PAMPA – Familiarity didn’t breed contempt so much as it did intensity in Thursday night’s UIL Region I-2A Division I region final between Panhandle and Wellington.
In the end, it was extremely familiar for both teams, which was great news for Panhandle and bad news for Wellington.
For the third time this season, the District 2-2A rivals met after No. 1 Panhandle had swept a pair of highly competitive games from the Lady Skyrockets during the regular season. As the numbers would bear out, the Ettes did what they did the first two games, holding off a late Wellington charge to hold on for a 41-37 win.
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The victory puts Panhandle (36-1) in the state semifinal next week against the winner of Friday’s game between Collinsville and Cisco at a time and place to be determined.
It might be a testament to Panhandle’s dominance this season that Wellington (28-8) closed the game with 10 straight points but the Ettes still came out on top. Since losing in November to Canyon, ranked No. 2 in Class 4A and still alive in the postseason as expected, Panhandle has won 35 straight games.
“Playing Wellington like we have for the last 12 years we were expecting this,” Panhandle coach Rob Schmucker said. “That’s just who they are. They don’t back down. We were expecting a very close game.”
That’s no surprise considering that the Lady Rockets gave the Pantherettes their toughest competition in 2-2A, twice coming within single digits, something no other district team did against Panhandle even once.
The Ettes never trailed, but for most of the first three quarters they were never able to pull away from Wellington. Their 19-13 halftime lead was their biggest of the half.
That might have been a by-product of the first two meetings of the season.
“I think the first half they played tight,” Schmucker said. “We were doing stuff we hadn’t done all year. The second half was a little bit better. I challenged them at halftime and I give these girls some credit because they stepped up and played.”
One Panhandle player who hasn’t had trouble doing that all season is senior and leading scorer Riley Segura. She carried Panhandle in the first half, when she scored 11 of her game-high 13 points.
Segura was especially big in the second quarter when she scored nine points, including the last five on a 3-pointer and jumper for the halftime cushion after Wellington had cut the lead to a point.
“Our coach always says he wants the ball in his best players’ hands so he told me I needed to have the ball,” Segura said. “If (the Lady Rockets) came in on me I needed to pass it to my teammates for open shots. We got closer together. We knew we had to go out there and be competitive and gritty.”
Panhandle led 31-24 at the end of the third quarter, which again at the time, was the biggest lead of the game for the Ettes. When the fourth quarter came, that’s when they showed why they’re No. 1.
With the offense struggling in the halfcourt, the Ettes were able to get some free baskets off of their pressure defense. Paige Bixby scored on a breakaway after a steal and Addison McCoid scored two similar baskets afterward as the Ettes built their biggest lead of the game, 41-27, midway through the fourth quarter.
“We practice that all the time and always try to get fullcourt layups,” said McCoid, who scored 10 points. “We’re big on that. We’re a track school so we always try to get in transition. It was pretty stressful but we were happy whenever we got up.”
Panhandle played solid defense all night, but didn’t get many points directly from it until the fourth quarter.
“We finally got a two to four minute stretch there when we finally got some easy baskets off our defense,” Schmucker said. “It helped us get a double digit lead.”
As it turned out, Panhandle needed those points. Wellington responded with five separate players scoring and whittled the lead down to 41-37 in the final seconds, but it was too little, too late.
In the end, it turned out exactly the way the first two meetings between the teams did. Thursday’s game was the closest of the three contests this season.
“When you’re Panhandle and you do a lot of the little things right it’s extremely tough to come out of a hole you’ve dug yourself into,” Wellington coach Shannon Fisher said. “They’re relentless on the boards and their defense is stifling. I’m proud of our kids for battling, but when you go down to a team like that, you have the possibility of a letdown but we didn’t do that. My kids battled every second of every quarter willing to do whatever it would take.”
Wellington had only one player score in double figures, as Ceighley Killian had 12 points before fouling out in the fourth quarter.