By MARK MOLINA | THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD
LA GRULLA — It was apparent early that every pass thrown, play ran or shot taken by the Pace Lady Vikings would draw an answer from the Laredo Nixon Lady Mustang defense.
That would translate to a long night for the Lady Vikings’ offense that could never find its rhythm as the Lady Mustangs ran away with a 60-24 Class 5A bi-district win Tuesday night at Grulla High School.
Pace’s offensive was stymied from the start as the Nixon press shutdown the paint early on and clogged passing lanes throughout the night, making even a trip up the floor a chore.
That led to a bevy of turnovers by Pace (15-21) falling into a double-digit hole by the early second quarter and a rough night from the field as it hit just seven field goals.
“You have to give it up to Nixon, they’re a really good team offensively and defensively and they make you pay for your mistakes,” Pace head coach Eddie Lozano said. “Unfortunately we had a little too many mistakes in the first half and forced us to change our gameplan. That put us in a bad situation.”
“My hat’s off to them, they are a really good team; best of luck to them in the playoffs.”
While Pace struggled on offense, their defense appeared to at least slow Nixon (32-6) in the early going.
That wouldn’t last long as the Lady Mustangs led 13-4 after the first quarter, cruise to 29-8 halftime lead and would lead by 36 on two occasions in the fourth quarter.
“The plan was to push the ball and I think Pace did a good job of slowing us down a little bit,” Nixon head coach LeaAnn Mendoza said. “We wanted to shoot the ball and to attack. Our shooting wasn’t the greatest tonight, but our effort was there.”
While Nixon didn’t run as they would have liked in the early going, it turned to Jennifer Pena for early offense as she scored 10 points on the Pace defense in the first eight minutes.
Meanwhile, Pace did not record a field goal until Sofia Espinoza converted on a layup with 11 seconds to go in the first quarter after several unsuccessful trips to the paint and several errant passes.
“We knew that’s the kind of team (Nixon is),” Lozano said. “They take away the paint and they make you make baskets from the outside. If you can’t make them, you have to play good defense and we didn’t. We gave up a lot of offensive rebounds and open shots.
“Those are things we have to work on. We’re a young team.”
Pena would answer seconds later with a bucket of her own right before the buzzer.
Espinoza would score again to make it 13-6 early in the second quarter, which would be its last make from the field in the half.
Nixon answered that score with a 14-0 run fueled by six points from Ashley Pena and Pace miscues.
“We always preach defense and we do a good job with our press and capitalizing of those (turnovers),” Mendoza said. “(Turnovers) were huge. We tried to make sure to get after it on defense, get loose balls, getting on the floor and all those things — it’s effort.”
Nixon led 29-8 at the half and opened the third quarter on 9-0 run to make it 38-8 before Espinoza stopped the run with her third bucket of the game.
Pace’s best quarter was the fourth, where it scored 12 points, matching its total from the three previous periods.
The Lady Vikings also struggled from the free-throw line, going 9 of 20.
Jennifer Pena finished the night with 20 points to lead all scorers, while teammate Ashley Pena finished with 14.
Pace’s Lexy Arce led the team with nine points, four of which came from the free-throw line where she was 4 of 4. Espinoza followed with six.
Despite the loss, Lozano was pleased with the season overall.
“The goal every season is to get to the playoffs and we did that,” he said. “Overall, we grew as a team. We’re a young team and hopefully this carries on into the offseason and into next year.”