The Mexico girls made up ground with its Friday district championship game opponent throughout the season.
The Lady Bulldogs lost by 20 points and then 10 points to North Central Missouri …
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The Mexico girls made up ground with its Friday district championship game opponent throughout the season.
The Lady Bulldogs lost by 20 points and then 10 points to North Central Missouri Conference champion Kirksville, but they lost 67-57 in the Class 4 District 8 title game in Moberly. In a rematch of last year’s championship game, Kirksville (24-4) got revenge for its first district championship since 2021 while Mexico (15-13) played in its third straight district title game.
Head coach Makenzie Mudd said Mexico was in the game until the end, when it had to foul and send Kirksville to the free throw line. The Lady Bulldogs were either behind or were ahead by one or two possessions all night.
“The last two times we played them, Eva Danielson was the one that really popped up and had 30 points both times,” Mudd said. “Our goal was to slow her down, which we did a great job of. Macey Lehmann filled those shoes for her, and that was an adjustment we had to make. In the second half, we were able to slow her down.”
Danielson finished with 19 points for Kirksville, but Macey Lehmann led with 24 points and six 3-pointers. Kirksville had 10 3-pointers as Mudd said they were good moving with and without the ball.
“They are a much stronger shooting team this year,” Mudd said. “They have grown a lot and developed a lot of their players. They did graduate some, but they have people who stepped up and filled those roles.”
Grace Hudson led Mexico with 21 points, Alyssa Miller followed with 14 points and nine rebounds, and Scottie Smith had 12 points.
Mudd said she definitely thought Kirksville would pay special attention to Miller after she scored 28 points in the previous round against Moberly. She said Miller still did well fighting through that, and Hudson did well driving to the lane and creating shots for others to adjust.
“We focused a lot on attacking the paint, moving the ball quickly and finding those scoring opportunities for each other,” Mudd said. “I’m excited to see our officials stats and see how many assists we had. We did a good job of creating for each other.”
Mexico trailed 18-12 after the first quarter but then was down 30-29 at halftime. Prior to that, the Lady Bulldogs went on a 13-0 run to take a 25-21 lead.
Mudd said she is proud of and will miss seniors Hannah Loyd and Landri Teel. They were there in each of those district championship games so Mudd said their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.
This season brought a challenging schedule to the Lady Bulldogs, according to Mudd, as it seemed a lot of Mexico’s opponents were either state-ranked at the time or have been ranked, or at least received votes like Kirksville, this season. Mexico faced state-ranked Clopton, Harrisburg and Boonville this season and gave a tough Kirksville team a fight at the end, so there is “nothing for them to hang their heads about.”
“I’m very proud, especially of these seniors and juniors,” Mudd said. “The last three years, they made it to a district championship game. Not a lot of people can say that. We didn’t come up with the win, but we did a really good job of fighting up until the very end.”
