MOULTRIE — The Colquitt County boys and girls basketball teams made the most of their consolation games on Saturday and will go to the Class AAAAA tournament later this week as Region 1-AAAAA’s No. 3 seed.

The Lady Packers, after having lost to Tift County three times previously this season, finally knocked off the Lady Devils, winning 50-45.

Colquitt’s girls will meet Morrow High in Atlanta on Saturday in a first-round stat ttournament game.

Morrow’s girls, the No. 1 seed in the Region 2-AAAAA tournament, were upset by Stephenson in the championship game 51-36 to finish No. 2.

Stephenson will play host to Tift County.

The Lady Devils, who won their first region regular-season championship since 1993, lost both of their tournament games and fell from No. 1 to No. 4.

Colquitt’s boys defeated their second higher-seeded opponent of the tournament on Saturday, taking a 55-50 victory over No. 3 seeded Lowndes.

The Packers will play at Redan on Friday.

Colquitt’s boys went into the tournament seeded No. 5, but beat No. 4 seed Coffee 57-51 in overtime on Thursday.

On Friday, the Packers were tied with top-seeded Tift County in the final minute, only to fall 42-37.

But the Packers put the disheartening loss to the Blue Devils behind them to knock off Lowndes for the second time this season.

The Vikings never led after the Packers’ James Trimble grabbed a teammate’s missed shot and put it back in to give Colquitt a 28-27 lead with 6:13 left in the third quarter.

The Packers led 50-38 with 2:43 left in the game, when Lowndes strung together three straight 3-pointers by Keith Austin, Brandon Moore and Ed Young and a pair of free throws by Moore to pull to within one with 37 seconds left in the game.

But as he did in the victory over Coffee on Thursday, Orion Ponder hit some clutch free throws down the stretch.

The junior point guard ended the Vikings run with a foul shot with 32 seconds left to put the Packers back up by two.

After the Vikings Larry Jackson hit a free throw at the other end to cut the Packers lead back to one, Ponder hit both ends of a two-shot foul with 9.7 seconds left.

Antwan Tuff added a breakaway layup at the buzzer to give the Packers a five-point margin of victory.

The win assures the Packers of no worse than a .500 record this season.

Col-quitt’s boys will take a 14-13 record into the tournament.

“I thought our kids showed a lot of character,” said Packers coach Kirven Davis, who said the performance of several players off the bench — including Danny Hunt, Rashawn Melvin, Duke Banks and Amar Parikh — made big contributions to the victory.

“That’s why I tell the kids on the bench to keep their heads in the game,” Davis said.

Trimble finished an outstanding tournament by scoring a season-high 22 points and grabbing, unofficially, 10 rebounds.

Antwan Tuff added 10 points. Melvin had seven, Andrew Wallace had five and Ponder had the three crucial free throws.

Hunt also had three, Jeremy DeBruce and Ronald Wilson each had two and Duke Banks had a free throw.

DeBruce did not play in the second half because of shin splints.

As they did in their first-round tournament game against Houston County the night before, Tift County’s girls fell behind early to Colquitt County and never were able to catch up.

The Lady Packers led 12-4 at the end of the first quarter and never trailed again.

Tift County cut the Lady Packers lead to three on a pair of Lindsay Welker free throws with 40.3 seconds left in the game, but Ashley Stafford answered with a pair of her own two seconds later and Nikki Hudson got another with 27 seconds left.

The Colquitt County girls, who struggled to shoot 50 percent from the free throw line this season, hit 16-of-19 to finally knock off the Blue Devils and put the disappointing 49-48 loss to Lowndes the night before behind them.

The Lady Packers had lost to Tift County 44-42 in November in the tournament at Lowndes and fell by 47-27 and 51-32 in the two region games.

Dorothy Strong had her second-straight outstanding effort for the Lady Packers. After scoring 19 in the loss to Lowndes on Friday, she came back to score 14 — including 12 in the first half — to lead her team in the victory over the Lady Devils.

Strong, the senior point guard, had 43 points in the three tournament games.

Ashley Stafford had 11 points and hit all five of her free throws.

Taquella Coates and Tiffany Troupe each had six points, Jessica Lemus and Laquita Smith each had four, Nicolle Thomas had three and Nikki Hudson had two.

Lemus led Colquitt County with seven rebounds. Coates and Troupe each had five. Lemus also had four steals.

“We zoned them and it worked real well,” Lady Packers coach Joe Parker said. “We got some good looks. And we were real aggressive on offensive.

“I thought it was real important to win that game.”

The Lady Devils, who fell behind 18-2 to Houston County before losing 38-35 on Friday, were led by Welker, who had 17. Jessica Jenkins and Stephanie Brownlee each had eight for Tift County, which will take a 19-8 record into their state tournament game against Stephenson.