Piper Donaldson scored Horouta\u2019s first field goal, picking up a loose ball off the floor below the rim to score, and as late as the third period was making shots with soft touch and finishing the fast break.<\/p>\n
Coleman also showed her intent early on with a three-pointer, driving lay-up and second trey.<\/p>\n
Veteran Mereono Rangihaeata galvanised and inspired her daughter\u2019s hard-working outfit, making a difficult shot on the baseline for 17-6 in the first quarter, and waging a great battle for possession with Ariana Kepa at the same spot on the floor going into halftime. <\/p>\n
Horouta\u2019s defence held against a Plugs team who ran when they could, passed the ball well and in the half-court set, swung the ball and found players in motion.<\/p>\n
Aileen Arnaldo and Jasmine Sparks put up nine points for the Spark Plugs and Petra Sparks was great value all-round.<\/p>\n
The second semi was also uptempo but even more physical. Dreamerz players dived for every loose ball and their admirable defence has claws \u2013 a stirring reminder of a simple, rugged era. <\/p>\n
But they can take it, as well as dish it out. Ihipera Mackey stole the ball from the Rugrats in the first play and moments later took a defensive charge from Pharah-James Brown.<\/p>\n
Brown scored eight points and talented forward Mere-Kaya Te Tai hit three treys for the Rats, who fought to stay in the game.<\/p>\n
Brown gave the cutting Bentley Morris-Munro right side a superb assist to make the best play of the first period but Ihipera christened the second quarter with the first of her two three-pointers.<\/p>\n
Rugrats\u2019 Tutemakoha Kemp never gave the fierce Dreamerz an inch, as she proved with a three-point play at the end of the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Coleman also made a three-point play off a spin move in the third period. <\/p>\n
With Melissa Mackey-Huriwai controlling the defensive backboard in the absence of centre Jett Pohatu, every Dreamer ran hard from the opening tipoff.<\/p>\n
The more experienced posse got on top early and stayed there \u2013 even if Te Tai stole their thunder brilliantly with a 28-footer and 20-footer to close the last two quarters.<\/p>\n
Scoreboard<\/p>\n
Semi-final 1: Horouta Rangatira 46 (Kayla Namana 14, O\u2019Shae Rangihaeata 13, Piper Donaldson 8, Neveah Smith 7) Spark Plugs 30 (Aileen Arnaldo 9, Jasmine Sparks 9, Ariana Kepa 6). Q1 \u2013 Horouta 17 Plugs 8; HT \u2013 Horouta 27 Plugs 19; Q3 \u2013 Horouta 37 Plugs 24.<\/p>\n
Semi-final 2: Rugrats 33 (Mere-Kaya Te Tai 9, Pharah-James Brown 8, Bentley Morris-Munro 7, Tutemakoha Kemp 4) Dreamerz 65 (Natalie Mackey 19, Harata Coleman 15, Materoa Poi 10, Ihipera Mackey 8, Ishtar Mackey-Huriwai 4). Q1 \u2013 Rugrats 10 Dreamerz 18; HT \u2013 Rugrats 17 Dreamerz 33; Q3 \u2013 Rugrats 22 Dreamerz 54.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Piper Donaldson scored Horouta\u2019s first field goal, picking up a loose ball off the floor below the rim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[374246,64,63,726,25055,74254,84863,463951,173885,38848,463950,64696,2877,28374,463949,85],"class_list":["post-894720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-adversity","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-build","tag-character","tag-doesnt","tag-dreamerz","tag-finalists","tag-gisborne","tag-horouta","tag-ladies","tag-league","tag-reveals","tag-sorted","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}