Clinging to a three-point lead at halftime, the Brownwood Lions dominated the final two quarters of their District 6-4A basketball opener at Warren Gym Friday night, giving head coach Will Parker his first league victory in maroon and white, 91-66 over the Gatesville Hornets.
“We had a couple of keys to the game that were on our board and we did one of those really well and that was wear them down,” Parker said. “We wanted to get them up and down and force them to have to play with us full court for 32 minutes, and we did a good job of that. On the rebounding side, we’ve got to be better at that. We’ve got to hunker down because the teams we play in district are pretty dang good on the boards so we have to get a lot tougher inside.”
Christian Kinzler paced the Lions with 22 points, including 18 in the second half.
“We talked to him a little bit at halftime, reaffirming what we’ve been telling him all year long and that’s when he doesn’t dribble the ball two or three times down low,” Parker said. “He’s a tough guy to deal with then because everything in his mind is telling him he has to go score.”
Jakob Hataway also finished in double figures with 17 points, as did Bryson Monroe and Luke Moss with10 points apiece. Tristan Salinas contributed nine points – all in the first half – off the bench which allowed the Lions to own a halftime 40-37 halftime lead despite some early struggles.
“He’s one of those guys coming off the bench, and we’ve got a lot of them, and when they come in it’s exciting to see what they are going to do because each of them provides us with something different,” Parker said of Salinas. “He can shoot the ball and there are times when we need his ball handling skills out there and I thought he did a really good job defensively as well.”
Weston Burns added nine points, Hayden Noe chipped in eight, and Ike Hall finished with six for the Lions.
Brownwood was unable to distance itself from Gatesville (11-14, 0-1) in the first half, but outscored the Hornets 27-13 in the third period to establish a 67-50 cushion.
“Hats off to (Assistant) Coach (Derrick) Stacks, honestly,” Parker said. “I let him talk to them at halftime about what he saw defensively on the press because they were eating us alive and really made us not look very good. We relied on him; he’s been coaching these guys for several years, and he saw some things and told them that we had to do a better job of not letting them get to the middle of the floor. We have a lot of seniors out there who listened, they adjusted and made it happen.”
The Lions have picked up a 4:30 p.m. Tuesday non-district game against Lingleville at Warren Gym, then will resume 6-4A competition at Stephenville (6-16, 0-1) – which dropped a 59-56 decision to Lampasas (18-10, 1-0) Friday – at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 21.
