By MARK MOLINA | THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD
LOS FRESNOS — The only thing uglier than the first five minutes of the Los Fresnos Falcons’ matchup with the Edinburg Vela Sabercats may have been the Christmas sweaters they wore in the pre-game shootaround.
The Falcons would find their groove soon thereafter to the tune of 20 unanswered points and never looked back as they cruised to a 77-44 win Tuesday night at Los Fresnos High School.
As Falcons missed high-percentage shots from the floor early, their defense consistently jumped into Sabercat passing lanes, holding them to just two field goals.
“It was a sloppy start, but the kids know just to play basketball,” Los Fresnos head coach Marco Hinjosa said. “We’re going to miss shot, but eventually shots are going to go in. Our biggest thing is we have to defend. We were still defending and it’s a low-scoring game so I’m OK.
“It was a slow start, so we had to create some turnovers. We started bringing some heat, forcing some turnovers and that kind of got us going.”
From there, Los Fresnos (16-5) mounted their run that lasted nearly five minutes and put them up 22-4 by the 6:26 mark of the second period.
Leading the way for the Falcons were senior Jordan Urbina with 20 points (five 3-pointers) and Andrew Carrizales with 18.
As a team, the Falcons knocked in 11 treys on the night.
Vela head coach David Keith said there was little his team could do to stop the bleeding as things began to snowball.
“Los Fresnos really shot well and they must have had a really high (shooting) percentage,” Keith said. “(Jordan Urbina) is incredible. As soon as he walked in the gym, he was in range. Their bigs played well, too. They’re physical, fast kids. Los Fresnos is a tough team and it’s no secret that they’re No. 1.
“I think Marco (Hinojosa) has done a fantastic job defensively with that team. They have fun on offense and realize that defense is the way to win.”
Vela had no players in double digits, but were led by eight-point outings from Sekinger and Josh Diaz, who hit two of the team’s three triples.
Vela would finally stop the run with a Bobby Esperiqueta bucket, snapping a scoring drought of five and a half minutes.
Still, the lead would swell to 22 by the half as the Falcons would knock in five 3s in the second quarter alone.
Trailing now 44-17 in the early third, Vela would make things interesting with a 15-9 run to close the third.
A 3 from Nate Garcia and a Sekinger bucket down low would bring Vela within 15 with 5:44 to play.
“We were just trying to play hard because they’re a physical team and we’re a physical team,” Keith said. “We started playing physical and I wish we would’ve started doing that earlier in the game. We did a good job battling back in it, cut it to 15 and it looked like we had a bit of a chance there, but we ran out of gas.”
The Falcons allowed just two field goals the rest of the way and finished the game on a 22-4 run from that point on.
“Vela is a good team and they made that run themselves,” Hinojosa said. “They got the stops and got buckets. We called a quick timeout, told them to stop the run and stop the bleeding. We regrouped, resettled and opened it back up.”