GIRLS BASKETBALL: Improved guard play has Andrews rolling

Rusty Gilbreath said his Andrews girls basketball team has a lot of momentum going into its Class 3A bi-district playoff game against Pecos at 6 p.m. today at Kermit High School.

The Lady Mustangs (15-10 overall) are 5-1 in their last six games and have outscored their opponents 224-189 during that time.

Gilbreath said the Lady Mustangs’ improvement on offense can be attributed to the play of three guards: Baley Badgett, Rayna Diaz and Kaitlin Steele.

“Once those girls got into basketball shape after getting out of volleyball, they became more aggressive and started to drive to the hoop,” Gilbreath said. “That’s improved our offense because we can get easy shots or layups.”

Diaz said the difference in play stemmed from adjusting to a new offense.

“We had a hard time at first because we lost (four) seniors from last year,” Diaz said. “It took the team awhile to adjust from a high-low offense to a motion offense where we used a lot of screens.”

Badgett and Diaz, two of the team’s three seniors, have each averaged 11 points per game during the last six games while Steele, a junior, averaged 12 points during that span.

“Our bread and butter is the motion offense,” Gilbreath said. “We try to set a lot of screens and try to become a double-attack offense with our three guards.

“They’re all quick, athletic and finally learned their role with the team.”

Diaz said the roles included becoming better rebounders, ball handlers and shooters.

The Pecos girls basketball team is also on a roll, winning four of its last six games. Pecos coach Debbie Garcia said her team uses a man-to-man and 3-1-1 trap defense to get its opponents out of sync.

Due to Pecos’ high-pressure defense, Gilbreath said he stressed the importance of taking care of the basketball to his squad over the last week.

“I told them that a good team limits their turnovers, rebounds and is aggressive on offense,” Gilbreath said. “Pecos is a good team and will hound you on defense with their man-to-man. We have to handle the ball well to have a chance to win.”

Garcia said her team’s keys to victory are twofold — rebounding the ball and making jump shots. The Lady Eagles (16-12) did neither well against Andrews’ 2-3 zone defense on Dec. 10, 2011, in the Sandhills Tournament at Kermit High School. Andrews won the game 46-37 and was led by Badgett’s 16 points.

Garcia said Andrews’ defense disrupted her team’s offensive flow.

“It was our second game of the day and we were pretty tired,” Pecos senior point guard Chelsea Roman said. “They played a zone defense and we couldn’t get the ball inside to our posts. So we took jump shots and didn’t grab any rebounds.”

Roman, who scored 17 points in the Dec. 10 contest, said the team has watched tape from that game and learned from its mistakes.

“We understand how to run our offense against Andrews’ zone now,” she said. “We know that we need to rebound a lot better because they got a lot of second-chance shots because we couldn’t block out and get rebounds.”

Roman, who leads Pecos in scoring with 21 points per game, said the brunt of the rebounding will need to be done by senior posts Karina Quintana and Kebbeh Darpolor. Roman said the duo struggled to get into position for rebounds against Andrews’ quicker post players.

“It’s going to be difficult to get rebounds because their post players are athletic,” said Quintana, who averaged 12.7 rebounds in the last six games. “But if we find a way to get rebounds, slow them down with our defense and limit their open shots, we’ll have a great chance to win.”

Diaz said she is looking forward to a good game.

“It’s the playoffs, anything can happen if you play well,” Diaz said. “We’re definitely expecting Pecos to come hard because we won the last game.”

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