The Cranston West girls basketball team fell to visiting Rogers 46-36 last week to drop their third straight game.

After a competitive first half, the West offense would stall and score just 13 points in the final two quarters and see Rogers run away with the victory.

Despite the slow second half, West coach Nerson Santiago was not discouraged by the performance.

“It was just a matter of the shots not going in. I thought we moved the ball well, moved well without the ball. We got the looks that we wanted but we just didn’t drop them. I’m proud of the effort and attitude that they played with, they played together, they never gave up, so I can live with that,” said Santiago.

Senior Kiley Abendroth led the Falcons with 14 points scored while Maia Riccio added seven. Santiago was happy with Abendroth’s outing and is expecting more big nights moving forward as the team looks to make a playoff push.

“She’s a senior, so we need that leadership every night. She brought that here tonight, she hit some shots, she did a great job with offensive rebounding, she had a couple of big steals, I am proud of her effort. We’re going to need her going forward. Hopefully we can make it to the tournament because if we do, anything can happen. We just need to win a few more games, qualify for the tournament and keep on building,” said Santiago.

The Falcons fell to 3-6 in league action and took on Barrington on Tuesday. The results were not available at press time.

The Falcons are looking to continue to build rapport after graduating nearly its entire roster from last season.

“We’ll get back in the gym and keep working. After losing nine players, having a young team, having a new team, you just need to keep building. We need to build some momentum heading into the rest of the season,” said Santiago, who believes consistency will be the key. “We just need to stay consistent and play team ball. To get that camaraderie, that continuity, fluidity, it takes some time. These last few games, we just haven’t played well. We didn’t play good team basketball and we were playing as individuals. Tonight, though, this was a nice step in the right direction.”