The Taylor Ducks boys’ varsity basketball team fell to the Leander Lions 68-39 Tuesday night at the Ducks Pond.
Ducks head coach Stephen Gibson spent a considerable amount of time after Tuesday’s loss taking to his team and said he told them they have to play with a purpose.
“We mainly talked to them about tonight’s game. Commitment, playing with a purpose that was tonight’s postgame talk because we did not do that,” Gibson said.
The Ducks had a slow start to the game and could not dig themselves out of the early hole the Lions put them in.
The Lions started the game very fast and scored 17 points while the Ducks only had 5 before the first quarter ended. The second quarter was not much better for the Ducks as they scored only five more points while the Lions added another 18 points to their lead.
“It is part of the growing pains that we are going to experience this season but we talk about how we need to come out and match the other team’s energy and in the first half we had no energy,” Gibson said.
Heading into halftime the Ducks were down 25 and needed a spark to help find some production on both ends of the floor.
The third quarter saw the Ducks be outscored again, 21-15, but their offense started to come alive.
Heading into the fourth and final quarter the Ducks were down 56-25 and knew they were playing for pride until the final buzzer. The Ducks were finally able to outscore the Lions in the fourth, 14-12, but the Lions lead was too large and the Ducks fell 68-39.
Despite the loss Gibson knows how good his team is and knows that they can matchup and compete against any team in the state, they just need to believe in themselves.
“That is a darn good team that we played, but we knew that coming in and that was my speech to them at practice this morning but on the backside, I told them we are a darn good team as well,” Gibson said. “But we’ve got to believe it. Once we start believing it, we will see some positives.”
The Ducks will be back in action at the Duck Pond taking on Lorena at 3 p.m. in their last pre-district matchup and Gibson said they are also a really good team but his team is going to be ready.
