By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

RESERVE – It’s become an unwelcome refrain for East St. John – play well early, fall behind, then see a furious rally fall short.

It was the case last week against Hahnville, and it was the case once again on Tuesday night against another of the Ladycats’ archrivals – this time Destrehan, which held onto a 51-47 District 6-5A victory at East St. John.

“I’m just not able to put my finger on it,” said ESJ coach Jackson Manuel. “We get a double figure lead, then we go into a funk.

“These girls won’t give up when things go bad and I’m proud of that, but we’ve got to play harder for four quarters.”

Destrehan forward Paige Rochelle did much of the damage for her team, scoring 28 points.

“I was feeling it tonight,” said Rochelle. “We had a good practice on Sunday. We passed the ball real well.”

Said Destrehan coach Ulysses Frontha: “We didn’t think they’d have an answer for our post players. We knew their guards were good, but we felt like we had the advantage up front.”

Wenisha Creecy led ESJ with 27 points. Kanitra Lee added eight.

East St. John ran out to a 17-9 lead after the first quarter. But ESJ’s offense grinded to a halt in the second quarter, scoring only two as DHS took a 22-19 lead into halftime.

“We switched up our defense to a 1-2-2,” said Rochelle. “That seemed to help.”

Destrehan (15-13, 2-3) kept the pressure on in the third quarter, outscoring East St. John 20-8 and extending its lead to 15.

“Once they got into foul trouble, they couldn’t press as much,” Frontha said. “They want to play a speed-up game, but we’d much prefer to play our pace.”

But ESJ began to push back in the game’s late stages. After Destrehan went ahead 48-37 on a Kayla Bradley score in the lane. Creecy answered with a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 2:05 left. Rochelle added a free throw, but Creecy canned another 3 from the wing with 1:30 left to make it 49-43. Then Brianne Brown converted a layup off of a Creecy assist to cut the lead to four.

Rochelle made a basket with 50 seconds left to push the lead back to six. East St. John cut the lead to 51-47 after Creecy stole a pass and found Chardey Johnson for a bucket with 18.4 seconds left, but ESJ wouldn’t score again.

Frontha praised Rochelle, a senior, for stepping up with a big game and leading a young team to a key road victory.

“How she goes, we go,” said Frontha. “If we get the consistent play from her, we can be consistent.”