The Pilot Point Bearcats basketball team opened their season with a 60-45 win at home against the Denton Calvary Lions on Monday morning.
The three balls were falling for the Bearcats and helped them build a double-digit lead in the third quarter that was too much for the Lions to overcome.
“We had our first practice Saturday morning, and then we showed up to play today, and with us only having one practice coming out there, I thought the kids did a good job,” said Jeff Price, Pilot Point head boys basketball coach. “They really competed and are still getting into basketball shape, but we did a good job of making enough plays to win the game.”
The two teams traded buckets during the opening period, with Pilot Point holding the slight edge, 15-11, at the end of the first quarter.
The score was even more closely contested in the second quarter, where both teams scored 11 points apiece, sending the game into the half with the Bearcats holding on to a four-point lead, 26-22.
Momentum swung in Pilot Point's favor in the second half, with the Bearcats outscoring the Lions 22-9 behind a barrage of three-pointers and stifling defense.
“We really got hot; I think we hit four or five threes in that third quarter, and we talked about at halftime, ‘Just stay on the court, make better passes, be ready to shoot, and they're going to start falling,’” he said. “We need to be able to shoot the ball at a high clip to give us a good chance to win, and we were able to make that run in the third quarter, and a lot of that had to do with good stops on defense and then hitting multiple threes back-toback to stretch the lead for us.”
Pilot Point carried a 17-point lead, 48-31, into the fourth quarter, where Denton Calvary showed signs of life, taking the scoring edge 14-12, but the Bearcats’ lead proved to be too much, with them holding on to win 60-45.
Senior guard Hunter Newman led the Bearcats with 16 points, followed by junior guard Alejandro Phillips, who finished with 12 points.
Despite the strong start, Price said the Bearcats are looking long-term and plan to take the season one game at a time.
“I told the guys, ‘These are games, but for us, they're really scrimmages,’” he said. “We didn't have a chance to scrimmage, so we're going to try a lot of different combinations, and there's stuff that we're trying that we haven't even worked on in practice, so it's really just about knocking off the rust these two days and getting in better shape and starting to figure things out a little bit— playing together and gelling as a team.”
