Sports

ALEXANDRIA – The Vermilion Catholic Lady Eagles live on high expectations that routinely place them in championship contention.
They were in position again on Friday, meeting district foe Lafayette Christian in the Division IV LHSAA girls basketball title at Rapides Parish Coliseum.
And VC, which won state crowns in 1999 and 2013 under coach Kim Guidry, featured an experienced squad with four seniors who had been to three previous Final Four events.

BATON ROUGE - Beating Madison Prep’s Chargers in the basketball playoffs is almost an impossible task.
Since the 2013 playoffs, the Chargers have lost only once in the high school playoffs, and that was in the Class 1A finals in 2014.
In 2013, Madison Prep won the Class B state title.
In 2014, Madison Prep finished second in Class A.
In 2015, Madison Prep won the Class A state title.
In 2016, Madison Prep won the Class 2A state title.
In 2017, Madison Prep won the Class 2A state title again.
In 2018, Madison Prep won the Class 3A state title.

Call it nerves. Call it overconfidence. Whatever it was, it went away in the second half.
The No. 5 Abbeville Wildcats may have come into their first-round game against No. 28 Bogalusa a little overconfident because, at half time, Abbeville was only ahead 30-27.
That Abbeville team who played in the first half stayed in the locker room and never resurfaced in the second half. Instead, the 2019 Wildcat team, who won 20-plus games, made an appearance in the second half and went on to blowout Bogalusa, 77-63.