Carson girls pull away from Douglas

MINDEN - As the Douglas girls' basketball team jumped out to an early 6-2 lead in Minden Friday night, Carson coach Todd Ackerman got a brief flashback to the the two team's overtime struggle earlier this month.

While Carson stole away with a one-point victory in the earlier meeting, the Senators were able to overcome their early struggles Friday night to put Douglas away 43-25.

"It was similar to last time in that we didn't shoot it very well," Ackerman said. "But we did some different things to them that we didn't do in the first game.

"We ended up getting the right people shooting and on defense we were able to force them away from their right people shooting.

"We battled and battled and got some good looks. We got a couple steals here and there and got them to turn it over a couple times. It just came down to us getting more opportunities to score than they did and taking advantage of those opportunities when we got them."

Indeed, Douglas led 7-4 with just over two minutes left in the first quarter, but the Senators rattled off a 6-0 run over the final minute to take a 10-7 lead.

Douglas would never get any closer as the Senators extended the run to 10-2 to start the second quarter. Carson pulled away from there.

The Senators added another 10-2 run highlighted by a Whitney Nash 3-pointer and Lisa Yamamoto's lay-up and free-throw conversion to close out the third quarter with a 43-24 lead.

Yamamoto led the Senators with 10 points while Nash added seven. Eliza Matley had six and Emily Collins had four in the win.

"We played really well in two tough losses last week," Ackerman said. "Our hope was just to play well tonight, try to pick one up Saturday and maybe then we'll start feeling pretty good about ourselves. Anything could happen now. We just have to keep working at it."

Douglas took yet another hit to its playoffs hopes heading into a tough week with a road date at Reno on Tuesday and a home game against Manogue Friday.

Bri Burnside led the Tigers with six points. Carly McCullough added five and Tia Lyons and Holly Downer each had four.