Greyhounds race to regional semis berth
Boerne’s boys basketball team used stifling defense and an early barrage of offense to dismantle La Vernia 50-26 on Tuesday night in a Class 4A state playoff regional quarterfinal matchup at Judson High.
“A lot of the success we had shutting down (La Vernia’s) offense came from scouting, but an extended 2-3 zone is our base defense,” Boerne head coach Kimble Mchone said. “We’ve got a group of guys who have been here for a long time and knows how to play our defense well. We’ve seen so many different ways to try and attack our zone that we can adjust well to most anything. I’ve got five seniors on this team, and that gives me a bit of confidence.”
The Greyhounds (30-5) — who have won 22 straight games and last lost all the way back on Dec. 9, when Boerne dropped a 46-44 decision to Pflugerville Weiss — now take on Somerset (26-9) in the Region IV semifinals on Friday at Texas A&mkingsville.
Boerne never trailed against La Vernia (28-9), a team that was riding a 10-game winning streak of its own coming into Tuesday night’s game. The Greyhounds scored the first 5 points of the contest and held the Bears without a field goal for the first 6:13, by which time Boerne was up 12-1 and rolling.
“The key when you play a zone defense like we do is to get off to a fast start,” Mchone said.
“If you don’t, then the other team can pull the ball out and make you have to do things on defense that you’d rather not. But (Trevor Agarwal) made some 3-pointers and we ran some sets that got some people open, and we got the lead and took off with it.”
Boerne led 18-4 after one quarter and 27-9 at halftime before making a 13-0 run in the third period to go up 42-11 and cruising to the win.
The Greyhounds went the final 4:37 of the game without scoring as Mchone cleared his bench, but La Vernia was only able to trim 7 points off the Greyhounds’ lead during that stretch.
Agarwal made six 3-pointers — three of which came in the decisive first quarter — and finished with 20 points to lead all scorers. Barrett Pape added 14 and Houston Hendrix had eight for Boerne.
Blake Forrest led La Vernia with 8 points and Ryan Bellino had seven for the Bears in the loss.
With his team’s sights now set on the regional semis on Friday, Mchone said that he feels that Boerne’s best basketball may be still to come.
“We are playing some of our best basketball right now,” Mchone said. “This season really has been a tale of two teams. We didn’t get eight guys — two of whom are starters — from football until the middle of December, and by then, we’d already played 16 games. The first group of guys we had maintained things for us, but for the second group of guys, this is only about their 20th game together. I do think this group can be even better than what it has been so far.”