By MARIO AGUIRRE | STAFF WRITER
LA FERIA — It’s usually around this time of year that La Feria begins to hit its stride. Coach Ruben Zambrano has seen it for the better part of five seasons now.
Once his football players have their basketball legs under them, and they get past the holiday break, the Lions begin to take form around early January.
That’s how it happened to play out again for the Lions in the second game of the new year Tuesday, as they ran Progreso out of the gym with a 59-26 win.
La Feria (14-6, 1-1) blew the game open during the third quarter, outscoring the Red Ants 17-11 after leading 22-16 at halftime. The difference, though, was the fourth quarter. The Lions blanked Progreso en route to closing out the game on a 20-0 run, winning their first District 32-4A game of the season.
“We’re finally starting to come together and we’re peaking at the right time,” Zambrano said. “It’s a good thing that we’re right where we need to be.”
Ozzy Cisneros led the way, scoring a game-high 19 points, including 15 after halftime. He buried a pair of 3-pointers during the third quarter to push the lead 27-18 and later 39-27.
Isaiah Martinez was the team’s only other double-digit scorer, pouring in 16 points and providing several key defensive plays.
“It starts off defensively,” Martinez said. “We have to get the legs running and get the tempo going. … Our defense is getting better slowly. Our offense starts from there. Full-court presses, breaking presses — it all starts with a team effort.”
It made the difference in La Feria outscoring Progreso 37-11 in the second half.
“They felt the pressure (from a close game at halftime) and they stepped up,” Zambrano said. “That just shows our defense does what it needs to do to get stops. And from there, we feed from it and that’s where our offense comes from.”
Like La Feria, Progreso (14-4, 4-1) had its share of mistakes early on. That was only magnified later in the game for the Red Ants, however, who couldn’t find any rhythm from the field.
At times, they depended too much on the long ball and struggled with their transition defense when shots didn’t fall.
“We kept up with them just fine. That fourth quarter we just kind of ran out of legs,” Progreso coach Erick Quintero said. “They ran out on lanes and were more aggressive and the refs let them play a little more.”
At 1-1, Quintero said the team is “not happy with the loss, but we could’ve very easily been 0-2 heading into a Zapata team (in the next game) that we don’t know much about.”
The Red Ants split their first two games after beating Rio Hondo in the district opener. Coming out of the stretch with at least one win, he said, was of utmost concern, especially with Progreso hoping to turn around their fortunes and compete for a playoff spot.
“We’re a lot better than what we showed tonight,” he said. “We knew it was going to be a tough one. We’re going to go back and look at film and see what we have to correct in the fourth quarter.”