By CURTIS ROCKWELL

Item Sports Editor

Visiting D’Iberville swept a pair of Division 8-4A games from Picayune on Tuesday night as both home teams wrapped up the regular season portions of their league slates.

The Warriors took a 54-44 win over the Maroon Tide, avenging a loss to Picayune earlier in the season.

And although the loss dropped the Tide to 7-5 in division action, Picayune will still be the third seed for next week’s league tournament. What the loss did, however, is drop the Tide to 11-11 on the season and put Picayune in jeopardy of perhaps a losing season. Picayune hasn’t had a losing season in basketball since 1974.

The Tide trailed just 16-10 after the first period, but the Warriors held Picayune scoreless in the second quarter and took a 22-10 lead at halftime.

Picayune fell behind by as much as 27-12 in the second half, before rallying and cutting the deficit to 42-37 on a short jump shot by Vince Gable late in the game.

With possession of the ball and still trailing by that margin with 1:23 to to play, D’Iberville’s Andrew Francois stole the ball and got an easy layup to seal the win. Sophomore Derrione Stewart paced Picayune with a game high 14 points and had 10 rebounds as well for a double-double. Gable, held scoreless in the first half, scored 11 in the second half.

The win was just the fifth on the season for D’Iberville, but the Warriors have now beaten every Pearl River County school once. Francois had 12 to led the Warriors.

In the girls game, Picayune played without leading scorer and rebounder Monique Brown and the Lady Warriors took advantage.

After Karly Moran gave the Lady Tide an early 2-0 lead, D’Iberville scored 18 of the next 20 points for an 18-4 lead an never looked back.

Janea Wills led Picayune with 11 and Moran added 10, as Picayune dropped it’s fifth straight game and fell to 5-16 overall and 3-7 in league play.