The Pearl River Central boys’ and girls’ basketball squads hosted Brookhaven on Friday night in a divisional match-up.

In both games, the home team struggled to score and found themselves trailing early. Neither the Blue Devils nor Lady Devils could mount a comeback, and both squads lost their final home game of the season.

In the girls’ match-up, Brookhaven started the game on fire, opening the first quarter on an 8-0 run. The Lady Devils fought hard all night but never managed to recover from the early deficit.

Junior guard Kim Gutierrez led PRC with 14 points and added 5 steals on defense. Her spirited effort kept the Lady Devils within striking distance throughout the game.

Every time the PRC girls would close the gap, the Lady Panthers would go on a scoring run to swing momentum back in their favor. Sophomore center Arnancy Arnold closed the third quarter by scoring eight of her team’s last 10 points to open up a 38-21 lead.

In the third quarter, the Lady Devils were out-scored 16-6. PRC was finding open looks at the basket but could not get the shots to fall.  

The game ended with a final score of 52-37, and the PRC ladies fell to 16-10.

In the boys’ game, the Brookhaven Panthers improved on their undefeated district record and routed the Blue Devils 90-32.

PRC played the game without two of their starters, senior Alex Travis and junior Donte Stephens.

The Blue Devils came out firing, sinking back-to-back three pointers to keep things close early on. Midway through the first quarter, the score was 10-8.

However, the lack of depth began to wear on the Blue Devils, and Brookhaven pulled away throughout the contest. The Panthers took every opportunity to push the pace on offense, scoring a number of their points in transition.

The PRC boys played hard down to the final whistle, but facing off against a top 5 team in the state without key players proved to be too tall of a task. Brookhaven took home the victory with a score of 90-32.

The PRC boys’ and girls’ basketball teams will travel to Poplarville tonight to take on the Hornets in non-divisional action.  The girls tip-off at 6 p.m. and the boys will play at 7:30.