In a scrappy game at the Coppell High School Arena, Coppell walked out with the 59-54 win over Plano on Friday night.

The Cowboys (11-2, 5-1 in District 6-6A)  were led by junior guard Naz Brown’s 25 points and aggression to keep them in the game. While leading at half by six points and by 10 points early in the third quarter, Plano was able to cut the deficit to two points behind junior forward Xavier Williams’ strong fourth quarter.

It wasn’t until junior guard Anthony Black scored a layup with 1:30 left in the game to put Coppell up 55-48 where the Cowboys began to dribble out the clock, forcing Plano to foul Brown twice. Brown went 4-0 on the free throws to seal the victory.

“We’ve been able to close out teams on defense really well this year,” Brown said. 

Coppell started slowly on offense and relied on Black and Brown to stick through the Wildcats.

“[Going forward, we need to work on] moving in the offense because it is easy to guard a team when they aren’t moving a lot but if we cut and screen, we’ll score more points and be tougher to guard.” Black said.

Persistence was key for Coppell last week with games against Flower Mound and Plano both showing the Cowboys’ ability to win in slower tempo games. 

“We obviously did not play our best basketball but we stuck with it,” Coppell junior guard Devank Rane said. “We made improvements in the second half, we rebounded better and we did not give in. Things didn’t go our way sometimes but we still stuck with it and got the win.” 

With Marcus (12-5, 5-1)  falling to Flower Mound (8-7, 1-5) in a 30-28 game, Coppell is tied with Marcus at the top of the district with the head-to-head advantage giving Marcus the slight edge.

The Cowboys travel to Plano West tomorrow at 7 p.m. and return home to avenge their earlier loss against Marcus next Friday at 7 p.m.

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