BY NATE KOTISSO | THE MONITOR
DONNA — Edcouch-Elsa and Donna High entered their district matchup on Friday night going in opposite directions.
After a 1-4 start to District 32-5A play, Edcouch-Elsa had won its last three games to get within a game of Donna for third place in the district standings. On the other side, Donna had lost of two of its last three district games after being tied for second.
Despite nursing a slim lead after three quarters, Donna’s 19-point fourth quarter boosted the team to a 50-37 victory in a physical affair.
“They’re very physical, and they’re very quick,” Donna High coach Kevin Kromer said. “They play extremely hard, and Coach (Richardson) does a great job with them. I knew it was going to be a battle. It was a battle last time. We didn’t get away from them until the fourth quarter. It’s always the same kind of game when we go up against them.”
Juniors Briana Quesada and Miranda Sandoval led Donna (16-16, 6-3) with 11 points apiece. Combined with Mercedes’ loss on Friday, the win moves Donna back into a second-place tie with the Tigers.
“Edcouch is a really good team, and we needed this win to get a higher spot for the playoffs than what we got last year,” Sandoval said. “Our goal this year was to not only get into the playoffs again, but get a higher seed once we get there.”
Sandoval was active early on, scoring six of her points in the first quarter while also chasing after offensive rebounds.
“Rebounding is all about hustling and getting to the ball,” Sandoval said. “I can always depend on the guards to get steals. If the posts can’t, then we can always depend on each other on defense.”
“I can’t take (Miranda) hardly off the floor at all,” Kromer said. “She has what you can’t teach. She has the aggressiveness to go after the ball. She doesn’t always block out, but she goes to where the ball is going to be.
“She has a natural knack for that. That’s just in her. With a kid like that, you just let them play. She’ll get a little frustrated with her shot sometimes, but I tell her, ‘You contribute in so many other ways. Don’t worry about your scoring. It’s going to come.’”
Donna led the entire first half and for much of the third quarter. The Yellow Jackets (10-19) trailed by as many as eight points in the second quarter but chipped away at the deficit to open the second half. E-E grabbed a 27-26 lead — its only lead of the game — on a layup by Haley Villalpando halfway through the third quarter.
E-E trailed 31-30 going into the final quarter of play.
“We just didn’t convert,” Edcouch-Elsa coach Daniel Richardson said. “We missed a lot of layups, a lot of free throws. That kind of took the air out of everything. They went on a run, we never responded to it, and that was the game.”
Edcouch-Elsa’s loss, combined with Brownsville Pace’s win over Brownsville Porter, puts the Yellow Jackets outside of 32-5A’s top four at 4-5 in district competition.
“This was a game we had to win against a team ahead of us,” Richardson said. “We had to come out with the same aggressiveness they had. We did that for three quarters, but we came up short in the fourth.”