In their final outing before the start of District 6-4A basketball action, the Brownwood Lady Lions came out on the short end of a 60-37 decision against Marble Falls Tuesday night at Warren Gym.
The Lady Lions trailed 14-6 after one quarter and 31-18 at halftime, but closed the third quarter strong and faced a 40-29 deficit heading into the fourth period. There, however, the Lady Lions were outscored 20-8 as Marble Falls coasted to the finish.
“I can’t knock their effort,” said Lady Lions 14th-year head coach Heather Hohertz. “They came in and played with good effort and good energy. At times we got buried by their big post players and let them have three or four shots, but we cleaned that up in the second half. We turned the ball over in the fourth quarter and that’s when they opened up the lead. But we played hard and did some good things and we have to build on those and move forward.”
The Lady Lions (13-14) shot 23 percent (10 of 44) from the floor, including 15 percent (4 of 26) from the three-point arc, but converted 68 percent (13 of 19) of their free throws. Brownwood committed 16 turnovers, grabbed 24 rebounds, tallied seven steals and dished out nine assists.
Miranda Northcutt, Mady Pyle and Icess Hall led Brownwood with seven points apiece followed by Hannah Deen with six, Kassidy Wooten with five, Kimber Green with four, and Olivia Ringer with one point.
Marble Falls (13-12) received 19 points from Tea Rodriguez, 13 from Emma Bindseil, and 11 points from Lexie Edwards.
Trailing by as many as 16 points in the third period, 38-22, the Lady Lions outscored Marble Falls 7-2 over the last 4:12 of the quarter to shave the deficit to 11 points heading into the fourth period. But Brownwood yielded 18 of the first 22 points in the last quarter and found itself down 58-33 with just under three minutes remaining.
“We were attacking the basket, but they upped their pressure a little in the fourth quarter and we just got didn’t focus mentally and meet passes and we started turning the ball over and they got easy layups,” Hohertz said. “For us to be successful we have to get our defense set and we didn’t do that, we gave them free layups.”
The District 6-4A slate begins at 5:45 p.m. Friday at Warren Gym for the Lady Lions, who host Texas Association of Basketball Coaches Class 4A No. 1 Glen Rose (25-1).
“Glen Rose is going to be a tough task and we just have to give ourselves a chance to compete,” Hohertz said. “We can’t go in already defeated, go in and do the things we need to do to be successful. This is why they play the game, because you never know what’s going to happen.”
