With state-ranked Glen Rose and Stephenville composing half of their District 6-4A games, Brownwood Lady Lions 14th-year head coach Heather Hohertz knew her team’s performance against Mineral Wells and Graham would be critical to the program’s postseason aspirations.
Following a 54-33 road victory over Mineral Wells Tuesday, the Lady Lions held off Graham, 40-36, Friday night at Warren Gym to take a huge early step toward clinching a playoff berth.
“That Graham bunch is a scrappy team,” Hohertz said. “To not have a very good record this year (2-16, 0-2), they came at us hard and came ready to play. Credit to them for taking us out of our game in the first quarter, but our kids hung in there and found a way to win.”
Kimber Green led Brownwood with 13 points off the bench while Mady Pyle also finished with double figures with 10. Miranda Northcutt chipped in six points trailed by Hannah Dean and Kassidy Wooten with four each and Icess Hall with three.
The Lady Lions shot just 20 percent (10 of 51) from the floor and 10 percent (2 of 19) from three-point land, but sank 58 percent (18 of 31) of their free throws. Brownwood also forced 23 turnovers, with 11 coming on steals; recorded 38 rebounds, including 16 on the offensive end; and turned the ball over 18 times.
“Hannah has been out all week with the flu, so it was a heck of an effort to give us all she had tonight rebounding-wise,” Hohertz said. “Miranda stepped up, and our guards rebounded as well. How many times did we look up and see Icess Hall grabbing a ball? Kate Tindol came in and played some big minutes, too, so it was a good team effort and everybody chipped in here and there.”
Graham was led by Maddie Franklin with 12 points and Emilee Gordy and Sadie Salazar with eight apiece.
The Lady Blues led Brownwood 10-3 after one quarter, but the Lady Lions climbed back into the contest thanks to the first 10 points of the second period, which resulted in a 13-10 edge with 3:22 left in the first half.
“We found a way to dig ourselves out of that hole and they fought hard and kept pushing until they got the lead, and kept going from there,” Hohertz said. “We started attacking more when they extended out their zone and we didn’t rely on just our three ball. We started attacking which opened things up a little bit. Kimber came off the bench and hit some shots and Mady started being aggressive going to the basket and that really helped us get going offensively.”
The Lady Lions carried a 17-15 lead into halftime which grew to 29-26 after three periods. Brownwood padded its cushion to eight points, 38-30, on a pair of free throws by Northcutt with 1:23 to go, but Graham refused to fade away.
Brownwood sank 8 of 15 free throws in the final quarter to keep Graham at arm’s length, while the Steers were 11 of 13 for the game from the charity stripe.
The Lady Lions are back in action at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at No. 8 Stephenville (25-2, 2-0), which had a bye Friday after defeating Graham, 36-15, Tuesday.
