AIMING AT THE TITLE

Playoff-bound Meridian Lady Jackets host Iredell looking to clinch at least share of District 20-1A championship, possible tiebreaker showdown with Blum awaits

Despite clinching their second straight trip to the playoffs, the Meridian Lady Jackets still have plenty to play for in the 2023-24 Texas high school girls basketball regular season finale. After all, the Lady Jackets stand one win away from clinching a share of the District 20-1A crown.

Coming off a dominating 47-7 road victory over winless Kopperl last Tuesday and fresh from an open date in the schedule last Friday, the Lady Jackets (10-1 in district, 14-15 overall) will host the third place Iredell Lady Dragons (7-4, 14-9) on Senior Night at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Yellowjacket Gymnasium.

Meridian enters the regular season finale in a deadlock for first place with the defending champion Blum Lady Bobcats (10-1, 13-6). With Blum battling on the road at Kopperl (0-11, 0-19) Tuesday, the Lady Jackets need a win to at least force a district championship playoff showdown later this week. In the meantime, Iredell hopes to upset Meridian to clinch third place in district just ahead of playoff-bound Walnut Springs (7-5, 11-8).

“Clinching a playoff spot is always a good feeling,” Meridian girls basketball head coach Adan Reyes said. “And it’s a good measurement of the fact that your program is moving forward and not backwards. That was one of our goals at the beginning of the season, so that also shows a sense of accomplishment.

“Being off this Friday before our huge game against Iredell, my coaching staff and I had to find a way to make sure that we have great, intensive and challenging practices during the week’s lapse. It makes it that much more challenging when the time from one game to another is a whole seven days.

“We just have to take the bad with the good. And the good being that it allows us a week’s time to rest and recover from a couple of players being banged up and getting over the crud that’s been going around everywhere.”

On the road against Kopperl last Tuesday, the Lady Jackets stormed to an early 10-1 lead and never looked back. While limiting the Lady Eagles to a single-digit final score, juniors Mariana Paniagua and Journey Stauffer led the Meridian offensive attack with 11 points each, followed by freshman Sarah Rosales and senior Canyon Stauffer with eight points apiece, as well as senior Eve Dirkse with five and sophomore Dyna Potter with four.

“Going into our game with Kopperl, we really wanted to focus on fine tuning some of the things that we had seen on film that weren’t where we would like them to be,” Reyes said. “We also wanted to work on taking better shots and really working hard on defense. We accomplished both of those goals.”