PEA RIDGE -- Heath Neal could have chosen to give his Pea Ridge girls the easy route and stacked the Lady Blackhawk Holiday Invitational Tournament bracket in their favor.
Instead, he gave the Lady Blackhawks a tough Hamburg team as their opening opponent Wednesday night, and they made the most of it.
Pea Ridge set the tone with six three-pointers in the first quarter and never let Hamburg back into the game and won 53-42 at Blackhawk Arena.
"It was good for us to see the ball go in," Neal said. "When we do the bracket, I hate sometimes how coaches try to find out who they want to match up with.
"I know this is our tournament and we obviously want a first-round win. But where we are as a team and how we've been growing -- also out of fairness to everybody else -- I wanted to put a reasonable tournament together. Hamburg had the longest drive, so I didn't want to put them in an early game. So we put them against us."
Leah Telgemeier hit the first three-pointer for the Lady Blackhawks (9-7) at the 5:33 mark in the first quarter, giving them a 5-4 lead. It quickly grew into double digits as Gracie Davenport nailed two more three-pointers and Makenzie Stites added another to make it a 14-4 game.
Davenport then hit her third from three-point range later in the quarter, and Stites nailed one with 11 seconds left to give Pea Ridge a 22-10 cushion.
"We're capable of that," Neal said. "I think, at times, when we get our feet set and feel like we're in a good position to take those shots that we work on all the time, we're finding out the consistency in our shooters. We shoot those shots every day, and we chart stuff.
"Our kids know they have the green light. The ones that needed to hit those shots got them to go in early, and we just kept building on that momentum."
Hamburg (11-3) would cut Pea Ridge's lead to single digits only once as Za'Niya Mooney hit two free throws and made it a 29-20 game early in the third quarter. It only lasted 24 seconds as Brooklyn Winn hit her first three-pointer, and the Lady Blackhawks went on to lead by as much as 16 points on two occasions in the fourth quarter.
Telgemeier finished with 17 points to lead Pea Ridge, followed by Davenport with 12. Lainey Tippen led Hamburg with 13 points, followed by Mooney with 11 and Shenia Gavin with 10.
The Lady Blackhawks move on to play Viola, which advanced with a 45-36 victory over Bauxite, at 7 p.m. today in the semifinals.
Providence Academy 48, Fort Smith Southside 32
Providence Academy has had its fair share of games against area teams in bigger classifications and has enjoyed some success in those games.
Karolina Kiraga scored 13 of her game-high 16 points in the first half as Providence (9-3) defeated Southside to begin Wednesday's opening round. The Lady Patriots, who will be an Arkansas Activities Association member next year and will be a Class 3A school, have already enjoyed wins over Bentonville West and Siloam Springs and split their two games with Pea Ridge.
Southside (1-12) led 2-0 after Mekaila Robinson's basket 19 seconds into the game, but it soon disappeared. Kiraga scored 10 seconds later, and Providence went on to lead 12-7 after one quarter. Ejirohne Edwednuwvedia's three-point play to end the first half gave the Lady Patriots a 30-16 cushion.
Kriaga was the only player in double figures for Providence, which led by as many as 48-27 after she hit two free throws with 2:31 remaining. Peyton Yaffe had nine points for Southside, which suffered its 10th straight loss.
Providence will play at 5:30 p.m. today in a semifinal game against Mena, which advanced with a 58-57 victory over Star City. Payton Clark hit the game-winning bucket with a running jumper from inside the lane with 9 seconds remaining for Mena (7-5).