Faith Academy girls basketball loses to Hill Country

CAPTION: Faith Academy sophomore forward Layla Terrell does everything she can to get the rebound against Austin Hill Country. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro

The Faith Academy of Marble Falls girls basketball team lost to Austin Hill Country 63-34 Dec. 19.

“They have seven seniors,” Lady Flames head coach Harvey Vaughn said. “They can all play like guards. They were tall and long.”

Hill Country (13-9) began the contest with a 10-0 lead that went to 12-2. The Lady Flames (10-5) cut the deficit to 12-6 with 96 seconds left in the opening stanza.

But the Lady Warriors took a 16-8 advantage going into the second period.

Faith scored a basket 31 seconds into the quarter to make it 16-10. But that’s as close as the Lady Flames came.

Hill Country went on a 6-0 run for a 22-10 lead with 6 minutes and 24 seconds remaining in the half that forced Faith into a timeout.

By the end of the period, the Lady Warriors built a 37-14 lead largely because they stole the ball when the Lady Flames threw reverse passes underneath their basket. That allowed the Lady Warriors to cheat by jumping the pass and converting the two-footers.

By the time Faith adjusted — by bringing a player lower to the free throw line to catch the pass in the middle of the press — Hill Country had built a 12-point lead.

“We’re supposed to have a girl in the middle,” Vaughn said. “When the ball comes in to one side, we should have a girl cutting to the middle and the inbounder should be the safety position. Basically at the timeout we said, ‘You are waiting too long to pass the ball. You’re catching it, turning, looking, dribbling. We have to get it in, and we have to make the pass immediately, and then make another pass immediately. We pass faster than we can dribble, right?’ So that’s what they started to do.

“And then they start jumping that reverse pass,” he added. “Obviously, we need to be faking that pass, hitting the middle pass. We should have someone in every position to be able to get the ball across. I think they just got a little bit under pressure and lost their focus a little bit.”  

This game revealed areas Faith can improve, Vaughn said.

“We need to get better at not trying to throw over our heads — that killed us on the press, trying to throw over people’s heads — and we’ve been working on it,” he said. “They were pretty much overplaying everything. We get it to the middle and the ball’s going across halfcourt, then we wanted to stop. And I’m telling them they’re still coming. If you get across the middle with the ball, you’re attacking the basket at that point or we’re not stopping to try to set up the offense. We need to attack the basket. And so once they started doing that, it started to help. But these are things that we have to continue to learn and get better on.”

Going into the contest, the coach said the Lady Flames would learn plenty, so the game served its purpose, he said.

“A little disappointed in how we played,” Vaughn said. “I thought we would be a little more calm coming into it. I think the girls were overly excited about the game, and I just don’t think we executed at the level we’re capable of. (Hill Country doesn’t) exert a lot of extra energy. They play very, very fundamentally sound and they know exactly what they’re doing, and they execute it very, very well. And it’s what you get when you have eight players who have played together since the seventh grade and all seniors. And just very well coached, obviously. This was our pop quiz, and we did not perform like we wanted to, but we have a whole other half of a season with district coming up – that’s the most important part.”

Faith will enjoy the Christmas holiday and will compete in the Johnson City Tournament Monday-Tuesday, Dec. 30-29. The Lady Flames will face the Lady Eagles at 9 a.m. Monday and will play a second game that afternoon based on the results of the first contest. 

CAPTION: Faith Academy sophomore guard Selby Sanchez looks for an open teammate. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro