Despite a 42-36 win over Gunn last week, Mountain View High girls basketball coach Xavier Cook was unsatisfied with the team’s performance.
“Honestly, I just felt like we just weren’t locked in tonight as a group, as a team,” Cook said after the Jan. 17 game.
Although the Spartans jumped out to a 12-5 lead in the first quarter and held a 25-14 advantage at halftime, Gunn clawed back into the game. The Titans pulled within three with a minute left in the fourth quarter before Mountain View converted several free throws to secure the win.
Cook noted the Spartans got away from their defensive game plan to focus on guarding Gunn’s best players and made too many mistakes that allowed the Titans to hang around. Gunn (7-10) played aggressive pressing defense to speed up the Spartans, with Mountain View (14-4) often dribbling to the sidelines and into pressure that forced more turnovers. Mountain View, normally the team to press and get opponents to make errors, committed 16 turnovers, including five in the fourth quarter that helped fuel the visitors’ comeback.
“If you get away from the game plan, I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to be very good,” Cook said.
Cook made an analogy for the team’s play to how a hand moves, noting the players are five fingers going in different directions that want to go without the hand but can’t. While Mountain View was good enough to win the game, he noted future results against tougher teams could be different if the Spartans don’t play together.
“For us right now, it’s little small things, but as we know, small things create big things as they pile up,” Cook said.
Despite the current play, he believes if the team executes better and follows the scouting plan, it will lead to cleaner play and bigger wins. The Spartans led the entire game and were up 39-31 before Gunn went on a 5-0 run over two minutes to make the game close. Mountain View guard Alana Hernandez finished with 14 points, while Liz Cardenas had 10, Mikayla Kim nine and Ellie Westgate six.
“At the end of the day, I think the happy part is we are still good enough to beat teams even when we are not playing very well,” Cook said.
Cook believes the Spartans can win almost every game by double digits if they continue to work on improving. He remains confident the team can refocus, fix the issues and make a deep run into the Central Coast Section playoffs. Mountain View has emerged as a contender for the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League El Camino Division crown at 4-1, with Milpitas (4-0) and Santa Clara (4-1) the other two teams vying for the top spot.
“I still think we are in a good place; we just have to get back in the gym,” Cook said. “We have to fine-tune those things we are messing up a little bit on.
