Sans football players, Panthers prevail

After a slow start, the Porterville Panthers outmatched the Exeter Monarchs on the road, handily winning their season opener 46-24.

“I was pleased with our effort but execution was horrible. There was bad basketball played by both teams at times. I think our effort was there. We need to work a lot on our offense,” Panthers coach Lance Wallace said.

Both the Panthers and Monarchs were missing players heading into this matchup, because both schools have football teams in the playoffs.

“We’re raw. We have a bunch of young guys and it’s the first game of the season and both teams are missing their football guys. We always know we are in for a physical game when we play Porterville so we know we are in for a tough game,” Monarchs coach Jared Mandville said.

Jordan McCoy led the Panthers’ offense with 14 points and he was followed closely by Nate Jessup, who racked up 10 of his own points. Chris Dempsey scored six points of his own and led the Panthers in rebounds with five.

Though, the stat that Coach Wallace emphasized the most was his team’s 27 turnovers they committed.

“We were diving on the floor for the ball. The kids really want to become a good team and they are working hard for it. We need to work on protecting the basketball, it’s our team’s Achilles’ heel. We had way too many turnovers,” Wallace said.

The Monarchs struggled to get any offensive production throughout the game and were led in scoring by senior guard Vince Diaz who scored six points. Junior point guard Abel Ibarra also added five points to the team total.

“We settled for the 3-point shot all night, and we probably went about 2-for-24 by the end of the game. We weren’t able to match up to their size on the inside which stopped us from getting anything going there,” Mandville said.

At the start of the game neither team could muster up any offense and the game was scoreless until nearly half of the first quarter had passed. With 4:02 remaining in the opening quarter, Porterville’s Mike Lopez sank a shot from beyond the arc to take a 3-0 lead for the Panthers. Exeter called a timeout immediately following Lopez’s trey. The Panthers barely held onto a 5-4 lead heading into the second quarter after Exeter’s Garrett Souza beat the buzzer, sinking a short jumper as the quarter ended.

Following a dismal first quarter, the Panthers’ offense began to produce, rolling on a 13-0 scoring run to start the second quarter.

Just over a minute into the period with the game tied at five, Porterville’s McCoy sank a jumper from within the key.

On the Panthers’ next possession, Jessup was able to draw a foul from a Monarch defender and he sank both of his free throws to extend Porterville’s lead to four, 9-5. After stopping Exeter’s offense once again, McCoy sliced through the Monarch defense and drove in for a layup. McCoy’s layup was off, but he rebounded his own shot and sank it the second time around.

Later, Eduardo Lamas scored one after being fouled to give the Panthers a 13 point lead, 18-5. The Panthers held the Monarchs to just six points in the third quarter, and they extended their lead to 16 by the end of the third, 32-16.

Exeter got into foul trouble throughout the fourth quarter, sending Panthers’ players to the line one after the other.

“This was a good game to get under our belts; get the minutes up on the board, team fouls, player fouls, and tough situations. We really needed this to help get prepared for the season,’ Wallace said.