Twelve hours after suffering its worst loss of the season, the Park City High School girls’ basketball team got back to work at 6 a.m. Saturday.
Head coach Sam White said the 56-24 loss to rival Wasatch Friday Park City’s sixth straight was a difficult performance to deal with. Throughout the loss, the Miners’ penchant for turnovers was evident. White estimated Park City had 25 to 30 in the loss to the Wasps.
“We were all kind of displeased with our performance Friday night, both the coaches and players,” he said. “But on Saturday’s practice, they got up. It was mainly an hour and a half of running. We didn’t do much work with the basketball. But we are going to have to work on focusing and taking care of the ball.”
Wasatch began the game defensively with a full-court press on Park City and White said his team simply didn’t react fast enough to avoid multiple 10-second calls. The Wasps led 12-3 after the first quarter and 28-7 after the second.
The length of the Wasps worked to their advantage. As White pointed out, Wasatch guard Riley Gagon had eight points alone on offensive rebound putbacks. Park City was able to hold forward Arylynn Robinson in check throughout the game, but 6-foot-1 guard Rebecca MaWhinney dominated Park City in the second half en route to her game-high 17-point performance.
“For the first couple quarters, MaWhinney barely touched the ball,” White said. “Their team quickly realized they could use her size to their advantage in the second half.
“All credit goes to her. You put someone in her face the whole time and she still could get to the hoop in those situations.”
Offensively for Park City, things were stagnant. Heading into the season, White said the defense would help fuel the offense, but the Miners could never find their groove. They reached double digits only in one quarter, with a 13-point third quarter, and managed only four points in each of the second and fourth quarters and three in the first.
“I don’t know if we were tired from defense or tired from trying to break the press,” he said. “We were just standing around. We weren’t really in the mood to move. No one was cutting or screening away. I kind of got the same feel there wasn’t a real urgency to score. Most of the time we were just dribbling around the perimeter.”
Park City’s Carson Lyman led the Miners with 10 points, while freshman Megan Lee chipped in eight. Forward Sabrina Prior scored five points.
White said his team must to learn to fight and respond when the chips are down, while still making conscious plays on both ends of the floor.
“We coughed it up and made way too many unforced errors,” he said. “We need to focus on being tough with the ball. I feel like we backed down Friday.”
While the Miners are on the wrong end of a six-game losing skid, White said they are ready to bounce back from their Region 10 opener thumping against Wasatch when they take on the Union Cougars this Friday at home.
Union is 3-8 and is in a similar situation as Park City. Both of the teams’ leading scorers from a year ago graduated Union’s Katie Richens and Park City’s Laurel Kasel each averaged nearly 20 points per game and now both programs are rebuilding.
“They’ve dropped a couple, but at the same time, they’ve beat teams who have beat us,” White said. “It’s always physical with Union. We just have to step up and take care of that ball.”
Tip off between Park City and Union is scheduled for 5:15 p.m. Friday night.