In between soccer games, the Sealy Lady Tiger basketball squad tipped off against Navasota as part of the four-game Friday night frenzy at home last week.

The visitors earned a 55-41 win to drop Sealy to 2-3 after one round of play within District 24-4A, which left the Lady Tigers in fourth place entering this week of play. Despite the district standings, Sealy Head Girls’ Basketball Coach Anthony Branch said he wants the team’s focus to remain on the individual games remaining in the second round.

“Going into the second round, we’re sitting in fourth but I told the girls, ‘I don’t want you worrying anything about the playoffs, we need to think only about what we need to do each and every day,’” Branch said Friday. “We have to come to practice and battle, we have two and a half weeks; we’re in the middle of this thing.”

Last Friday, Branch said the Lady Rattlers got up early and although the Lady Tigers battled back, the deficit was too steep to overcome but it wasn’t because of a lack of effort.

“The score is not indicative of how the game went, I thought the kids fought hard,” the head coach said. “I thought Evelyn Harrington played pretty well, DJ Johnson was a really big factor, we were able to get the ball down inside. I thought we were able to get the ball to Jasmyne Joiner well and she was a threat but we’ve still got to do a better job at getting her the ball inside. But I was extremely proud we were able to get it to her and she had not played well on the offensive end so for her to do that I thought that was big for her.”

Branch said it was a strong turnaround after Sealy dropped a double-overtime contest in Bellville earlier in the week by a 52-46 score

“They keep competing and they’re fun to be around, they’re fun to coach. We took that tough loss on Tuesday, that was a gut punch and we were kind of down but once we got into practice – we had a really good Wednesday practice so I was proud of that,” Branch said. “We had fun and got that out of us so pretty solid practice, had a good game plan trying to not let (Navasota) get in transition because that’s what they do really well.”

Branch hoped to keep the ball rolling with Wharton and Royal on the schedule this week to start the final stretch of the regular season.

“Still having fun and we’ll see what happens, just enjoy each and every day in practice and continue to fight and get after it and see what can happen,” Branch said of the postgame message. “It’s been a process but this team has grown from the beginning. When I got here, I didn’t have a single senior. I started three sophomores, a freshman and a junior so I’m proud of them and just looking forward to these next two and a half weeks. Let’s just keep competing and let’s see how much better we get because after playing that, we had some things we can continue to get better at.”