The Brownwood Lions rebounded from a narrow three-point loss at No. 11 China Spring Friday night with a 68-60 home victory over the Class 2A No. 16 Cisco Loboes Saturday afternoon at Warren Gym.
The Lions (4-4) led by as many as 22 points in the third period but Cisco (2-1) crept within single digits in the fourth quarter against the Brownwood reserves. The Lions’ starters were able to push the lead back to a dozen, but the Loboes hung around until the final buzzer.
“A win’s a win, but an eight-point win when we’re up 22 at one point, we’ve got to get better and we’ve got to finish games better than we did,” said Lions fifth-year head coach Nadir Dalleh. “I told the guys at halftime Cisco’s kids don’t quit and that was shown in the fourth quarter.”
Bryson Monroe with 19 points, Jakob Hataway with 18 points, and Christian Kinzler with 15 points ignited the Lions. Michael Felts contributed six points followed by four from Zach Porter and two points apiece from Brandon Brasher, Tanner Roberts, and Asher Choate.
“Those guys are the horses right now and make things go,” Dalleh said of Monroe, Hataway and Kinzler. “It’s one of those things right now where they have to be on the floor a lot of time for us to be competitive. We got some good minutes out of guys early on, but we’ve got to finish games better than we did. We have to be able to sub because you never know what’s going to happen.”
Cisco’s Layne Edgar scored a game-high 22 points trailed by Kasen Conring, Gunner Pharr, C.J Lewis and Trent Bailey with eight apiece and Jacob Flores with six points.
The Lions raced out to a 22-11 lead after one quarter, carried a 39-28 edge into the locker room at halftime, and were comfortably in front 58-42 through three periods.
“We executed, we were finishing plays and making shots and rebounding, and in the fourth quarter we stopped doing all of it,” Dalleh said. “We played semi-good defense but there are some things that happened today we have to get better at, like guys taking us to the basket and finishing. That didn’t happen last night and today I don’t know if it was tired legs or what, but we have to get that fixed.”
Cisco tallied the first seven points of the fourth quarter to trim the deficit to 58-49, while holding Brownwood scoreless the initial 3:42 of the frame. But with 4:18 left in the contest, Monroe knocked down a trey for the Lions’ first points of the quarter, boosting the lead back to a dozen points, 61-49.
Neither team scored again until 2:44 was left on the clock, as Bailey knocked down a three-pointer for Cisco. But Hataway immediately answered with a trey on the other end to again stretch Brownwood’s lead to a dozen, 64-52, with 2:24 to go.
The Lions’ lead remained in double figures until 56 seconds were left when Edgar drilled a three-pointer to close the gap to the final eight-point margin of 68-60.
Brownwood is back in action at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Abilene Cooper.
