By Henry Miller

In the heyday of professional wrestling, with The Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin leading the way, Goldberg coined the phrase “Who’s next.”

That phrase would appropriately fit the Mercedes Tigers right now. Now, before teams start using this article as locker room feed, the phrase has nothing to do with who’s up on the Tigers’ schedule. It pertains to who’s next to take charge and lead the team to victory.

It seems that’s what they’ve done all season, and they did it again on Tuesday as Jordan Ovalle nailed a 3-pointer to bereak a 60-60 tie and lead Mercedes to a 63-62 win over Brownsville Pace in Brownsville, avenging an earlier district loss.

Before Ovalle’s three is was Brandon Lozoya’s 3-pointer that brought the team back into a game when Pace looked like it was pulling away. Oh, and in between those two it was Jesse Fuentes (also with a 3-pointer) that tied the game.

Mercedes coach Rick Trevino summarized the contest efficiently. “Sometimes we were out of control,” he said. “Sometimes we got good looks.”

Last week it was point guard Jared Casteneda who needed to turn up the offense and scored 21 points while Lozoya had 17 in a 20-point win over district juggernaut Brownsville Veterans, knocking them from the ranks of the unbeaten with a convincing 71-51 victory.

Mercedes is 8-2 in District 32-5A and Veterans is 9-1. The Tigers have lost once to Veterans and once to Pace. Both losses have now been avenged, but on Tuesday it wasn’t without a long, drawn-out fight.

“They got us at our place,” Trevino said. “We knew we needed to come in and just play relaxed. We knew it would be fast paced and we tried to just spread them out.”

Having so many players who can score and be the biggest threat at any time on the court is something Trevino talked about earlier in the year.

“We’re just trying to find out who we are right now,” he said. “We really don’t know that, but we’ll get there.”

It looks like they know who they are now, and they probably very much like who they are.