Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 19, 1993 TAG: 9311190213
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-9 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: M.J. DOUGHERTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHLANDS LENGTH: Medium
In the third quarter, it found some offense.
As a result, the Indians will be back to defend their Group AA high school girls' basketball championship.
They easily beat host Richlands 53-27 in the Region IV semifinals at Richlands Middle School to earn a state tournament berth.
Blacksburg (22-2) will travel to Gate City (20-4) Saturday night at 7:30 for the regional championship game.
Richlands (19-4) saw its season end with back-to-back losses in tournament play after having gone through the regular season without losing to a state school.
An unusual tactic started Blacksburg on its way to victory - a zone. Known for their man-to-man pressure defense, the Indians went into a 3-2 zone because of foul problems. The defense not only protected the players with fouls, it prevented Richlands from getting any offense going as well.
"We try to play a lot of different defenses; we mix it up to keep teams off balance," said Blacksburg forward Meredith Braine, who scored six of her 12 points and pulled down five of her eight rebounds in the second quarter.
"We wanted them to make them make the outside shots to beat us. And we wanted to shut off their inside game."
The Lady Blues couldn't penetrate the zone and thus had to try outside shots. They had no success - going 0-for-5 from long range and 1-for-9 overall in the period - and trailed 23-14 at intermission.
"We knew they used a zone when they had some foul trouble, so it didn't surprise me," said Richlands coach Reuben Pritchard. "For us, that [the defense] was pretty good because we're normally a pretty good outside shooting team. We were short shooting because we were leg weary. The players had to play mismatches and that tired us out."
Once the Indians took the lead, they used their defense to generate the offense to extend it. Over the last 6 minutes, 19 seconds of the third quarter, they went on an 18-4 run and put the game out of reach.
"We weren't clicking before," said Blacksburg forward Lisa Price, who had nine of her game-high 13 points points in the surge. "Mickey [McGuigan, the Blacksburg coach] told us that we weren't playing to our potential. So we came out and got ourselves into the game."
The run cliched the victory as Blacksburg maintained at least a 20-point lead throughout the final period.
Richlands, the regional runner-up to the Indians last year, had to play almost the entire game without starting center Martha Phipps. In the district tournament, she tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee.
Phipps, who scored 22 points against Blacksburg last year, tried to play with a brace on her knee and scored the Lady Blues' first basket. But she pulled up hurt after diving for a rebound two minutes into the contest.
by CNB