By Angie Ledbetter

It was a nail biter to the end for the North Delta junior high Lady Wave on Friday night as they lost to district rivals junior Lady Eagles from Marvell Arkansas 27-26 before their own home crowd.

It came down to one point and the Waves couldn’t get it done before the clock ran out.

The junior Lady Eagles jumped out in the first quarter and took a six point lead over the junior Lady Wave and held the junior Lady Wave to only one point in the first quarter. The score was 7-1 at the end of the first quarter.

The junior Lady Wave came out in the second quarter and put 10 points on the board and held the junior Lady Eagles to only six points. At the half, the junior Lady Waves were within two points of the junior Lady Eagles with the score at 13-11.

The junior Lady Wave continued to fight hard in the third quarter and added 10 more points to their scoreboard trying their best to take the lead before the end of the third quarter. The Lady Eagles kept up their pace and put up eight points in the third quarter but the game would come to a 21-21 tie at the end of the third quarter.

Bradi Beard was the leading scorer for the night with nine points. Hanna Greenlee added five points and Mary Jane morrow added five also.

Mary Jane Morrow lead the team with nine total rebounds. Katelyn Still lead on steals with seven and Beard led with four assists.

Head Coach Phil Douglas said that his team got off to a really slow start. “We just couldn’t seem to get in the flow of the game. We got down 7-1 to begin the game and then we switched from a zone to a man to man defense and that picked up the intensity level. They played pretty good the rest of the first half.

”The biggest thing that I can see is that we have got to do a better job of shooting free throws,” said Douglas. “It really hurt us in the loss to West Memphis and tonight we were five out of 18 from the free throw line. You can’t win when you don’t shoot the ball better than that.

“Our defense intensity is solid,” said Douglas. “We held them to enough points to able to beat them if we had clicked any at all offensively.”

”That just about is going to eliminate our chances of finishing any higher than fourth in our district which would match us up with Desoto in the first round in the division playoffs and assuming that we could beat them again, then we would have to play Delta in the semi-finals.”