A hot hand from beyond the three-point arc, particularly in the second half, carried the Brownwood Lady Lions to a 53-38 victory over the Goldthwaite Lady Eagles Friday night at Warren Gym, the second triumph in a row and 11th overall for head coach Heather Hohertz’s squad.
“We’ve been talking about how we’ve been up and down energy-wise,” Hohertz said. “I know basketball season’s a grind and the good teams find a way to get out of that little slump that they have. I challenged them in the locker room before the game, I told them good teams find a way. I thought for the most part defensively we were in the spots we needed to be, but we were a step behind in some areas. Offensively, I thought we came out and shot the ball really well tonight.”
The Lady Lions converted 38 percent (18 of 48) of their field goal attempts, but buried 10 of 17 three-pointers (58 percent) and sank 7 of 10 (70 percent) from the free throw line.
Mady Pyle led the way for Brownwood with 17 points while Kassidy Wooten and Kynslee Walker chipped in 10 points apiece. Jaylen Savage finished with eight, Tessa Goodwin contributed six points and Lilly Brasher added a bucket.
“We had a shooting slump during the Lorena tournament but we’re good shooters,” Hohertz said. “We’ve done a lot of three-point shooting in the last few days at practice and they’ve proven to me that we’re good shooters. I told them to go out and execute and Mady, Kynslee and Kass stepped up big from the three-point line.”
Seven treys occurred in the second half, which allowed Brownwood (11-5) to pull away from Goldthwaite (9-3) after the Lady Eagles trimmed the deficit to 31-26 with 3:17 left in the third period.
Walker knocked the Lady Lions’ sixth three-pointer with 1:36 left in the third period and Wooten tacked on a free throw as Brownwood carried a 35-26 lead into the fourth quarter.
There, back-to-back threes from Walker and Pyle allowed the Lady Lions to establish their largest lead to that point, 43-29, with 6:01 to go. Pyle drained another triple with 4:29 left, pushing Brownwood’s lead to 48-31. Then, with 2:25 to go, Pyle struck again from long range to give the Lady Lions their biggest lead of the night, 53-33.
“The first half we were trying to do our high-low and Jaylen and Tessa were struggling to score around the basket so we started opening it up a little bit,” Hohertz said. “This team has a lot of weapons when we’re on the same page. If somebody’s not having a good game the next one steps up and I thought that’s what we did tonight.”
Brownwood led 12-8 after one quarter and 25-16 at halftime. Consecutive three-pointers from Wooten midway through the third period allowed the Lady Lions to open a 31-18 edge, but Goldthwaite fired back with eight straight points – its biggest run of the game – to prevent Brownwood from pulling away at that point.
Maggie Tupin finished with 12 points for the Lady Eagles followed by Hope Hermesmeyer with six points, Avery Graves and Abbey Patrick with five each Britni Roberts with four, and Logyn Rountree and Rani House with three points apiece.
The Lady Lions visit Burnet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
