‘Gritty’ Lady Leps Rally for Playoff Win
-
La Grange’s Brion Williams, left, and Campbell Cooper, right, play some strong defense against this Sealy player in Tuesday’s playoff game. Photo by Jeff Wick -
La Grange’s Kylie Trlicek drives to the basket as she scores part of her team-high 21 points Tuesday.
The La Grange girls basketball rallied from a seven-point deficit in the third quarter to edge Sealy 6865 in an intense first round playoff game Tuesday in Columbus.
“We’ve always preached since the beginning of the year that we were going to win with defense. We got some key turnovers late,” said La Grange head coach Heath Golan. “We found a way to battle back.”
Tuesday’s victory improves the Lady Leps to 24-11 overall and vaults them into Friday’s area round match against Salado at 6:30 p.m. at Thrall High School.
Sealy ends its season with a 21-8 record.
Maybe feeling some nerves of the first playoff game, both teams turned the ball over a lot early, but the Lady Leps clung to five-point leads after the first quarter and again at halftime.
La Grange stretched that lead to nine points early in the third quarter before Sealy went on a 14-0 run to take a 39-34 lead.
Sealy extended that lead to 4740 later in the quarter.
But La Grange fought back. Three times in the fourth quarter the See game was tied. Three times late in the game Lady Leps grabbed key rebounds and were fouled. In all three situations, La Grange’s Campbell Cooper, Brion Williams and Landri Hernandez made free throws to keep and/or put La Grange ahead.
“We’ve had some close games and they’ve been in those situations,” Golan said. “You just take a deep breath, get up there and have confidence in yourself.”
With just seven seconds left in the game La Grange was clinging to a one-point lead when Hernandez made both her free throws.
A desperation try by Sealy at the buzzer missed and La Grange was victorious.
“I just took it as any other game, any other free throws,” Hernandez said. “I try to take my reps seriously at practice and at home so when it is big moments like that I can just knock them down ... There were a ton of turnovers both ways today, but when we needed to, we controlled it and slowed it down.”
Kylie Trlicek played the entire game for La Grange and scored a team-high 21 points.
“A gritty performance,” Golan said of his junior leading scorer.
Cooper, meanwhile, was in foul trouble much of the night, but returned with a vengeance late. She scored 12 Tuesday, but seven of those came in the fourth quarter.
2/11/25
La Grange girls 68 Sealy 65
La Grange 17 12 17 22 – 68 Sealy 12 12 23 18 – 65 La Grange scoring: Kylie Trlicek- 21, Campbell Cooper- 12, Landri Hernandez- 11, Macie Collier- 8, Brion Williams-5, Kaylee Holmes- 4, Hannah Gross- 4, Avery Griffin- 3.
Record: LG is now 24-11.