By Myra Bean

The North Panola Jr. High basketball teams ended their season hosting an invitational tournament last Saturday.

Both boys and girls teams finished the tournament second to the Tunica Middle School teams.

North Panola girls defeated Tunica 35-33, but Tunica had defeated Coldwater by more points and earned the first place.

The North Panola boys game against Tunica ended with emotions high in overtime.

North Panola had a 36-32 lead with 1:00 left in the game. Tunica scored with 40 seconds left in the game to cut the score 36-34. With 8.9 seconds left, North Panola scored one of two free throws for the 37-34 lead. At the buzzer, Tunica sank a three-pointer to tie the game and send it into overtime.

During overtime, one of the North Panola players thought he was called for a foul and bounced the ball hard and was called for a technical foul.

Another player got mad at that call, bounced the ball again, but since the officials did not see who bounced the ball, hit the first player with a double tech and ejected him from the game.

The original foul was called on Tunica but a substitute players had to shoot for the ejected player and hit one of two free throws to cut the Tunica lead 41-40 with 49.6 seconds left in overtime.

Tunica hit three of the four technicals to go ahead 44-40. North Panola scored a three at the end of the game with 3.4 seconds left. The Cougar coaches tried to call time out as time expired and Tunica won 46-43 and earned the first place trophy.

In earlier games, North Panola girls lost to Coldwater 19-17.

North Panola boys played Batesville Jr. High in an early afternoon game and won 31-27 in a highly, energized game.

North Panola led 17-14 at halftime.

Ankeyvious Harris led North Panola with 13 points, followed by Roderick Bobo with 10. Dequarrius Lee scored four points and Vennis Mills rounded out the scoring with two points.

For Batesville, Donald Twilley scored 12 points to lead the Tigers. Other scorers include Oluwain Hoskins, five points; Kennon Johnson, four points and Kasey Hankins, two.

Batesville Jr. High defeated Coldwater for third place in the tournament, 34-31. Batesville led 20-17 at the half.

Twilley was the game’s leading scorer with 14 points.