The Brazos Christian girls basketball team has been looking forward to this rematch.
Last season, then fifth-ranked Brazos Christian reached the state tournament for the first time in 15 years, but saw its run end in the semifinals with a 70-36 loss to top-ranked Tomball Rosehill Christian.
The teams then met in this season’s opener with Rosehill Christian winning 54-44.
Now, fourth-ranked Brazos Christian (27-8) gets another crack at second-ranked Rosehill Christian (31-3) with the schools meeting in the TAPPS 3A state semifinals at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Waco Robinson High School.
“All year, the girls have been like, ‘We want to play them, we want to play them, we want to play them,’” Brazos Christian head coach Hayley Huggins said. “[Rosehill Christian’s] regional game was at Allen [Academy] on Saturday and so we all went. We all went, we had nine players [go]. We just went and watched and the whole time they’re excited like, ‘We can do this, we can do this.’ I definitely think we have a shot. It’ll be a close game. I don’t think it will be the same kind of scores it was last year, but we feel ready.”
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It’s been a completely different track to get here than last year for the Brazos Christian girls. Last year, Brazos Christian made it to state thanks to a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Brooke Jacobus for a 54-53 win over Houston Lutheran North in the TAPPS 3A regional championship.
Last Friday, Brazos Christian came away with a dominant 62-28 win over The Christian School at Castle Hills in the TAPPS 3A regional championship. Castle Hills had beaten Houston Lutheran North a round earlier, 48-37.
Brazos Christian earned a bye week in the bi-district and beat Westbury Christian School 72-53 in the area round.
Huggins points to the end of the first part of district when she realized this team could have a similar trajectory to last year’s squad. Brazos Christian started off 6-0 in TAPPS 3-3A with the closet margin being a 14-point win.
“We didn’t have the goal of being undefeated in district but we were,” Huggins said. “We were 12-0 last year, we were 12-0 this year in the district and I just felt like the momentum toward the end of the year was starting to really get going again and so, one day at practice, I had them write down what their goal was for the year and then they had to write down how they were going to help us get there and almost all of them had something about the final four or getting to the state championship game and that kind of thing. They were all dreaming big, we just hadn’t really talked about it.”
The path to get here has been different but most of the names and faces are the same. Huggins says other coaches have complimented her squad on how much fun they are to watch, which she credits to the team’s unselfishness and an emphasis on picking each other up.
Teams might try and stop one of Brazos Christian’s players, but like clockwork, someone else always steps up. A big boost also comes from Brazos Christian’s four seniors, who have been coached by Huggins since seventh grade.
Those four are guards Brooke Jacobus, Caroline Powers and Emily Angerer and forward Cate Wright.
All four, along with the rest of the team, will be needed to stop Rosehill Christian’s talented bunch.
“They have a lot of individual talent,” Huggins said. “They have one player who has always been fabulous [in] Mercy Freeman. She’s a great kid, she is a lefty and so we’ll need to try and focus on her some and then they have a lot of players with skills but another [that comes to mind is] Ashlee Cain. She likes to shoot the 3 and so we’ll have to focus on those.”
The winner will play the winner between top-ranked Lubbock Christian and third-ranked San Jacinto Christian Academy at 2 p.m. Thursday at Robinson for the title.
“Our team really gets going when we have a defensive turnover,” Huggins said. “We tend to be — I don’t know if it’s nervous, anxious or what it is at the beginning of the game — but the minute we get a steal, the minute we get a stop that is a big stop then like the jets turn on. I’m hoping that doesn’t take us too long but typically that kind of fires us up and then we really get into a good groove but typically it’s a defensive play that gets us going.”