LUMBERTON, N.C. – Friday’s road game at Sandhills Athletic Conference foe Lumberton High School may have felt like déjà vu for the Richmond Senior High School Lady Raiders basketball team – but not necessarily in a good way.
Playing the Lady Pirates for the second time in three days, Richmond got off to another slow start that ultimately resulted in suffering its fifth consecutive loss. Lumberton topped the Lady Raiders 50-35.
In Wednesday’s game, Lumberton (18-4, 9-3 SAC) held the Lady Raiders scoreless in the first quarter, jumping out to a 16-0 lead. And Friday was unfortunately much of the same for Richmond (5-12, 3-9 SAC), as it followed a similar script, this time falling behind 18-0 in the opening 6:51 before freshman Jakerra Covington put a stop to the thrashing with a putback bucket on an offensive rebound.
Lumberton’s senior point guard London Thompson owned the first quarter, as she hit five field goals for 10 points. She dominated all game on both sides of the ball and finished with a game-high 22 points. Richmond ended the first quarter trailing 22-4 after senior forward Lexyonna Ingram hit a short jumper with 30 seconds left.
During the short break between quarters, Richmond head coach Rosalind McDonald’s message to her team was clear: “we need to take care of the ball.” The Lady Raiders’ slow start was attributed to 10 turnovers and a lack of ball control on Lumberton’s end of the court.
Richmond outscored the home team in the second, but it was by a mere two points, 11-9. An early Allexis Swiney driving bucket, coupled with a Taliah Wall free throw, forced Lumberton to call a timeout with 5:33 to play.
Five different Lady Pirates connected on a field goal or free throw to push the lead to a game-high 19 points in the second stanza. However, Richmond managed to cut the lead to 12 points, 27-15, when senior Saleemah Brown, junior Dannon Shepard and Swiney connected on three straight possessions.
In the closing minutes of the first half, Richmond saw its deficit slip to 16 points when Thompson hit a pair of free throws and junior center Alexandria Simpson added a lay in near the buzzer. Heading into the locker room, McDonald’s team trailed 31-15.
Out of the break, Lumberton applied full-court pressure, but the Lady Raiders worked the ball well enough to back the Lady Pirates off. Sophomore guard Keionna Love, who led Richmond with 12 points on the night, hit back-to-back three-pointers from opposite sides of the floor in the opening 1:44 to cut the lead to 10 points, 31-21, for the first time since the 3:24 mark of the first quarter.
The only other basket scored by Richmond in the quarter was a Hailey Miller triple, as she knocked down a contested shot from the left corner to end a 5:26 scoring drought. Thompson netted eight more points (three field goals and two free throws) to lead all scorers. At the end of three, Richmond still trailed by double digits, 41-24.
But Love helped make things interesting, as she opened the fourth quarter with a 7-0 run of her own. First, she hit a sharp-angled three-pointer from the right corner, before following up with a free throw and another triple from the right wing.
Swiney followed her fellow sophomore teammate by draining two free throws, and grabbed a steal at half court that she returned for a layup. With 3:35 to go in regulation, the Lady Raiders trailed by only eight points, their smallest deficit of the second half.
But Thompson and Simpson, along with junior Madison Canady, would combine to notch seven more points to close the game’s scoring for the final score of 50-35. Richmond’s total score tied its season-low for points in a single game.
No other Lady Raiders scored more than seven points, with Ingram finishing with that tally. Swiney added six points, while five other Lady Raiders combined for the remaining buckets.
Aiding Thompson’s 22 points were 11 from Simpson, eight from Canady and seven from junior Rachel O’Neill.
With just two regular season games still on the schedule before the start of the SAC tournament, Richmond will travel to Seventy-First High School on Tuesday, February 6, before hosting Scotland at home next Friday.
The Lady Raiders lost to the Lady Falcons (13-7, 7-4 SAC) 61-47 on January 9, but defeated the Lady Fighting Scots (2-15, 1-10 SAC) on the road 54-43 on January 12.
