Beatty boys down Round Mountain

After dropping three games in a row to Tonopah, Spring Mountain and Sandy Valley, the Hornets men’s basketball team turned things around and came on top of the Round Mountain Knights 51-49 in a must-win game.

Beatty improved to 2-3 in league, but has only three games remaining in their schedule.

The team will travel to Indian Springs on Thursday and Adelson on Tuesday. Indian Springs is 0-5 and Adelson is 5-0.

The Hornets comes home on Valentines day to play Pahranagat Valley who is 2-3 also.

Hornets coach Joe Serrano was not too concerned with his last three games. He was optimistic and felt his team still had a good chance of making it to the playoffs and believed beating Round Mountain was a good start.

“We played well against Round Mountain. We out-rebounded them. I made some adjustments to the lineup. I moved Jake Zamora to point guard and moved Luis to forward. Luis was doing too much as point guard. I then put Luis on one of the bigger dudes of Round Mountain and he did a great job boxing him out,” he said.

When asked about his last three losses and if he thought his team was getting tired in the fourth because of a small bench, he dismissed this.

“Against Sandy Valley we shot 11 for 55. I am down to a seven man rotation,” Serrano said.

He believes his team still can win the big games.

“If we take two out of our last three we will be in good shape for the playoffs. If we lose two of them we might be done. I think the playoffs are there for the taking. I think we are still competitive. We beat Word of Life and they have beaten some tough teams. We stayed in there with Tonopah and Spring Mountain. Round Mountain has beaten Spring Mountain,” he said.

The Hornets are in sixth place in the Division and the top six go to the playoffs, but they are tied with Pahranagat Valley.

Against Round Mountain Serrano named Jake Zamora the player of the game. Serrano said Zamora did well as point. He said Jacob Oseguera did well too.

“Oseguera does not put up a lot of stats, but he does his job when he is out there. He had two big points in the fourth quarter and when he comes in he plays great defense,” he said.

The Lady Hornets lost a close away game to the Round Mountain Knights 29-26 last week.

The ladies are now 4-2 in and in third place in league and must now fight for a decent seed in the playoffs. To maintain third, they will have to take the next two teams, Indian Springs and Adelson on the road. Indian Springs will go down fighting at 3-3 and it’s up to the Hornets to beat the 0-4 Lions at home.

Hornets coach Aimee Senior was disappointed in losing to the Knights. Round Mountain was 1-2 going into that game.

“Like the Broncos we didn’t show up to play. Round Mountain has some height and that for some reason stopped us from playing our game. We didn’t drive the ball to the hoop, we didn’t take outside shots, we forced shots that weren’t there and didn’t take shots that were there. We stood and watched Round Mountain take the ball from us, we didn’t make any steals, and missed lay-ups that we should have made,” she said.

Senior said her team didn’t score any points in the third quarter and that was the deciding factor in the game. Round Mountain took the lead in the third 21-17.

The coach knows she needs to finish the year near the top to get a good playoff seed. The top six teams advance to the playoffs. The first and second place team get a bye during the first round.

“As you can tell, I’m very disappointed. It was really heartbreaking to lose that game when I know we could have won. These ladies have played with their hearts and a lot of determination this year and I didn’t see that intensity Friday. We need to get our game back to where it has been. If we want to win, we’ve got to drive the ball, take smart shots, play tough defense, make steals and the lay-ups that go with the steals, and run our press like it’s supposed to be run,” she explained.

The Hornets deserve credit for even being in third place this year. They are a scrappy bunch of girls who take their basketball seriously and could be a long shot to go to state.

Scoring: Denise & Claudia 4, Maggie 3, Christina 7, Eaire 2, Alexia 6.