SAN ANTONIO — When varsity girls basketball took down Lancaster in double overtime Sept. 15, a very important piece was missing.
Lions junior guard Makenzie White transferred in mid-season, adding a valuable piece to a team that was already a championship contender.
White won Championship Game MVP, and the Chaps (40-1) fell in the 6A-DII State Championship, 51-37 Friday night at the Alamodome against Lancaster (33-5). Despite the ending, they achieved the first 40-win season in program history.
“[Lancaster] did have a player that we didn’t see the first time,” head coach Vickie Benson said. “I thought she was pretty impactful. She was physical on the boards and gave us a little bit of trouble, for sure. I think when we played them the first time, they were a little bit timid defensively, and weren’t really expecting what we were going to do.”
After the Chaps went on a quick 6-0 run to start the game, the Lions fought back immediately, tying it up with a 6-0 run of their own. Lancaster led 13-11 at the end of the first and never gave that lead up.
White scored nine of her 15 points in the second and third periods, where Lancaster did a lot of their damage, outscoring the Chaps by a combined 25-12.
The Lions used a stifling interior defense to force 14 Chaparral turnovers. Their paint presence forced quick kick-outs into 3-pointers, which weren’t falling. The Chaps shot 3-18 from beyond the arc, with two of those coming in the last few minutes of the game.
“We had to be more aggressive,” senior forward Tamia King said. “I had to play like I did at the end from the start, but I laid back.”
King, who is committed to play basketball at the University of Houston, was the only Chaparral in double digits, finishing with 11. She also collected half of the team’s 28 rebounds. She helped them go on a 10-0 run in the dying moments. The Chaps shot 43% from the field and 33% from beyond the arc in the fourth.
The Chaps’ 37 points was their lowest output on the whole season. Benson credited the Lions’ defense, while insisting that the grandeur and importance of the game didn’t play a part after the game tipped off.
“I think the girls would say they probably were a little bit nervous throughout the day,” Benson said. “They had some roller coasters of nerves, which is totally normal. I think once we started playing, though, I don’t think they had that. I think they just wanted to win, and they were just disappointed that it wasn’t going our way.”
Two underclassmen have been counted on heavily this season, and freshman guards Geralynn Byers-Veal and Payton Hensle have answered the bell. Byers-Veal was a perfect 4-4 from the field, and Hensle added two 3-pointers, combining for 15 points. Byers-Veal is the top-ranked freshman in the country.
“I think tonight is a great experience for them, because that’s the only thing they’re missing, is the experience,” Benson said. “Now they’ve been here, they have a taste for it, and I can tell you, they’re going to be really, really hungry to come back.”
The playoffs as a whole were a stark turnaround from last season. The Chaps lost a year ago to Vandegrift in the first round. A few impact players were on that same team last year, including King, junior forward Wynn Thorne and junior guard Molly Frazer.
“The feeling that we felt after that Vandergrift loss, I know no one on that team ever wanted to feel that again,” Thorne said. “It was kind of in the back of our minds the whole season, that it’s never happening again, and it would push us to be better every time we got on the court.”
Similarly to the previous year, Westlake returns a significant amount of production. King is the only rotational senior, and the Chaps should return the other five players that got minutes in the State Championship.
“It wasn’t the outcome that we wanted,” Byers-Veal said. “But next year we’ll be back, and we’ll be better and we’ll win.”
