The Wellsville-Middletown girls basketball team celebrated some more hardware from the Keytesville Tournament on Jan. 31.

The Tigers placed third in the tournament after beating the Northwestern/Keytesville Tigers 26-18 in the third-place game. It’s the sixth year in a row that the W-M girls placed in the top three at the Chariton County town.

The Tigers placed second last year, finished third in 2021 and 2022 and came out on top in 2021 and 2022.

Also, the W-M boys lost to Norborne 50-37 in the consolation championship game. They placed third at Keytesville a year ago.

Both W-M boys and girls have eight regular season games remaining. They were scheduled to play a road game against Elsberry on Feb. 3. They have a home game against Sturgeon on Feb. 5 and travel to Louisiana the following day.

The W-M girls improved to 6-10 with the win over Northwestern/Keytesville. They snapped a six-game losing streak and matched last year’s win total.

The Tigers, the No. 1 seed in the tournament, lost 33-26 to North Missouri Home School in a semifinal game on Jan. 30. It was the first time in 10 days that W-M played a game.

In the third-place game, the Tigers stormed to a 9-0 lead and never looked back. Junior Elly Cash scored the first five points of the game and went on to finish with a team-high 11 points with seven rebounds.

Sophomore Mia Romecka finished with five points and six rebounds, freshman Alexis Brennan had four points, senior Helanea McKenzie had two points and four rebounds and freshman Julieanna Dodd finished with two points.

Last year, W-M lost to Higbee 60-30 in the tournament finals.

Northwestern/Keytesville, the No. 6 seed, upset third-seeded Bevier 38-31 in the first round. The Tigers lost to eventual champion Norborne in the semifinals.

In the boys consolation finals, the Tigers trailed 17-4 to Norborne after the first quarter and never recovered. W-M got within six points (33-27) in the third quarter, but that’s as close as it got. 

The Tigers, who were the No. 5 seed, lost to Southwest 64-61 in overtime in a first-round game on Jan. 28. Southwest won the game on a 3-pointer as time expired in the overtime period. The 61 points marked a season-high for W-M.

The next night, the Tigers knocked off eighth-seeded Keytesville 20-11 in the consolation semifinals to pick up their second win of the season and snap a six-game losing streak.

W-M dropped to 2-16 with the loss to Norborne in the consolation finals. The Tigers won seven games a year ago.

Shane Joles scored 15 points and Andrew Maskey and Willard Shireman each had eight points. Joles and Shireman had five rebounds apiece.

Both W-M teams played their second tournament of the season. Earlier in January, they competed in the Madison Tournament. Both teams finished with a 1-2 record.