ROCKINGHAM — Tuesday marked the day Richmond Senior High School head girls basketball coach Teddy Moseley had been waiting for since he was hired in June — the season opener.
The Lady Raiders’ season officially began by hosting non-conference opponent Whiteville High School, and they outlasted the Lady Wolfpack down the stretch, winning 43-38. The win gave Moseley his first career victory, while it also marked the first time Richmond has won its first game of the season since defeating Cheraw High School to open the 2013-14 campaign.
“It feels really good to open this season with a win,” an emotional Moseley said after the game. “I was able to get that monkey off my back. It’s a little bittersweet for me since this was the first time in my life that my dad (Allen Moseley) wasn’t around to see me coach. It’s a little emotional for me.” (Moseley’s father passed away earlier this month.)
Richmond (1-0) and Whiteville (0-1) both got off to a slow start in the first quarter, as the Lady Raiders used baskets by senior Taliah Wall, sophomore Jakerra Covington and freshman Allyiah Swiney to hold a small 6-3 lead after the first eight minutes of play.
Moseley’s squad responded in the second frame with its most points of any quarter, netting 16 more points before the heading into the half up 22-12. Covington, a sophomore forward, netted a game-high 14 points to help lead the Lady Raiders to victory. She opened the second quarter with an offensive rebound putback under the hoop, and added another jumper and a free throw before the half.
Junior center Jardai Tillman, who finished with eight points, muscled her way through the paint with 6:22 left in the second quarter to give Richmond a nine-point advantage, 12-3, capping off a 10-0 Richmond run spanning back to the first quarter. However, Whiteville closed the gap to just one point, 13-12, with 2:54 remaining.
Something Moseley noted in the preseason was his team’s ability to score off of turnovers and in transition, and that’s exactly what happened in the final stretch before the buzzer. Junior guard Allexis Swiney drained a three-pointer to end the Whiteville run, which sparked a 9-0 run by the Lady Raiders to end the half. Wall put back an offensive rebound, Allexis Swiney intercepted a pass for an easy lay up and Covington poked her own rebound into the twine to close things out.
“The message is the same that it has been (all summer and preseason),” Moseley explained. “We want to play fast but not in a hurry. We made too many careless mistakes tonight because we were in a hurry (early one). But when we were patient, we were able to make easy baskets. The biggest thing we need to work on is making layups.”
A new philosophy for Richmond this season under Moseley is to use a revolving door of players to keep legs fresh, and the head coach used that to his advantage in the second half. Coming off the bench to score were juniors Jasmine Ewing and Layne Maultsby, the latter hitting a big-time three-pointer from the right corner to extend the lead 28-21 with 3:52 to go in the third.
But a 7-0 run by Whiteville that saw a triple by Trinity Smith helped erase the deficit, and back-to-back free throws by I’Reona Jonhson tied the game at 28 points. It was the first time Richmond hadn’t held the lead since trailing 3-2 early in the first quarter.
Covington broke the tie and gave Richmond a four-point lead, 32-28, heading into the final stanza, as she made two buckets, the last on a breakaway assisted by a steal from teammate Jayla McDougald.
Only three Lady Raiders would find the basket in the final eight minutes, as Tillman opened the fourth on a 6-0 run to extend the lead. All three of her baskets came from under the hoop in under a minute off the game clock. Covington added a breakaway layup to give her team its largest lead of the night, 12 points, 40-28.
A free throw from Covington and two more from Wall in the final 1:37 iced the cake for the Lady Raiders.
“I take full responsibility for the runs that (Whiteville) had,” Moseley said of letting the Lady Wolfpack back in it. “It’s my job to be able to stop those runs. We just need to be more disciplined — that will prevents those runs from happening.
“Jakerra was really big for us tonight,” he concluded. “She was rebounding the ball and there were a couple of times when she went coast to coast to score which helped us.”
Aiding Covington’s career-high 14 points were eight from both Tillman and Wall, six by Allexis Swiney, three from Maultsby, and two points each from Ewing and Alliyah Swiney. The leading scorers for Whiteville were Johnson and Jazmin Faison, who both had 10 points.
Richmond will be off until Friday, Dec. 3, when it’ll travel to Pine Forest High School for its second game of the season. That will also be the Raider boys basketball team’s season opener.
