5 PARAGON TEAMS IN STATE TOURNAMENT; ELK CITY IN THE AREA TOURNAMENT 

This week has been a week that small school basketball players, coaches, and fans have been looking forward to forever. It's small school State Tournament week. It’s also the final State Tournament in the Big House before next year and the new arena opening. 5 of our Paragontv teams will be there for the Last Dance at Jim Norick Arena. Friday night both Hammon teams punched their tickets through the front door as Area Champions. The Lady Warriors dominated Chattanooga 44-17 to qualify for the 5th straight Class B Girls State tourney. The Warriors will be back in the Class b Boys state tournament for the first time since 2020 after a second half comeback to defeat Duke 48-43. 

Saturday night 4 teams had chances to finish their quest for state tournament glory through the consolation bracket. Defending Class 2A State champions, the Merritt Oilerettes, avenged a regional finals loss to Riverside by defeating the Lady Braves 45-39. It's Merritt’s 3rd trip to State in the last 4 years. In Class A girls two western oklahoma teams traveled across the state to play for a spot in the show. Canute and Cheyenne-Reydon met for the 3rd time this season, and this time OT was needed. The game was tied at 25 with under a minute to go when Canute went up for good.... Destiny Jackson’s 3 gave Canute a lead they wouldn’t surrender in a 29-27 win over the Lady Bears. Canute makes it’s first trip back since 2020. In Class B it was the Leedey Lady Bison taking on #1 Lomega up in Enid. Leedey led most of the night, but found themselves down 1 with under 20 seconds left..... Lomega couldn’t hit a buzzer 3 on the other end and the Lady Bison are back in the State Tournament for the 4th time in the last 5 years.  

That’s who’s in the State Tournaments, but who and when do they play? That question was answered yesterday. Class A will play tomorrow. #4 Canute drew #1 Seiling in the first round. That game will be played at 4:30. On Wednesday it’s Class B’s turn. The #6 hammon Warriors get defending champion, #9 Wilson Henryetta at 1:30. It's an all Western Ok quarterfinal on the girls side. #2 Hammon will play #11 Leedey at 4:30. The first round wraps up on thursday with 2A taking center stage. It’ll be a rematch of last season’s 2A girls final at 4:30 between Merritt and Dale.  

Due to OSSAA’s media agreement with the NFHS, we aren’t able to live stream the games with video. We will have the audio available with the live scoreboard on paragontv.com 

Class 4A finished up the Regional Tournaments this weekend. For the second straight year, the Elk City Elkettes will be making a trip to the Area Tournament. Elk City beat Woodward on Saturday afternoon 54-48. It was the 3rd win over Woodward in as many tries this year, 2nd in the playoffs. The Brown and White will now travel to Stroud for an Area Consolation bracket game against Oologah at 6:00 Thursday night. We will have this one livestreamed for you on bigelktv.com