7th grade avoids collapse, win by a point

The 7th grade girls avoided a meltdown in the last minute of the game and held on for dear life in a 20-19 win that brought their record back to .500.

Nursing a one point lead with 10 seconds left in the game, the girls had an inbound underneath their own basket, but Tiffany threw an errant pass right to the other team. Luckily Melina wrestled the ball away from her and the 7th graders held onto the ball as the time expired.

They dodged a bullet midway through the 4th quarter when Cynthia accidentally shot the ball in her own basket.

It happens quite often in a regular season it seems when the entire team doesn't realize which way they are going in the second half, and they ended up throwing it in their own hoop. Cynthia's shot wasn't a layup, but rather a jump shot that was nothing but net that cut their own lead to 18-16.

When Cynthia shot in her own basket, she was pretty good. She nailed an NBA range 3 pointer near the end of the 3rd quarter and gave the 7th grade girls a 16-11 cushion heading into the fourth.

Melina hit a jump shot to start the fourth which gave them their biggest lead of the game at 18-11.

Playing with only five girls, the 7th grade looked tired at points during the game. A lot of their shots were missing badly because they had absolutely no lift from their legs. They threw up a lot of forced shots when they weren't squared to the basket from bad angles.

When they took their time and shot in stride, the results were usually good.

On both of Melina's jumpers in the fourth, she had ample time, squared herself and drained her shots. Same goes for Cynthia when she pulled up in rhythm and was able to find the hoop.

At (3-3), the playoffs are very well in reach. Winning out would almost assure them at worse a tie-breaker game. Split the next two, and they'll probably need some help.

Remember this is a team that lost two games to forfeit when they couldn't get five players to show up for a game.

Now they are down to five players, and they'll need to be in condition for the full four quarters.

Defensively, they played pretty well and avoided foul trouble, something that they got themselves into in their last game.

A few more practices together should hopefully get them playing even more together than they were this afternoon.

Amy scored 2 points and Julia chipped in with 4 points in the win.