Lady Tarpons Collar Bulldogs, 47-42

By LARRY GAGE
Special to the PRESS

The Port Isabel High Lady Tarpons beat Lyford 47-42 in a non-district girls’ basketball game Monday afternoon at Tarpon Gym.

With the win Port Isabel improves to 4-4 on the season.  School is officially out all this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  The team practiced on Tuesday and Wednesday and is taking the rest week off.

Port Isabel led 15-7 at the end of a quarter of play, 21-17 at the half, and 32-30 at the end of three.

“Overall, start to finish, we played a pretty good game,” P.I. head girls’ coach Blake Ramsey told the Press Monday.  “We had a couple of breakdowns on defense in the third quarter.  They started chipping away and made it close.  Fourth quarter we came out composed and got after it on defense.”

Lyford outscored Port Isabel 13-11 in the third quarter; the Lady Tarpons regained the advantage in the last quarter, 15-12, and that was a final, 47-42.

Last weekend the team competed in the big Border Bash tournament in McAllen and came out with a 2-4 record.  On Thursday they lost 58-25 to McAllen Nikki Rowe and 51-41 to Edcouch-Elsa.  On Friday the Lady Tarpons lost by 10 to Rio Hondo, 46-36, and got past Raymondville, 45-38.  They finished things up on Saturday with a 42-32 win over Corpus Christi Miller, and a 54-33 loss to La Feria.

“It was great,” Coach Ramsey said Monday.  “Anytime you go to a tournament and play six games, two each day, that’s a lot of basketball.  And I was proud of the way they played.”

The Lady Tarpons stepped up in class in three of the six games.  Nikki Rowe plays in Class 6A and CC Miller and Edcouch-Elsa are both 5A programs.

District play will not start for Port Isabel until Dec. 15, but this first tournament of the season afforded an opportunity to check out the kind of teams the Lady Tarpons will be up against once league play starts.

“A lot of teams in our district (32-4A) were in this tournament, and what we took away from (it) … was that our district is wide open,” Ramsey said.

Against Lyford on Monday the Port Isabel freshmen team was victorious, 38-25.  The Lady Tarpons JV squad lost, 52-32.

Alex Martinez led the Lady Tarpons in scoring with 27 points and in steals with seven.  She also pulled down four rebounds. Natasha Ramirez and Hadassah Daigle each scored six points for P.I. and Ramirez got five rebounds.  Ramirez and Daigle each made three steals, as did also Ava Gomez, Victoria Macias, and Jasmine Saldivar.

Port Isabel totaled 22 steals on the day. Ramsey is emphasizing an aggressive style of defense this season, and the steals and turnovers will continue to add up.

“It went well,” Ramsey said afterwards.  “Anytime you can get more than 20 steals in a game, that’s great.  What we need to focus on now is what we do after we get the steal.”

A steal or turnover isn’t much good if the team getting the ball turns it right back over.  “There are times when we get a great steal, but then we turn it right back over within two seconds.  We need to work on that and become more consistent.”

Classes will start up again next Monday and the team will have one practice that day before its next game on Tuesday night at home against La Villa.  The varsity will start its game at 6:30 p.m. and preceding that will be the JV contest with a scheduled tip-off of 5 o’clock.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.portisabelsouthpadre.com/2015/11/29/lady-tarpons-collar-bulldogs-47-42/

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