San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Thunderbirds dominate, make next round
Wagner left no doubt to its dominance Friday night.
It outscored Sam Houston 36-11 in the second half to steamroll the Hurricanes 71-34 in a Class 5A area round girls basketball playoff game at Littleton Gym.
“(In the second half ), all we did was that we increased our intensity level,” said Wagner coach Annissa Jackson, whose team gave up just two field goals in the second half. “We got back to playing like we did to get to this point. We played like we were ready for the playoffs.”
With the win, Wagner (24-2), which has won 16 straight games dating back to Dec. 10, moves into a region quarterfinal matchup against Buda Hays (36-3). The date, time and location of that game will be announced later this weekend. Hays, which is riding a 16-game win streak of its own, advanced to the third round of the playoffs by beating MacArthur, 5333, on Thursday night.
“(Hays) is a really good team,” Jackson said. “We've got to get prepared for them, but we'll definitely be ready for them.”
Wagner, the District 26-5A champions, never trailed against Sam Houston, scoring the first nine points of the game and leading 16-4 after the opening quarter. However, Sam Houston (23-12) hung around a bit in the second period, scoring the final four points of the first half to trim the Thunderbirds' halftime lead to 35-23.
“We played well in the first quarter when we only gave up four points,” Jackson said. “However, we got lackadaisical in the second quarter and allowed (Sam Houston) to score 19 points. We regrouped at halftime and were able to get back to playing like we normally do.”
Wagner opened the second half with a 14-1 run to build a 5328 advantage going into the fourth quarter and later ripped off another 16-1 run to steamroll its way into the region quarterfinals. Nine different players scored for the Thunderbirds, led by L.A. Sneed's 20 points. Sahvani Sancho made five 3pointers en route to 19 points, Aniya Bigley made three treys of her own and chipped in 12 in the victory.
Ke'lai'jaia Henderson led Sam Houston with 12, and Amaya Miller-Singleton had nine for the Hurricanes.
“Our offense tonight was spread out and it went with my pregame speech,” Jackson said. “Before the game, I talked about how this team is a unit and everyone is a part of the unit. I talked about how we're better as a unit and being a unit is why we are where we're at. It's good that we don't have to rely just on one person to get our points. We have different people who can score at different times and that helps a lot.”