East Lake, the No. 4 seed, led at halftime but got outscored 24-9 in the third quarter in the Class 8A-8 district semifinal Tuesday, falling 66-57 to North Port. The Eagles (11-15) were led by Emily Dine, who scored 32. Amber Jennings chipped in with 12.
“We just had one bad quarter,” coach Steve Plummer said. “We scored 24 points in the fourth quarter, but we dug too deep of a hole.”
In the other semifinal, Palm Harbor University (19-9) was outscored 13-0 in the first half and couldn’t recover, losing to Sarasota Riverview 65-32. Riverview (18-8) will play North Port for the championship Thursday night.
Canterbury 49, Keswick Christian 43: Canterbury’s Kelsey Hill was nearly unstoppable in the 2A-9 district semifinal, scoring 35.
Canterbury will play top seed Sarasota Christian (16-8) in Friday’s championship game. Sarasota Christian had no trouble with Lakeside Christian, winning 68-14.
Canterbury and Hill got cranking in the second quarter. She started the quarter by scoring the Crusaders’ first 13 points in a 13-4 run that gave them a 21-9 lead.
But Keswick (5-15) managed to score the final five points of the quarter and cut the lead to 23-15 at halftime. Then Bonnie Bouvier scored Keswick’s first seven points to start the third quarter and the lead was cut to 24-22.
That seemed to motivate Hill, who scored 11 to end the quarter and give Canterbury a 34-24 lead with eight minutes to play.