 "Photo: Alma Hernandez/The Pan American")
At the end of the first half with 4:48 minutes left on the clock, junior guard Manny Hendrix’s slam dunk raised the energy level in the UTPA Field House. Cheers and chants filled the stands after the University of Texas-Pan American men’s basketball team scored six consecutive points; one might have thought that the Broncs were dominating the court, or at least trailed UTSA by a basket or two.
But the score was 30-16 in favor of the Roadrunners when Hendrix dunked.
Friday night, the Broncs fell 72-48 against UTSA. Although UTPA had bursts of liveliness throughout the game, the team couldn’t recover from a slow start that put it 20 points behind in the first 10 minutes of the game. The Broncs ended the first half down 37-18, falling to their 11th loss in 12 games.
“We got off to a slow start, and once you get down so much it’s hard to come back,” Hendrix said “We go through spurts where we have a lot of energy and we go through spurts where we’re slugging; we got to have more energy and less slugging.”
Freshman Aaron Urbanus and sophomore ChaRunn Jones led by scoring eight points each. Hendrix followed a point behind.
Junior Rakeem Couch, who scored six points, said that this last week’s conditions haven’t enabled the Broncs to focus fully on their sport, but that one of the team’s goals before the next game, which is Tuesday, is to regroup in order to accomplish winning results.
“We kind of feel better but we didn’t really play hard like we should,” said the Arkansas native. “It’s been a tough week, we got finals and we’ve been on the road a lot, so we’re trying to get back on our feet, get our minds right back into basketball.”
In addition to the adversity, the team’s leading scorer, Jared Maree, missed Saturday’s games due to a knee injury suffered in a 104-42 setback against UT in Austin Dec. 15. Prior to that, UTPA lost on the road at Texas State and UTSA.
Head coach Ryan Marks mentioned that UTSA’s intense play is something that the Broncs, who are striving for both physical and emotional consistency, can look up to.
“We have to give UTSA a lot of credit, they’re a very good team… the most impressive thing about them is that their aggressiveness is the same at home as it was on the road,” he said. “The next step for us to be a better team is consistency, and for us some nights it’s been three or four guys play well and have good energy, and some other guys aren’t where they should be.”
Since the team’s main focus is to be successful at the conference level, Marks added that the next three weeks are crucial, as the Broncs to prepare for games against members of the Great West Conference starting in mid-January.
“January 14 is a critical date for us on the calendar because we know that’s when we start in the Great West Conference…we want to a certain point be competitive night in and night out in conference show,” he said. “I think Tuesday night starts the first of five games that we have remaining between now and then to get playing with the effort level and the understanding that we need to be competitive in the conference.”
The UTPA basketball program will try to work on maintaining positive and consistent energy at Ruston La., where they will face Louisiana Tech Tuesday before returning to the UTPA Field House for a match against Northern Arizona at 2 p.m.
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