The regular season ended for two playoff teams on Tuesday night as the St. Mary’s Knights fell to the Xavier College Prep Gators 58-42.

 

The Knights' leading scorer, senior Beyonce Jordan, was back in the lineup after suffering a head injury last week against Thunderbird. She sat out the next game against Shadow Mountain, which the Knights lost 53-15.

 

Knights head coach Liberty Brittain said the decision to rest Jordan had to do with the fact that they had the state playoffs to think about. “We just let her rest that game, she played tonight and she’s feeling good.”

 

The Knights' offense missed Jordan as they were only able to score 15 points in that game without her, which is lower than Jordan’s average points per game of 19.

 

Even with Jordan playing, the Knights' offense still struggled on the court. St. Mary’s was outscored 30-11 by the end of the first quarter and the gap would prove too difficult to overcome.

 

The biggest problem the Knights had, according to Brittain, was “[The Gators] speed and they were shooting lights out.” The Gators had a feeling of intensity in the way they commanded themselves on the court, and that intensity showed on the scoreboard.

 

Gators head coach Jennifer Gillom said the team’s fire came from losing against Pinnacle last week. “After the loss against Pinnacle the other day, they knew that they had to rebound back from that game and I guess they just took it out on this team tonight.”

 

Leilani McIntosh of the Gators (22-5) believed there was a different reason behind the team’s intensity on Tuesday. “Honestly, Coach Gillom. She has ways to get into your head and knows how to push you to do great. She just reminded us why we’re playing and its to win a championship.”

 

Struggles continued for St. Mary’s (14-10) as they had a hard time hitting shots in the second quarter. It wasn’t until there was 2:42 left in the quarter that they scored on a free throw from Lanessa Palencia.

 

The score was 44-17 at the half and Brittain continued to preach to her players what she had been since the beginning of the game. “What matters is we play like it’s a two-point game for four quarters, never getting on each other, always playing together. If we can do that in this situation then we can do that all across the playoffs and be champions.”

 

Despite being down by 30 at the start of the fourth quarter, the Knights fought back. But the Xavier lead was too large.

 

Both teams are looking ahead to their playoff matchups. “We won our region which was one of our goals and hopefully we can focus on trying to get a state championship for the first time for Xavier," Gillom said.

 

The season could have ended better for St. Mary’s as the Knights dropped the last three games on the schedule.

 

“A lot of things just didn’t go our way,” said Brittain. “Things that weren’t totally in our control, girls getting sick, the chaos at the end of the Thunderbird game, a couple of girls became ineligible. Just a lot things that were not in our control.”

 

In the face of all that went wrong Brittain was still confident the Knights could go far in the state playoffs. “It’s frustrating but its also encouraging to know we just aren’t falling apart basketball-wise. All that mattered in tonight’s game was that we were able to play together and intense for four quarters despite adversity… we did all the things we need to do to win games in the playoffs.”