Lady Warriors Tame Mustangs On Way To Finals

Riverdale Lady Warriors (33-0, 12-0)

Houston Lady Mustangs (28-4, 12-0)

AAA Blue Cross State Championship Semi Finals

For the first time in five games, Riverdale had to break a sweat. After the District 7 Finals versus Stewarts Creek, the Lady Warriors have been on cruise control. Beating their opposition by an average of 32 points in that span.

But, as defending champs, the ladies knew the closer to the championship game, the tighter the competition. Houston would supply that eagerly awaited competition in the AAA State Semi Finals at the Murphy Center.

In the opening minutes RHS would find themselves down 12 to seven, but with a championship pedigree the Warriors wouldn’t falter. In the blink of an eye Riverdale was in front and would go on to take a lead into the half, although a narrow one at 26-23. Riverdale’s reason for struggling in the first? Poor field goal percentage, shooting it at a clip under 30 percent. That stat compounded by a one for 13 effort from behind the arc.

2nd Half

The Riverdale team that went into the locker room at half did not come back out. As the Riverdale faithful, affectionately known as,”The Tribe” witnessed their defending state champion Lady Warriors emerge for the second half.

The lady who sat the tempo and had an outstanding third quarter was one, Brinae Alexander. A junior forward who can stretch the court, drilled two early three’s giving the Mustang D fits. And she wasn’t done there, scoring 13 points in the quarter alone. Her second half would culminate with a perfect shooting performance, going five for five from the field and five for five at the line. Her performance would fuel a lopsided 24-8 quarter for the Warriors.

The third quarter was one the Mustangs could not recover from as the lead ballooned from then on out in favor of RHS. Coach Coffman and his Lady Warriors would go on to take the game 69 to 50.

Next stop for Riverdale, the State Championship game. Awaiting them, a familiar cross state foe, Memphis Central (27-6). Last season in Riverdale’s march to state they faced Memphis Central in the Semi’s, coming away victors by a mark of 80 to 58. This year Central defeated the Cinderellas of the tournament, Dickson County in the early game on the day to reach the finals.

The AAA State Championship will be played tomorrow, Saturday, March 11th at 1pm.

Riverdale Head Coach, Randy Coffman post game press conference.

On what worked in the third quarter:

“The girls who are sitting here in front of you, (Bernae Alexander, Anastasia Hayes, Aislynn Hayes) they’re just unselfish. You’ve got an Anastasia Hayes who’s averaging 25 a game and she comes out today and leads the team in assists. Because she saw and recognized where mismatches were.”

On Brinae Alexander’s big game:

“Brinae stepped her game up, it was really big there in the third quarter. You saw a sense of urgency from her and out of Anstasia and when those two kids are on the same page we’re as good as most teams.”

 On Playing Memphis Central in State:

“We played them last year, their ridiculously athletic. Quick’s everywhere and they play extremely hard. It’s going to be a grind tomorrow, we’ve got a tough task in front of us, but we feel like we’ve got some tough match ups for them as well.”

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