Semoball

A healthy Delta team ready for district tournament

The Delta girls basketball team placed 3rd in the Holiday Classic in December in the Show Me Center.
Tony Capobianco ~ tcapobianco@semoball.com

The MSHSAA Class 1 District 1 Girls Basketball Tournament begins on Tuesday, Feb. 21 and it will be hosted by Naylor High School. The number one seed Delta Bobcats will hope to repeat as district champions and make another run to the state championship game.

The Bobcats finished the regular season with a record of 22-3 with those three losses being against much larger schools in Park Hills Central, Notre Dame and Jackson.

Head coach David Heeb said the biggest thing for his team is everyone being healthy.

“We’ve had injuries to two starters,” Heeb said. “This week is the first time since Christmas that we’ve had a whole team together.”

Delta has played two of the teams in the district, defeating both Oak Ridge and Scott County Central by 63 and 71 points, respectively. Couch, Koshkonong, Naylor and Southland are the newcomers to the district after MSHSAA realigned the district assignments this season. Two teams in the district have a three-hour drive to get to each other, something Heeb feels is challenging.

“I don't see how it's fair to anybody in this district because there's no way to schedule each other. There's no way to seed it or anything like that,” Heeb said. “You just got to go there and do the best you can because half of the district is somewhere outside of West Plains and half of us are somewhere outside of Cape Girardeau. It's just really a ridiculous situation.”

All three teams that Delta was defeated by this season are either ranked or receiving votes to be ranked in the top ten of class four through six. As a class one school, playing schools which are large and talented is beneficial later on in the postseason.

“I think we played a really good schedule and we’ve really improved since the beginning of the season,” Heeb said. “If we're gonna make another run like we did last year, we're gonna have to beat some really good teams and we're gonna have to play our best.”

Delta will take on the winner of four-seed Oak Ridge and five-seed Couch at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 23.

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