Turnovers key for Raiders
SEARCY — Riverview’s boys came out of the halftime break in a heap of trouble.
The first half of the Raiders’ 4A-East Region semifinal with Jonesboro Westside had been a disaster, and they walked out of the locker room down 11 and with point guard DeShawn Lee benched with four fouls.
But his teammates started the comeback by cutting Westside’s lead to one entering the fourth. Lee finished the job from there.
The senior scored 15 fourth-quarter points to send Riverview roaring past Westside 63-50 and into tonight’s championship game.
An ill-advised technical just before halftime sent Lee to the bench for nearly 9 minutes, but he made up for it in a big way.
He finished with 20 points and knocked down three fourth-quarter threes — each one further back than the last.
“I told him, ‘ You better make it up to us,’ ” Riverview Coach T.J. Coleman said. “He’s been nailing them in practice this week. He’s a streaky shooter and he made sure we were going to win. We just kept calling plays for him.”
Charles Smith added four threes and 20 points in the victory. Riverview (26-7) knocked down nine threes for the game and forced 17 turnovers.
The Warriors (24-6) committed 10 second-half turnovers and were outscored 39-15 in the second half. Coach Mark Whitmire said those stats were absolutely related.
“A lot of our turnovers led to their points,” Whitmire said. “When you do that, that’s a double-edged sword and I think that cost us.”
Riverview’s formula of quick second-half baskets started immediately out of halftime during an 8-0 run that cut Westside’s lead to three. Another quick 7-0 spurt gave the Raiders their first lead of the half, but Westside nosed in front on a Rico Mayo three-pointer and took a 43-42 lead into the fourth.
They would never lead again. Lee unleashed a personal 9-2 run to put his team up six. The advantage only grew from there.
“You’ve got to give them a lot of credit,” Whitmire said. “They played really well in the second half and hit shots when they had to. We just didn’t play very well the second half.”
Westside punished the aggressive Riverview man-toman in the first half to build its halftime lead. It was especially noticeable in the second quarter when the Warriors scored several times on baseline drives on their way to a 25-point quarter and a 35-24 lead at the break.
It didn’t phase the home-standing Raiders.
“We’ve been down at halftime 20 before and come back and won,” Coleman said. “We reminisced about that at halftime and talked about how we’ve handled adversity so many times.”
Edel Sandoval didn’t score much for Riverview but he held the potent Mayo to seven points on 2-for-9 shooting with his aggressive man-toman defense. With Mayo struggling, freshman Avery Felts (19 points) and senior J.T. Schwarz (14) picked up the offensive slack for Westside, but it wasn’t enough.
J.T. Smith scored 13 for Riverview.