Patience is still the word for the Salisbury girls basketball team.

The early going has been difficult, but young players are gaining experience that will be helpful down the road. Basically, Salisbury has been able to beat the teams that it figured on beating, and the Falcons struggle against the perennial Colonial League contenders like Palmerton and Northwestern Lehigh. The teams between those two levels, the games are up for grabs.

In their last game against Moravian Academy, the Lions came out firing and gave Salisbury very little opportunity to score. The result was that after one quarter, the Falcons were down 15-2. That was a point where the team could have packed it in and started thinking about anything but basketball. Instead, they simply went about their work and played better. By halftime, the lead was cut down to 16-10 with Kendra Morgan having a team-high six points at the half.

In the second half, the game again grew closer and suddenly, the Falcons were down by just three points at 19-16 when the quarter ended. Moravian Academy was able to pull together enough to win the game, outscoring the Falcons 7-5 in the final quarter of play for a 26-21 win.

The two teams combined to go 8-for-27 (29%) from the foul line. Salisbury was 3-for-11 (27%). On the season, Salisbury is hitting 39-percent of their foul shots and by getting a few more of those to go, some of these games will be in the win column.

Want signs of better things to come? As a sophomore, Kendra Morgan is leading the team with nine points per game and senior Desiree Nales is next with 4.6 points per game. The team has five seniors on the roster, but younger players have gotten a good number of minutes on the floor for Salisbury.

It’s also a good sign that six players have set career highs for points in a game through the first eight games of this season. Many of those numbers aren’t high numbers, but they’re improving and that’s all that Salisbury needs to show.

The Falcons headed into the holiday break at 2-6 overall and 0-5 in Colonial League games. They return to action Thursday, Jan. 4 when they travel to Northern Lehigh to face the 2-5 Bulldogs.