Marble Falls boys basketball beats Lucas Christian
CAPTION: Marble Falls juniors Marc Barrios and Charlie Martin help lead a stingy Marble Falls defense that jumpstarted the offense. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
The Marble Falls High School boys basketball team defeated Lucas Christian Academy 51-32 Nov. 20 in the Mustangs’ first game of the Florence Tournament.
The Mustangs (1-3) assembled all the pieces in earning their first win of the season.
They scored on their first 4 possessions that started “with a nice pull-up jumper” by junior guard Beckett Berkman out of one of the Mustangs’ offenses.
“And I think it just kind of calms the water for everybody,” head coach John Berkman said. “And it doesn’t have to be Beckett, it could be anybody. But when you hit your first one, everybody feels good about that. Because you see a basket go in and you feel good. It helps everybody else kind of relax a little bit.”
That start led to an 18-5 lead by the end of the first period and 31-11 at the half.
“Early in the game we got some transition stuff going,” the coach said. “But we also were able to get just some good shots out of our half-court offense. And for us, we want to be able to do both. We want to be able to run and score, and we also want to be able to run our offense and be able to get good looks out of it.”
Then the Mustangs continued the onslaught in the third quarter to build a 43-21 advantage.
“I think the defense is what really made the difference for us,” John Berkman said. “Our defense was aggressive. We put a lot of pressure on the other team and made it difficult for them. We always say in our program that the defense makes the offense go, and so we preach everybody’s got to play defense, everybody’s got to get after it, and everybody’s got to help us on that end. Even if you’re not a great scorer, your defense can always help us.”
The coach was so pleased with the defense that he began there as he reflected on the contest.
“We got a lot of guys putting pressure on the ball,” he said. “We got a lot of steals off of passes, and we forced them into a lot of bad shots. Teams are going to still be able to get shots off even when you play good defense and sometimes even make tough shots even when you play good defense. But the key is to consistently get them to take the shots that they don’t want to take or rush them in the shots. And we also had a lot of deflections. The stats aren’t back yet. But I know that one thing we did a great job of was just getting our hands on the ball and deflecting passes and making it easier for our teammates to get some steals off of passes.”
Junior guard Beckett Berkman led with 14 points while junior forward Marc Barrios scored nine, Colby Kitchen added nine, and senior center Cameron Plumlee finished with seven.
“We had several others who just chipped in with three or four,” the coach said. “We just played solid, had a lot of guys come in and play well. We had a lot of guys who played well, played some good minutes for us. We were able to get different guys in the game and do some different things, which was really good for us. We need multiple guys to be scoring, not just one guy. We want it to be that we’re a tough team to play or to scout because you don’t know who is going to be the guy for us that game. We want it to be that we’ve got several guys that if you try to stop this guy, that’s OK. We’ve got another guy over here who can score.”
Marble Falls will face Slidell at 10 a.m. and Vanguard College Prep at 2:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21, at the Florence Tournament then end the event Saturday, Nov. 22, before enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday.
CAPTION: Marble Falls junior forward Cooper Gray continues to force opponents to account for his presence. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
