The Whitman-Hanson girls basketball team put themselves in position to clinch another trip to the MIAA tournament Tuesday night with a pair of wins last week, but they will have to wait until Friday for another chance to punch their ticket.

The undersized Panthers refused to go away against the Duxbury Dragons, but couldn’t overcome a poor offensive first half in a 50-44 loss at the high school that keeps them one win away from the postseason.

Duxbury seemed to be headed for an early blowout after holding Whitman-Hanson to four points in the first quarter and 10 in the second, but the Panthers were able to make it a game in the second half. Twice the Panthers were able to make it a two-score lead for the Dragons in the second half, but both times Duxbury was able to string points together to kill their momentum.

Whitman-Hanson cut the lead to three with 15 seconds left in the fourth quarter, but didn’t get a chance for a tying shot as they were forced to foul.

“We got ourselves in a hole in the first half, and we just couldn’t get that next step,” head coach Jim Daley said. “It’s not for lack of trying. They made more shots than we did, but we played as hard as we could.”

The Dragons were able to exploit their height advantage by feeding the ball to 6’2” center Michela North for 12 points in the first half, but Abby Trapp and Alyssa Eaton were able to neutralize North in the second half, holding her to two points the rest of the way.

“I thought they worked hard and did a real nice job,” Daley said. “I thought Abby had a great game.”

Trapp and Panther forward Brittney Porter also took control of the paint on the offensive end of the floor in the third quarter. The two attacked the basket to combine for 11 points in the quarter and help the Panthers cut Duxbury’s lead to six, 27-21, with four and a half minutes left in the quarter.

But Duxbury captain Shannon McLaughlin answered with a 3 pointer and then hit another one following a Panther turnover to push the Dragon lead back to 12 in the blink of an eye.

“She’s such a nice player and if you let her slip away, it’s over,”

The Panthers battled back to close to nine points by the end of the quarter, and then came within six again in the fourth when Mackenzie Hatfield hit a three with 3:30 on the clock, but again the Dragons rallied for six straight points to go back up by double digits.

Whitman-Hanson made one last charge behind a pair of buckets by Alyssa Eaton and big threes from Hatfield and Marina Kelley, but ran out of time.

The Panthers will see the Dragons again on Feb. 16, and with a little better start to the game, Daley said he hopes for a different result.

“I hope it means something when we play them at the end,” he said. “With this team playing this hard for the rest of the year, we’re going to win more than we lose.”

The loss snapped a two-game winning streak for the Panthers, who avenged an earlier loss to the Rockland Bulldogs by beating them 52-34 at the high school on Thursday. Hatfield notched a double-double with 10 assists to go with a team-high 11 points while fellow senior Cassie Chernicki was also in double figures with 10.

The Panthers were just as dominant the next night when they traveled to Pembroke and picked up a 49-33 win over the Titans behind 10 points from Trapp and nine from Hatfield.

Whitman-Hanson will try to clinch their spot in the tournament Friday night when they play host to the Bridgewater-Raynham Trojans.