ROCKINGHAM — Completing the three-game season sweep of Union Pines High School, the No. 1 Richmond Raiders punched their ticket to the Sandhills Athletic Conference tournament championship on Thursday.
Following a first-round bye, the top-seeded Raiders returned to action for the first time in nearly a week and held off a tough No. 4 Vikings team 70-55 in the semifinal contest.
Union Pines hung with Richmond for the first three quarters before a 21-11 run in the fourth period moved the Raiders to the title game.
A hard drive in the paint by senior guard Xavier Collazo with 57 seconds left in the third quarter broke a 44-44 tie and put the Raiders ahead for good. He finished the game with 8 points, including two three-pointers, and 6 rebounds.
Sophomore shooting guard Paul McNeil followed up his career-high scoring performance from last week with 30 points and 16 rebounds. He added a three-pointer from the left wing with five seconds left in the third to help create a five-point advantage.
Seven other Raiders found the basket in the win — Javian Drake (9 points), Jamarion Wall (7 points), Zion Baldwin (6 points, 8 boards), Dakota Chavis (6 points) and Will Dawkins (4 points, 3 rebounds).
Four different players scored in the first quarter for Richmond, which used a 10-0 run to take a 12-5 lead. McNeil had six of those points on two field goals and two free throws. Chavis added a drive and both Baldwin and Wall had a field goal.
Wall, who scored all of his points in the opening stanza, notched a triple and a drive in the closing 2:40. Two more jumpers from McNeil gave the Raiders a 21-13 lead.
Another strong start to the second quarter put the Raiders up 30-15 following a 9-2 stretch in the first three minutes. Collazo started his scoring with a three-pointer from the left side, Chavis and Drake had two points and Dawkins hit a spinning jumper in the paint.
Four more points by McNeil gave him 15 at the break, but the Vikings nearly erased a 15-point deficit before halftime. In the closing 2:27, the Vikings outscored Richmond 12-0 to cut their deficit to 35-32.
Paul McNeil, who had a game-high 30 points, pulls up for a shot in the first half. (Kyle Pillar/The Richmond Observer)
Isaiah Robbins, who finished with a team-high 19 points for the Vikings (18-7), scored 9 points in the second. Jack Adair added 8 points in the second frame to make it a one-possession lead for Richmond, the first of his 12 points.
The third period was also balanced in scoring, seeing Richmond maintain a five-point lead by outpacing the Vikings 14-12. Collazo and McNeil both hit a triple and a field goal to lead the team with 5 points.
A shot in the paint by Robbins gave the Vikings a 40-39 lead, but Collazo answered with a three-pointer with 3:31 to play. A bucket by Kelby Wright, who had 8 points, tied the game on the next possession.
Dawkins notched his final two points on a pair of free throws to give the Raiders a two-point lead with 3:00 left. That was undone by a basket from Wright, which knotted the game again at 44-44 with 1:16 left in the third.
On the next two possessions, Collazo split two defenders for the two points that put the Raiders ahead for good and McNeil rattled home a triple in the final moments.
McNeil tallied his final 10 points in the fourth quarter, scoring on three putbacks, a jumper and two free throws. Drake, who had just two points entering the final period, added seven more on a three-pointer, a drive and two shots from the line.
Both Baldwin and Chavis added two points in the pivotal fourth quarter. Robbins had 10 points in the second half, including six points in the fourth.
Stevenson Lee Haskell, who had 12 points in the loss, hit a three-pointer with 2:50 to play for Union Pines’ final points. The Raiders closed the game on a 10-0 run.
No. 1 Richmond (22-1) will host No. 2 Pinecrest High School (20-4) in the SAC tournament championship on Friday. The Patriots defeated No. 3 Hoke County 69-65 on Thursday.
The two teams split the regular-season meetings, with the home team winning each time.
The Raiders defeated the Patriots by 28 points in early December, before losing by 4 points on the road last month. Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m.
