FREDDY GONZALEZ | Valley Morning Star
CORPUS CHRISTI — As Geoffrey Chaucer once famously wrote, “All good things must come to an end.” For the San Benito Lady Greyhounds that end came at the hands of a 62-39 defeat to the Laredo Alexander Lady Bulldogs Friday evening at the Mary Carroll High School gymnasium.
The Class 6A area-round playoff loss snapped the Lady Hounds’ seven-game win streak and capped their magical season at 27-11.
“Coming into the game the thing that worried me the most was having a bad night,” said San Benito head coach Abel Moreno. “Give credit to Alexander, but at the end of the day we got our looks and we stayed with them for a while, but they (Alexander) got into a run and the girls got a little flustered.”
While the Lady Hounds might have lost by a 23-point margin, the score was in no way indicative of the hard-fought contest.
After falling behind 11-4 to start the game, San Benito battled back to finish the first period trailing by only five points at 14-9.
The Lady Hounds fed off that momentum into the second period after senior Miranda Vallejo nailed a 3-pointer to cut the Lady Bulldogs’ lead to 14-13 just one minute into the second quarter.
However, after playing catch-up for most of the period, Mikayla Garcia brought the house down with her lone 3-pointer of the night to tie the contest at 24-24.
But in what seemed like a flash, Alexander quickly rattled off seven points and San Benito found itself down 31-24 at the half.
In the third, the Lady Bulldogs kept their foot on the gas pedal and outscored the Lady Hounds 14-11 to take a 10-point lead going into the fourth at 45-35.
History had famously been on San Benito’s side throughout the season in crucial fourth-period situations. On Friday night, however, the Lady Hounds’ tenacious offense was nowhere to be found as they scored only four points in the final quarter.
“If you look everywhere, the fourth quarters have always been our good quarters but we just didn’t have one tonight,” said Moreno. “I think the girls had a little bit of a letdown when Laredo got that separation. I told the girls after the third that we were still in it, but as bad as that third was the fourth became worse.
“But the girls had a good season and we did take a step forward as a program because we finally won district and we beat Weslaco and Harlingen, and those are the kind of things you need to build a program. I told the girls that people aren’t going to forget what they did this season.”
Haley Lopez scored a team high 14 points, Miranda Vallejo finished the night with 12 and Mikayla Garcia finished with eight.