FAYETTEVILLE — Hoping to carry over the momentum from their three-game winning streak on Friday, the Richmond Senior High School girls’ basketball team struggled offensively against Jack Britt High School.
The Lady Raiders would see their streak come to an end, dropping the Sandhills Athletic Conference contest 64-40. At the end of play Friday, Richmond (8-4, 0-3 SAC) was the only team in the SAC without a conference win besides Hoke County High School.
Head coach Teddy Moseley knew ahead of the game that the Lady Buccaneers (9-3, 2-0 SAC) were a well-coached team that ran a tough defense. His Lady Raiders ran into that wall of defense, and scored the fewest amount of points in their last five games.
One bright spot for Richmond was senior guard Keionna Love, who netted a team-high 15 points. She would finish the first half with nine points, and saw 13 of her points come in the second and third quarters.
Fellow senior guard Bree Wall contributed seven points in the win, including five in the first half, and junior point guard Jayla McDougald chipped in six points.
Jack Britt would have three double-digit scorers to help them to the win, starting with Kaya Goldsby’s game-high 16 points. Two other Lady Bucs each finished with 15 points in Nyla Cooper and Ashara Hayes.
Prior to the game, Moseley said his team needed to match Jack Britt’s intensity on the floor, as well as its defensive efforts to pull out a win. But he said that wasn’t the case.
“Tonight, Jack Britt came out from the start and set the tone by taking our hearts out of our chests,” Moseley said. “We were afraid, and we didn’t match their intensity. We didn’t cut to the basket hard, make good passes or take care of the ball.
“Everything we talked about during shoot around, we had a plan to execute to match what we knew Jack Britt could do,” he added. “The plan worked, but our intensity wasn’t there. When teams play aggressive and hand check, we have to be that much tougher.”
Richmond got off to a slow start on both sides of the ball, falling behind 18-7 at the end of the first quarter. Love, McDougald and junior Davionna Campbell each had two points in the frame, with Wall adding a free throw. Goldsby scored seven of her 16 points in the first eight minutes.
The Lady Raiders mounted a solid comeback effort in the second stanza, getting outscored by just two points. Love went off for seven points, including a three-pointer with 30 seconds left before the half to cut the deficit to 11 points.
Wall helped Richmond keep pace with four points, and the Lady Raiders erased two 17-point deficits to go into the break down 35-23.
Cooper, who scored eight points in the third, kickstarted a fast open to the second half for Jack Britt, which saw the Lady Bucs roll to an 8-1 run. That extended their lead to 20 points before Love drove the paint with 5:45 left in the quarter to stop the attack.
Richmond chipped away at the lead, seeing two more field goals from Love, and four combined points from McDougald and Wall. A jumper by Wall in the final 65 seconds of the third made it a 50-34 score.
The final period of the game was Richmond’s lowest scoring affair, seeing just six points added to the board. Junior Jakerra Covington added the final two of her five points, while Jamiya Ratliff and Asia Douglas each hit buckets for their only points of the game. Hayes matched Richmond’s team total with six points of her own.
“We don’t want to be 0-3 in conference,” Moseley said. “I told the girls they need to work on their toughness. People aren’t going to lay over for us because we’re the Richmond Raiders. We have to play with some pride and we played with absolutely no pride tonight.
“The days of playing Anson and Cheraw are gone,” he closed. “They have to pick up their intensity because we are at the bottom of the barrel in the conference. Our effort is there, we just have to be tougher.”
Richmond will practice Monday in preparation for two more SAC games next week. The Lady Raiders will travel to Hoke County High School (4-8, 0-3) on Tuesday before hosting Lumberton High School (8-4, 1-1) on Friday. Both games are set for 6 p.m.
