The Republic Lady Tigers are in the Final 4! Tip-off for the semifinal game against Miller Career Academy is scheduled for Friday at 3:20 p.m. I’ll be courtside with Rodger Wheeler of the Republic Monitor to bring you live play-by-play, photos, and more.

Click the uStream player to listen to live audio coverage. It will go live and begin working around 3 o’clock. You’ll get an occasional ad, but stick with it and the audio will come up again.

Below that, you’ll see a CoverItLive box, where Rodger and I will be dropping in photos, stats, commentary and more from the game.

The Lady Tigers left Republic for the Final Four in Columbia today. They’ll spend the night in Columbia before playing in the state semifinals against Miller Career Academy at 3:20.

The team’s sendoff included a pep rally at the high school, and visits to each of the other school buildings, where younger students lined the halls and cheered them on. Here’s what it looked like.

As the Lady Tigers prepare for their trip to the Final Four, I’ve talked to the other three coaches in the Class 4 semifinals. The final installment is with Trevor Mosby of Smithville.

–

Smithville (25-5)
Head coach: Trevor Mosby

Of the four teams remaining in the Class 4 state tournament, only Smithville is still trying to match its success of last season. The Warriors made it to the state finals in 2011, losing to undefeated St. Dominic 61-44. Coach Trevor Mosby says last year’s run set the stage for this year’s success.

“It just seemed like it opened a door for our program to know we could do it,” he says.

That last trip to the Final Four for the Warriors was 26 years earlier, when Mosby was a sophomore at Smithville himself. He rode the pep bus to Columbia as a student for those games, and now has led his alma mater to two straight appearances as head coach.

But with the Warriors graduating three senior starters, Mosby says he wasn’t anticipating a repeat performance. Smithville starts one senior, two juniors, and two sophomores.

“I thought, ‘We play a really tough schedule, we’ll be lucky to be .500. I’ve got girls with no varsity experience I’ve got to play,” Mosby says. “Then we started winning, winning, winning.”

The Warriors have racked up a 25-5 record to this point. Last year’s squad was 24-5 heading into the Final Four.

“A big part of that is last year’s success, and the girls just believing it’s possible,” says Mosby.

In contrast to the style of semifinalist Miller Career Academy, Smithville doesn’t worry about putting a lot of points on the board.

“I’d say we’re a defensive-minded team. Our scores aren’t always going to be real high,” says Mosby. “We don’t gamble a lot with our full-court pressing.

“Our goal is to hold you under 40 points. We feel like we can score 40, so if we hold you under 40, we can beat you.”

As for the pressure on his players, Mosby says he’s told them not to worry.

“I really do feel like the pressure is kind of off,” he says. “We’re going to go out and play as hard as we can.”

As the Lady Tigers prepare for their trip to the Final Four, I’ll be looking at each of the other three teams remaining in Class 4. Today it’s Westminster Christian Academy, from St. Louis.

–

Westminster Christian Academy (26-3)
Coach: Steve Stipanovich

With only three losses, Westminster Christian Academy has the best won-loss record of any of the four teams still alive in Class 4. Second-year head coach Steve Stipanovich says he expected good things from his team coming into the season.

“We finished strong last year. We lost in the quarterfinals last year to (eventual state champion) St. Dominic’s,” he says. “We started the season thinking we would build on that.”

Westminster’s three losses were against Kirkwood and Troy — both larger schools — and Class 3 Principia, which Stipanovich says was the best of the bunch.

“I like to think we play some good teams,” Stipanovich says. “If you’re a team that you feel can get to the Final Four and win a championship, you’re going to prepare for that by scheduling stronger competition. It’s all about the playoffs.”

To succeed in the playoffs, Stipanovich says it all goes back to solid defense.

“I think any coach will tell you the defense is where your success lies. You can play defense every night,” he says. “Rebounding is also another one we try to hammer into the girls heads. Rebounding and defense is what we say we focus on more than our offense.”

Man-to-man is the staple of Westminster’s defense, with an occasional half-court zone trap. “Our focus is on half-court defense. We don’t do much full-court pressure,” says Stipanovich.

The Wildcats are led by 6’3″ junior center Sadie Stipanovich, averaging nearly 16 points and nine rebounds per game. Senior guard Courtney Powell averages about 13 points for Westminster.

This is the Wildcats’ first-ever trip to the Final Four in Columbia. Stipanovich says last season’s experience as a quarterfinalist has helped prepare his girls for this year’s playoff run.

“I told the girls before we played Kirksville (in this year’s quarterfinals), I really feel like we’re in the state tournament now because we’re playing for something.”

As the Lady Tigers prepare for their trip to the Final Four, I’ll be looking at each of the other three teams remaining in Class 4. First up, Republic’s opponent in the semifinals: Miller Career Academy out of St. Louis.

–

Miller Career Academy (22-5) Coach: Darrin White

When the Republic Lady Tigers face Miller Career Academy in the state semifinals Friday, they might have a feeling of deja vu. That’s because the two teams met in Republic last year during the regular season, and Miller returns almost an identical squad to that one.

The Phoenix only graduated one senior off last year’s state quarterfinal team. They have six sophomores and two freshmen on the roster this year. Coach Darrin White says with such a young roster, it’s important to continue learning as the season goes on, and he thinks his team has done that this year.

“Especially the last two (losses), we played Incarnate and Fort Zumwalt West. We tried to use both of those games as lessons. There are some mistakes that we made. We went back and changed some things, and did some things to make adjustments to help us get better.”

Republic fans who saw last year’s Phoenix squad will see a similar style again Friday. “We play an up-tempo game. We run most of the time,” says White.

But White also says his team showed they can slow it down and be successful, too.

“We also played a very good half-court game against Blue Springs this year that we ended up winning,” White says. “My girls have developed some patience and some discipline that they didn’t necessarily have at the beginning of the year.”

The Phoenix compete in the St. Louis Public High League, where the competition is not especially strong. Their league games included an 89-19 win over Vashon, an 84-9 win over Gateway, and a 93-13 win over Roosevelt. White says he went out of conference to make sure his team was prepared for the postseason.

“Outside of the public high league, we try to beef up the competition,” he says. “We want to play teams that will challenge us and teams that will make us better. We live by the philosophy that steel sharpens steel.”

Republic and Miller Career Academy have one common opponent: North Little Rock. The Lady Tigers lost to North Little Rock 60-49 in the KTXR Lady Classic over Christmas Break. Miller lost, too, 59-51, in their season opener.

“They had already played 4 or 5 games, and that was our very first game of the season. I would like to think that we’ve gotten better since we played North Little Rock,” says White.

The Phoenix are led by senior Shanity James with 15.3 points per game. Braennan Farr averages 13.2, and Abrelyn Rackley and Zhanesha Dickerson average about 10 per game.

James will be the only player on the floor Friday with Final Four experience. She was on a Miller Career Academy team that finished third during her freshman season.

I’ll have live updates from the state quarterfinals in Rolla. Tipoff is scheduled for 1 p.m.
[Read more...]

The Republic Lady Tigers meet Aurora in the state sectionals at Willard tonight. I’ll have live updates from courtside. Tipoff is scheduled for 6 p.m.

Enter your email address in the box below and you’ll get a reminder when I start updating from Willard.