ORANGE PARK - Orange Park High’s girls basketball team rode a rugged road schedule to get to a point of toughness to last through a deep region playoff run, but the mojo did not happen Friday night in the region final against Pensacola Pine Forest who out-energied the second half against the Lady Raiders to win 70-55 and end the Orange Park season. Pine Forest finished 17-7, 15-1 last year with a region semifinal 39-38 loss to Fort Walton Beach and, in 2020, was 5A runnerup with region semi win over Orange Park under coach Fred Cole, now at Oakleaf. In 2019, Pine Forest was Class 7A region semfinalist.

“Lots of little mistakes,” said Orange Park coach Michael Nesmith, who finishes his second season as Raider coach with a district title, a 24-6 record and two playoff wins. “One good thing is that we bring back all but two players from this team next year and now those girls know how bad this feels to play a seasoned playoff team.”

The Lady Raiders, 13-13 last year, started slow with Pine Forest’s very fast, very good shooting after both teams traded away steals for the first two minutes in a battled of athleticism at half court.

“We knew exactly what they were going to bring with their very fast backcourt,” said Nesmith. “We had worked all week on slowing them down.”

Pine Forest, with two senior guards and a senior post player, jetted to a lightning fast 8-0 lead including a three point shot from guard Makevia House to force a Nesmith time out to regroup.

Back off the time out, Orange Park senior Nia Brown hit two free throws to get on the scoreboard.

With the Raiders getting just one shot at scoring with Pine Forest snagging defensive rebounds, Nesmith kept players switching off to find a rhythm with sophomore guard Eris Lester flying in for a layup to 10-4.

“She’s a sophomore with 1,000 points already and playing in one of her biggest games this season,” Nesmith, noting Lesters’ 20.4 points per game average. “She put everything into tonight.”

With Nesmith planting 6’-1” center Mychaela Parker in the paint to counter Pine Forest’s inside prowess, Orange Park started to chip away at the Pine Forest lead with Parker hitting two free throws after getting hammered on the third of three offensive rebounds to the glass attempts.

After Parker’s clogging of the middle forced an errant Pine Forest pass, Orange Park got a Brown running hook to 12-8 with 2:35 of the first quarter.

A breakaway up and under layup from senior guard Sam Hardison from a Piera Alexander steal closed the gap to 12-10 with Autumn Nesmith tanking two frees to tie the game at 12-12.

“We got our game going and started getting steals to layups,” said Nesmith. “I was trying to find the right combination of players to offset their attack.”

Pine Forest mounted a swift counterattack to end the first quarter up just 15-14 at the buzzer with Brown landing a jumper at the horn.

Orange Park would stay within shouting distance to the half, 31-22, with five missed shot opportunities off offensive rebounds before the half by the Lady Raiders.

“I was good with being that close at the half with as many mistakes we made,” said Nesmith. “I needed to settle them down, get our game out there.”

Hardison started getting more action on the defensive end of the court with rebounds and steals pushing Orange Park as close as 31-26 with 6:39 left in the third.

A travel call on a double team defensive set gave Orange Park some momentum with Brown blocking a layup attempt as the Lady Raider defense was getting results with Lester’s flying layup to 33-28 and Lester drawing an offensive charge.

A Brown turnaround jumper three punched to 33-31 with 4:21.

Two missed free throws by Pine Forest guard Makevia House kept the Lady Raiders’ momentum in tact before back-to-back steals off full court pressure landed two layups for Pine Forest and a 41-31 surge before Lester put in a layup off a Hardison miss, 45-36 at the buzzer.

Pine Forest opened with two dagger-like three pointers from House, just 5’-1”, that sucked the air out of the RaiderDome quickly as the Eagles flew to 55-40.

“We were not hitting our threes at all,” said Nesmith. “When their girl got hot, I think we got a little panicky.”

A Pine Forest time out with Orange Park band noise intervention came at five minutes to go to try and blow some Eagle eardrums in the final segment of play proved fruitless with Lester and Brown both missing layups and House canning another missile launch three from Middleburg to 58-42 with 4:42 to go.

Orange Park mustered up a 64-52 gap with 1:42 to go and the Lady Raiders seemingly ready to make a run.