The Langford Area girls basketball squad put up a fight against second-seeded Warner in the Region 1B quarterfinals last week Tuesday but saw their season come to an end in a 40-28 loss to the Monarchs.
The Lady Lions finished with a 9-13 season mark.
Warner downed #3 Waubay-Summit 47-31 in semifinal action on Thursday to earn a spot in the SoDak 16. The Monarchs (16-6) are a 12 seed among the final 16 and will meet #5 Bennett County at Stanley County at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. Northwestern was the other semifinal winner over Wilmot 49-31. The Wildcats (17-5) are seeded #9 among SoDak 16 teams and will clash with #8 Dell Rapids St. Mary’s (16-6) in Watertown on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.
LA trailed by just six at halftime but was not able to cut into that deficit in the second half. Warner boosted its lead to 31-21 after three quarters before LA rallied to trail again by six but could not come all the way back.
“I thought we were playing our best basketball at the end of the season.,” said LA coach Michael Alberts. “Warner is a very good defensive team and they made it hard for us to get a good shot off. We were down by 15 towards the end of the third quarter but our girls never gave up and battled to within six points late in the fourth. We had to try to force the issue to create turnovers and Warner was able to capitalize and pulled away at the end.”
Paytyn Marlow led LA with seven oints Mariah Tosse had six, and Alex Darling and Clarissa Guy five each.
“I am very proud of our girls always fighting to the end and never giving up,” added Alberts. “I thought we did a really good job handling the ball this year and getting good shots on the offensive end. Sometimes we didn’t shoot the best, but we did a good job of moving the ball to find the open shot. I also thought we got better at rebounding as the season went on even though we were undersized in most of the games we played. We are really going to miss our only senior in Eliana Darling next year, but have a good majority of our girls returning.”
LANGFORD AREA: Clarissa Guy 2 1-3 5, Paytyn Marlow 2 2-3 7, Lizzie Gustafson 1 1-2 3, Alex Darling 2 0-0 5, Eliana Darling 1 0-0 2, Mariah Tosse 3 0-0 6. Totals 11 4-8 28.
WARNER: Jordyn Jensen 0 2-4 2, Courtney Leidholt 5 3-3 15, Tatum Hanson 1 0-0 3, Kenna Leidholt 1 1-2 3, Stacia Carda 8 1-4 17. Totals 15 7-13 40.
LA (9-13) 8 13 21 28
Warner (15-6) 12 19 31 40
3-point goals – Marlow, A. Darling; C. Leidholt 2, Hanson. Fouled out – A. Darling. Total fouls – LA 11, Warner 10.
