Pirates misfire again

COSTA MESA — Clearly, 24 works better as a prime-time television drama than it does as a shooting percentage.

But 24.1% was all the Orange Coast College women’s basketball team could muster from the field Saturday night in the semifinals of its Coast Christmas Classic against visiting Cerritos.

The result was a 52-45 Falcons victory that was hardly as routine as one might expect.

For, despite OCC’s inability to produce a field goal during a stretch of 18 minutes, five seconds, that spanned well into the second half — the hosts missed their first 12 field-goal attempts after halftime and were two for 19 before a relative bucket frenzy (three) in the final 77 seconds, the Pirates (10-5) had a three-point try in the air with 17 seconds remaining that could have cut its deficit to three.

Alas, the three ball proved errant, dropping the Pirates, ranked No. 18 in the state and No. 12 in Southern California, into today’s third-place game against College of the Canyons at 1 p.m.

And with College of the Canyons ranked No. 13 in the state and No. 10 in SoCal, the Pirates’ may see their status in the polls fall more than their jump shots.

“If the game would have gone on three or four minutes longer, we might have had a chance,” said OCC Coach Mike Thornton, who substituted liberally and continues to use the breadth of his 39 years on the sideline, the last 20 at OCC, in order to try to generate something offensively for his team.

“We’ve changed our motion about two or three times,” said Thornton now 438-191 at OCC. “We’ve narrowed down our list of set plays, so as not to give them too much and, at the same time, become more effective with what we do. We have a hard time getting into [the offense], then, when we do a good job, we can’t finish. So, there are a lot of issues there, offensively.

“We struggle so much on the offensive end that our margin for error is really, really slim. If we give up easy baskets and we don’t defend the way we should ...”

The Pirates had trouble defending freshman point guard Maleta Daughtery, who amassed a game-high 26 points on 10-of-17 shooting from the field, including four of six from three-point range. The rest of the Falcons were 10 of 33 from the field (30.3%).

Daughtery scored 10 points, including back-to-back three-point swishes to key a 14-0 run that began with 50 seconds left in the first half and ended with 13:55 left in the game to give the Falcons (8-7) a 36-22 cushion.

With an ice-cold Pirates squad gaining some offensive sustenance from the free-throw line, Cerritos upped the lead to 46-30, before Casey Gomez sank a four-foot runner to halt the field-goal drought that amounted to nearly half of the game.

Gomez finished with 11 points, making five of seven field-goal tries, including her only three-pointer. But she played just 16 minutes, as Thornton was displeased with the play of his starters.

Thornton praised the effort of his reserves, who included Daisy Bueno (10 points), Jaque Anderson (six points, six rebounds and two steals) and Rebecca Murray (six boards).

It was the second loss to Cerritos in eight days. The Falcons claimed a 58-57 nonconference road triumph Dec. 12.

Coast Christmas Classic

Cerritos 52, Orange Coast 45

Cer – Taylor 7, Butler 5, Faagata 8, Daughtery 26, Garcia 0, Tripp 4, Sanchez 2.

3-pt. goals – Daughtery 4.

Fouled out – Tripp.

OCC – Ibbotson 6, Harrell 0, Lujan 2, Gomez 11, Simmons 2, Bueno 10, Anderson 6, Mahi 4, Alfafara 2, Lewis 1, Murray 1.

3-pt. goals – Gomez 1, Bueno 1.

Halftime – Cer, 26-22.

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at [email protected].