Farmersville junior Rileigh Blankenship (10), pictured in previous action, led the Lady Farmers with 11 points in a 57-27 loss to North Lamar in a bi-district playoff game Monday at Commerce High School. Photo by Victor Tapia / C&S Media

By Evan Grice

For The Times

COMMERCE – It has often been said that offense wins games and defense wins championships.

Tuesday night at Commerce High School, the Farmersville Lady Farmers unfortunately struggled with offense, and ran into a smothering North Lamar Pantherette defense. 

After a solid start to the game in the first quarter, the Lady Farmers offense went cold as FHS was eliminated in the Class 4A Division II bi-district playoffs by a score of 57-27 against NLHS, ending their season at 11-15 overall, while North Lamar improved to 24-9. 

North Lamar will now move on to the Area round where they will face off against the Brownsboro Lady Bears at a site and time to be determined later this week. 

The loss marks the first time since 2022-23 the Lady Farmers have been eliminated in the bi-district round of the playoffs after reaching the Area round last season. 

“They (North Lamar) were very disciplined defensively tonight,” Farmersville coach Sandy Hoge said. “We couldn’t get much going on the interior due to their help side; they just dove down on top of us pretty well. They created turnovers and we just never recovered from it.”

“Number 12 (Alexa Lane) is an awesome kid for North Lamar,” Hoge added. “She draws a lot of attention. When we were trying to guard her, then someone else would pop off. This was just a hard group to run up against in the first round.”

North Lamar began the game on a 6-0 run in the first quarter, before the Lady Farmers got their first points of the game from the free throw line at the 4:45 mark of the first quarter. 

Twice the Lady Farmers got to within one point at 6-5 and 8-7 with 1:42 remaining in the first quarter, but that was as good as it got on the night for Farmersville. 

The Pantherettes would close out the first quarter on a 6-0 run and lead 14-7 going to the second, when disaster struck the Lady Farmers as they were held to just two points before halftime, leaving them in a 27-9 deficit going to the locker room.

Farmersville did have a 10-point third quarter, but North Lamar countered with 16 points of its own, thanks in part to a smothering defensive plan which gave the Lady Farmers fits all night long. 

North Lamar finished the game off in the fourth with a 14-8 quarter, once again using the same combination of offense and defense which had brought them success throughout the game.

Rileigh Blankenship led the Lady Farmers with 11 points on the night followed by Katelynn McRay with seven points. Kylie McGee and Gali Matthews each had four points apiece for the Lady Farmers. Alexia Hernandez added one point for Farmersville.

Alexa Lane led all scorers with 25 points on the night with Roselyn Spencer scoring 14 points. Alee Andrews added six points with Landry Spencer scoring five points. Criss Malone scored three points with Avery Spencer scoring two points for the Pantherettes.