ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: East's season ends with 49-42 loss to Gregory-Portland

ALICE – If Weslaco East could’ve bought a few more shots or maybe a few more minutes, it very well could’ve been them on their way to San Antonio.

Instead, the night belonged to the other Wildcats school. Behind some key stretches and clutch free-throw shooting, Gregory-Portland advances to the Sweet 16 with a tough 49-42 win over East in the Class 4A regional quarterfinals in Alice. The Corpus Christi school moves on to play Lake Travis in San Antonio on Friday.

The Weslaco school never led in this game and in fact were down quickly 7-0 before Frank Ramirez finally put East (26-9 overall) on the board at the 3:25 mark of the opening period. Costly turnovers and frustration with the officials allowed GP to lead by double digits early in the second and it didn’t help matters the squad couldn’t net free-throws at one point missing five-straight. Ticky tack calls put East in foul trouble including center Juan Jasso, who as one of the top scorers on the squad was held to two points in the first half and 14 as a squad.

"Being that this was a regional quarterfinal game, I thought they would let us play," said Weslaco East head coach Art Castillo. "I felt they called too many touch fouls."

Despite what they had to put with, the Wildcats’ defense was good enough to keep them in the game. After giving up 15 in the opening quarter, GP (26-9) was held to six and eight points respectively in the next two periods. At the same time Jasso (11 points), Frank Ramirez (9) and Kenny Valenzuela (11) finally started getting going in the third quarter. Halfway through the third, East managed to narrow the deficit to three on two occasions. The second time, East had three golden opportunities to close the gap to one or even tie it, but the Coastal Bend school got some breathing room going on a 8-2 run into the final stanza headed by Patrick Gutierrez.

But East had one final rally. Trailing by 11 (38-27), Valenzuela nailed back-to-back three’s to close the gap to five. Eric Gutierrez netted a jumper just behind the free-throw line to get Weslaco within four (41-37), but disaster struck when the squad’s best shooter Valenzuela fouled out at the 1:28 mark.

Forcing to foul in the last minute of the contest, Gregory-Portland took the pressure in stride making eight-of-10 foul shots to give them the cushion.

When Alonso Salinas rattled a three-pointer in and out of the basket with exactly one minute left that would’ve cut the margin to three, it was all but over to a fine and historic season at the Mid-Valley school.

"Defensively, we worked hard and it kept us in the game," Castillo said. "If we could’ve brought it offensively, it could’ve been a different outcome."