Burnet girls basketball preparing for Marble Falls
CAPTION: Freshman guard Rowan Mulhollan’s play is vital to the Lady Dawgs’ success, especially know that they’re preparing for the start of District 24-4A play. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
The Burnet High School girls basketball team lost to Georgetown East View 31-29 Jan. 2 in its final non-district contest.
Head coach Kim Payten was encouraged by what she saw, particularly since the Lady Dawgs had only one practice before this game.
“I thought we could have won,” she said. “And we should have won. Just the turnovers again killed us. I think that’s going to be part of us growing because it’s just the youth that I have. And it’s going to come with turnovers and every game it gets better.”
Payten took the job in June, which didn’t give her time to assemble a non-district schedule that would have aided in the learning curve, noting she likes to participate in a holiday tournament during New Year’s week.
“We just had a lot of downtime and that did not work in our benefit at all,” she said. “We needed to play, but those are things that I can make sure don’t happen in the future.”
The Lady Dawgs will welcome Marble Falls Friday, Jan. 9, with the junior varsity playing at 5 p.m. and the varsity to follow.
To help prepare the Lady Dawgs, Payten said some boys will scrimmage against them.
“I am very, very happy with the way things are going and the way we’re progressing offensively and defensively,” she said. “We get lost a little bit on help side defense, and so we’re going to work this whole week on that. And then I’m going to change things up for district.”
The Lady Dawgs will lean heavily on posts Wrigley Mulhollan, a senior, and Emma Hashbarger, a sophomore
“Because they’re our bread-and-butter and so that’s what I’m looking to do,” the coach said. “We’re going to change things up a bit offensively, not defensively.”
She noted that freshman guard Rowan Mulhollan, Wrigley’s younger sister, continues to grow in the role and praised the work she is doing with senior guard Peyton Allen. The two are the primary ball-handlers. The veteran Allen tells the younger Mulhollan what she is seeing and continues to encourage her, Payten said.
“I can’t express to you how much growth I’ve seen in her,” she said. “East View was one of those games where I had to remind myself she’s a freshman because they were handling her, and she is so competitive, and she has that dog in her.”
Payten recalled seeing how much playing well for the team means to Rowan Mulhollan when the two chatted on the sideline during the East View game. Mulhollan told her coach that she wasn’t meeting her own personal level of expectation, and the coach said the team will use that.
“She just needs a little confidence and just a little more basketball and she’s going to be a force to be reckoned with,” she said. “She has chemistry with both Emma and Wrigley and she makes great entry level passes to begin with. She still has her freshman moments, but she’s making better entry passes, getting them the ball, and then the thing that I’m most proud of with her is her ability to just drive in the lane. She wouldn’t have done that three weeks ago. But after the Fredericksburg tournament, she turned things around, and she’s like if they’re going to cover Wrigley and Emma, she’s going to drop it in to try to score. She did a great job and she’s getting more comfortable with the ball.”
The other important piece is the Lady Dawgs are still learning how to play basketball Payten’s way, which means reading the defense and knowing where to go in her motion offense.
“It just gives you the opportunity to make things happen in different ways,” she said. “And so they’re starting to see how that works because in the beginning they wanted a play, they wanted me to call a play where they stood at spots and I was like we’re not doing that, we’re not going to do that. You can’t win games like that. And so I’m very proud of how they’ve bought in and things are changing for the better. And I told them our preseason ends and our new season begins. This is the season that matters. This is where we have to come full force. And so we have four days to prepare for our district opener, and I think we’ll be ready.”
