Loboettes secure playoff spot

  • ON A STRING- The Lobboettes have hung their hats on defense this season and continued to be suffocating defensively against Big Spring in district action Tuesday. The Lady Steers were held scoreless in the first quarter and had three points going into halftime. Pictured on defense are Olivia Velardez, Leilani Sanchez, Emery Smith and Laci White. (Photo Courtesy of Edward Ramirez)
    ON A STRING- The Lobboettes have hung their hats on defense this season and continued to be suffocating defensively against Big Spring in district action Tuesday. The Lady Steers were held scoreless in the first quarter and had three points going into halftime. Pictured on defense are Olivia Velardez, Leilani Sanchez, Emery Smith and Laci White. (Photo Courtesy of Edward Ramirez)
  • HEAD SHOT- The Levelland Lobos early district success has moved them to 3-1 after the dominated the Big Spring Steers, 52-17, at home Tuesday. Lobo Zameron Lecroy banged heads with a Big Spring defender as he drove to the basket. Lecroy finished the game with three points. Levelland will continue the second half of district play on the road in Sweetwater Tuesday. (Photo Courtesy of Edward Ramirez)
    HEAD SHOT- The Levelland Lobos early district success has moved them to 3-1 after the dominated the Big Spring Steers, 52-17, at home Tuesday. Lobo Zameron Lecroy banged heads with a Big Spring defender as he drove to the basket. Lecroy finished the game with three points. Levelland will continue the second half of district play on the road in Sweetwater Tuesday. (Photo Courtesy of Edward Ramirez)

    The Levelland Loboettes remain perfect at 6-0, in district play after defeating the Big Spring Lady Steers, 58-19, at home Tuesday.

    Currently 26-3 on the season, the win over the Lady Steers secures the Loboettes a playoff spot.

    Continuing their dominant string of defensive performances in district play, the Loboettes held Big Spring scoreless in the first quarter, before the Lady Steers could put up three points going into halftime.

    Limiting the Lady Steers to single digit quarters in the second half, Big Spring managed nine in the third and seven in the fourth quarter.

    On the offensive side of the ball, playing a competitive full four quarters has been one of the tougher tasks for Levelland as there had been multiple games with slow starts offensively.

    It took time for the Loboettes to get their scoring efforts to count as they had only eight points in the first quarter.

    Finding their stride by the second, Levelland had a 22-point quarter and led 30-3 at the half.

    Coming out of the locker room to begin the second half, the Loboette’s retained their momentum and had a 22-point third quarter before squeaking out six points in the fourth to cap off a dominant 58-19 win.

    “It’s funny saying this since we held in the three points, but I feel like we really weren’t getting after them too much, not really pressuring them, turning them over or turning those into points,” said Loboette Head Coach Clay Barnett. “We talked about that a little bit at the half. We held them to three points at one point which is great but some of that was on them.”

    Looking back on his team’s performance, Coach Barnett was pleased with their efforts and felt like that had spurts of great play compared to an entire game from start to finish.

    “I thought we did a better job in the third quarter getting out and pushing it and kind of force a tempo a little bit,” explained Coach Barnett.

    Currently in the final stretch of the district schedule for the Loboettes, Coach Barnett knows every game increases in importance and the difficulty of staying perfect grows.

    “Every district game counts, and I feel like once you get to that backstretch even though you’ve gone through every team once I mean trying to pull that sweep off is a little more difficult,” explained Coach Barnett. “We’d love to go undefeated, but we’re just going to take it one game at a time and if we end up getting beat, we’ve got to be ready to go again because we want to put ourselves in the best situation we can as we go into the playoffs.”

    Having wrapped up a playoff spot with Tuesday’s win is a positive for the Loboettes, but Coach Barnett does not want his team to become complacent with just accomplishing that.

    “We wrapped up a playoff spot already, but we can’t be satisfied with just going to the playoffs,” said Coach Barnett. “We want to make some noise within the playoffs and we’re going to have to keep battling and keep scratching to get as many wins in this thing as we can.”

    Lelani Sanchez led the Loboettes with 14 points while Carly Tienda knocked down 11. Destynii Jones added eight points while Laci White and Emery Smith scored seven each. Angelica Gonzales had four with Madison Stafford adding three. Adrenna Galvin and Olivia Velardez had two each in the win.

    Levelland shot 22-59 from the field and 6-28 from behind the line. Levelland would force 31 turnovers off the Lady Steers and turned those into 19 points.