LYNN – The way Classical girls basketball coach Tom Sawyer sees it, inexperience is something you just have to put up with.The only way you gain experience is to play ? and to learn from your mistakes, keep practicing, and keep getting better.The Lynn Classical girls basketball team’s had its entire spectrum of adjectives on display last night. The girls are very young, very athletic, very willing to try and learn ? but very raw. The Rams only have three seniors, and have had to start from Square One. And it showed. They took an early lead against Gloucester, but then things began to happen ? good for the Fishermen, and bad for the Rams.The result was a 55-39 loss ? not totally devastating, to be sure, but frustrating just the same.”It’s frustrating,” Sawyer said, “because we played very well the other night against Winthrop. We may not have won the game, but we played great. If we’d played like that tonight ? I don’t know whether we would have won, but it might have been a better game.”It was a choppy game in the first half, with neither team able to find much in the way of rhythm. Thanks to a hot start by Shanece Berberena, who scored all her eight points in the first quarter, the Rams jumped to a 10-8 lead after the first eight minutes.But it was all Gloucester after that. The more experienced Fishermen developed a semblance of a flow midway through the second quarter, and by halftime, they’d overtaken Classical to cling to a n 18-15 lead at the break.”We’ve been having trouble with our intensity,” said Gloucester coach Jon Flanagan, whose teams shook off a mild two-game losing streak to run its mark to 6-4 at the halfway point. “But I thought we came out in the second half, and contested everything. That made it difficult for (Classical) to slow us down.”Gloucester got big contributions in the second half from both Hannah Cain (16 points overall) and Lindsay Rogers (who also scored 16) as the Fishermen slowly pulled away until the lead peaked at 18 (53-35) midway through the fourth quarter.”Our goal,” said Sawyer, “was to keep them from penetrating. And we did that early. We played well in stretches, but we got sloppy with the ball in the second half.”However, what killed Classical was its difficulty in finishing.”That’s a mark of inexperience,” said Sawyer. “With experience comes the ability to make better decisions.”Right now, we’re rushing everything,” he said. “If you get an offensive rebound, for example, it doesn’t have to be hot potato. You don’t have to get rid of it right away. Come down, gather yourself, and go back up strong.”Diamond Doe led Classical with nine points ? all in the second half whilel sophomore Hannah Byrne and senior Sochetta Men had seven. Byrne did some yeoman work underneath for Classical as well.
