HARLINGEN — The Harlingen Cardinals used a strong first quarter and a 23-point performance from Junior point guard Michael Arellano en route to a 67-56 win against Brownsville Pace Tuesday night in Harlingen.
The Cards improve to 5-2 on the young season and win their home opener. Harlingen will now shift their focus to another 5A opponent in Mission Vet-erans Friday night.
“It’s nice to finally play at home and have a home crowd,” said Harlingen coach Greg Yates. “This is our seventh game of the year, we have had some away games and some tournaments so to have some enthusiasm from the crowd was great.”
The Cards rebounded Tuesday night after a tough 50-44 loss to Corpus Christi Veterans last week.
“They were a tough team,” said Yates of Veter-ans. “We were tied in the fourth quarter and they did a good job on pulling away, but tonight is a good win for us and a great way to bounce back.”
Big Red came out firing from the floor, and raced out to an 11-5 lead in the first quarter. Jeremy Vasquez directed traffic while scoring seven first quarter points for the Cards. Vasquez finished with nine points while teammates Matthew Sesler scored 10 and Antonio Aguilar netted 12 points.
The second quarter was a mirror image of the first quarter. Arellano dropped seven of his 12 first half points in the second quar-ter while the offense pushed their lead 26-15. After a slow start to the third quarter, Harlingen picked up the pace and sealed the game in the fourth quarter
“It was a great team win tonight,” said Arellano. “I attacked the rim aggres-sively tonight and I got to the free throw line. Offen-sively we got off to a strong start and we passed the ball well and attacked the basket and made our layups
