By Grace Fuerte

Phoenix Metro Tech lost 76-69 to Tempe High School Thursday night in a 4A Conference game.

Despite the win at home, Tempe head coach Tom Saltzstein said his team deserves a ‘B-minus’ for its performance, primarily because of its turnovers.  

“We have a lot of room for improvement,” he said. “We give up the ball way too much, and we still give up way too many offensive rebounds.”

While the offense is strong with multiple high-scoring players, Tempe’s defense allowed Metro Tech to crawl back up from a 20 point deficit.

Along with the team giving up the ball and not being aggressive on the offensive glass, Saltzstein said that selfishness and maturity also are concerns.

Tempe is a fairly young team with not many seniors. At times, only sophomores and juniors were on the floor against Metro Tech.

“Right now we have some good athleticism and we’re trying to convert that into some good basketball players,” Saltzstein said.

To do that Saltzstein believes that "hard and smart work" will help.

His goals for his team is to get better every day, peak in mid February and hopefully make it to the playoffs. Tempe is 1-1 and opened its season with a 75-43 loss to a very good Shadow Mountain team.

Metro Tech High School dropped to 0-2 under third-year coach Mario Malaby.

Fuerte is a sports journalism student at Arizona State and covers Tempe high schools for azpreps365.com