North girls surprise Richmond County

Mon. February 20, 2012 at 10:00 p.m. | By Contributed Story

ROCKINGHAM | The North Davidson girls basketball team had a hard time finding Richmond Senior, getting into the gym approximately 20 minutes before tipoff.

This strategy could be coach Kendra Puckett’s plan for the rest of the playoffs.

The Black Knights trailed only once in the contest, for a little over one minute in the third quarter, in a 54-43 upset of the Midwest pod’s sixth-seeded Raiders Monday night at Raider Gymnasium to advance to the second round of the 4-A state playoffs.

North Davidson will face Southwest Guilford on Wednesday night in High Point. It was the second straight year Richmond has been knocked out in the opening round. Last season, the Raiders were eliminated by Knightdale.

“We got lost coming down here,” Puckett said. “We didn’t know much about Richmond before the game. I told the team to play hard and that’s all I could ask of them.”

Because the playoffs brackets weren’t released until late Saturday afternoon, Richmond coach Nellie Harrington, like Puckett, wasn’t able to gather much information about the opposition before the game.

“We didn’t know what to expect from them,” Harrington said. “I thought they might be smaller than what they were and I didn’t expect them to play with that much tempo.”

North Davidson (9-16) scored the game’s first nine points and took a 28-25 lead at halftime.

Richmond took its only lead of the game with a 4-0 mini-run to open the second half, capped off when Taylor Diggs rattled in a 14-foot jumper in the lane.

“We just needed to settle down on offense,” Puckett said. “We played well in the first quarter and then we started to rush some shots in the second quarter.”

After Puckett called a timeout to calm her team down, it was all Black Knights.

Kelcey Lowery hit a layup to give North Davidson the lead for good with 5:13 left in the third period and ignited a 10-0 run. Samantha Honeycutt added a runner in the lane, Taylor Darrow connected on a layup and a putback, and Alayaisa Lindsay knocked in a jumper during this stretch.

Darrow finished with a game-high 14 points. Ivy Kiker added 12 for the Black Knights, while Sydney Bryan scored 11.

“I thought when we made that run at them, that was going to be the turning point in the game,” Harrington said. “I think the girls were still down after Friday night’s loss to Scotland. It looked like some of them weren’t focused out there.”

Richmond (16-9) made one final push at 11th-seeded North Davidson in the fourth quarter. The Raiders cut the margin to six at 44-38 after a Jade Evans layup and a 3-pointer from the left wing by Shaquail Wall at the 6:29 mark of the fourth quarter.

Once again, the Black Knights responded with six straight points over the next 2 1/2 minutes to put the game away.
Harrington thought North Davidson’s offense, which set several screens to get players open under the basket, frustrated her team.

“We got beat because we weren’t switching on the picks,” Harrington said. “We played hard for a little bit, then we just gave up.”
Richmond’s Tiara Ellerbe finished her career with 12 points in the loss. Evans also scored 12 for the Raiders.