State-ranked Wildcats torch Prairie Lea 108-18

WAELDER — After falling to Dimebox last Tuesday, the state-ranked— at least according to the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches’ poll— Waelder Wildcats needed a bounce-back win before heading to La Marque tonight to take another state-ranked team.

Starting the game on a 51-0 run seemed to do the trick as Waelder dismantled the Prairie Lea Indians 108-18.

“First win of the year,” head coach Brandon Howard said. “The new year of 2015, we got our first win so now we’ll just try to build on that. Next game we go into La Marque, as far as I know they were 2-0 and they beat Dimebox which we lost to this past Tuesday so hopefully we’ll build momentum and build off of that.”

The La Marque Premier Learning Academy won Friday, beating Fayetteville 92-13 to move to 3-0 in district.

Defense was the key to the game as the Wildcats forced turnovers throughout the 51-0 run, frustrating the visiting Indians.

Prairie Lea’s first basket would come at the five-minute mark in the second quarter, against a Waelder squad of mostly backups. The Indians didn’t have to wait another 11 minutes of game time to score as they ended the half on an 8-2 run to get to double digits.

In that first half, eight Waelder athletes etched their name in the stat book with points, with Caleb Ibarra leading the pack with 16 points, 13 of which came in the first quarter. Right behind him was junior baller Aaron Lee who scored 14 points. Senior starter Jeremy Gonzales scored all nine of his first-half points in the first quarter. Other scorers include Tracy Moore with four, Keyshann Fields with six, freshman Abijah Alexander with six, Daniel Rodriguez with two and Steven Ewing with one.

Though the second half saw more playing time for the non-starters, Waelder still lit up Prairie Lea with their points off of turnovers. By the end of the game, six players, including all five starters, would score double digits.

Ibarra led the team in scoring overall with 21 points followed by Lee with 18 points. Fields and Moore had 16 each and Gonzales had 13. Freshman Jeffery Tovar was the ninth player to add his name to the stat book, scoring his six points in the second half of the game.

“Anytime you get your bench playing time and get them the minutes and the experience game time,” Howard said, “it’s a good thing because you never know who you have to call on during the season or later in the season or playoff time. The bench needs to improve so being able to get them minutes it really helps a lot.”

Waelder moves to 2-1 in district and is ranked 17th according to the TABC poll this week. They travel to La Marque to take on the 3-0 Cougars.

Even though the Wildcats had a dominant performance, Howard believes the team still needs to be more consistent on the defensive end. After all, La Marque, currently ranked 14th, beat this same Prairie Lea team on Tuesday 119-16. The Cougars also took on Dimebox and beat them, a team that can say already has a win against Waelder.

“We need to be consistent on defense all the time,” Howard claimed of his squad’s needs for improvement. “Offensively we also need to be consistent but more important our defense needs to be consistent. We need to play defense on full court, or whatever we’re in, we need to play it consistently, be able to help the defender, help and recover and just defense I mean that’s what we build our program on, defense.”

Tipoff is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. at La Marque.