Cowboys rally for victory

The Porter Cowboys came up big in the second half for a 69-56 come-from-behind victory over McAllen Memorial on Tuesday at the Porter gym.

The Cowboys (5-3) trailed 29-24 at halftime, but rebounded by outscoring the Mustangs 24-12 during the third period and 21-15 during the final quarter.

Porter played at a fast-paced tempo throughout the game, made its shots when it counted and capitalized on turnovers by Memorial (2-3).

"We’re a dribble-drive team," Porter coach Luis Garza said. "We’re going to kick the ball out and try to get you from the outside. We believe in the jump shot. We practice that and shoot about 1,000 of them every day or so. We don’t have the size and we’re not going to post too many people up, so we’re going to live and die by shooting from the outside.

"I told the guys at halftime that we were getting open looks and that we just had to knock them down," Garza added. "Either we were going to make them or not. We weren’t going to shoot ourselves out of the game by not shooting. Our players stepped up tonight and I’m real proud of them."

Felix Muñoz, Hector Garza and Eric Guerra led Porter with 16, 14 and 12 points, respectively. Mark Mota and Rudy Melchor each added nine points.

Joel Renteria led Memorial with 16 points, while teammates Sameer Wadhwani and Zach Pollock each added 14 and Mike Alaniz chipped in eight.

"Porter played pretty good man-to-man defense, and I think it kind of tired us down in the second half," Memorial coach Sam Cortez said. "We had a seven-point lead (29-22 in the second quarter) just like we had against San Benito, but we just didn’t finish the game, just like San Benito. History tends to repeat itself sometimes."

Porter took a 48-41 lead into the final quarter and held off the Mustangs for the win. Porter was coming off last Saturday’s 67-66 loss to Hanna in tournament play in Harlingen.

The Cowboys’ biggest lead was 14 points twice in the late going. Guerra scored off a rebound to make it 67-53 with 1:05 left and Mota scored on a fast-break drive with 32 seconds remaining for a 69-55 Porter advantage.

The biggest lead of the first half for either team was 29-22 when Memorial’s Wadhwani sank a pair of free throws to give the Mustangs a sseven-point advantage with 18 seconds left until intermission.

Porter next plays Victoria on Thursday in Edinburg’s Craig Smith Tournament, while Memorial visits Lopez on Monday.

Roy Hess covers sports for Valley Freedom Newspapers. You can reach him via e-mail at rhess@brownsvilleherald.com.