At the end of the first quarter, the Coppell boys basketball team had secured a five-point lead. By the third quarter, however, Lewisville was 10 points ahead. It was a gap Coppell could not recover from. 

On Tuesday, Lewisville defeated Coppell, 68-63, during the District 6-6A Opener at CHS Arena.

Lewisville senior Rakai Crawford scored a 3-pointer within the first minute of the third quarter followed by Coppell senior guard Gabe Pehl’s 3-pointer with an assist from Coppell senior forward Antonio Romo. 

“Lewisville is a very fast-paced team, and we knew that if we wanted to win then we would have to slow them down,” Romo said. “So we worked out different ways in which we could slow down the pace of the game and play at our own speed.”

However, Lewisville scored 24 points in the third quarter, widening its lead. Lewisville’s strong offense and physical strategy combined to bring them to victory.

“To combat their physicality, we as a team made sure to help each other on defense,” Romo said. “This made sure that no one person was singled out by a Lewisville player that might be larger or stronger than us.”

Coppell, in the fourth, scored 21 points, the most Coppell scored within any quarter. However, it was not enough to combat Lewisville’s lead and the 2-pointers scored by Lewisville senior Frank Butler, senior Landon Brown, senior Colby Springs and senior Elijah Chambers.

Coppell took advantage of Lewisville’s fouls from its physical strategy to score at the free throw line. In the fourth quarter, Coppell made six of the seven free throws. 

“We’ve learned how important it is that we play for each other,” Romo said. “When we look for our teammates’s success before our own we are a very dangerous team.”

Coppell plays at Flower Mound on Friday at 7:30 p.m.

Follow Anushree De (@anushree_night) and @CHSCampusNews on Twitter.