Playoff-bound Lady Apaches lose district finale

GONZALES — With a district seeding already set for the Gonzales Lady Apaches, head coach William Ramsey set goals for his young squad in their district finale Tuesday night, accomplishing many of them during their 66-24 loss against the District 27-4A champion San Antonio Veterans Memorial Patriots.

“They’re a 5A team playing on a 4A level,” Ramsey chuckled. “They beat everybody in district by 40 points. It is what it is.”

Indeed, the state-ranked Patriots, listed as seventh in this week’s TABC Class 4A rankings, have gone through the district with an unblemished 10-0 record, with an average win margin of 48.5 points per game. They’ve outscored their district opponents 712-227.

Gonzales took an early 4-3 lead, before Veterans Memorial finished the quarter up 12-4, then continued their run through the second quarter, going up 30-4 late before the Lady Apaches finished the half with six straight points to cut the lead to 20. Veterans Memorial would take a 21-10 third quarter advantage and then outscore the Lady Apaches 15-4 in the fourth to win by 42 points.

Despite the loss, Ramsey commended his team for accomplishing various goals they set before the game.

“We had some rebounding goals, which we met,” he explained. “We had some turnover goals, trying to limit our turnovers. We met those in the second half, didn’t meet them in the first half. Had some personal goals for assists and some things. Defensively we did some things we’ve been working on as far as forcing their shots that they took with the shot we wanted them to take. The main factor for us for that was keeping their shots in the paint limited, which we did. They took a lot of their shots from the outside, which is what we were trying to force them and not let them beat us up inside, in the paint.”

The Lady Apaches finish their district season with a 4-6 record, good for fourth place behind Veterans Memorial (10-0), Navarro (7-3) and La Vernia (6-4).

A playoff game has been set for next week, as Gonzales travels to Canyon High in New Braunfels, taking on the Canyon Lake Lady Hawks, currently ranked 24th in Class 4A this week.

“They got three seniors who are very very good,” Ramsey scouted. “One of them is a scorer, averaging about 25-30 points a game. They’re pretty good size overall. They’ve won a lot of ball games in the season, they’ve beat some pretty good teams.”

The first-year head coach cited believes if his squad can hit their open looks on the offensive side of their game, the Lady Apaches should have an opportunity to pull off the upset.

“Putting the ball in the basket is going to be a major factor for us,” Ramsey said. “If we make the shots that we get, because we’re going to get open looks, we got open looks tonight, when we hit our open looks we’ll be right in the ball game. If we struggle with the ball going to the basket then we’ll struggle [to win the game].”

The game is set for Tuesday, Feb. 13, with tipoff at 6:30 p.m. at Canyon High in New Braunfels.