The St. Patrick-St. Vincent High girls varsity basketball team did just enough to lose Friday night against visiting Kennedy.
A missed shot here or a turnover there spelled the difference in a frustrating 41-40 loss for the Lady Bruins. SPSV trailed all night but had countless opportunities to catch – or surpass – the Lady Eagles.
“We’re still learning,” said disappointed SPSV head coach Nadine Walker after another heartbreaking loss. “There are a lot of good things that we’re doing and the effort is definitely there. But there are times where we mentally relax and we can’t do that. We have to be aggressive all the time.”
The Lady Bruins weren’t aggressive enough early, falling behind 12-9 after one quarter and 25-18 at the break. But Kennedy (10-4, 1-1 TCAL) was having shooting and turnover problems of its own and couldn’t put SPSV away.
Trailing by 10 with under five minutes remaining, junior forward Selena Caoile brought the Lady Bruins back with seven unanswered points to make it 38-35 with 2:26 left. After a Kennedy bucket by Destinee Alexander, SPSV’s Alyssa Sanderson had a 3-point attempt bounce off the back rim and go in to make it 40-38 with 49 seconds remaining.
But SPSV could pull no closer. Vicki Sims made a free throw to put Kennedy back up by three, and two 3-point attempts by SPSV failed. The Lady Bruins (5-10, 0-2 TCAL) had one final chance when Kennedy turned the ball over under its own rim with two seconds on the clock, but SPSV only had time for an easy Kelly Dennis 2-pointer.
“We had a very good game plan defensively and I thought we did a great job executing that,” Walker said. “But like always we struggled to score and that’s because of too many turnovers. We just can’t take care of the ball.”
Caoile led the Lady Bruins with 17 points, 11 rebounds, four steals and six blocks. Neenah Pangilinan had four assists, four steals and five steals, and Dennis, Sanderson and Carra Dwyer each had six rebounds.
SPSV hosts St. Joe’s on Tuesday.
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