Posted: February 20, 2013

By Mark Sawyer

STEPHENS CITY — Coaches are always talking about wanting their teams to play their best basketball towards the end of the season and heading into the playoffs.

For the Sherando High School girls’ basketball team, that's exactly what its been doing these past two weeks.

Since losing their first, and only district game of the season three weeks ago (a four point road loss to Millbrook), the Warriors have been on a roll winning five straight including a pair of rematches with the Pioneers.

Playing in their third straight Region II Division 4 Tournament, the No. 2 Warriors didn’t miss a beat against Northwestern District rival No. 7 James Wood. Sherando jumped out to a big first quarter lead and never looked back rolling to a convincing 80-45 victory at Sherando High School. As a result for the third season in a row, the Warriors advance to the regional semifinals and stand just one victory from qualifying for the Group AA state tournament. However for the first time during that stretch the Warriors will be hosting the semifinal game Thursday night against No. 3 Loudoun County, a 47-42 winner over Powhatan in Tuesday night’s semifinals.

“There’s no question, the last three weeks we’re playing really good basketball,” Sherando coach Kevin Reed said. “We’re playing unselfish basketball, we're flying on both ends of the floor, and we’re rebounding better. We’re doing a better job defensively. It’s pretty basketball.

“I’m not real surprised by the way we came out and played today because of our effort the last couple of weeks and the way they practice. The focus has been there and every girl in there has pride in what were doing.”

Five Warriors scored in double figures led by freshman Lauren Reed’s game-high 20 points and sophomore Jessica Hakel's 16.

Sherando (15-10) scored 14 of the game’s first 18 points building an early 10-point lead (14-4). Five different Warriors scored in the first quarter and a 7-4 Sherando run to end the quarter gave them a 21-8 lead after one. The lead would never dip below double figures the rest of the way.

Wood's Whitney Dick scored six first quarter points to lead the way for the Colonels.

Any thoughts of a Colonels’ comeback was quickly put to rest at the start of the second quarter. The Warriors opened the second frame with a 12-2 run to extend the lead to 33-10 with just 4:57 left in the half. Over the next three minutes, the Warriors continued to extend the lead and had pushed it to 29 points (43-14) by the 1:30 mark of the second period.

James Wood (12-12) missed 11 shots and had 16 turnovers in the first half alone leading to several easy Sherando baskets and a 44-17 halftime deficit.

“I don’t think we played defense very well in the first half and when you get down like that you can’t come back,” James Wood coach Rhonda Slider said. “Sherando peaked at the right time and they’ve got five girls on the floor that have a desire to win. You’ve got to give them credit. We tried to switch some things up [defensively] and it just didn’t work out.”

“I’m not taking anything away from them [Sherando], I think they work hard. I just don’t think we played to up to our caliber tonight. I’m proud of these girls and what they’ve done this year. We just came up short.”

In the third quarter the Colonels were finally able to get some things going offensively, unfortunately for them the Warriors were still able to add to their lead.

The Warriors opened the half on a 9-2 run giving them their biggest lead of the game 53-19 midway through the period. Wood was able to close the gap a bit and shave four points off the lead with a 15-11 run to close the third quarter and head to the fourth trailing 64-34.

The Colonels only dressed nine players but eight scored.

In addition to Dick’s 12 points, Sarah Johnson scored a team-high 13 off the bench to lead the way for Wood. With Erica Hepner being the only senior on the team, the future looks bright for the young Colonels.

On the other side of the floor all 10 Warriors saw quality minutes and scored for the home team. Other players in double figures for Sherando were Danielle Rizzari and Erin Magalis with 11 points each, and Heidi Brown with 10.

“It’s always good to start off strong, everyone is just playing with so much confidence right now,” Lauren Reed said. “We’ve finally reached our peak. We’ve been climbing this mountain and we’re finally playing our best basketball.”