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Seward 80, Otero 71
Avery Marchino scored a career-high 29 points, and the Seward County Lady Saints defeated the Otero Rattlers 80-71 on Saturday evening in The Greenhouse.
Seward (3-0) won its home opener in Game 2 of the Seward Classic. It marked the second time this season that Seward has defeated Otero after winning 91-85 in overtime on Oct. 31 in La Junta.
Marchino finished with 29 points and seven rebounds while Kimora Fagan stuffed the stat sheet with 20 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and three steals to pace Seward.
Seward led for 39 minutes with Otero never leading in the game. The Lady Saints scored the first 14 points of the game bursting out to a 14-0 lead as Trinitee Holmes, Marchino and Fagan each canned triples in the stretch. Otero scored its first points of the game with 3:06 to play in the first quarter but an A'Neya Chambers triple and two more Marchino buckets saw the Lady Saints leave the first quarter with a 21-7 advantage.
The second quarter was the highest combined scoring quarter with each team posting 23 points. The Lady Saints took their largest lead of the game, 20, with 1:27 to play off two Fagan free throws to make it 44-24, but Otero used a 6-0 run to end the half to make it 44-30 at halftime.
The Rattlers came out firing in the second half outscoring Seward 21-14 and pulling within four at 47-43 midway through the third quarter.
Seward took a 58-51 lead to the fourth quarter. Seward led by double digits early in the quarter but Otero cut the lead to three at 69-66 with four minutes to play, and a minute later the Rattlers cut it to one at 69-68. The Lady Saints outscored Otero 11-3 over the final three minutes to secure the win.
Holmes pulled down 10 rebounds while Grace Posch dished out seven assists and had five rebounds to go with six points. Chambers had 16 points and seven rebounds off the bench.
Seward shot just 35.6 percent (26-73) from the field compared to Otero's 38.2 percent (26-68) but the Lady Saints outrebounded the Rattlers 62-36.
Itxasne Fernandez Arguello led Otero with 20 points, seven rebounds and four assists.
Seward 72, Northeastern 32
The Seward County Lady Saints saw 10 different players score and seven score eight or more as they defeated Northeastern Junior College 78-38 in the final game of the Seward Classic Sunday afternoon.
Seward moved to 4-0 on the season with the win. The last time the Lady Saints got off to a 4-0 start was the 2019-2020 season when they started 4-0 before a road loss at Midland College.
The 40-point win is their biggest of the season as they held NJC (0-2) to just 12 made field goals on 25.5 percent shooting as well as 0-12 from three.
Avery Marchino led Seward in scoring for a third straight game as she finished with 13 points and eight rebounds.
NJC led Seward 4-0 early in the first quarter and later 5-3. The Lady Saints snatched their first lead with 3:15 in the first quarter as Grace Posch found an open Kimora Fagan in the corner for a triple to put Seward ahead 8-5. They led for the rest of the game.
Seward led 13-11 after one but used a 19-7 second quarter to take a 32-18 lead to the locker room.
The second half saw Seward outscore NJC 46-20 with the largest lead of the game being 40, which was the final margin.
Trinitee Holmes finished with 12 points and seven rebounds, Fagan added eight points and five rebounds, Posch had nine points, four assists and three rebounds and A'Neya Chambers totaled 11 points, five rebounds and five steals.
The Lady Saints chipped in 25-38 (65.8 percent) free throws, shot 7-19 (36.8 percent) from three and 23-58 (39.7 percent) from the field. They forced 28 NJC turnovers scoring 25 points off the takeaways.
Seward returns to action on Friday when they take part in the New Mexico Junior College Classic, playing host NMJC at 6 p.m. CST from Hobbs, N.M.
