Round Rock’s Dragons, taking advantage of their 6-9 and 6-7 performers on the front line, breathed fire on the Temple Wildcats’ victory hopes Tuesday night.
With 6-9 junior John Henson, a toothpick with seemingly never-ending arms, scoring 26 points and blocking eight shots, the Dragons claimed a 63-50 victory in the season opener for both teams.
If that wasn’t enough, 6-7 Dax Hill added 20 points - 18 in the second half after Henson had 16 of his in the first 16 minutes.
“We just didn’t have the size,” Temple coach Bruce Etheridge said after a game showing by his youthful warriors. “They looked like a college team and have a lot of talent.
“We had some chances to take control, but we couldn’t get our shots to go down, and I think we were a little intimidated inside.”
If shots weren’t being caught in the rotary fan supplied by Henson’s arms, the Wildcats altered their attempts to attack the basket.
Etheridge, starting two seniors, a junior and two sophomores, also pointed to two other areas of concern.
“We’re going to have to play better defense and by that I mean we’re going to have to take more charges and we’re going to have to cut down on the number of turnovers by our point guards,” Etheridge added.
Despite the loss, Etheridge wasn’t all doom and gloom.
“It wasn’t that bad for an opener,” he said. “We had our chances, but couldn’t get the layups to go down. We just couldn’t finish.”
Temple, which visits Class 5A Bastrop on Friday, hung tough for most of the first three quarters but then fell victim to being outmanned.
Trailing 29-20 at the half, Temple came out and cut the lead to 31-27 on a 3-pointer from the corner by junior D.J. Wright and a pair of buckets underneath by 6-5 senior post James Gude, the tallest Wildcat.
But Hill went to work, scoring 10 of his team’s next 11 points, to make the margin too high for the Wildcats to climb.
Round Rock’s largest lead was 61-41 with 3:05 to go after a run of 12 consecutive points.
Sophomore Bron Etheridge led Temple with 12 points, while Eric Valdez, who scored sixth in the fourth period, had 10 and Wright added nine.
The Wildcats spent a considerable time attacking Round Rock from beyond the 3-point line, making seven. Wright had three and Etheridge added two.
Henson and Hill were the only Dragons to score more than five points.
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