Pictured is JoJo Bailey
The Mansfield Sr Tigers hardwood heartaches continued on Tuesday, January 26th with a lopsided 61-33 loss to the Lavaca Golden Arrows. It didn’t take long for Mansfield to get behind the eight-ball against the Golden Arrows. The Tigers struck foul trouble early in the game and Lavaca took advantage of Mansfield’s frustrations. With an offensive inconsistency, Lavaca exploded to a 31-9 lead at the end of the first quarter. The Tigers found some life support in the second quarter though as the team finally began to mesh together. A couple of steals and defensive stops held the Golden Arrows back to only 9 points in the second quarter, but the Tigers still walked into halftime down 40-17.
Mansfield got some solid minutes from the bench in the second half as players rotated in and out consistently. With fresh bodies on the court, the Tigers were able to hang a few more points on Lavaca, but that didn’t last. The defense that had held the Golden Arrows so well in the second quarter began to unravel and Lavaca rolled ahead 59-28 at the end of the third quarter. The final 8 minutes of the game was a defensive battle as players from both teams played really good defense stuffing each other’s offenses from lighting up the scoreboard. Both teams combined only scored 7 points in the final quarter of the game leaving Mansfield with a 61-33 loss.
Codi Chick was held to 14 points in the game but that was due to a lack of playing time because of foul trouble early in the game. With Chick out, Lavaca was able to pin their ears back and flood the Tiger’s other scorers with tons of pressure. The pressure was able to shut down the president, JoJo Bailey, keeping him to only 5 points. A returning Tyler Escalante was able to play solid defense and bring down plenty of rebounds but was also stuffed offensively gaining just 4 points. The big men of the boards, Bri Sanderson, Zayne Dugan, and Drew Elmore combined for a total of 6 points against Lavaca. And Greyson Baggett and Braxton Byers rounded out the teams scoring with Baggett putting up 3 points and Byers putting up a single bucket for 2 points.
With talented players and great coaching, it’s hard to tell what the cause of the Tiger’s downfall is but rest assured, the team as a whole is working on whatever it is. With only a couple of games left in the regular season and the District Tournament still to go, the Tigers are gripping the steering wheel with both hands to turn things around. The next turn for (7-12) Mansfield will be the (5-7) Magazine Rattlers as the Tigers host the Rattlers on Tuesday, February 2nd.
