Saint Jo
The Saint Jo Lady Panthers season came to an end on Monday in the regional semifinals against Neches.
The Lady Panthers lost to the Lady Tigers 68-43 in a tough game.
Saint Jo had blown out Sulphur Bluff in the area round on Feb. 13, 53-18 in a game that was not too competitive.
The Lady Panthers were led by Payzlie Cervantes who scored 19 points while Jordyn O’Neal was second with nine points and Aubrey Morman scored eight points. Taylor Patrick led the team with eight rebounds and four assists.
Saint Jo knew it had a challenge heading into Monday’s game even though Neches had won only 20 games and ere not highly ranked on any poll. The Lady Tigers were fresh off of upsetting highly ranked Gorman in the area round in a low-scoring, grind it out type of game by two points.
The game started and the Lady Panthers found themselves down 15-8 at the end of the first quarter. Saint Jo struggled to score in the second quarter while the Lady Tigers made three 3-pointers and extended their lead to 33-15.
The Lady Panthers came out in the second half and play better defense and make up some of the lead, outscoring Neches 12-9. Unfortunately that was not going to be good enough.
Saint Jo tried to ramp up the pressure even more with its back against the wall, but the Lady Tigers were able withstand it and even got to the free throw line quite a bit, going 6-9 in the final period.
Neches won 68-43.
O’Neal led the team with 13 points while Krista Reeves was second with 11 points. Patrick had a near triple-double with 10 rebounds, 10 assists and eight steals.

Bellevue
The Bellevue Lady Eagles had their season end in the area round on Feb. 13 against state-ranked Saltillo.
The Lady Lions won 57-38 against the Lady Eagles as they drew a tough draw early in the playoffs.
Bellevue knew it had a tough challenge ahead. Saltillo had 30 wins on the season and were ranked 11th in the state in the 1A classification according to the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches poll.
The Lady Eagles are a young team that also does not have a ton of size in the post so they had their work cut out for themselves.
Still, Bellevue came out and played really good and competitive basketball in the first quarter, leading by one point 15-14.
Unfortunately, offense became harder to come by for the rest of the game. The Lady Eagles were held to single-digit scoring in the second and third quarter while the Lady Lions kept scoring at their same pace.
Saltillo led 26-21 at halftime, but started to separate itself in the third quarter, leading 43-28 heading into the final period.
Bellevue was able to rack up a lot of free throw attempts in the fourth quarter, but it was not enough to catch back up or slow down the Lady Lions at all to get back in the game.
Saltillo won 57-38.
Mattie Broussard led the team with 15 points while Brittany Gill was second with seven points.

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