SENIORS FINISH HOME CAREERS WIN WIN

Any concern about how the Booneville Lady Bearcats would respond to their first loss of the season were quickly abated Monday afternoon in a 60-38 win over Danville in the third place game of the Class 3A Region 1 tournament.

Danville scored the game’s first point at the free throw line but after senior Brooke Turner, who started in place of an injured Layla Byrum, hit a 3 just 20 seconds later and the Lady Bearcats (28-1) were in front the rest of the way.

Precision passes for point blank shots allowed the Lady Bearcats (28-1) to build a 14-3 lead by the end of the quarter.

When Leigh Swint picked up a second foul Karmen Kent came in and was dominant over a two minute stretch, scoring seven points while the lead grew to 27-10.

Danville sliced into the lead with five free throws and a 3 to get within 27-18 but Joleigh Tate drove in for a score just before the halftime horn and it was an 11-point lead.

That gave Tate, another of the four Lady Bearcat seniors playing their final game in Bearcat gymnasium (shown above after leaving the court for a final time), six points in the quarter and the game. She was just getting started.

Tate would lead the Lady Bearcats with 14 points and she had 18 rebounds, with 12 coming in the second half. She accounted for half of her team’s 36 rebounds in the game.

Senior Hayley Roberts started the second half scoring with a couple of free throws and when Turner hit her second 3, on one of Heaven Sanchez’s -- the remaining senior – five assists it was back to a 16 point lead. Sanchez also had five rebounds.

Sanchez, the leading scorer on the season, hit a fourth quarter 3, after a mad scramble for a loose ball to give her 11 in the game and it was 52-31.

From there Lexi Franklin scored four more points to finish with eight as the Lady Bearcats finished off the Lady Little Johns for a fourth time this season.

The win positions the Lady Bearcats in the Class 3A state tournament as a 3-seed who will face the 2-seed from Region 2 at 4 p.m. Saturday. The opponent will be determined tonight when Clinton faces Pangburn.