Staff photo / Dan Hiner Boardman’s Jocelynn Torres (44) goes up for a layup during the first quarter of a game against Marlington on Monday in Boardman.

BOARDMAN — The Boardman girls basketball team is young, and at times, that inexperience showed on Monday night.

Turnovers, the occasional defensive lapse and inconsistent shooting plagued the Spartans, who dropped their third straight gaame with a 54-50 loss to Marlington at Boardman High School.

“They’re a young group, and they’re still learning that you can’t take anybody lightly and you can’t take any plays off,” Boardman head coach Annie Pavlansky said. “We obviously had one too many turnovers in the second quarter, as far as being careless with the ball and valuing possessions.”

It was a bit of a slow start for both teams. After scoring on their first possessions, both teams went without a point for a couple minutes. But Boardman outscored the Dukes 12-5 during the final several minutes of the opening quarter and led 14-9 at the end of the first.

Turnovers by the Spartans (1-5) allowed the Dukes to take a 17-16 lead at the 4:34 mark of the second quarter. The Marlington lead grew to 28-19 with a minute left in the half, and they took that advantage into the locker room.

Marlington carried some of its momentum into the third as the Dukes increased their lead to 35-23 with 5:30 left in the quarter.

But Pavlansky changed things up defensively.

The Spartans began to press, which threw the Dukes (3-4) out of sync. The visitors started turning the ball over, and Boardman clawed back basket by basket to cut the deficit to 41-37 by the start of the fourth quarter.

“When we were down, they knew we had to get up and start pressuring them more in the fullcourt,” Pavlansky said. “But I think we did a good job, all things considered, handling that. It was just too little too late.”

Boardman’s defense kept the Spartans in the game, but they struggled to consistently get shots to drop in the fourth.

After a 3-pointer by Boardman’s Jocelynn Torres, the Dukes held a 50-44 lead with 2:30 to play. However, Boardman went 2-for-7 shooting – a pair of threes by Maddy Slevin and Torres – during the final couple minutes and couldn’t complete the comeback.

Slevin scored a team-high 23 points, including a game-best four 3-pointers. Torres added 11 points, and Lili Ison ended with 10 points.

Pavlansky said the team will need to grow by doing the little things if the Spartans are to achieve their goals this season. It starts with focus and controlling what they can control.

The Spartans’ second-year coach said that will start when they look back on Monday’s game during the film session and learn what they can from the loss.

“Doing all those things – effort, energy, attitude, intensity, focus – more consistently, because we’ve seen glimpses of it and parts of it in games,” Pavlansky said. “But with our schedule, we play good, competitive teams, and our margin for error becomes a lot smaller. We just have to learn to do that more consistently.”