SPORTS

Lady Tigers get final playoff spot, to face top team

DERON TALLEY, EDITOR @dvillechief

DHS junior De'Miaya Gipson blows past a Port Allen defender in a game earlier this season.

After an up and down season, the Lady Tigers basketball team (10-17) was finally grounded as the number 32 seed in the 3A state basketball playoff bracket. Some give thanks to Crowley High School for playing an ineligible player, thus forfeiting seven games and others thank the work the team put in to gather enough wins and fill the final slot.

“We really are fortunate that another team messed up, where if we would have handled our business in some of the games that we played it would not have come down to the wire,” head coach Amy Blanchard said on the team receiving the last birth in the playoffs. “We would have gotten in with our own strength, our own merit.”

Regardless the Lady Tigers made the playoffs and go on to play the number one seed Albany on their court. With Crowley forfeiting the games, Blanchard said the Lady Tigers was able to get points in the ranking system that the team would not have gotten. DHS didn’t make the playoffs last season, but this year the team was fortunate to get in even if it was by the falling of another team. For senior Patrice West, her high school career continues, at least for another game.

“It feels good and I feel like we have a chance,” West said about making the playoffs. “I feel like I had a good senior year.”

The Lady Tigers face the number one ranked team in the state, but West said she isn’t going in thinking the team is going to lose.

“We all are going to go and play as hard as we can,” West said about playing Albany. “I know everybody thinking we are going to lose, but we are not going in there with that mentality. We are just going to play and whatever happens, happens.”

Blanchard said she’s been looking at the film of Albany from some Albany games and she admitted the team runs a diamond press that’s pretty tough to beat.

“If we can do what we are a cable of; pushing the ball at times, giving it to Patrice and letting her bulldoze her way in there, getting LaQuincya some shots, hit some outside shots, I think we can do it,” Blanchard said.