In sports, there are good losses and bad losses.
Chalk up Carson's 48-42 loss to Bishop Manogue Tuesday night at Morse Burley Gym on the good side.
Carson played hard and played well a lot of the time, and had it not been for a six-minute drought in the second quarter the outcome very well could have been different.
"We played pretty well," said Carson coach Todd Ackerman, whose team dropped to 3-4 in Northern 4A play. "We had some mental breakdowns where we were turning the ball over; errors that were unforced. We played hard on defense.
"In the third quarter, we got the tempo going our way. They were just standing around which is huge. We had to be able to control the tempo, and we did that."
Carson trailed for the final 1 minute 40 seconds of the second quarter and nearly the entire third quarter, finally taking the lead briefly, 36-35, on a shot by Tiana McAllister-Daggs with 9.3 left.
It was a big quarter for Carson's Jazmyn Stokes, who scored seven of her team-high 15 points in that span. Stokes was aggressive going to the basket, and it was that effort which led to some baskets and free throws.
"I've been working on trying to take it straight up instead of falling away," Stokes said. "I take a quick look. If it's there I'll take it. If not I get it out of there.
"We stayed with them pretty well I think. I think we played pretty well."
Lauren Luckadoo, who led the Miners with 14, gave the Miners the lead for good, 37-36, with a buzzer-beating basket to end the quarter.
"She's a pretty good player," Ackerman said. "She's real long, and we had trouble closing out on her, especially on 3-pointers."
A 3-pointer by Amy Yeager and a fast-break layup by Kelly Lujan stretched the Miners' lead to 42-36 with 5:50 left in the contest. Lujan finished with 10 points. Two free throws by Elayna Shine made it a 42-38 game with 4:23 left, but that's as close as the Senators would get.
"We missed four or five shots inside 5-feet in that last quarter," Ackerman said. "Elayna missed a couple of tough ones. To beat a team like Manogue you have to be able to make those (tough) shots."
In the opening period, Whitney Nash (11 points) and Eliza Matley combined for nine points in the final 1:45 to give the Senators a 16-12 lead.
Manogue's Gabbi Concepcion picked up three first-quarter fouls, which forced Manogue to play some zone as well as look to other people for scoring.
That's when things went south on the Senators shortly after that, however.
Manogue opened the second quarter with a 13-0 run to take a 25-16 lead with 1:40 remaining thanks to eight straight points by Luckadoo and a three-point play by Lujan. Two straight hoops by Stokes and a driving layup by Lisa Yamamoto cut the deficit to 25-22 after the first 16 minutes.
"Nothing went right," Ackerman said, describing the scoreless stretch which saw Carson go 0-for-8 from the floor and turn the ball over five times. "We didn't score for six minutes and we were still in the game."
And, they stayed in the game the rest of the way. There was no quit in the Senators on this night.
