Krewe Officials Address Public at NAACP Office
February 20, 2020
Philip Caballero
February 21, 2020
There was another “Battle of the Tigers” thriller last night.
No. 16 Terrebonne High School hosted No. 17 Thibodaux High School in a Class 5A first-round playoff matchup. Both teams played hard until the final seconds of the game, but Terrebonne was able to hold off the Tigers 49-45.
“We knew it was going to be a tough game. This is the fourth time we’ve played them [this season],” said Byron McPherson, Terrebonne coach. “So we knew it was going to be hard. We just had to come out and just try to play smart.”
Terrebonne was playing smart in the first half, getting good shots and holding defensive assignments. The team looked like it was going to have a relatively smooth walk into the second round with a 24-17 lead at half time.
But Thibodaux wasn’t getting sent home that easily, as it went on a 19-7 run in the third quarter, which gave it a 36-31 lead going into the fourth.
“It’s just a situation that we work on all the time in practice. So I told them, ‘Don’t Panic,’” McPherson said. “We had a lot of young players on the floor, so I had to get my experience people back in the game, and that was a difference. They didn’t panic because they were used to the situation that we were in.”
After some sloppy play — turning the ball over, taking bad shots and fouling –the Terrebonne Tigers looked like themselves again in the fourth quarter, which made for an exciting finish.
The final quarter was a back-and-forth virtually the entire time, but Terrebonne was able to establish enough of a cushion in the last few minutes to outlast Thibodaux — giving Terrebonne its first playoff win since 2010.
Nala Hollins led Terrebonne with 12 points, and Aryana Peak was the lead scorer for Thibodaux with 13 points.
Now Terrebonne will face No. 1 Ouachita Parish in Monroe for the next round of the Class 5A bracket.
“We’re going to just try to get better,” McPherson said. “Every practice, we work to get better than we were before.”
