LAQUEY, Mo.— Something didn’t feel right for Rich Mueller before Friday night’s Class 2 District 8 girls basketball championship game against Crocker. The Richland head coach scrapped his original game plan at the last minute.
“We worked on one [Thursday] that we were going to start with, but something inside just told me to switch it, change it up,” he said. “So I did. We changed up what we did defensively.”
It worked. The Richland Lady Bears beat the Crocker Lady Lions 61-49 Friday night at Laquey High School to claim their first district title since 1999.
The Lady Bears were aiming to avenge an embarrassing 85-57 loss they suffered to the Lady Lions on Feb. 18 of this year. In that game, Crocker sophomore forward Larra Kubinski dominated inside, scoring 34 points on the Lady Bears. This time, they held Kubinski to eight points.
The Lady Bears (now 20-7) started early, shooting out to a 15-2 lead in the first four minutes of the first quarter with the basket in their crosshairs. They took every open shot they had and made almost all of them in those first four minutes, including a two monster three balls from sophomore Jessica Hutton.
Hutton finished the game with a team-high 24 points— 10 of which came in the first quarter. Ten more came in the fourth quarter, sealing the game after Crocker crawled back to within two points at the end of the third quarter.
The Lady Bears had led 21-10 at the end of one quarter and 31-24 at halftime, but the Lady Lions had made a game of it at 42-40 at the end of the third. However, Richland's 14-0 fouth-quarter run all but finished off the Lady Lions, capped by two more huge threes from Hutton.
Aside from Hutton, the usual suspects helped lead Richland in scoring. Sophomore Emily Case netted 13 and Mallory Warren 10.
For Crocker, Ashley Bogle led the way with 14 while Kubinski and Megan Wall scored eight each. The Lady Lions finish the season 20-7 and were 8-0 in Frisco League play.
Richland will take on Class 2 No. 6 Russellville in sectional action Wednesday, March 10 at Camdenton High School. Russellville (25-3) won the Class 2 District 7 championship by defeating Sedalia Sacred Heart 55-40 Friday night.
