Girls basketball: Lady 'Dogs routed by Trojans in top of TCAL clash

However, four first quarter threes by the visitors saw Lincoln lead 16-5 after one — and the lead would only continue to grow from that point.

“Playing Lincoln, we know that they’re a very strong team and they showed that tonight,” Tracy head coach Derek Eaton told the Tracy Press. “They knocked down a lot of outside shots and we knew that we had to bring our best. I think we had an off night with that. Our energy was not there like we know it can be but overall, it’s only our first loss in league and we know we’ll bounce back.”

The visitors were able to take full advantage of their size with their length causing Tracy all sorts of problems — particularly on the glass with the Trojans inhaling what felt like every rebound. On offense, Lincoln finished with great efficiency inside and from beyond the arc.

The Trojans paired up their impressive offense with a suffocating — and virtually impermeable — mix of zone and pressure on defense which had the visitors scrambling and turning the ball over en masse.

In the end, the mistakes were extremely costly as the visitors erupted for a 25-4 second quarter run to lead 41-9 at half-time.

Things then went from bad to worse for the ‘Dogs after the break as the Trojans held their hosts to just three third quarter points (a triple from sophomore guard Reanna Zuniga).

Zuniga’s lone bucket of the game put her just one point off being Tracy’s leading scorer on the night. The ‘Dogs were led by junior center Lauren Hoock with 4 points to go along with four rebounds.

Junior guard Aliya Tipton was held to just 2 points by the Lincoln defense. Senior guard Sydney Breckenridge had two points and three rebounds off the bench. Senior center Tiana Coble hauled in three boards.

Tracy was able to add some buckets to reach double digits on the scoreboard down the stretch, though Lincoln did continue extending their sizable lead despite taking their foot off the gas for large parts of the second half.

The ‘Dogs will look to learn valuable lessons from this one as the Trojans flexed their muscle in a very dominant show of total basketball to improve to 3-0 in TCAL. They will get a chance to bounce back in a rivalry clash against West High on Friday night.

“We just really need to learn from this,” Eaton said. “We’ve had games like this in the past where our girls have bounced back well and I know and trust and believe in our team and what we can do. I don’t think this will affect us in the long run. We won’t allow this to affect us moving forward.”

Contact Arion Armeniakos at aarmeniakos@tracypress.com, or call 209-830-4229.