COLORADO SPRINGS – A year ago, Brighton High School’s girls basketball team had trouble scoring points, holding onto the basketball and with fouls in its playoff game against Rocky Mountain.

    Even though the calendar turned almost 12 pages, those problems were still at the forefront Feb. 24 when Brighton visited Pine Creek in the first round of the state 5A basketball tournament.

    Though Brighton made 10 of its first 12 free throws, the Bulldogs made just one basket in the first 1 ½ quarters – four for the half – against the Eagles. Pine Creek wound up on the long end of a 63-51 score.

    “Now that I think about it, it was the same kind of game (as Rocky Mountain),” coach Traci Mescher said. “We couldn’t make a basket last year either. I don’t know why. They just weren’t falling. We weren’t taking very good shots. We were forcing shots, so that didn’t help.”

    Brighton finished 11-13. Heritage beat Pine Creek (15-10) in the second round of the tournament Saturday night.

    “We tried. We came out with good intent. We just couldn’t finish it,” said junior center Jenna Sandoval, who finished with nine points. “We had pretty good defense. We tried to set up the offense. What went wrong was we got a little rushed, and we had a lot of turnovers. We got a lot of fouls.”

    Jordanne Kniss wrapped up her prep career with a 25-point performance. That led all scorers. Pine Creek got 18 points from Audra Romero and 15 more from Brandy Farley.

    Pine Creek had a tough time shooting from the floor as well. The Eagles made just 29 percent of their field-goal tries and a bit more than half of their free throws. Brighton couldn’t find a way to take advantage, and the Bulldogs lost three starters to fouls by the midway point of the fourth quarter.

    “This was the game we were most ready to play,” Sandoval said. “We got a little frustrated once it wasn’t going our way.”

    “In the second half, we started moving the ball around and actually getting better shots,” Mescher said. “We made a few more but not enough. The shots were more open. We didn’t stop turning the ball over. We fixed one area but not the next.”

    Brighton loses five seniors off the playoff roster.

    “We can learn from the experience,” Sandoval said, “of suddenly getting down, dealing with pressure, not resorting to fouls when it’s not going our way – stuff like that.”

    “The girls played hard, played very competitive,” Mescher said. “You can’t be upset over a loss when you give 100 percent. “I lose a group that’s been around for four years. We need to get the younger kids more involved and start working the younger levels more. We’re going to build from there. Definitely, we’ll be back next year.”