Gallery by Tina Laney
Fairlea – Strategy and schemes are all part of winning postseason high school basketball games.
Bottom line, however, you still have to make shots.
Thursday night inside the Spartan Gym, the shots would not fall for Riverside in the Class AAAA Region 3 co-final clash with Greenbrier East.
When the final horn sounded, the Lady Spartans had pulled away late to take a 53-30 win over the Lady Warriors.
Greenbrier East (21-4), the No. 5 seed, will now play No. 4 seed Morgantown (16-8) Tuesday morning at 11:15 a.m. in the quarterfinal round of the state tournament.
Although the final score indicated an easy win, the Lady Spartans could never shake Riverside free until late in the contest.
After losing by 40 points in its regular season clash with East back in December, the Warriors only trailed by nine at the break.
The tough part for the visitors was the numerous opportunities that went wanting which could have changed the complexion of the game.
“I’m not sure we ever had them where we wanted them, but I think the issue was we just couldn’t get the ball in the basket,” Riverside head coach John Frisby said. “We had planned all week to eliminate (Jada) Waller and (Kennedy) Stewart from the game. We were doing a pretty good job of that at first, but we couldn’t get shots to fall. It could have been from nerves or a lot of different variables. We start a couple of freshman and being at somebody else’s place always hurts some. It’s just basketball.”
Having scored just 15 first half points themselves, Greenbrier East head coach, and current W.Va. Governor, Jim Justice felt he had to light a fire under his troops.
“Really and truly, they defended our guards,” Justice said. “Ava (Workman) goes down at the get-go with an ankle. We get in a little bit of foul trouble and everything. In all honesty, we had a major, major come to Jesus (meeting) at halftime. (Riverside) missed so many shots and they weren’t going to shoot that way in the second half.”
Many of the missed looks for the Warriors came after beating the East pressure just over mid-court.
“I thought (the press) worked to our advantage, except when we would get to the basket, we couldn’t score,” Frisby said. “If we had gone in at halftime having made three-quarters of those shots, it may have been a different game.”
From the Greenbrier East perspective, Justice was happy with the ball pressure applied by his team.
“That is what a press does. Not only do you steal the ball from time to time, but it speeds them up.” Justice said. “It gets them out of their rhythm and they shoot shots that don’t go in. That is what we want.”
A good portion of the struggles for East came at the hands of the Riverside defensive strategy, especially on Stewart.
The answer for the Lady Spartans was to go inside to 6-foot-1 sophomore Hannah Fuller who made Riverside pay dearly.
“Fuller has hurt us for three games this year. It wasn’t the first time we saw Fuller,” Frisby said. “We planned for her as much as we could. If you don’t account for (Waller and Stewart), you don’t have a chance. Then when you do account for them, they have the other weapons that can step in eliminate that threat.”
Fuller, who ended with a game-high 16 points, opened the contest with back-to-back scores and duplicated that feat to start the second half.
“We stopped taking the bad shots and right off of the get-go went to Hannah,” Justice said. “We ran our stack play and then we scored again. On the press, she would come up and take the ball. She was our press break there. Hannah played a heck of a game.”
The defensive strategy for Riverside also took a big blow in the third period when Ava Ward and Laila Campbell picked up their fourth fouls.
“It was just a little bit of youth. Two of our best people were in some foul trouble,” Frisby said. “We had Ava guarding Stewart. We were box-1 on her or even triangle-and-2. We worked hard on that and I thought we did an amazing job at that. You have to roll the dice on that because Kennedy Stewart can shoot it from the bleachers. You have to account for her, so the risk was worth it. If our shots would have fallen in the first half, it may have been different.”
After going scoreless in the opening half, Stewart drained two 3-balls and tallied 10 points in the third period.
“The third quarter we scored 20 and we only had 15 at halftime. That was nice to see,” Justice said. “We finally got Kennedy open. Kennedy just didn’t shoot the ball well in the first half, plus they were dogging her like crazy.”
Greenbrier East held a 17 point lead with eight minutes to play, which went to 38-19 on a corner 3-pointer from Mackenna McClure 30 seconds into the final quarter.
While McClure’s triple looked to be the knockout blow, the Warriors came off the canvas fighting with six straight points that forced a timeout from the home team.
“Even though we weren’t down that far, we traditionally this year had been terrible in the third quarters,” Frisby said. “They got us at Riverside in that third quarter. They scored 18 and we scored seven. It kind of happened again. Credit to them. Coach Justice does a great job with them.”
Out of the timeout, the Lady Spartans put the game to bed by scoring 13 straight points. Ward and Campbell also fouled out on back-to-back possessions in the middle of the spurt.
Stewart ended the night with 15 points, while Waller scored nine and McClure added eight. Ward and senior Riley Starsick each had eight for Riverside.
R: 2 4 12 12 – 30
GE: 6 9 20 18 – 53
Riverside
Riley Starsick 8, Laila Campbell 3, Sophie Bare 6, Anna Roop 3, Ava Ward 8, Katie Johnson 2. Totals 13 3-9 30.
Greenbrier East
Kennedy Stewart 15, Jada Waller 9, Josie Banton 1, Sandy Banton 3, Mackenna McClure 8, Liz Wooding 1, Hannah Fuller 16. Totals: 17 9-20 53.
