By RYAN ARENA

Sports Editor

St. Charles coach Chris Perrone felt his team would have to win two of its final three games to find its way into the playoffs. That road got a lot tougher on Friday night.

Brusly picked up its first District 9-3A victory of the season with a 62-57 win over visiting St. Charles, putting the Comets’ playoff chances in severe jeopardy.

The Comets will likely have to defeat district foes Port Allen and Plaquemine this week to have a chance to break into the top 32 teams in Class 3A’s power rankings. Plaquemine is ranked second and Port Allen is ranked fifth in the latest LSWA Class 3A poll.

“I don’t think our guys expected the kind of game Brusly gave us,” said Perrone. “I’m not sure that we looked past them, or if maybe we felt like we were better than we were after playing those top 10 teams so well.

“But Brusly saw this as their chance to get a district win, and they came after us.”

The Panthers (10-20, 1-6) rode a balanced scoring attack to the win. Darius Jackson led all scorers with 23 points. Stanley Stewart scored 12. Kevin Purnell scored 10 and Chucky Prior scored nine on three 3-pointers.

St. Charles (8-17, 2-4) countered with 18 from DeMarcus Bernard, 15 from Zach Goodwin and 14 from Birch Matus. But it wasn’t enough to notch the win.

The Comets trailed by three at halftime, but rallied to take a 43-39 lead entering the fourth quarter.

But Brusly took off from there outscoring the Comets 22-14 in the final period to snatch the win.

The Panthers shot exceptionally from the perimeter, hitting 10 3-pointers on the night.

“They shot very well, and we played poor defensively,” said Perrone. “They executed their offense well, while we turned it over and missed easy shots.

“We missed a bunch of shots that I know we make on a regular basis. We just rushed them.”

Perrone said Brusly controlled the pace of the game as well.

“We like to control the tempo, but they were able to slow things down,” he said.

“Things just didn’t fall in our favor. Now, we’ve gotta win two to have a chance. We managed to find a way to make things really tough on ourselves.”