ROCKINGHAM — With its 22-game regular season in the books, the Richmond Senior High School girls’ basketball team did enough to earn a first round home playoff game.
The Lady Raiders and second-year head coach Taneika Reader will open the 2025-26 NCHSAA 7A West postseason at home against an unfamiliar opponent.
When the final brackets were released by the NCHSAA Saturday afternoon, Richmond was awarded the No. 16 seed in the West. That ranking pairs them with No. 17 Ballantyne Ridge High School.
The No. 16 Lady Raiders (11-11) will welcome in the No. 17 Lady Ridge Wolves (13-13) Tuesday for the postseason opener.
Looking to break out of a late season funk that’s resulted in five losses in its past seven games, Richmond is looking at the playoffs as a fresh start.
“We know we haven’t played our best basketball of the season the last 10 or so games,” Reader shared. “Our job right now is to reset and realize that every team is 0-0 at the start of the playoffs. We’re going to take things one game at a time and hopefully we can start to build a rhythm.
“The last couple of seasons have been great for us and we’ve established a standard for our program,” she continued. “We expect to win every game, especially now we’re in the playoffs. And it all starts with Ballantyne Ridge on Tuesday. We can’t look past them and expect to win.”
Adding that she knows some of what the Lady Ridge Wolves are capable of doing on the court, Reader also admitted Ballantyne Ridge is a lesser known opponent than some of the other schools from recent playoff runs.
Coming off back-to-back trips to the fourth round during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons, the journey for the Lady Raiders will start with a Ballantyne Ridge team that finished 5-5 against Southwestern Conference opponents and had a third-place finish in the final conference standings.
Similarly, Richmond also had a 5-5 conference record and finished third in the Mid-South Conference standings. Both teams enter the playoffs having lost their regular-season finale.
With four more games played than Richmond, Ballantyne Ridge has scored 1,411 points this season to average 54.2 points a game. The Lady Raiders have netted 1,004 points in 22 games for a nightly average of 45.6 points.
Where it evens out is how Richmond’s defense is limiting opponents to 42.9 points per game, compared to the Lady Ridge Wolves’ average of allowing 55.3 points per game.
Richmond’s leading scorer this season has been senior Jasiah Gilchrist, who is netting 18.7 points per game. Rounding out the top three scorers on the team are junior Madisen Jackson (8.6 PPG) and senior J’Nasia Neal (5.8 PPG).
The Lady Ridge Wolves’ top three scorers have comparable averages – Kaiya Dodson (12.8 PPG), Natanya Chando (8.6 PPG) and Sara Simko (6.8 PPG).
The No. 16 Lady Raiders and No. 17 Lady Ridge Wolves will tip off Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Raider Gymnasium.
