Free throws push Nixon-Smiley to 53-45 win

NIXON — Nixon-Smiley thwarted their rivals 53-45 at home as they beat Stockdale using free-throw shooting as their main weapon.

“Stockdale plays scrappy,” Lady Mustangs’ head coach Scott Jones said. “I wanted to get out on top of them early and just play on from there.”

The Lady Mustangs made 16 straight free throws in the first half before missing one with 2:15 left in the second quarter. The team combined for 25-of-30 from the free-throw line that night. Meanwhile, Stockdale made 6-of-13.

“Always in close games, I’ve always told [the team], free throws will win or lose them,” Jones noted.

The Lady Mustangs opened the game with an 8-0 run with baskets coming in from Katy Tschoepe, Chaelee Mejia and the team leading scorer Celeste Arriaga. Nixon-Smiley attacked the basket soon after, resulting in the large amount of free-throw attempts.

On defense, the Lady Mustangs ran a 2-3, causing problems for the Stockdale Lady Brahmas.

“We’ve been running the 2-3 for a long time, so we’ve kind of fallen to a groove,” Jones explained. “There’s adjustments you got to make here and there with whatever it is [Stockdale was] doing. We’re pretty comfortable sitting in our 2-3 and we got into a bit of foul trouble too. We had one foul out and Celeste had four.”

Late in the game, the Lady Apaches had to run their offense through what they call a “stall” set in which they would space out their players as if they were stalling to kill clock.

“We didn’t get in it to stall the clock,” Jones said, “we got in it to attack out of it because [Stockdale] came out in a man and they were in foul trouble.”

Nixon-Smiley would score easy baskets out of their “stall” to maintain their lead throughout the game. This allowed Arriaga, who had four fouls on her with six minutes to go, to not only attack the basket but keep her from fouling on the defensive end.

Arriaga would finish the game with 24 points.

“She’s always one that you can count on,” Jones said. “She has a motor that just won’t quit. As a coach, you’d love to have that out there. She’s almost a coach on the floor at some point. She’s one you always want on your side.”

Meanwhile, the Lady Mustangs got contributions from other players such as Lexi Trammell who came away with 13 points and Maggie Mendez who finished with seven.

“Maggie stepped up, I know she had a couple buckets early on,” Jones said. “Lexi had 13. That helped a lot. Chaelee [Mejia] had a few rebounds. All those little things put together, they add up to wins.”

With a roster size as small as theirs, one thing Jones did mention that the team needed to do to stay on the winning side and in playoff contention is clean up their turnovers.

“Our turnovers are hurting us,” he warned, “we have to clean that up.”

Nixon-Smiley now sits at 7-4 and in third place in District 27-3A. They take on Yoakum (6-5) on the road, a team that sits at fourth. Yoakum won their last contest on Jan. 6 57-42.