BRUNSWICK — It wasn’t a good day for the No. 11 Bradwell Institute Lady Tigers as they failed to capture the Region 2-6A championship in Brunswick on Wednesday.
The two-seed Lady Tigers (20-5) fell to the team that they gave their only loss to; one-seed No. 2 Brunswick Lady Pirates (25-1) as they were trounced for the region title 69-26.
The loss ended the Lady Tigers’ nine-game winning streak.
The Lady Tigers went down by 10 with 2:53 left in the first quarter with a score of 13-3.
The only basket came from a three pointer by Taniyah Bowman as they trailed 21-3 at the first buzzer due to missed shots, turnovers, and failing to rotate on defensive sets.
Bowman led the team with eight points.
Bailey Gilmore ended the Lady Tigers cold streak in the second quarter, demanding the ball under the basket before laying it in over the Lady Pirates’ Toni Dudley.
But the Lady Pirates kept on pouring it on as they cruised to a 43-13 lead at the half.
“Brunswick came out ready to play and they jumped on us quick and we just never responded,” Baker said after the loss. “We started playing defeated in the first quarter and so our mental capacity wasn’t where it needed to be from that point on.”
The second quarter was more of same as the Lady Pirates continued to extend their lead on their way to raising the gold trophy.
“I got to give Brunswick credit,” Baker said of the region champions. “They came out, played well, executed to perfection and we just could not respond. We were allowing Shamya Flanders to kill us on the boards. You have games like this.”
A night like this was far from perfection and Baker wasn’t shy about expressing that the team needs to improve in the state playoffs.
“We’ll view this film together and see where we went wrong and try to learn from it and utilize it to get ready for the first round of the state playoffs,” Baker said. “We were on a nine-game winning streak and the girls were playing well. We were playing more east to west rather than north to south tonight. This is a disappointing setback for us.”
The Lady Tigers will enter the Class 6A state tournament as a two seed.