By JOSHUA McKINNEY, Staff Writer
District contests are hard enough, but going on the road against a crosstown rival just makes it ridiculously tough.
The Pace Vikings won a 53-45 dogfight against the Porter Cowboys(6-12, 0-2) on Tuesday, as a first half controlled by Pace (11-9, 2-0) turned into a wild, back-and-forth affair between the teams during the second.
“We knew with this one here to throw records out the window,” Pace coach Jose Luis Ramirez said. “It’s an (intracity and) district rivalry. We have to get after it every play. And they made us work for it. They made us work. My hat’s off to them. They made us work for this one.”
It all came down to the final minutes of the fourth quarter.
Albert Garza hit a midrange shot to tie the game at 45 with less than two minutes to play.
The Vikings responded on the other end with playmaking from two of their stars.
Andres Salgado found Pace’s power post player, Esteban Garza, with a pass in the paint. Garza powered his way through traffic and sank a layup to give his team a 47-45 lead with 1:10 remaining in the quarter.
Porter drove down the floor with a chance to tie it with less than one minute to go, but a turnover and a foul on the following inbounds pass put Alex Acosta on the line for Pace.
Acosta made both free-throw attempts to give Pace a four-point lead with 56.1 left on the clock.
The Cowboys, who had one of their better shooting nights of the season, did not find a way to score, and the Vikings went on to score four points to close the game on a seven-point run and leave Porter’s gym with a 2-0 start to the District 32-5A season.
“We’re all competitors,” Ramirez said. “Coaches are all competitors. I had a coach one time tell me that it was great to win by 20 every game, but after a while it got boring. I said, ‘I’ll take boring every day and we can keep winning by 20.’ It’s not that way. Every team in the district is going to be tough, and every game is going to go down like that. It’s why we compete.
“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It’s hard to say that every game you’re going to play you’re going to win by 20. That’s every coach’s dream, but it’s not going to be that way.”
Salgado, a junior guard who is one of Pace’s on-floor leaders, thought the Vikings were capable of better play and credited Porter’s ability to push the ball and attack as why they stayed in the game.
“Sometimes we step up and play like a team,” Salgado said. “When we want to play, we can beat anybody.”
He scored 15 points to lead Pace, and Garza finished the game with 10 points and seven rebounds. Louie Rodriguez also grabbed seven rebounds and scored nine points.
Gracia had a team-high 12 points for Porter. Rey Martinez and Luis Garza II scored eight points each.
The Cowboys won the rebound battle 33-25, with Brian Salazar grabbing a game-high eight boards.
“I think we really came out ready to play today,” Garza said. “I was really proud of our kids and the fact that they stuck with the plan. They were more composed than they have been for a couple of games. Pace really stepped it up. They really showed that they’re the top team in our district this year, and they beat us at our best, the best we’ve been in a while. It was exciting. That’s what we play for.”
Pace started the game strong and had as high as an 11-point lead in the second quarter, but the Cowboys’ defense and strong presence on the boards helped them close the gap by the end of the third.
Mike Reyes shot a fadeaway 3 with the buzzer sounding in background and made it to give Porter a 41-39 lead going into the fourth.
Joshua McKinney writes for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6663 or via email at [email protected] Twitter, he’s @joshuabvherald.