By John Loop
Sports Editor

Costly fouls and missed opportunities plagued the Coppell Cowboys (17-11) in the fourth quarter, and the Marcus Marauders (21-3) pulled away in the closing seconds to cruise to a five-point win, 48-43.

Marcus senior forward Xavier Adams impressed with a game-high 24 points to lead the Marauders to their fifth win in six district games. Junior guard Michael Mayhew also paced Marcus with 10.

Coppell rallied back from an 8-0 Marcus run to start the game to go on a 17-4 run of its own. The 17-12 score after the first quarter was directly indicative of the offensive momentum with which the Cowboys began the game.

“We got a good start offensively,” Coppell head coach Kit Pehl said. “We hit some shots, we got a pretty good flow going.”

The Cowboys continued to keep that flow until halftime, holding the Marauders to a mere four points scored in the second quarter.

Then Adams got hot. The University of New Mexico commit became a defensive force, blocking and altering several Coppell shot attempts in the paint on the defensive end, as well as rebounding and earning several second chance points on the offensive end.

“We guarded [Adams] the same way we did in the second half,” Pehl said. “He drew some fouls in the second half that he didn’t get in the first half.”

After Adam’s two-handed flush late in the fourth quarter gave Marcus their second lead of the night, Goesling came back down the floor and buried a three-pointer to pull the Cowboys back within one. Sadly, that was as close as Coppell got as Marcus finished the stretch with free throws.

The Cowboys now face a tough road in positioning themselves to get into the playoffs. Coppell would need to win their next four district games, and lots of other scenarios to play out between the other five district teams, in order to reach the postseason.

“I mean, a lot of it depends on how things shake out,” Pehl said of the Cowboys playoff hopes. “But at the same time, I think we still hold our own destiny.”