SANGER — A shaky end of the season carried into the postseason for Gainesville.
The Leopards, who lost two of their final four regular season games to drop into second place, fell to underdog Frisco Lone Star 64-56 in a Region II-3A bi-district playoff game on Monday at Sanger High School.
The loss followed a trend as the Leopards dropped three of their final five games -- narrowly escaping with wins in contests against
Bridgeport and Sanger. The Leopards would get into a cold streak and find themselves in a hole too big to climb out of.
Frisco Lone Star (16-16) will play Princeton in the area playoffs later this week.
Senior guard David Moore, who will play football next year for East Central Oklahoma, led Gainesville (14-9) with 26 points. Denzel Johnson had 12 points and Jonathan Mendez had seven points.
The Leopards jumped out to a 9-0 lead to open the game with five points coming from Moore, a dunk from Johnson and a mid-range jumper from Mendez -- but it went downhill from there.
Lone Star would answer with a 9-2 run to close out the first quarter with Ranger junior guard Jonathan Clay hitting a 3-pointer with 30 seconds left in stanza.
Clay would lead Lone Star with 14 points in the contest.
The Rangers would again get hot in the second quarter with an 8-0 run to seize a 21-16 lead.
Following makes from Landon Bond and De’Quan Wilford and a 3-pointer by Mendez to keep things from getting away, the Leopards trailed 29-23 at halftime.
A put back from Lone Star sophomore Zach Brown would put the Rangers up by 10 points early in the second half at 33-23.
The Leopards would answer, however, with a run of their own -- this time a 6-0 spurt that included a thunderous dunk from Moore to make it 33-29. That’s as close as the Leopards would get.
Gainesville couldn’t buy a bucket in the final four minutes of the game, making only four field goals as the Leopards saw the game slip away.
Demetrius Franklin had five points for the Leopards. Wilford had four points and Bond had two points.
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