BRAD HORN/Nevada Appeal Douglas High's Brittany Puzey drives to the basket in the Tiger's game against the Reed Raiders in Reno Thursday.
Matching up against Reed, a team that has not lost this season and has rarely even been challenged, the Douglas girls basketball team didn't flinch for a second.
"These girls are battle-tested," Douglas coach Werner Christen said. "They've been in this situation a couple times before, and they were going to compete. There was no question about that."
Douglas fought toe-to-toe with the Raiders Thursday night before their final comeback attempt fell short, as Reed won 62-58 to advance to the Northern 4A Regional championship game in Reno.
Douglas managed to contain Reed's two perimeter threats in Maria Moore and Brittany Moore, who scored 20 and 14 points respectively, but was hurt inside by the Raiders' Erica Maldonado who finished the night with 20 points, mostly on putback layups.
"We got this game to the tempo we wanted, but we just gave up too many second shots," Christen said. "There were a couple of possessions in a row there at the beginning of the fourth quarter that hurt us and that ended up costing us the game."
The Tigers never trailed by more than nine points in the game, and led for a brief period of time late in the fourth quarter after Erin Brinkmeyer hit a big 3-pointer to put Douglas up.
It was a far cry from the two teams' first matchup in December, when Reed's aggressive defense and high-octane offensive attack put up 73 points in a 19-point win.
"We wanted to keep the score in the 50s," Christen said. "We just concentrated on being patient on offense and we put Brittany (Puzey) on Maria Moore and tried to keep a man in front of her at all times.
"I thought we did that well."
After surrendering 13 first-quarter points to Moore, who scored 35 points in the December game, the Tigers clamped down and held her to just seven through the rest of the game.
"What's the phrase? You can't stop her, you can just hope to contain her," Christen said. "She had about 15 less than the last time we saw them."
Moore also got into foul trouble, drawing her fourth with nearly four minutes left in the third quarter and the Raiders leading 45-36.
Monica Knight hit a pair of free throws and Brinkmeyer put up a pair of buckets as Douglas closed out the quarter trailing 48-42.
"We told them going into the fourth that if we could keep them from getting those extra shots, we'd be O.K.," Christen said. "It's been a long time since Reed has been in a close game like that and we wanted to see how Reed would react. Give (Reed coach Rick) Shaw a bunch of credit. They really finished strong."
A pair of Brinkmeyer free throws and a basket sandwhiched around a 3-pointer from Tammy Gough brought the Tigers to within two at 56-54 with about three minutes left but Douglas just couldn't close the gap from there.
Brinkmeyer led the Tigers (22-8) with 20 points, Knight had 14, Puzey had eight, Kellei Kizer had six and Gough had three.
"I can't fault my kids on their effort at all," Christen said. "They went out and executed the game plan and played smart basketball. Reed is just a very talented team."
