Marble Falls boys basketball ends season
CAPTION: Marble Falls junior forward Marc Barrios ends his season by scoring at least 15 points in three of the last four contests, including against Salado. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
The Marble Falls High School team lost to Salado 55-49 Feb. 17 to end the 2025-26 season.
The Mustangs finish the season with an 11-20 record and 4-8 in District 24-4A play. The 57-50 loss to Burnet Feb. 13 meant eliminated them from postseason contention.
“Our guys did everything we asked,” head coach John Berkman said. “We talked a lot about finishing the season with character and not just quitting even though we weren’t qualifying for the playoffs, win or lose, and I couldn’t ask for more out of our guys than that.”
Marble Falls took a 14-11 lead after the first stanza, trailed 25-23 at the break, and 42-37 after three quarters.
The Mustangs trailed by as much as 37-29 in the third period where it felt like the Eagles “were going to get away from us,” Berkman said. But then Marble Falls tied the game at 47-47 with about two minutes remaining.
“Our guys just fought and fought and fought and made play after play, keeping us in the game,” Berkman said. “Then (Salado) came down and hit a couple of big shots, and we just weren’t able to answer. But couldn’t ask for more of a better effort in a game that would have been real easy for our guys just to quit on. But they didn’t. And so I was real proud of that for them.”
Junior forward Marc Barrios led the Mustangs with 16 points and 10 rebounds, the team’s first double-double of the season. Junior guard Beckett Berkman added 12 points, senior Kaleb Bielfeldt scored 6, senior center Caleb Plumlee dropped in 5, junior guard Cy Neve had 4, and senior guard Gregory Lemon and junior guards Charlie Martin and Logan Guerrero each contributed 2.
“Just real proud of the way we finished the season,” the coach said. “Even though it’s not a win, you can still be proud of the effort. We talk about that a lot. Win or lose, are you giving your best effort? And I felt like that’s what we gave, which was good.”
The program says goodbye to three seniors who gave all they had to it while going to the playoffs in two of the four seasons they wore the uniform.
It will be turned over to a group of juniors, who will use the results of this season to fuel their offseason, Berkman said.
“Seniors are always important, whether they’re first-year varsity players or whether they’ve been on varsity for a couple of years, whether you get them all year long or you get them when they’re finishing with football and that kind of thing,” the coach said. “They’re older and you hope that they’re the more mature players in your program, you hope they’re the ones who understand what you’re trying to accomplish, more maybe than your younger players understand it, and you’re depending on them for their commitment and their drive to help us win and so I always count it a blessing to have seniors. I’ve had teams where we didn’t have any seniors and those years are tough, because even if your seniors aren’t your best players, they’re always still important because of what they bring to the table just as seniors and the respect that they garner as being seniors. Each one of those guys did some important things for our program this season, just in different ways at different times. And they are very different players also between the three of them and so that matters as well. What we want is one good group to encourage the other groups underneath them to really build the program. So year after year, it’s not depending on one group, it’s the expectation of the standard.”
CAPTION: Junior guard Beckett Berkman serves as the Mustangs’ Mr. Consistency thanks to his scoring and defense. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
