The North Platte girls’ basketball team (4-1) was in a pair of grudge matches that were decided by one possession in the KCI Conference Tournament – winning one and losing one – to come out in third place overall.
Entering the tournament as the No. 3 seed, North Platte took care of business against sixth-seeded West Platte (2-3) in the opening round before a matchup with No. 2 seed Lathrop (5-1) in the semifinals on Dec. 9. The tournament was set to be played at West Platte High School, but at halftime of the boys’ game, right before the Lady Panthers’ matchup, there was a power outage.
Due to the technical difficulties, the game was moved to North Platte and started an hour and a half behind schedule. When the game finally began, North Platte used home court to its advantage and jumped out to an early 15-7 lead.
North Platte senior Lonee French scored all six of her points in the first half in the loss to 45-42 Lathrop on Dec. 9.
Lathrop made a second quarter run and went up 28-23 at the break and the Lady Panthers fought back to tie the game at 40 with 1:30 remaining in the game. The Lady Mules took the lead on free throws on the ensuing possession, and the Lady Panthers turned the ball over a few times down the stretch as Lathrop was able to pull out the 45-42 victory.
Lindsay Ramsey stuffed the stat sheet with nine points, five rebounds, four assists and four steals and Allyson Smith made all three of her shot attempts to end with seven points. Jaylin Burgess had five points, eight rebounds and four assists as Lonee French ended with six points, all of which were in the opening half.
With the loss, North Platte took on fourth-seeded Mid-Buchanan (4-4) in the third-place game on Dec. 10. From the get-go to the final two minutes of the game, the Lady Dragons never trailed but that changed late in the contest.
In the third quarter, Mid-Buchanan was up 31-21 and hadn’t allowed a single North Platte point in the second half until Kaylee and Kylee Griswold came in and gave the Lady Panthers a spark. Kylee Griswold sank two shots from behind the arc and had eight points, while Kaylee Griswold also hit a 3-pointer to get North Platte back in the game.
The Lady Panthers took their first lead of the night on a backdoor layup by Ramsey on an inbound play. The sophomore guard also hit the go-ahead – and eventual game-winning – free throw with 30 seconds left with the game tied at 39.
Ramsey had nine points and nine rebounds and Burgess scored four points and grabbed eight rebounds. North Platte will play Mid-Buchanan again soon as the Lady Panthers open up regular KCI Conference play with a road matchup on Dec. 16.