It was over almost before it really began.

Three-point shots from Alex Mandeville, Jaqualon Lovette and Brennan Chatman in the first quarter spearheaded a 19-point opening quarter effort as New Iberia Senior High closed out the regular season with a 69-44 District 3-5A win over LaGrange Friday.

Mandeville and Lovette each hit two 3-pointers and Chatman added a fifth as the Yellow Jackets rolled out to a 19-6 first quarter lead over the Gators and never looked back in improving to 20-13 overall and 5-2 in district.

“I’m looking at the scoreboard and I’m still not happy,” NISH coach Todd Russ said. “Yes we scored 69 but we gave up 44 and that’s a lot of points for us to give up and going into this playoff stretch run for us, there’s a lot of things that we need to be sound on and solid.

“There were times tonight we looked playoff ready and there were times we were watching the scoreboard. Still an immature group that needs to get better in certain areas.”

Still, complaints aside, Russ was still happy to see his team come away with a convincing win.

“It was good to see the ball go through the basket, we had good ball movement, we had some great looks and had some guys who were willing to step up and take some shots that haven’t taken some in a while,” the NISH coach said. “It was good to see Stiles Jolivet be a little be more aggressive in shooting the basketball and I thought Alex Mandeville played really well.”

Mandeville led NISH with 18 points, Lovette added 14 and Ralph Johnson finished with 12 for NISH, who had 10 players get at least 1 point.

NISH entered the final game of the regular season as the seventh seed in Class 5A, according to the most recent, but unofficial power rankings from the LHSAA. The Jackets (17.23) were ahead of eighth-seed H.L. Bourgeois (17.20) and behind sixth-seed Bonnabel (17.34).

A top eight finish in the power rankings would guarantee NISH a home first round playoff game Friday and barring an upset, would also mean that the Jackets would play host to a second-round game before having to go on the road in the quarterfinals.

If NISH holds the seventh seed, it would play host to the 26th seed in the first round, which would be a rematch with LaGrange.

“I don’t even want to think about that right now,” Russ said about the postseason. “There are still games that need to be played tonight that will affect everyone, including us, when it comes to how the seeds will fall in the playoffs.

“The brackets will be released Monday and I’ll worry about it then.”

For now, Russ wants to make sure that his team is playoff-ready regardless of who the first round opponent is.

“We had a lot of positives tonight,” the NISH coach said. “But there are still some areas that I would like to tighten up a little bit more moving forward.”

Donte Dodd led LaGrange (10-16, 2-7) with 10 points and Malachi Fairly added 7 points.

“This was the best we shot all year and hopefully we can continue with that,” Russ said. “And we didn’t play bad defense tonight, I just know that in the playoffs every possession matters and we have to maximize our possessions on both sides of the court.”