In the last home game of the season on Feb. 3, the Carlmont varsity girls basketball team fell to the Menlo-Atherton (M-A) Bears 51-46.
This was the team’s second loss to M-A, who they had played previously on Jan. 13. The Bears stand undefeated and rank first in the league. The Scots are third.
“Our league record is seven and two, we’ve won all of our league games except the two against M-A. I’d love to say the season is going perfect but unfortunately, we haven’t been able to beat this one team,” said senior forward Brynn Toomasson.
The Bears developed an early lead, making a 3-pointer within the first 60 seconds of the game. When another basket followed, the Scots retaliated quickly and brought the score up to a tie.
This back-and-forth continued throughout most of the first quarter, keeping the score evenly matched until the Bears pulled forward 16-10. In the first quarter’s final three seconds, Toomasson completed a free throw, leaving the score 16-11.
The Scots tried their best to catch up but fell even farther behind during the second quarter. The Bears finished the half with a steady lead of 31-18, sinking a basket just before the buzzer sounded.
“In basketball, you’re gonna fall down a lot. You’re gonna make a lot of mistakes, but part of being a good player is being able to put that behind you and just get it back on the next play. As my coach likes to say, you want to have short memory even if you do something good or bad. Don’t become caught up, keep playing your game and being focused,” said sophomore point guard Willow Ishibashi-To.
Coming back from halftime, the Scots were determined to work even harder to close the gap between scores. After multiple attempts by both teams to score, junior Ale Nelson used a fast break to make the first basket of the quarter.
The Bears came back even stronger and rose the score to 40-29 by the end of the quarter. With just 0.9 seconds left on the clock, Nelson’s free throw gave the Scots a push to 30 points.
Being in the final stretch of the game, both teams were full of fuel and Nelson opened the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer. With all players working as hard as they could, the gap between scores couldn’t be made up and the game concluded 51-46.
Coming out of the game, head coach Richard Stephens was reflective of their performance against the Bears.
“The game is about we have to go out there and do what we’re supposed to do, and they got to try and stop us. And they did a better job on that,” Stephens said.
Despite their loss, many players remain positive and are happy with how their season has turned out so far.
“We’ve had the best first start to the season we’ve had in five years, and our coaching, our playing, it all came together. We were really playing as a team and had a good connection,” Ishibashi-To said. “We have more games in the season, we’re gonna play the rest for our seniors.”
