Gainesville girls\u2019 basketball closed an up-and down regular season Thursday by falling to visiting Williston 63-41.<\/p>\n
Gainesville (10-9) got off to a rocky start by struggling to break Williston\u2019s press. By the end of the first half, the Hurricanes trailed by eight (37-29).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Williston (16-2) took control in the third quarter by limiting Gainesville to four points to extend its lead to 55-33.<\/p>\n
This has been a season of rebuilding for Gainesville after losing three dominant guards from last year, two of whom went on to play Division 1 collegiate basketball.<\/p>\n
First-year coach Ken Mitchell knew the Hurricanes were facing a tall task.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cAfter you lose two division-one players and have maybe one or two rotational players coming back, we went immediately into building mode,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes\u2019 backcourt has been led by junior guards Mateja Allen and Sarah Collins, who were both a part of last season\u2019s 5A state tournament runner-up team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Allen, who ended the game with 13 points, explained how playing under last season\u2019s senior guards helped her transition into a leadership role on the court this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just allowed me to learn from a lot of good guards and I was able to learn their skills,\u201d Allen said.<\/p>\n
Despite the loss Thursday, the Hurricanes still enter this week\u2019s 5A-District-2 Tournament as the No. 1 seed that earned them a bye in the first round. Gainesville will host the winner of Monday\u2019s opener between four seed Tallahassee Chiles (12-10) and five seed Columbia (6-14) in the semifinals at a date to be announced.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say we were ruled out for the district, but the reality is, if we buckle down, I\u2019m picking GHS,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
2026 FHSAA Girls Basketball District Tournaments 5A District 2<\/a><\/p>\n Category: Gainesville High School<\/a>, High School Sports<\/a>, Williston High School<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gainesville girls\u2019 basketball closed an up-and down regular season Thursday by falling to visiting Williston 63-41. Gainesville (10-9)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,65988,77834,77835],"class_list":{"0":"post-575385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-fhsaa-girls-basketball","10":"tag-gainesville-high-school","11":"tag-williston-high-school"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115996298387689416","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}