Ozona Girls Rally Past New Deal to Reach Regional Final

OZONA, TX — The Ozona girls basketball team is proving to be a tough out in the playoffs.

The Lady Lions again showed poise in the second half to keep their season alive, rallying from a halftime deficit to defeat New Deal 47-37 on Monday in the Class 2A Division I regional semifinals.

Ozona survived a 43-40 win over Plains in the previous round.

The unranked Lady Lions improved to 29-7 and are moving on to play No. 2 Panhandle (31-3) at 6 p.m. Thursday in Post.

Ozona trailed by as many as seven points late in the first half against New Deal before Avery Davidson hit a deep 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 24-20 at halftime.

Davidson then began the second half with another 3-pointer and a runner in the lane to give Ozona a 25-24 lead it would never lose.

Ozona eventually ran out to a 31-24 lead and took a 34-30 advantage into the fourth quarter.

New Deal never got any closer down the stretch.

“We played really well in the first quarter, but we kind of hit a little slump in the second quarter and did not take care of the ball,” Ozona head coach Jerry McSherry said. “We talked at halftime about going back to our game plan, taking care of the basketball and quit trying to play quite so fast, and run our half-court stuff against their stingy defense. And we came out in the second half and were just like a different team.”

Ozona returned only two players from last year’s team that reached the regional semifinals, and they both played a huge role Monday.

Kelyn Gass scored a team-high 19 points, while Davidson had 13 points.

Now Ozona will turn its focus to Panhandle, which steamrolled Ballinger 85-16 in the last round.

“We’re going to have to play a pretty much flawless game and really limit our mistakes,” McSherry said. “We have to just buckle down and play solid defense to have a shot at it. 

“The thing is, at this point, everybody’s good, and you’ve got to hope that you can make the shots when they matter and play defense the way we need to be playing defense at this point in the year. They’re a junior and senior team, so they’re not going to make mistakes that maybe younger players would make, so we’re just hoping we can step up and play to that level.”