Lady Rattlers comeback falls short against East Central

The Lady Rattlers came up just short inside the Snake Pit Tuesday night.

San Marcos fell 49-44 to East Central after putting together a 15-8 fourth quarter even thought they went into the period trailing by 14. The Lady Hornets jumped on the Purple and White early holding San Marcos to just 13 points in the first half.

“I thought we played hard. I thought, (if) you take away the first quarter our defense was pretty solid. (We) gave up eight in the fourth, so we’re closing out halves the way we’ve talked about it. But you can’t give up 17 in the first quarter and 20 in the third quarter — especially with three threes in the first and third,” head coach Jermaine Ervin said. “(We) give up that and then combine that with (us) hitting no threes, there’s your game. Offensively, I thought we had good looks — as a coach sometimes you’re like ‘oh, these are the corrections we've got to make and we've got to do this and we need to get in here’ — (tonight) me and my coaches were talking to them and I said ‘I mean, we just gotta make a shot.’ So the little things, jitters, a little bit of amp being at home — I think that just kind of got to us a little bit.”

The Lady Hornets opened the game with a 12-2 run, getting their hands in passing lanes on defense and converting from three offensively. The Lady Rattlers were able to get two more buckets on the board before the end of the period, but East Central (20-8, 2-0) won the quarter 17-8.

San Marcos was able to respond and narrowly win the second quarter 5-4 in what was a defensive eight minutes. Their effort to slow down East Central’s offense cut their deficit to 21-13 heading into halftime.

The Lady Hornets started the second half similar to how they started the first, beginning the quarter on a 5-0 run that extended their lead to 2613 early in the third. East Central’s offense kept their pace throughout the rest of the period, winning 20-14 which put the San Marcos deficit at 41-27 heading into the final eight minutes.

That’s when the Lady Rattlers gave East Central everything they had.

In what was a defensive start to the quarter, San Marcos created a 6-2 run that cut the Lady Hornets’ lead to 43-33 with four minutes left. Over the next three minutes, the Lady Rattlers would go on a 8-2 run that cut their deficit to 45-41 with a minute and eighteen seconds left on the clock. East Central did just enough in the final 78 seconds though, matching the Purple and White shot for shot to close out the game 49-44.

“They don’t quit. A lot of people can say what they want to say about our team, but they don’t quit and they play hard. They stay to the course of understanding who they are. We’re a defensive team that prides themselves on getting stops (and) loves to get in transition and score fast break points. They did that in the fourth quarter. We literally just take the ball from the girl, (and) go lay it up,” Ervin said. “There was a point where I thought maybe they would not be able to get the ball in. We scored four straight baskets that jumped their (double-digit) lead at one point to two possessions and that’s what we lost by, two possessions. All eight of their points were free throws, (we) gave up no baskets.”

San Marcos (17-5, 1-1) will face off with Schertz Clemens when they return to the Snake Pit on Jan. 12 at 7:00 p.m. for their third district match-up.

“(We) got a great Clemens team coming in here on Friday. So a great thing about this district is you get an opportunity to play every game. You’re not going to have an easy one. There’s no easy ones,” Ervin said. “We gotta get ready and get back to work, and that’s what I told the girls after the game. I said, ‘hey, let me tell you everything bad about the game, let me be gloom and doom real quick and now we’re through. It’s over.’ I said ‘everything anybody could say to you right now, let it go. We can’t dwell on it. We can’t go back and fix it. We can look at the film, make our corrections and get ready to play on Friday and try to go 1-0.’ That’s it.”

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