Cold shooting dooms Longhorns in sub final

    One stat tells the story in the Longhorns’ 54-75 season-ending loss to the Ogallala Indians—shooting percentage.
    The Longhorns couldn’t get the ball to drop all night, shooting just 23 percent from the field—11-36 outside the three-point arc and just 6-37 inside the arc.
    At the other end of the floor, it seemed like everything Ogallala threw up went in. They were 21-36 inside the arc for 58 percent and 7-16 outside the arc for 44 percent.
    “We couldn’t buy a bucket the first five minutes,” Coach Chris Bartels said.
    That was literally true. Ogallala built a 12-0 lead to open the game. Finally, sophomore point guard Taylor Jablonski broke the ice with a 3-pointer at the 3:32 mark.     
    The Longhorns would only get an and-one three pointer from Cedric Maxwell near the end of the quarter and trailed 17-6 after the first eight minutes.
    Braden Space and Jablonski  dropped a pair of 3s to just one bucket by Ogallala to pull within seven, 19-12. That proved to be the closest the Longhorns would get the rest of the game.
    By halftime, the Indians led 34-18.
    Bartels said every time the Longhorns would get a little run going, Ogallala would answer.
    The Longhorns have been able to erase those kinds of deficits in the second half of the season, but not last week.
    Space opened the second half with a 3-pointer and the Longhorns got a stop defensively. However, on that next possession, the Longhorns came up empty.
    Bartels felt that was a turning point in the game. Had they been able to get another bucket and another stop, he felt things would have been different.
    As it was, the Longhorns continued to play catch-up the rest of the game as the ball still refused to go down for them.
    Bartels said their game plan  was to slow down Ogallala’s top two players, Cameron Raffaeli and Clayton Murphy, and make their other three beat them. Unfortunately, they did with those other three accounting for 35 points.
    “You have to tip your cap to a team that can do that,” he said this week.
 

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