Lady Longhorns fall to defending champ Melrose

LOGAN - COVID-19 outbreaks took away a sizable part of the Logan girls basketball team's schedule and its head coach on Friday. It also effectively took away its usual postseason berth after the Lady Longhorns lost to defending Class 1A champ Melrose 49-31.

Logan head coach Glynna Strand was recovering after contracting the disease last month but didn't feel well enough to guide her team Friday. Assistant coaches Dustin Robertson and Robert Young guided the team instead.

Playing their first game after a long layoff following a quarantine, the Lady Longhorns struggled to get anything going offensively and fell behind by a double-digit margin before intermission.

"It had to have hurt," Robertson said of the layoff. "We couldn't hit a short early. I thought we got all our misses out of our system in practice this week. Apparently we didn't.

"But I'm so proud of them. They fought hard, and Melrose has an awesome team. We wish them the best. I'll miss these seniors and have nothing but good things to say about them."

Melrose coach Caleb King agreed the forced layoff had an effect on the Lady Longhorns.

"They had a lot of rust, I'm sure," he said. "They were back in practice, but game-type speed is really hard to mimic in practice. I saw them play Fort Sumner right before their quarantine, and they looked a lot more sharp then than they did today. It's hard to keep sharp when you have that kind of layoff."

Robertson said even if Logan had upset Melrose, it was no guarantee his team would have gained a postseason berth in the shrunken eight-team tournament. By his estimation, at least two other teams would have been considered. He said Logan drifted down in the state rankings because of its lack of games during the quarantine.

"If we would have won tonight, it would have adjusted things. But we didn't," Robertson said.

Reece Goldston scored 13 points to lead Logan (4-2), and Karlee Cantrell added nine.

Hailey Martin scored 15 points to lead Melrose (10-1), and Anjalina Sanchez added 14.

Melrose earned the No. 3 seed in the Class 1A tournament. Roy/Mosquero was the top seed, and Fort Sumner was seeded second.

Because the Lady Buffaloes played three games in four days, King acknowledged not pressing his team go high-energy against the Lady Longhorns.

"We didn't press or even run a whole lot because last night," he said. "We'd played Fort Sumner and had some tired legs. We wanted to slow the game, the pace down a little bit. But it was a good game for us, and Logan's always a good team. We did what we wanted to do be able to win."

Melrose's defense created long scoring droughts for Logan. Meanwhile, Melrose kept piling on points with Martin's strong inside game and Sanchez's slashing moves to the basket. Melrose had a 25-13 lead at halftime and fattened its advantage to nearly 20 in the third quarter.

Logan showed life offensively early in the fourth period with eight unanswered points, closing the gap to 38-28.

"We rotated some subs in there and lost our momentum and lost some energy," King said. "We put Hailey and some of our seniors back in, and that settled things back down a bit."

Melrose's lead went back to 20 with about a minute left.

Robertson said he's not counting out the Lady Buffs in the tournament.

"Coach King is a great coach. I've got a lot of respect for him, and they're probably going to make a lot of noise in the playoffs, I would think," he said.

Before the game Friday, Logan honored seniors Cantrell, Kindal Smith, Kambry Burns and Keilee Judd.