By JOSHUA McKINNEY, Staff Writer
It was a tale of two halves, but Los Fresnos’ three-point bonanza during the second half was all that mattered.
The Falcons beat McAllen Rowe 43-42 on Tuesday at Los Fresnos despite trailing by double digits at the end of the first half.
Injuries have taken away one starter, guard Hugo De La Cruz, and limited the minutes of Alex Garcia, also a regular starter.
But plenty of players provided long range shooting in Los Fresnos’ 35-point second half. Coach Marco Hinojosa said the only thing separating the eight-point first half with the Falcons’ bucket heavy second-half was that the players started hitting their marks.
“Shots started falling,” Hinojosa said. “We took great shots in the first half that we’d normally make, but they weren’t falling in. We had to continue to shoot and eventually they’d go in, and they did. To me, that was the difference in the ballgame.”
Albert Alarcon scored 14 points, including four 3-pointers, to lead Los Fresnos’ offense. Andrew Carrizales and Jordan Urbina each scored 10 points. Carrizales, who made three shots from long range, said the Falcons’ fight after halftime propelled them against Rowe.
“We started off bad but we came together as a team,” he said. “We came back and got it going as a team. No one put their heads down, and we started shooting the ball like we know how to shoot.”
Alex Keith led Rowe with 17 points.
The Warriors ended the first half with a 19-8 lead on the strength of 19 rebounds and an air-tight defense that limited Los Fresnos’ offense, allowing only a single point during the second quarter on a free throw.
But Los Fresnos’ offense took flight in the third quarter, starting on a 4-0 run with a free throw by Carrizales and a 3-pointer by Alarcon.
The scoring streak was just the beginning of an 18-point quarter for Los Fresnos, which cut Rowe’s lead to 32-26 by the end of the third.
Los Fresnos took its first lead midway through the fourth quarter when Carrizales rebounded his missed three-point shot to make another.
Another three-point bucket gave the Falcons a lead they kept until the final buzzer.
Urbina found Alarcon wide open behind the three-point arc, and he hit the deep trey to put the Falcons in the lead again at 41-38 with 3:20 left in the game.
“It’s not hard to defend (three-point shooting),” Rowe coach Jose Yebra said. “We should have played them tighter. We were giving them too much room. We didn’t expect them to shoot as far as they did, and that’s way the game went their way.”
Rowe had a chance to take back the lead with 20.3 seconds left in the game, but the Warriors missed a three-point attempt and Carrizales came down with the defensive rebound to secure the win.
Joshua McKinney writes for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6663 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @joshuabvherald.