Lady Blue Devils End Tough Week With Win

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  • Lady Blue Devils End Tough Week With Win
    Lady Blue Devils End Tough Week With Win
  • Lady Blue Devils End Tough Week With Win
    Lady Blue Devils End Tough Week With Win
  • Lady Blue Devils End Tough Week With Win
    Lady Blue Devils End Tough Week With Win
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Cordell’s Lady Blue Devils ended what might be the toughest week of the their season with a win and seventh place finish at the Western Equipment Classic tournament Saturday.

The Lady Devils opened the week on the road Tuesday against 5thranked Okarche. Cordell’s girls put up a good fight in the first half of play, holding the powerhouse Lady Warriors to just 24 points while posting up 12 of their own. In the second half, however, Okarche showed how they earned their #5 ranking and forced Cordell into mistakes on their way to a 55-21 victory.

Cordell head coach Jana Rogers said that despite the second half mistakes, her team is learning and improving with every outing.

“I thought we competed tough the first half,” she said. “We just made too many mistakes in the second half to keep it going like we did in the first. But I am seeing improvement. We are just trying to get better. We are playing some very tough teams this week, but we are going to embrace it and make ourselves better so hopefully we will be able to find some success in the future.”

That future began Thursday afternoon at the Western Equipment Classic in Arapaho. Cordell’s girls opened the tournament against another powerhouse team, the Lady Trojans of Canute. Despite their best efforts, the Lady Devils were never really in this game, and walked off the court on the short side of a 72-26 scoreboard. The Lady Devils found themselves pitted against Lookeba-Sickles in the second game, in which they fought a much closer battle. In the end, though, the Lady Panthers took the 69-43 win and pushed Cordell’s girls into the seventh/eighth place game Saturday morning.

The Lady Devils came out of the gates on fire in the final game of the tournament against Snyder, reeling off 18 points in the first quarter, and keeping up the pressure all the way thruogh. Snyder tried to make a fourth quarter run, but the Lady Devils hung on and claimed the 46-38 victory.

“We survived a very tough week of basketball,” Rogers said. “We played three very highly ranked teams this week and even though we didn’t win I felt we did improve. The first round we played Canute who is a very high powered offensive team. I thought we played confident with them, especially in the first half. It’s just hard to match all their three point shooters. They do go on to win the tournament pretty easily. The next round we played Lookeba-Sickles. We had a great start jumping out to a 7-0 lead, but even though we were having some success offensively they began to catch fire as well. Andrea Palmer had a great game, scoring a career high of 23. The last game we played Snyder. We had another great start, scoring 18 in the first quarter. We also played good defense. Snyder made a run at us at the end, but we were able to do enough to get the win. Actually, what’s most important is that we are growing and improving. We know this season is going to be a process, but the girls are doing a good job of staying hooked up and because of that they are improving. That’s all a coach can ask for.”