The Wright City girls basketball team was sailing along on Friday – until the team’s collective ship ran aground at Veritas Christian in a 59-31 loss.

The Wildcats went toe-to-toe with the Eagles and even took a one-point lead early in the third quarter on a 3-pointer from senior guard Shiriah McRoberts before the offense sputtered, scoring just nine points over the final 15 minutes of play, including two points in the fourth quarter.

“It’s frustrating because I feel like, as a team, we need to work to communicate better,” McRoberts said. “We were down 10 and we did (rebound to take the lead). We communicated really well on defense and that allowed us to play the way we needed to play.”

Down 21-11 late in the second quarter, Wildcats senior Kaitlyn Mikus buried a three at the halftime buzzer to trim the deficit to seven.

Wildcats coach Dustin Elledge said that, as has been the case for much of the season, an ill-timed downward spiral sank the Wildcats (5-15).

“We do have our highs and lows,” Elledge said. “We got that lead and then we just fell into a funk. We got too far into that funk to get out of it.”

McRoberts led Wright City with 17 points while junior guard Ada Ferrell added seven points and Mikus added five.

The game marked the third meeting between the teams this season. On December 18, Veritas won with a sizable second-half effort after trailing Wright City at the Orchard Farm Tournament.

The Wildcats returned the favor with a three-point win on January 9 to capture the championship at the team’s home tournament. 

This week will be a busy one for Wright City, as the team will play three home games. After a game against (11-12) on Tuesday, Wright City is scheduled to take on Wellsville (7-15) on Thursday before hosting Liberty Christian in the Community Classic game at 5 p.m., on Friday.

WESTWOOD BAPTIST BOYS 50, LIBERTY CHRISTIAN 45 – After suffering a 33-point loss earlier this season, Liberty Christian fared much better this time around but still dropped the Metro Athletic Conference tournament championship.

Liberty (20-7) led 12-11 after one quarter and 22-21 at halftime before Westwood (25-2) rebounded.

Eagles Coach Butch Clark said that the team had its chances to take control of the game.

“We came into the game hoping to compete with them and to have a chance to win and we accomplished that,” Clark said. “We did a good job on the boards and shutting down the paint. We were stopped on four straight (second quarter) possessions because we weren’t patient. We were rushed in our shot selection, or we turned the ball over.”

Senior post player Willy Mueller led the team with 24 points while adding 14 rebounds.

Junior guard Phoenix Obermann added 14 points in the defeat.

VERITAS CHRISTIAN BOYS 54, WRIGHT CITY 41 – A slow start hurt the Wildcats (5-15) in a loss on Friday on the road.

Wright City fell behind 17-8 after the first quarter and couldn’t recover in the non-conference game.

WARRENTON BOYS, GIRLS FALL AT HOME – A slow start did all the necessary damage in a courtwarming loss for the Warrenton boys.

Warrenton (8-15) fell behind and couldn’t catch up in the 72-50 loss.

On the girls' side, Warrenton fell to Orchard Farm 44-30.