GONZALES APACHES

Lady Apaches’ season ends with turnover-filled bi-district game

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CASTROVILLE — The Gonzales Lady Apaches’ basketball season came to an abrupt end Monday as turnovers and missed opportunities gave the team their third straight bi-district round loss, two under head coach Brock Ramsey’s tenure. The team’s self-inflicted mistakes led to their 59-56 loss against Crystal City.

“It comes down to the inexperience situation again,” Ramsey said after the game. “We’re still starting girls who haven’t won a playoff game yet, so I’ve got two girls who hadn’t played in a playoff game yet and early on we didn’t do what we do on offense. We didn’t shoot the ball. We wanted to make that extra pass tonight and against a good team, you make the extra pass, it’s going to go the other direction. We did that in the first quarter. We had those moments in big games this year where we don’t do what we do, we don’t shoot the ball and turnovers kills us.”

Crystal City opened the game on a 7-0 run, using their full-court press to frustrate the Lady Apaches. But even with the turnovers, it was Gonzales’ defense that kept them in the game.

“Defensively I thought we played well, kept us in the game in the first quarter when we couldn’t get the ball in the hole,” Ramsey analyzed. “We had another good second quarter with that, came out the third quarter and struggled a little bit defensively, just had some rotation misses. We never could extend the lead. The big deal to that is we never could extend the lead once we got the lead, four or five points, never could get past that point. Anytime we got to five, they hit a three and cut it back to two, and they made a lot of free throws. We fouled them in some inopportune situations.”

Gonzales’ biggest lead in the fourth quarter was 48-42 with 4:25 left in the game. Soon after, Crystal City’s Karina Ortiz shot a three to cut the lead to 48-45. Gonzales’ Devon Williams converted on a free throw to extend the lead again to two-possessions before Camila Moncada scored another three to cut the lead to 49-48.

“They hit some threes tonight, I mean, banked off three or four off the backboard?” Ramsey said. “That’s girls’ basketball. Sometimes those shots go in and when they do there’s nothing you can do about it. We had a couple breakdowns on defense which happens at times anyways, when you’re playing high school basketball you can’t play it perfect every time but had a couple of breakdowns and when we did they made us pay for it.”

Free throws were a problem for the Lady Apaches in the fourth, as the team went 5-of-12 from the line, including 2-of-4 in the last 22 seconds of the game.

“We probably had one of our worst free throw shooting nights,” Ramsey said. “It didn’t help us.”

Despite the loss, Ramsey touted the team’s 28-win season and hopes it’ll be a stepping stone for next year’s group.

Williams led scoring with 17 points. Chella Longoria added 12 while Ali Rocha had 10, Chelsie Hastings had eight Sam Barnick had seven and Kayley Martinez had two points.

The Lady Apaches will lose three seniors, Hastings, Martinez and Destiny Hunt. The rising senior class of Williams, Rocha and Longoria with other key contributors such as Barnick should be enough to compete in what looks to be another strong district next season

“Next year, now we’ve been [to the playoffs] twice and didn’t get it done, now it’s some unfinished business,” Ramsey said. “We need to get off this ‘can’t win the first round of playoffs’ situation that Gonzales team sports seem to have. I think next year we’re going to come back with a little bit of vengeance on that aspect. Of course, we’ll have that senior maturity next year, hopefully.”

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