Team defeats Seaside, King City Mustangs
Same game plan, same strategy, same smothering defense.
It’s just a different year.
Hollister got their first glimpse of the San Benito girls
basketball team on Tuesday night at Mattson Gym
– the team’s first home game since dispatching host Seaside
44-27 in the Nov. 25 season opener – and not a whole lot seems to
have changed from last season’s epic ride to the Nor-Cal
playoffs.
Team defeats Seaside, King City Mustangs
Same game plan, same strategy, same smothering defense.
It’s just a different year.
Hollister got their first glimpse of the San Benito girls basketball team on Tuesday night at Mattson Gym – the team’s first home game since dispatching host Seaside 44-27 in the Nov. 25 season opener – and not a whole lot seems to have changed from last season’s epic ride to the Nor-Cal playoffs.
While they may not be exactly at the point where they left off last year – there was an eight-month layoff – the numbers are already speaking for themselves.
The Lady Balers downed visiting King City Tuesday 72-39 after outscoring the Mustangs 45-18 in the second half. San Benito forced 40 turnovers and took an amazing 85 shots from the field, 34 more than King City.
“I think we’re almost doing better than last year, but at the same time we still kind of backtracked a little,” post Megan Halstead said. “We’re still having to go over things and having to re-learn them. It’s not like we picked up where we left off after CCS or Nor-Cals.
“We had to start over a little bit … but it’s still not where we want to be.”
And for a 33-point win in just their second game of the season, San Benito isn’t content by any means.
Same plan. Different year.
“I think that’s a good sign,” San Benito head coach David Kaplansky said. “I think we can get a lot better. And that’s a good team, too. They were big, strong, athletic and experienced.
“But overall we need to work on timing, our execution, and develop a little more confidence for other kids so we can get the ball in the bucket.”
It wasn’t the greatest start in the first half, but once San Benito got adjusted and their shots began to fall, it seemed to be only a matter of time.
After shooting just 22 percent from the field in the first half, the Lady Balers rebounded with a 43 percent performance in the third and fourth quarters.
Kaplansky felt his team still had their “sea legs” in the first two quarters.
“In the second half, they started to get a little continuity and started to get a little confident,” Kaplansky said. “Once the ball started going in, it transpired to the rest of the team. It took one or two to get going, and once that happened, we caught a nice little rhythm.
“But we just didn’t have any rhythm offensively in the first half. I thought our defense was solid and kept us in the game.”
And San Benito’s defense is strong enough to keep them in games when the offense isn’t necessarily clicking.
It was, more or less, the stifling defense that turned an 8-15 team two years ago into last year’s 24-6 squad, which won the Central Coast Section and even a Nor-Cal playoff game – both firsts for the program.
And it will be, for the most part, the stifling defense again this year that will lead San Benito – from preventing easy points in the paint, to forcing plenty of turnovers that lead to quick transition baskets.
That much was on display Tuesday night.
“I felt like once our defense started creating our offense we started getting passing lanes, getting lay-ups and then we started to find a rhythm,” Kaplansky said. “You’d be amazed. You knock down a couple of free throws. Make a lay-up. That’s all it takes.”
For San Benito, it’s the same plan, just a different year.
