{"id":143291,"date":"2026-01-29T23:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/143291\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T23:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:30:15","slug":"no-6-tascosa-girls-beat-no-16-lubbock-monterey-to-hold-on-to-district-3-5a-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/143291\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 6 Tascosa girls beat No. 16 Lubbock Monterey to hold on to District 3-5A lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

The going got tough for the Tascosa Lady Rebels against the Lubbock Monterey Lady Plainsmen on Wednesday night, but that\u2019s exactly what they were expecting.<\/p>\n

That was the biggest difference between what happened in the Tascosa Activity Center and the first time the two teams played in District 3-5A this season. This time, the Lady Rebels were the tough who got going.<\/p>\n

Tascosa led almost the entire game in a matchup between top 20 teams, but the Lady Rebels had to show some grit to hang on and beat Monterey 51-45. The win kept the Lady Rebels (26-2, 11-1 in 3-5A) alone in first place in the middle of a challenging week.<\/p>\n

Midway through the fourth quarter, the game appeared to be slipping away from Tascosa, which led by as many as 10 points in the period. But they came up bnig defensively late and put the game away when it counted.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can preach toughness all day to the kids, but until they\u2019re in this environment and they experience these things you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d first-year Tascosa coach Zac Tabor said. \u201cThat\u2019s the only way you can prove it. The game wasn\u2019t perfect in the fourth quarter. We missed some free throws and were spotty with the ball at times but I felt we did a good job of really steadying the ship and going and getting the win in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge facing the No. 6 Lady Rebels was how to contain Monterey\u2019s Ambrosia Cole, one of the area\u2019s best players. She carried the No. 16 Lady Plainsmen (21-9, 10-3) with a game-high 28 points, but didn\u2019t get much help, as no other Monterey player scored more than seven.<\/p>\n

Contrast that with the first meeting between the two teams in Lubbock in December, which Monterey won 71-54. It was a rare blot on Tascosa\u2019s record but the Lady Rebels haven\u2019t lost since.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lubbock Monterey\u2019s Ambrosia Cole\u00a0scored a game-high 28 points on the night against Tascosa. [Emily Ochoa\/ Press Pass Sports]<\/p>\n

Monterey\u2019s only lead came when Cole hit a 3-pointer midway through the first quarter to give the Lady Plainsmen a 10-9 lead. That pretty much set Monterey\u2019s offensive tone, as Cole had 10 of her team\u2019s 12 points in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

The Lady Rebels, though were far more balanced offensively with more than one focal player each posession, thanks to their three top seniors. Devaeh Johnson led the Lady Rebels with 16 points, 11 of them in the first half to spark them to a 26-23 halftime lead. Nic\u2019Kiyah Fisher had 12 points, and Kenzee Dickson scored 11, including all nine of Tascosa\u2019s fourth quarter points.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it comes back to their experience and I\u2019m kind of a broken record at this point in talking about an experienced team but it does come back to that,\u201d Tabor said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been in a lot of big games together. The trend for us in these games is Kenzee gets aggressive in the fourth and everybody else really takes care of the ball. I\u2019m really proud of the way we finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Alex Carter of Tascosa goes up for a shot against Lubbock Monterey on Tuesday night. [Emily Ochoa\/ Press Pass Sports]<\/p>\n

Tascosa led by as many as 13 in the third quarter, but Monterey stuck around the whole way, and when Emree Smith hit a 3-pointer for her only points of the game, the Lady Plainsmen had cut the lead to 47-45 in the final two minutes. However, Dickson scored on a drive to the basket and hit a pair of free throws to ice the game.<\/p>\n

The Lady Rebels have little time to enjoy the win, as Friday they head to a rematch with traditional rival No. 17 Amarillo High at AHS. It\u2019s a game which always means something.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the gold star of the Panhandle,\u201d Tabor said of the Lady Sandies. \u201cWe\u2019ll come back (Thursday) to prepare and we\u2019ll try to go over there and get a big win. It\u2019s definitely not going to be easy. We\u2019ve got to have a short memory on this one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The going got tough for the Tascosa Lady Rebels against the Lubbock Monterey Lady Plainsmen on Wednesday night,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169],"class_list":{"0":"post-143291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lubbock","8":"tag-lubbock","9":"tag-lubbock-headlines","10":"tag-lubbock-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}