Angelina Sotelo continues to be clutch in the fourth quarter.
San Marcos (3-0) battled Pflugerville Hendrickson (1-3) wire-to-wire on Friday night. The visitors opened up the game with 12 of their 16 points coming from beyond the arc before junior forward Faith Phillips hit a jump hook with seven seconds to close the first quarter. As the score tangoed back-and-forth, Sotelo, a sophomore guard, made her presence felt with another good fourth-quarter performance and continued to shine in the biggest moments. The sophomore went on a 7-0 run by herself, including the buckets to take the lead and extend it to four with under three minutes to play in regulation. Senior forward Grace Latham followed her own shot, grabbed the rebound and put the Cottonelle touch on the ball to score the dagger and secure a 57-51 win over the Lady Hawks.
“I’m telling them how proud I am of them for showing heart, showing fight, showing team, never fading away,” head coach Veronda Kendall said. “It’s a great group of kids, great chemistry and I think we have an idea of our potential right now. But we just wanna come out and get better every day.”
Hendrickson’s sharpshooter, senior guard Sarah Malinowski, made four of six 3s from various spots on the floor in the first half, keeping her team within striking distance.
The Lady Rattlers had to stop the sniper from getting any clean looks at the rim after halftime and that started with the pressure up top from junior guard Kayla Presley, who played pesky defense on the guards bringing the ball up the court and flying into passing lanes to intercept passes like a safety.
“My mentality is just don’t let them score,” Presley said. “They can pass the ball around the perimeter all they want but I just don’t want them in the paint and I don’t want them to score.”
With the score sitting at 44-43, the Lady Rattlers locked down on defense only allowing the visitors to score eight points in the fourth quarter. With time running low, Hendrickson switched to a full-court press that allowed Sotelo to find holes in the defense, leading to open transition layups. But Sotelo didn’t neglect her team’s identity on defense. Her steal with 1:05 remaining in the game allowed Latham to score the team’s final bucket, sealing the 57-51 win.
“I was just thinking that we’re still in it,” Sotelo said. “We need to come out with this dub and stay undefeated in the preseason. I just didn’t want to lose.”
Malinowski only made one 3-pointer in the second half after the adjustments made in the locker room during halftime.
“We knew we needed to keep a hand on her,” Kendall said. “She’s a nice shooter. Pure touch. We just kept changing defenses and we know the style of defense we play. We like to keep the pressure on people and force them to take those shots.”
Presley finished with a team-high 15 points, closely followed by Latham who chipped in 12 of her own. Faith Phillips used her size ups to attack the basket strong and score consistently at the rim for 11 points of her own.
San Marcos gets a couple of days off before taking a road trip to San Antonio when they take on Brackenridge (2-3) at 7:30 p.m. The Lady Rattlers will put their 3-0 record on the line without the support of the home crowd but that won’t stop them from playing their style of basketball.
“When we go on the road, we go expecting to play to win,” Kendall said. “We appreciate our home crowd. We love our home crowd, but we don’t worry about that when we’re on the road. We know what we have to do on the road to win.”
