By Carl Harper
Closing out the game wasn’t easy, but when it was all said and done, the Lady Rattlers grabbed the victory 44-38 against Seguin and extended their winning streak to two games.
In the final minute and the score 41-35 in favor of San Marcos, Jasmine Williams and Christina Hilstock were able to knock down their free throws to seal the deal for the Lady Rattlers. Williams offensively provided for her team for the second consecutive game with 12 points, seven rebounds and three steals while teammate Ashley Crayton also picked up 12 points with four rebounds and one steal.
Even though San Marcos (2-1) picked up the win and is off to better start than last season when they were 0-3, coach Shad Scharlach and his team was not exactly happy with how they won.
“We really didn’t play to our best tonight,” Crayton said. “This is the beginning (of the season) but we could have played better.”
The Rattlers were up 20-12 at halftime and were able to sustain a comfortable lead through out the second half. Seguin narrowed the deficit to five with a few seconds left with lay-ups coming from Kindle Busch and Jasmine Haynes.
“We didn’t take care of the ball as well as we usually do on the closing stretch, but give Seguin credit because they played good defense,” Scharlach said. “Defensively we need to play smarter, we need to take care of the ball better and we didn’t board as well in the last couple of minutes.”
The Matadors got off to a 6-3 lead in the opening minutes of the game only to see Scharlach call a timeout and wake his team up. The Rattlers quickly scored two buckets on fast break points by Williams and Crayton when play resumed.
San Marcos went on a 6-0 run in the second quarter that was fueled with lay ups by Crayton and teammate Roslind McKinney. The Rattlers ended the first half on a 13-4 run to take an eight-point lead going into the locker room. McKinney led the team with 11 rebounds and collected six points with one steal.
“Tonight was a night of spurts to me,” Scharlach said. “We started off flat and then had a spurt in the second quarter. In the third quarter we were up by 10 but then we stopped taking care of the ball offensively and defensively we started fouling. Those are things in the stretch that you cannot do.”
San Marcos consistently held on to its eight-point lead as they were up 24-16 half way through the third quarter and 28-20 with 1:40 left. They were up 32-20 early in the fourth but Matadors’ Madison Koehler’s 3-pointer pulled her team back within nine points. Koehler ended the game only posting four points as teammates Busch and Haynes tallied 12 and 13 points, respectively.
Scharlach’s squad will play in the three-day Marble Falls Varsity Tournament beginning on Thursday with the time to be announced.
