By MARK MOLINA | THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD
While the Brownsville Veterans Memorial Chargers dished out passes for easy buckets early on, the Lopez Lobos looked a step slow to stop them on defense.
The Chargers stormed out to an 11-point first-quarter lead and never took their foot off the gas as they upended the Lobos 72-45 in a District 32-5A matchup Friday night at Brownsville Veterans High School.
The Chargers put the Lobos on their heels early by attacking the paint on backdoor cuts to the basket and finding the trailing man in the paint for easy buckets.
For Charger head coach Larry Gibson, going back to fundamentals gave his team new life.
“We sat them down and told them to give us a try and do it our way, make the extra pass, look for the extra man, move the ball, get it out of your hands and don’t dribble through double teams,” he said. “The kids listened tonight. It makes a big difference when you move the ball, because that ball can move faster than any defense..the whole key was the way we moved the ball.”
Turnovers plagued Lopez (2-7 in district) throughout, but a nearly drought without a field goal spanning from the 6:38 mark of the first quarter to the 5:37 mark of the second put them in a hole as the Chargers (4-5 in district) blew the game open on a 13-0 run.
“We couldn’t hit shots in the first half and they controlled the boards… that killed us,” Lopez head coach Neil Schuster said. “We dug ourselves a hole and we ended up having to take too many chances in man-to-man — when you do that, you’re susceptible to getting beat on the back side and that’s what happened. They have a lot of size compared to us and they took advantage of that and finished around the rim.”
Brownsville Vets spread the scoring around and had three players in double figures, led by 14 points from Paul Barrera.
“We were just trying to redeem ourselves by showing that we could pass run, pass the ball and show our chemistry,” he said. “Finally we’re clicking together in this part of the season.
Damian Maldonado followed with 13 points and Matthew Maddox added 12.
For Lopez, Juan Briones had a game-high 16.
The Chargers started their run and took the lead for good in the first quarter on a Kelly Davs free throw and a Sebastian Sosa bucket to make it 7-6.
From there the Chargers would score unanswered four more times, capped off by a Maddox three-point shot to make it 17-6 with 1:03 left in the first.
A pair of Briones freebies stopped the Brownsville Vets run, but the Chargers pushed their lead to 15 as they opened the second quarter on a 6-0 run.
Armando Pecero ended Lopez’s drought from the field, which lasted more than nine minutes, by hitting back-to-back buckets including a 3 to make it a 10-point game.
Barrera finished the quarter with six of the Chargers’ 10 points in the final 4:50, giving his team a 33-21 lead at the half.
Lopez struggled to cut into the lead or mount a run as it scored 10 of its 24 second-half points from the line and hit from the field just six times.
The Chargers kept building the lead in the fourth and led by as many as 28 points.
Gibson said his team’s performance on both sides of the ball was a good sign for what views as a young, rebuilding program.
“We’re a team with 10 players and nine of them are underclassmen with one junior,” he said. “These kids play hard and are giving everything they’ve got. Hopefully we can get them into the playoffs, but this is building for next year because we’ll have everybody back —we’re going to be alright.”