The Colquitt County Lady Packer middle school basketball teams swept Coffee Middle at the C.A. Gray Junior High gymnasium on Thursday.
The sixth- and seventh-grade team won 20-13 and the eighth-graders won 39-19.
The eighth-grade team completed an undefeated regular season and claimed the top seed in the Southwest Georgia Middle School Athletic Conference tournament that will start Monday.
Addison Wiley led the way with 13 points and Kyndle Pettis and Delyzsha Tillman added nine points each as the Lady Packers jumped out to a 10-1 lead and never looked back.
“Today was about taking care of business,” coach Kim Taylor said. “That was a good team, they had good size and athleticism, but we battled hard, kept applying pressure and did what we needed to do.  Now, we focus on the playoffs.”
Four others got into the scoring column, as Taylor Brown, Analee Thompson, Kylie Pettis and Kaniyah Brown each contributed a basket in the victory.
In the first game, the youngest Lady Packers entered the day as the No. 4 seed in the conference, facing a once-beaten Coffee team with several impressive wins on its resume.
It was the Lady Packers, however, who overcame a slow start and outlasted the Lady Trojans.
Needing a win and trailing 9-8 at halftime, Colquitt County got a spark from D’Kyra Jones in the third quarter.
Jones scored six of her team’s eight points in the period as the Lady Packer guards forced turnovers and repeatedly put Coffee ball-handlers in bad positions as Colquitt built a 17-10 lead going into the final period.
“That third quarter was huge,” coach Jon Scroggins said. “We knew we had to be the aggressor. Coffee is used to dictating the action, but our plan was to force them to adjust to us.”
Scroggins praised Jones, Mea Rodriguez and Caitlyn Spralding for initiating the defense, but reserved the highest accolades for Makairi James.
“They had a girl who was so tall and so talented, we knew we had to make her night difficult,” he said. “Makairi did exactly what we asked her to do. She was physical, played great disciplined defense and took her role seriously.
“I think she had been averaging 15 or 20 points, and we held her to five.”
James also scored four points. Rodriguez added three, and Spralding scored two.
When the dust settled across the conference, the seventh- grade girls earned a tie for second place in the conference.
Colquitt also held the tie-breaker that earned them the No. 2 seed for the season-ending tournament.
“I can’t say enough about this team,” Scroggins said. “They’ve worked so hard and improved so much from the beginning of the season until  now. Now it’s just a matter of finishing what we’ve started.”
Both girls teams will host playoff games on Monday at C.A. Gray.
The sixth- and seventh-grade team will meet Thomas County Central Middle at 4:30 p.m., and the eighth-grade team will face Lowndes Middle immediately after.