Faith Academy girls basketball beats Central Texas Christian
CAPTION: A mad dash for the ball shows the importance of each possession for Temple Central Texas Christian and Faith Academy’s Layla Terrell (on the floor, left), Cuyleigh Zimmerman and Lilly Koziel while teammate Megan Burrows watches. Staaff photo by Jennifer Fierro
The Faith Academy of Marble Falls girls basketball team defeated Temple Central Texas Christian 52-44 in District 4-3A play of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools.
“Big win for us,” head coach Harvey Vaughn said. “Obviously a huge team win to be able to get a game like that.”
The Lady Flames (15-9, 3-2 third place) trailed 20-9 after the first quarter, 30-24 at the half and 41-35 going into the final stanza.
Faith junior post Megan Burrows was the catalyst to start the run that would lead to victory.
She knocked down to two free throws with 21 seconds left in the third quarter then two more to start the fourth period. And though the Lady Lions hit a jumper to lead 43-37 with 7:43 left in the game, they wouldn’t score again until 37 seconds remained in the contest.
By then, the Lady Flames led 51-44 thanks to getting two 3-pointers from junior guard Lily Koziel with one on an assist from sophomore guard Cuyleigh Zimmerman to tie the contest at 43-43, two free throws by sophomore guard Olivia Kraenzel for a 45-43 advantage, and a Koziel pass to Zimmerman on a backdoor cut for a 47-43 lead with 2:34 left to play.
The next bucket came with 1:21 remaining when Kraenzel ran from one sideline near mid court to the other to zigzag to the lane where she scored a lay-up thanks to her teammates sealing off defenders.
CTC decided to go into its full-court press that led to Faith scoring when sophomore forward Layla Terrell found Zimmerman cutting to the basket on their press breaker with 50 seconds left. Kraenzel ended the scoring by connecting on a free throw.
“So that’s outstanding defense,” Vaughn said of his team. “We started taking the ball to the basket instead of settling for what they were giving us.”
Kraenzel led with 17 points followed by Koziel with 12, Burrows added nine and sophomore guard Selby Sanchez and Terrell each scored three.
“Lilly has the green light to take the shot when she’s open,” the coach said. “We’re not the best 3-point shooting team, but they’re young and rather than telling them don’t shoot, I’m trying to get them to understand which 3-pointers we want. We’re trying to focus less on shooting open 3-pointers and driving more to the basket, drawing the contact, getting fouled, getting free throws, and trying to work on kicking it from inside out and not just one pass, I’m open, I’m going to shoot.”
Before that, the Lady Lions dropped in 20 points in the opening stanza behind the play of Brynlee Richardson, who scored nine points en route to finishing with 14 for the contest. CTC also connected on two 3-pointers to build the double-digit lead in the first period.
The Lady Lions maintained the advantage thanks to Ellie Maurer, who scored 15 points in three quarters with seven coming in the third period. She connected on 7 of 12 free throws in the game.
“We were not playing well offensively or defensively In the first half,” Vaughn said. “And so at halftime, we talked about what we needed to do defensively. I wasn’t too worried offensively. We broke their press pretty well, and once we finally got into our formation on offense and actually ran a little action here and there to try to look for good shots rather than the first available shot, we started getting easier baskets and open shots. And things started falling. And all of a sudden, the defense started working a little better, and they started getting a little energy and believing they could win.”
He credited the Lady Lions, pointing out they do several tasks well that give them opportunities to score.
“They screen very well, and it’s hard to deal with their size with their screens,” he said. “They’re difficult to play against. (Maurer) is really tough. She could post you up in the paint. We defended (Maurer and Richardson) I thought really well in the second half, not as well as I wanted to in the first half.”
One final part of victory was that only one Lady Flame fouled out while two others played with four fouls for all of the fourth quarter.
“That was huge because if one of them fouls out, we’d have been in trouble,” Vaughn said.
Faith travels to play at San Antonio Keystone at 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23, to begin the second round of district play.
CAPTON: Faith Academy sophomore guard Olivia Kraenzel did her part on both ends of the floor. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
