Riverdale's Shanique Heard extends for a rebound against Iolani. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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Iolani's Jade Botelho puts up a shot against Riverdale. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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Riverdale's Shelbie Davenport blocks the shot of Iolani's Pua Kahalehoe. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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Fri, Dec 13, 2013 @ Iolani

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Riverdale

54

Iolani

31

Final	1	2	3	4
Riverdale	8	15	22	9	54
Iolani (5-7, 12-10)	5	4	10	12	31

J. Botelho 8 pts  0/1 FTs

S. Heard 18 pts  4/6 FTs

For eight minutes Friday night, Iolani hung tough with one of the top teams in the entire country. After that however, reigning national champion Riverdale (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) imposed its will en route to a 54-31 win in a semifinal game of the Seventh Annual Iolani Girls Classic.

Shanique Heard scored a game-high 18 points, Shelbie Davenport added 14 and Alexa Middleton 11 to lead the Warriors (9-1) to their fifth consecutive win and second in as many days in Honolulu. They overcame a sloppy first half to pull away from the Raiders (7-2) and into Saturday's championship game, where they will play another national power in Long Beach Poly (Calif.).

Riverdale, which finished 36-0 last season, is the top-ranked team in Tennessee and No. 15 in the country by USA Today. The Warriors hardly looked the part after the first quarter with just an 8-5 lead over the much-smaller Raiders, but showed signs of their brilliance in the second quarter before completely taking over in the third.

"It was pretty uncharacteristic of us, but you've got to give Iolani a lot of credit; They guard you very hard and all the credit goes to them, but we were doing some things that we're not being coached up to do and we lost our composure a little bit, which I was a little bit surprised by," Riverdale coach Cody Barrett said. "My team is a little more seasoned than that so I didn't really expect that."

After taking a 23-9 lead into halftime, the Warriors opened the third quarter with a 15-2 run that included six points by Heard, including her three-point play to cap the run, which give her team a 38-11 advantage. After a putback by Iolani's Emily Nomura a few possessions later, Middleton scored four straight points and Riverdale took its largest lead of the game at 43-13 on a free throw by Davenport.

"We had a little talk at halftime and made some adjustments as far as what we needed to do and reinforce that and then we came out in the third quarter and really started playing the way we're supposed to play," Barrett said.

Heard scored nine of her points in the third quarter, including four field goals. Barrett pulled Heard from the game in the first quarter after she was unhappy with an official after drawing a personal foul.

"She's our point guard, she's our floor leader and she's a competitor so a lot of that is competitiveness and we've got to harness that a little bit better and control our negative emotions a little bit better, but I thought she did a great job in the second half of that and then I thought her play got a lot better and it steadily improved," Barrett said.

Despite the relatively low-scoring first half, it was played at a frantic pace. The Warriors got numerous stops on the defensive end in the third quarter and shot a much higher percentage from the field. Barnett said his team's second-half offensive production was spurred by its defense.

"That's what usually gets us going is our pressure and our transition and I thought we did a better job of taking care of the basketball," Barrett said. "We slowed our minds down a little bit and like I said, that was all Iolani speeding us up when we try to speed people up as well."

Davenport, who scored 29 points in a 67-45 win over Kamehameha Thursday, made six of seven free throws. The Warriors were 16 of 22 from the line as a team.

Iolani went on a 6-0 run late in the third quarter and trailed, 45-19, to start the fourth.

"We just had to settle down and make some adjustments," Raiders' first-year coach Dean Young said. "That team is so long. They're so long that what normally would work just wasn't working because of their length. We just had to make some adjustments on how to attack their pressure."

One night after hitting 10 3-pointers in a 61-14 rout of McKinley in Thursday's first round, Iolani made just one shot from behind the arc.

"We learned a lot from playing one of the best teams in the nation," Young said. "If we can go up-and-up with them and battle with them,  I think that's going to carry us far into the season."

Jade Botelho led the Raiders with eight points, including six in the first half. They made just four of their 11 free-throw attempts for the game.

"We showed a lot of tonight and we're still very positive," Young said. "I thought the team competed really hard and even though we lost by 20 points, I don't think we made it easy for them at all. We're looking forward to playing (Saturday)."

Iolani, which finished fourth in the Division I state tournament last season, will play Westview (Ore.) in the 6:30 p.m. third-place game.

The 8 p.m. championship game features a pair of nationally-ranked team in Riverdale and Long Beach Poly.

"I think it's going to be a great game. Everybody should come out and watch that if you're around here and you're a basketball fan at all," Barrett said. "We expect a hard-nosed basketball game — both teams are really resilient and both teams are going to fight tooth and nail — so it should be a great game for the championship of the tournament and for the fans."

Note: The fifth-place game between Maryknoll and Kamehameha will be played at 3:30 p.m. Saturday with the seventh-place game between Hilo and McKinley to follow at 5 p.m.