Clear Lake Falconhoops

Falcons Squash Yellowjackets 63-48 February 8, 2005 When you hit 100% of your free throws in a 5A basketball game, you expect to win. When you shoot over 50% of your 2’s and over 40% of your treys, you should usually win. Combine that kind of accuracy with consistent aggressive defense from the opening tipoff and you tend to dominate. That is the short version of the Clear Lake victory over Alvin Tuesday night. Tonight in the Clear Lake gym the varsity team put together a complete game. Too bad for the Alvin Yellowjackets, who thought they could spoil the Falcons' playoff hopes. The Jackets were bolstered by their recent encounter with Clear Creek, the District leader. Alvin had played Creek to double overtime before losing by 7 only one week ago. Creek had beat Lake by only 2 just last Friday in a thriller so Alvin knew they had a chance. What Alvin did not know was how mentally and physically prepared the Falcons would be. Lake was so focused and so motivated. Okay, so Clear Lake has a much more talented team than Alvin. Surely. But that is not the reason Lake won. It was the way they played. The Falcons took control of the game from the opening basket and never let up. They played the kind of first half that has been missing most of the season. Their defense was consistently tenacious. Their offense was measured and shrewd. It was like the Falcons remembered how Alvin had led at halftime in their previous meeting and they were not going to let it happen again. Who knows what Coach McDonald used to motivate his players or what they themselves had resolved to accomplish? Whatever it was, it worked well. Bottle what is left and save it for the Clear Brook game next week when the Falcons will need to put together another complete game to trump the Brook bunch. Due to intense defense, the first quarter was a series of miscues for Alvin that the Falcons would match with well executed, unselfish plays resulting in scoring. The defense from Jordan Villarreal, Scott Oswald, Armie Lewis, and Andy Leveque, scooting around the floor with the quickness of hummingbirds in a feeding frenzy, was awesome . The defensive display put on by the Lake squad in the first half was what is referred to in southeast Texas as “mighty fine”. A first quarter score of 23 to 5 attests to the effort applied by the Falcons. Andy scored 7 of his 13 points in the first quarter. Mark Murphy led all scorers with 18 points, six of them garnered in the first quarter (Murphy scored 13 in the first half). Justin Kurtz was sidelined early with a potential injury and did not re-enter the game. The reserves got in the game early and this led to balanced scoring across the entire squad. The refs were letting them play and in the second quarter the abundant amount of uncalled fouling on both sides continued and became more noticeable. Lake extended their lead to 25-5 when Armie hit a jump shot from the left side. At 5:09 a steal by Jordan Villarreal and a coast to coast drive made it 27-9. After Jordan's successful free throw and only nine seconds later, a steal by David Pearce as Alvin was attempting to inbound the ball and a pass to Lee Mazurek who quickly zipped it to Andy to add two more brought the score to 30-9 for the largest lead of the game. Several well executed plays on both ends of the court by Lee Mazurek throughout the game had to please the coach as it did the fans. The first half ended with Lake up 17, 37-20. By midway through the third quarter, Gordon Abner had his second dunk and the squad was really having fun. Then Andy hit two free throws to return the lead to 21 points, 43-22. The foul count got kinda lopsided at 8 and 2 (8 for the Falcons) as the refs tightened it up in the second half. The third quarter closed at 47-33. With two minutes gone in the final period, Alvin narrowed the gap to 11, 50-39 before Lake changed their offense to a slowdown to consume time and score more certain baskets. By the final three minutes the Falcons had pulled away again and increased their lead to 18 (despite the 11 to 6 foul count). The final score was 63-48. Teamwork, impressive court awareness, accurate passing and shooting (due to good shot selection), and aggressive, intense defense resulting from lots of hard work and lots of hustle made this game a very satisfying victory. In other action Clear Brook beat regionally ranked (#10) Clear Creek 56-49! See what happens when the Chronicle calls you "perfect in district play" and you get your name in the paper for being only one of two 5A schools in the region undefeated in district play (Fort Bend Marshall, ranked #1 in the state in several polls, is the other). Scoring for the Falcons: Mark Murphy 18, Andy Leveque 13, Scott Oswald 9, Gordon Abner 6, Kendrell Thompson 5, Armie Lewis 5, Jordan Villarreal 3, Lee Mazurek 2, David Pearce 2 Score by Quarter: 23-14-10-16= 63 US 05-20-13-15= 48 Them Score after each quarter: 23-37-47-63 US 05-20-33-48 Them 2’s: 21 of 41 (51%) 3’s: 3 of 7 (43%) Free throws: 12 of 12 (100%)