The magical undefeated roller coaster the Nocona Lady Indians rode all season ended on Saturday in the regional final against Lipan.
Nocona fell to the 2A state power 50-36, finishing one game short of the state tournament and suffering its only loss of the season.
Nocona came into the tournament first having a rematch against a Muenster team that had given the Lady Indians their closest game of the regular season.
Only three games all regular season saw Nocona win by less than double-digits and the closest one was a 41-37 win against the Lady Hornets back during the holiday tournament.
Muenster was not super highly rated, coming in at 11th on the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches poll, but the stakes were higher and the Lady Hornets had knowledge they could hang with the Lady Indians team that was blowing everyone else away.
The game was ugly from start to finish. Neither team could buy a basket, especially in the first quarter. With less than a minute to play, the first points of the game were scored on a free throw.
Nocona led by the soccer score 1-0 after the first quarter.
Things could only go better for both sides the rest of the game and while they did, neither team scored at a great pace like they are capable. Muenster was trying to run its guards off screens and pound its big, but not tall, post player inside to no success. Nocona tried to find openings in transition, but those were few and far between.
The Lady Hornets had tough perimeter defenders ready to challenge the Lady Indians players in isolation and had help waiting in the paint.
For both teams any outside shots in the first half were not going, as if there seemed to be something wrong with the ball or rim, but it was just one of those nights.
Nocona led only 12-7 at halftime.
The Lady Indians tried to change some stuff up on defense, bringing more pressure to try and create some transition opportunities off of turnovers.
It was not quite as low scoring as the first half had been, but still neither team was running and gunning like they would like.
Nocona built up its biggest lead up 23-14, but did not close the quarter well with Muenster making it 23-19 heading into the fourth quarter.
With a bit of a lead still midway through the final period, the Lady Indians were able to close out the game by stalling and drawing free throw attempts. While Nocona did not make the Lady Hornets pay as much as it could have by making only 5-11, it was enough to close out the game, winning 35-29.
They had less than 24 hours until they had to play a Lipan team that looked utterly dominant in its 70-25 win against Cooper the game before.
Lipan was rated right along side Nocona among the top five no matter which poll you looked at as the team had only two losses on the year. Lipan won the state title as recently as 2021 and came up one game short of returning to the state tournament last year by falling to Stamford in the regional final.
The first quarter proved to be the biggest separator. Lipan had a size advantage inside and early tried to feed that post player. It was not the first time for the undersized Nocona who did a good job all year sending help to be feisty.
Unfortunately, Lipan had a shooter ready to take advantage of the passes back outside. With Nocona leading 6-5 after four minutes into the game, Lipan went on a 17-5 run to end the first quarter. Hanna Gaylor made five 3-pointers and scored 16 points during the quarter as Lipan took control and led 22-11 heading into the second quarter.
Nocona was shaken and no matter what it did could not get back into the game.
Early in the second quarter Nocona cut the lead down to 22-16, but Lipan answered. Anytime Nocona would try to double-down on stopping either perimeters shots or down in the post, Lipan would counter with steady scoring in the other area.
Nocona was having a better shooting day than it did in its first game, but the two players it relies on for the bulk of its scoring, Meekins and Smith, were getting hounded and no points were coming easy.
Lipan tried to deny Meekins which disrupted some of the flow of Nocona’s ball movement, but it’s not like it kept her from getting the ball.
Really the final three quarters were close and competitive with Lipan only outscoring Nocona by three points. Unfortunately, with the team down 11 after the first quarter, that meant Nocona was never able to go on a run of its own to get back into the game.
Nocona tried to bring pressure late to try and prevent Lipan from stalling, but the lack of substitutions meant it was only effective for a short bit before fatigue set in.
Even before Smith fouled out with 2:18 left in the game, the writing was on the wall for all but the most enthused fan who did not want to believe the magic carpet ride was ending.
Lipan won 50-36.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News