Trailing by just six points with a little more than six minutes left in Monday night’s non-district contest at Warren Gym, an uncharacteristic defensive breakdown plagued the Brownwood Lady Lions as the Burnet Lady Bulldogs pulled away for a 63-40 victory.
Brownwood trimmed what was a 12-point deficit with 44 seconds left in the third period in half to 37-31. The Lady Lions had a chance to creep even closer at the 6:05 mark, but a missed layup and putback on the offensive end triggered the downfall for head coach Heather Hohertz’s squad.
“We missed a layup and a putback that killed our momentum and our spirit,” Hohertz said. “We started off slow but we adjusted our defense a little bit. We hit a few shots in the third quarter to get ourselves back in it and we just stopped playing defense which allowed it to go from a six-point game to more than 20.”
Burnet 6-3 junior post Zaria Solis dominated in the paint with 20 points for the Lady Bulldogs (10-4), who added four three-pointers over the 4:38 of the contest. A 15-3 run in the final stanza turned a 37-31 lead into a 52-34 edge with 2:59 remaining.
“We have to be better students of the game and whether that’s me putting a point of emphasis on being better at watching film and being better at adjusting in game, and then I need to be a better coach. We talked about how we could do it right for one possession and then the next possession down we butcher it. We’ve got to make sure we’re engaged and that’s my job to get us there.”
Hannah Deen led the Lady Lions with 16 points followed by Kimber Green with 12 off the bench, Mady Pyle with six, Miranda Northcutt with four and Icess Hall with two points.
Brownwood – which trailed 13-9 after one quarter, 25-19 at halftime and 37-27 through three periods – shot 28 percent (13 of 47) from the floor, 23 percent (5 of 22) on three-pointers, and 50 percent (9 of 18) from the charity stripe. The Lady Lions also finished with 18 turnovers, 30 rebounds, seven assists and six steals.
“Miranda and Sidney (Windham) rebounded the ball a lot better tonight than we have in the first 16 or 17 games that we’ve played,” Hohertz said. “Mady looked good attacking the basket and Talasia (Green) did a pretty good job at defense in place of Kassidy (Wooten) who sprained her ankle on Friday. All in all we scored enough points to win but we have to make sure we’re defending first. We have to change our mindset and that will start tomorrow.”
The Lady Lions (7-11) next venture to Springtown for a 5 p.m. Friday encounter.
“We have to get stops,” Hohertz said of the key going forward. “It can’t be a stop every third or fourth possession. We have to get stops to be able to give ourselves a chance to win. Right now our defensive mentality isn’t always defense first and we have to change that.”
