With Texas coach Vic Shaefer watching, No. 1 Cedar Park girls roll into third round
BUDA — At some point in the playoffs, Cedar Park might have a close game.
“Might” being the key word.
When and if that comes, the Timberwolves will be ready, even though they don’t have a lot of experience in tight games to fall back on.
Top-ranked Cedar Park ran its winning streak to an astounding 57 games Thursday as it continued its march to repeat as Class 5A champion with a 69-23 win over San Antonio Edison in an area-round playoff game at Johnson High School.
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“It’s been awhile since we have played a close game, and that could factor into things,” Cedar Park coach Donny Ott said. “But we have a couple of games from earlier in the year that we’ll draw back to. We’ll watch those games and visualize that environment to get ready for the moment when it comes.”
Since playing a brutal nondistrict schedule from the start of the season through early December, the Timberwolves haven’t been challenged much, outside of a 45-41 win over Georgetown on Jan. 14.
Blowouts have become commonplace for Cedar Park, as has playing in front of Power Five coaches — as it did Thursday, when Texas' Vic Schaefer, wearing a burnt-orange jacket, sat in the second row of an empty section.
But even though Cedar Park has entered most of its games the past two months knowing it would probably cruise to a win, there’s still work to be done — especially in the playoffs, when preparation time is short.
“At this point, we’re really meticulous about watching the other team, finding their strengths and working on that in our practices,” Ott said. “Earlier in the year, we focused on us. We watched film on us, scouted ourselves and tried to polish things up. Today we wanted to stop their transition game. I was really proud we limited their transition game and made them play a half-court game.”
From a competition standpoint, the game was over almost as soon as it started.
Cedar Park (32-0) led 20-5 early on and 43-11 at halftime.
Junior Gisella Maul (26 points) and Shelby Hayes (22 points) easily cleared the 20-point mark, with Molly Ly adding 12 points.
While college coaches such as Schaefer flock to see Maul and Hayes is headed to play at Rice next year, anyone who’s seen the Timberwolves knows they are far from a two-player team.
Ly and seniors Elaine King, Megan Woods, Rece Prater-Merrill and Angie Sacco could all play some level of college basketball if they choose.
“It’s a fun experience to receive the attention from college coaches and elsewhere. I enjoy it for our program,” Ott said. “This school district means a lot to me, and to bring this attention to Cedar Park is important to me. We’re blessed to have talented kids, and we’re going to soak it up and make sure our girls just enjoy playing basketball and don’t feel the pressure of recruiting.”
Right now, Ott’s players say they’re just focused on getting back to the state tournament and, they hope, winning another state title, even if at the moment practices might be more competitive than games.
“Every game we’ll still find things to work on to get better for the next,” King said. “We’ve got to keep pushing. We know the playoff games will start to get tougher, so we do our rotations like we would for a close game … but there’s some stuff we have that we haven’t done in games to put out for scouting.”
Though it’s hard to see what Cedar Park can actually improve on, that will be the aim as it prepares to play New Braunfels Canyon in the regional quarterfinals Tuesday at the Blossom Center in San Antonio.
“Moving forward, we’re just going to continue to watch film of our opponents, and hopefully we can tighten things up and make a good run,” Ott said.
Expanded coverage
For more stories and photo galleries from Thursday's and Friday's high school basketball games, go to statesman.com/sports.