Lady Patriots make playoffs, settle tie Friday
According to the regular schedule, the Sharyland Lady Rattlers and the Veterans Memorial Lady Patriots basketball teams’ regular seasons are both supposed to be over. They both played their final district games of the season Tuesday evening and depending on how their seasons went they were each supposed to be either preparing for next week’s Bi-district round of the playoffs or looking forward to next year. As things have played out for both teams however, neither of those is the case.
As a result of their loss to Edinburg Vela Tuesday evening, the Lady Rattlers ended the regular season in a three-way tie for third place with Edinburg Economedes and Donna. Only the top four teams qualify for the playoffs, so one of those three teams will be on the outside looking in when post-season play starts next week. Which two teams will play on will be determined on the basketball court this weekend.
Lady Rattlers’ head coach Dale Whitaker explained, “We met with Economedes and Donna and all three coaches flipped a coin at the same time to determine the order in which we’d play each other to break the tie. As it turned out, we will be playing Economedes Thursday evening at 7 at Juarez-Lincoln High School. The winner of that game will then play Donna Friday evening at 7 at Juarez-Lincoln. If Donna wins that game they will be the third seed and the winner of Thursday’s game will be the fourth seed. If Donna loses that game however then they will have to play the loser of Thursday’s game with the winner being the fourth seed.”
Should the Lady Rattlers survive this rather confusing scenario and emerge as the third or fourth seed in the district, they will then play either Laredo United or Laredo Alexander in the bi-district round of the playoffs – either Monday or Tuesday of next week. As the third seed, Sharyland would play Alexander, while as the fourth seed, the Lady Rattlers would play United. In either case, the date, time and location of these games will be determined later.
The Lady Patriots also ended their district schedule in a tie that will be broken this weekend. However, theirs is a two-way tie and, unlike Sharyland, Veterans Memorial is already assured of a spot in the playoffs.
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As VMHS head girls’ basketball coach Rafael Cantu explained, the Lady Patriots’ tie with Roma is for second place in District 32-4A. The only thing to be determined is which of the two teams will be the second seed and which will be the third.
“We will be playing Roma in Roma Friday evening at 6 to determine the seeding,” explained Cantu. “If we win we will play Laredo Cigarroa in bi-district, but if we lose we will play Corpus Christi Ray. While the date and times for those games will be determined later there are a couple of scenarios for when and where we may end up playing. One of those is Monday in Bishop if we play Ray, or Monday or Tuesday in either Rio Grande City or Zapata if we play Cigarroa.”
