Albany hits tough stretch in district play
By Sam Waller
The Albany Lions varsity boys basketball team endured a rough second week of the new year with losses to Cisco and Anson.
The Lions (8-6 overall, 3-3 District 10-2A) returned to action Tuesday, Jan. 14 with a 48-65 loss at Hawley in their only outing this week. Albany has the district bye Friday, Jan. 17 that fortuitously coincides with the Shackelford County Livestock Show.
On Tuesday, Jan. 7, the Lions went cold in the fourth quarter of a 48-39 loss to Cisco. The slump carried over to Friday, Jan. 10 in a 51-48 setback at Anson.
“It was a big week with two big games. This is just a young team in terms of district experience,” Lions coach Ryder Peacock said. “You don’t like to lose, but I think you can grow up a lot. We can learn from the mistakes we made late against Cisco and early against Anson.”
Against Cisco, the Lions forged a 37-27 lead through three quarters only to have the Loboes come back with a 21-2 edge in the fourth.
“We played three quarters of good basketball,” Peacock said. “Our defense was lights-out, then we gave up nearly as many points in the fourth quarter as we did the first three. And credit to Cisco, too — they hit three 3’s in a row on three straight possessions.”
Chip Chambers led Albany with 13 points, 10 of which came in the first half. Huffman Heatly added nine points and Aaden Mendez eight. Heatly had Albany’s lone basket in the fourth quarter while Cisco sank six field goals and went 5 of 6 at the line.
“It wasn’t a matter of us not playing hard, it was just execution,” Peacock said. “That’s kind of expected at this time of year. We’re going to learn from it, grow from it and get better.”
But the cold stretch extended several minutes into the game at Anson, which saw the Lions trail 14-2 early before closing to within 16-10 at the end of the first quarter.
“When you travel in this district, you’ve got to rebound well and play defense,” Peacock said. “We didn’t do that very well the first quarter and they got a lot of easy baskets. It just kind of snowballed.”
Albany stopped the bleeding, outscoring the Tigers 28-19 over the middle two periods to take a 38-35 lead. Anson used another 16-10 edge in the fourth to pull out the win.
“Our guys did a good job of not quitting,” Peacock said. “We came back and took the lead, but just couldn’t finish. We had some shots to go ahead and missed.”
Chambers finished with 18 points, hitting six 3-pointers, while Clay Chapman scored 12 and Heatly nine.
ALBANY 39 – Cisco 48
ALBANY 10 12 15 2 - 25
CISCO 8 9 10 21 - 48
ALBANY – Chip Chambers 13, Huffman Heatly 9, Aaden Mendez 8, Clay Chapman 5, Jaxson Street 4.
ALBANY 48 – Anson 51
ALBANY 10 10 18 10 - 48
ANSON 16 8 11 16 -51 ALBANY – Chip Chambers 18, Clay Chapman 12, Huffman Heatly 9, Aaden Mendez 4, Will Barrett 3, Jaxson Street 2.
