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Bulldogs stage second-half comeback against Antioch
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Turlock senior forward Andrew Johnson scores two of his nine points in the second quarter of the Bulldogs’ 48-42 victory over the Antioch Panthers on Tuesday evening (CANDY PADILLA/The Journal).

The flow of Tuesday evening’s pre-league basketball game between the Turlock Bulldogs and Antioch Panthers resembled that of a rollercoaster. After jumping out to a 15-5 lead, the Bulldogs found themselves trailing  24-21 at halftime. The game was knotted at 30 to start the fourth frame, where the Bulldogs pulled away to win 48-42.

Helping the Bulldogs get off to their hot start was junior guard Dutch Lawrence, who began the game scoring eight points in the opening three minutes off of three shots. He finished the game as Turlock’s leading scorer with 14 points.

“We had lost two of our last couple of games (62-56 to Golden Valley in the Godinez Tournament and 66-55 to Riverbank last Tuesday), so we just wanted to come out strong to get back on that winning track,” explained Lawrence.

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Turlock senior guard Nels Johnson navigates through the paint in the first quarter of Tuesday evening’s 48-42 pre-league win over the Antioch Panthers (CANDY PADILLA/The Journal).

The trouble for the Bulldogs began when they turned the ball over nine times between the second and third quarters.

“I think they were ready to come out play defensively as well as offensively and the confidence showed, but we ended up getting a bit lazy and kind of complacent,” said head coach Doug Cornfoot. “Guys started stopping and watching instead of moving and getting open to meet passes… A little bit of a mental breakdown, so we'll work on it. Those are fixable things.”

The Bulldogs also riddled themselves with 14 missed free throws, which came as a surprise to Cornfoot, who believes they had been a good free throw-shooting team on the year up to that point.

The miscues were avenged in the fourth quarter when the trio of Andrew Johnson, Jeremiah Evans and Izaiah Saenz took advantage of some extra leeway given by the referees in crunch time by combining for 10 rebounds. Seven different Bulldogs scored in the fourth quarter to help them pull away.

“We rebounded a lot better. The refs let it go a little bit, which was fine because they let it both go both ways, but we had to be stronger with the ball and make every possession count,” Cornfoot said. “We have the skill and the talent on this team, it's just the competitiveness. They just need to get nasty and go get it.”