After suffering a heartbreaking loss to Montgomery County on Dec. 20, the Wellsville-Middletown girls basketball team was looking to bounce back with a home game against South Callaway, its first game of 2025.

But the New Year didn’t get off to a good start for the Tigers as they fell 48-34 to the Bulldogs in a non-Eastern Missouri Conference contest. W-M lost its second straight game after winning two games in a row and dropped to 2-5.

“We just didn’t play very well tonight,” W-M coach Steve Lasman said.

The Tigers will be pretty busy in the 2025 portion of their schedule, playing 13 games and two tournaments. They were scheduled to play Westran in a first-round game of the New Franklin Tournament on Jan. 8.

Lasman is in his first year as W-M girls coach after heading the W-M boys team the last seven years. He said his girls team has a simple mission for the next month or so.

“We’re going to try to get better,” Lasman said. “That’s our goal.”

The Tigers, who finished 13-13 last year, lost their first three games before pulling off their first win of the season on Dec. 6, a 32-29 victory over Bowling Green in the seventh-place game of the Montgomery County Tournament. They got their second win a week later after knocking off Liberty Christian 38-28 in their home opener.

W-M appeared to pick up another home victory on Dec. 20, when it faced Montgomery County in the Pink Out Game at home. The Tigers led 39-34 with 1:27 left and were looking to beat their cross-county rivals for the first time in 12 years. But the Wildcats came from behind to win 42-39.

“We played great that night,” Lasman said. “We should have won that game. We got into foul trouble and that’s what hurt us. But that’s over and done.”

Against South Callaway, the Tigers led 20-17 earlier in the third quarter before the Mokane school went on a 16-0 run to take a 33-20 lead it never relinquished. The Bulldogs took advantage of nine W-M turnovers in the third quarter.

Senior Keigan Hall turned in another strong performance for the Tigers, finishing with 13 points. She scored 20 in the loss to Montgomery County.

Also for W-M, sophomore Elly Cash had nine, senior Hallie Guzy finished with five, senior Alivia Stewart and sophomore Aubrey Harmon each had three and junior Helenea McKenzie had a point.

South Callaway snapped a three-game losing streak and improved to 4-4 with the win over the Tigers.