To call Saturday night’s Class A girls’ basketball state sectional game at Arts & Sciences a defensive struggle would be an understatement.

To say the host Lady Patriots never thought they could be held below 30 points is an even bigger one.

For the second year in a row, the Region 3-A champion Lady Patriots ended their season with a home loss to the Region 4 runner-up. Saturday night it was Pickett County, which earned a berth to next week’s state tournament with a 29-26 victory.

“I can count the number of times we’ve scored 26 points in a quarter,” CSAS coach Clay Martin said. “I guess it just wasn’t our night.”

The Lady Patriots’ offensive struggles began early in the first half, during which they were called for four offensive fouls. With senior center Jamisha Featherstone on the bench the entire second quarter with two personals, the Lady Bobcats went inside to take a 15-10 lead, but the CSAS defense held them scoreless over the final 4:10 of the first half.

While the Lady Patriots were getting the defensive stops they needed, they struggled to convert them to points until Courtney McPhearson’s putback with just under a minute remaining before halftime.

“To me, it looked like we were wide open,” Martin said. “They took some charges on our penetration and I think that might have thrown us off a little, but we were just missing open shots.”

Pickett County held the ball for a final shot of the half, but Alexis Anderson stole it for CSAS with 11.4 seconds left and found an open Kayla Kelly, who connected from behind the 3-point line just before the buzzer to tie the game at 15.

The momentum, however, failed to carry over into the second half, when the normally potent CSAS offense was repeatedly stifled. Held to four points in the third quarter, the Lady Patriots trailed 23-19 going into the fourth, and Pickett County opened the final period with a basket from Terrah Garner to extend its lead to six.

“We knew they had athletes,” Pickett County coach Brent Smith said. “We just tried to keep them out of the paint. I’m not a zone coach, but we played zone probably 90 percent of the game tonight.”

CSAS fought its way back with another 3 from Kelly and a basket from Chariah Gordon to get within 27-24 with 1:44 remaining, and Pickett County missed four free throws in the final 1:02.

Kelly scored with 20.6 seconds left to cut the Lady Patriots’ deficit to 28-26, but Garner made the front end of her one-and-one with 15.5 to play, and CSAS could never get the shot it needed to send the game to overtime. Kelly finished with a game-high 14 points as the Lady Patriots ended their season 29-3.

“As bad as we played, we were still in a position to win the game, and that’s all we could ask for,” Martin said. “I just told them that at the end of the day, it’s just a game. Does it hurt? Yes, but we gave it our all. We fought until the end.”