SPORTS
Nocona football plans tougher schedule
Even with a strong senior class graduated, the Nocona Indian football team feels like they have the players in their program to challenge themselves more than they have the past few seasons.
Specifically, the Indians have bumped up the size of schools in their pre-district schedule more than they have in the past. The past two seasons, Coach Brad Keck said he liked to schedule some smaller schools to help build his teams confidence. It worked as Nocona went 9-1 in the pre-district the past two seasons, but they outscored their opponents 502-75.
“We feel like these next two years we are going to be a fairly talented team and wanted to bump that schedule up a little bit,” Keck said. “We are playing some teams in Boyd, Venus and Ponder who are all a bit bigger than Nocona is. That will be a challenge for us.”
Still, the toughest non-district game on the schedule will probably come from the only school that is smaller than Nocona, 2A Valley View, which is coming off of a 10-2 year and a second round playoff birth. They will play them for their homecoming game.
That will lead right into district play as the Indians will face a newcomer to the district and a traditional power, Gunter, on the road. They have made trips to the 3A state championship game the last two years, winning in 2016 and losing last year. That loss is the only one for Gunter in those two seasons.
For the rest of the story, pick up a copy of the weekend edition of the Bowie News.
Prairie Valley
The Prairie Valley Bulldogs had a good final non-district warm-up on Friday at home against Ector.
The Eagles beat the Bulldogs 69-63 in a game where Prairie Valley was trying to play catch up all the way through.
The Bulldogs were coming off a tough tournament at Electra the previous week to try and knock the holiday rust off. Prairie Valley was familiar with Ector, having played the team to start its season back in early November and was hoping to compete better than it did in that first game.
The Eagles came out firing, splashing five 3-pointers, including several deep ones, to go out to a 21-8 lead in the first quarter. Even with the Bulldogs changing out of their preferred zone defense, the 3-pointers continued a bit and opened things up inside the arc.
Thankfully, Prairie Valley’s offense came alive in the second quarter, scoring 18 points and cutting the lead down to 38-26 at halftime.
The third quarter was more of the same, though a different player for Ector started to get hot from beyond the arc. Even as the Bulldogs were able to keep up their offensive production from the second quarter, they could not break through and cut the game to single-digits, trailing 54-42 heading into the final period.
The fourth quarter saw Prairie Valley break through to cut it the lead to single-digits, but just not close enough. Every time the Bulldogs were on the cusp of making it a one or two basket game, the Eagles would make a shot to keep that distance.
In the end, the final score was the closest Prairie Valley got as Ector won 69-63.
Nocona
The Nocona Indians bounced back with a competitive district win at Petrolia on Friday.
The Indians won 60-53 against the Pirates in a game where the middle quarters took drastic swings in momentum.
Nocona was coming off its first district loss against Windthorst as the team sat a 1-1 district record.
Petrolia came into the game at 0-1, but had a bit more time to prepare for the game.
The first quarter was competitive, but the Indians were able to get to the free throw line at will and led 16-11.
Then Nocona’s pressure defense turned up its intensity in the second quarter.
“Our pressure seemed to disrupt them and we were able to get out in transition after forcing turnovers,” Coach Brody Wilson said.
Nocona scored 25 points and led 41-25 at halftime.
Unfortunately, that intensity did not keep up at the start of the third quarter for Nocona.
The Indians took their foot off the gas a little bit which allowed Petrolia’s offense to get back into the game and make up some of the deficit.
The Pirates outscored Nocona 15-7 and trailed only 48-40 heading into the final period.
Thankfully, the Indians bounced back and competed a bit better in the fourth quarter. Nocona was able to keep offensive pace to keep Petrolia at a bit of a distance instead of making it a one score game.
The Indians held on to win 60-53.
To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekly Bowie News.
For more pictures from the Prairie Valley game, click here https://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=bnews1&AID=6871971&T=1
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