Chadwick GBB takes down Delta 60-34 in Class 1 state tournament opener

DELTA – Something felt different about this Delta Ladycats girls’ basketball team.

The gradual improvement throughout the season, senior Jade Berry’s historic year, the emergence of young talent – it had the makings of another magical postseason run for coach David Heeb’s program.

The Chadwick Lady Cardinals just happened to catch them on a bad night.

Chadwick used superb rebounding and crisp shooting to rout Delta 60-34 in the opening round of the MSHSAA Class 1 Girls Basketball State Tournament on Tuesday, Mar. 4, at Delta High School.

“We've got two fans that have not missed a game these kids played in over the last two or three years,” Heeb said. “They’re at every one of our games. A couple weeks ago, they told me, ‘Coach, if you said this team was above .500 when the year started, we would have taken it.’ In the last three years, we’ve lost 12 starters. We've lost three all-staters. We've lost eight all-conference players. So, we've lost a lot of good players.

“From the beginning of the season, we probably were a .500 team. But to the level that they improved, while it didn't show tonight because Chadwick played extremely well and they deserved a lot, just from the beginning of the season to now is just a testament to those three seniors and the rest of these kids and how hard they work.”

Berry bowed out of her decorated high school career with a nine-point performance. More importantly, the star point guard became Delta’s all-time leading scorer Tuesday night, surpassing Rebecca Below’s career mark of 2,012 points.

“She’s top 10 or 15 all-time in the state in made 3-pointers, steals, assists,” Heeb said. “She hadn't just had one of the great careers here, but one of the greatest careers in the history of Missouri. For her to do what she did as a freshman, where she was out there with so many other good players and made all of them better. She makes good players better and then she makes average players good.

“That's the best thing you can say about Jade is that when she had all that help, she was unselfish and made them better. When she had a lot less help, she could have been a kid to say, ‘I'm gonna average 30,’ but that's not Jade. She wants to make the team better, and that's the thing I will always cherish about coaching Jade Berry is she was such a team-first kid.”

The Ladycats, which won their sixth straight district title last weekend, were a win away from reaching the state quarterfinals for the fifth time in the past six years.

Grace Ancell led the way with a team-high 10 points, while junior Lilli Boitnott added six.

Similar to its district final against Oak Ridge, Delta had a rather slow start and found itself down 13-7 by the end of the first quarter.

The ensuing quarter was nearly a foil of the first, as Chadwick stretched the lead to as much as 11 after Emily Landry drilled a 3-pointer with 4:07 left to make it 20-9, forcing Heeb to call a timeout. Several possessions later, Lady Cardinal senior Rae Little's driving layup as time expired made it 28-17 at the break.

Delta shot just 32% (7-of-22) from the field and failed to make a 3-pointer in the first half.

“Coach (James) Pendergrass does a great job and they are not a team you want to be trailing,” Heeb said. “Not just with Coach Pendergrass, but the last two years with Coach (Ethan) Garrett, who coaches the boys' team, they play so methodical, so patient. So, if you get behind them, even for a team like us that presses, it's almost like kryptonite.”

Chadwick bolted out in the second half, crafting a 16-5 run over eight minutes, played great defense, and pulled away.

Delta hit its first 3-pointer of the game when Berry nailed one from the top of the key with 6:37 left in the fourth, but Chadwick had the game on ice at that point.

Little paced Chadwick with a game-high 21 points. Emily Landry posted 16, while Macy Landry added 15. The Lady Cardinals outrebounded Delta by a wide margin, including 12-to-6 in the second half alone, and held the Ladycats to 32.5% shooting on the night.

“Early in the game, I thought we had some shots that didn't go down,” Heeb said. “We had some rebounds that we didn't grab and they got some second-chance points on us, which gave them the cushion to be comfortable. If you flip it and we grab those rebounds and we make those shots, then maybe we’re up by six. OK, 'now you've got to come to us.' And the opposite could have happened tonight, where, if we could ever make them play fast, I thought we had a chance to maybe get them by 15 or 20. But you’ve got to give them credit. They dominated us rebounding, and you can't say that about very many teams in the last five or six years.”

Tuesday night’s matchup marked the third postseason in a row that both Delta and Chadwick met in the state tournament. After losing 56-54 in the state quarterfinals in 2023, the Ladycats evened things behind a 60-55 victory in the opening round last season.

Delta loses three seniors in Berry, Jolie Scherer, and Emma Walter, but will return a chunk of production to give Heeb and the coaching staff something to be excited about.

“This is probably the most improved team I've ever coached,” Heeb said. “That's the only reason we're standing here talking right now. It’s still just a bitter taste to know it maybe could have been a different outcome, but we've got a lot to look forward to.”

There will also be an interesting twist next season.

“Next year, our school is actually doing a co-op with Leopold,” Heeb said. “Leopold doesn't have girls' basketball, so we're excited about that because we're going to bring girls' basketball to that community. Then, hopefully, that'll be just a good relationship between us two schools, so not only do we have these kids coming back, but that's just something that we're looking forward to.”