The Brownwood Lady Lions are coming off their Christmas break in the midst of their best stretch of basketball season, a trend that 14th-year head coach Heather Hohertz hopes continue during the TexasBank Holiday Classic that begins Wednesday.
“We’re playing both ends of the floor, we’re playing offense, we’re playing defense, and Mady (Pyle) and Kimber (Green) are leading us in scoring most of the games and that helps us a lot,” Hohertz said following a 48-26 win over Bangs last Tuesday. “It’ll be good to come off a five or six day layoff and play that many games in three days. It’s good to get our legs back underneath us and get ready to play when it matters most.”
Over the last three outings, the Lady Lions have knocked down 27 three-pointers, including a program-record 13 in a 65-24 win over San Angelo Lake View. Brownwood is also averaging 59 points per game during the stretch, up from the season average of 44, and is yielding just 30 points per contest after giving up 43 on average.
“We have to continue to be defensive-minded first and score like we have that last few games,” Hohertz said. “We have to continue to be consistent offensively. Defensively, we have to shore up our rebounding and our assignments whether we run man or zone defenses. We have to move and react and not stand on defense.”
The Lady Lions’ pool play schedule features games against Fort Worth Lake Country Christian at 9:20 a.m. Wednesday at Warren Gym, Valley Mills at 5:20 p.m. Wednesday at the high school, and Little River Academy at 1:10 p.m. Thursday at the Brownwood Coliseum. Additional games will follow.
“We have 11 teams this year and we’re going to do three pools – two of four and one of three,” Hohertz said. “We’ve got a tough Little River Academy team in our pool. We also have Valley Mills and Lake Country, so it will be really good to see where we are coming out of the break and see if we can continue to play at the level we’ve been playing at recently. I told them to make sure they go do something, make sure you don’t just sit. It’s going to be big on that first day to be able to get up and down the floor.”
The complete girls tournament schedule is as follows below:
