On to the Final Four for the Highland Women's basketball team after setting the tone early in the Quarterfinals and after picking up a 77-59 win over the six seed and seventh ranked team in country, Cape Fear.

Just like against Macomb it was a slow start offensively to the contest but the Scotties turned the volume knob up early on defense in the first quarter and forced Cape Fear into 18 first quarter turnovers leading to strong start as Highland led 34-7 after one quarter. On top of the 18 first quarter turnovers by the Sea Devils of Cape Fear they only managed seven shot attempts and went 2-7 from the floor, while the Scotties were 12-22 from the floor in the first stanza and finished the first half outscoring Cape Fear 26-3 after an 8-4 start to the game.

"Great first quarter; first time we've looked like ourselves in a while. I thought we played with a lot of energy, a lot of rotation and aggressive offensively," said Head Coach BJ Smith.

Headed into halftime the Scotties led by 20-points but Cape Fear finished the first half on a miniature run including a buzzer beating three-pointer to end the first half; Scotties led 46-26 at intermission.

Cape Fear opened the second half with the first few buckets and the Scotties had a hard time scoring out of the half initially but by the end of the third quarter it was still a 20-point Highland lead as the third quarter was a 17-17 stalemate. Highland finished off the game using their strong start to notch win number 34 of the season beating Cape Fear 77-59.

"Watching Cape Fear yesterday I thought they were as good as anybody we've seen, they've got some kids that can really play. That first quarter we really made them look bad and that was impressive and we did it without two of our best players. It's always good to win when you don't have your best players play well," said Smith. 

Highland was led by a quartet of double figure scorers including a 20-point game by Berniezha Tidwell as she went 6-12 from the floor and 7-8 from the free throw line. Niccolly Ramalho continued to fill the stat sheet finishing with 13 points, six assists, five rebounds and five steals, while Mariane De Caravalho netted 11 points and Sydney Brinlee recorded 10 points and six rebounds. Scottie defense held a Top 10 three-point shooting team in Cape Fear to just four three's and 23.5% from behind the arc, while forcing 34 turnovers and registering 23 steals. A 16-20 performance from the free throw line and 11 three-pointers (18th game with 10+ made three's this season) helped propel Highland to the win.

The win moves the Scotties to 34-0 extending the schools longest winning streak and punching their ticket into the Final Four, a place the team was in 2014 their last trip to Nationals prior to this season. Highland will face off against the two seed Kirkwood Eagles in the Semifinals on Friday, March 23rd at 6:00pm (Kirkwood topped North Arkansas 65-61 in their Quarterfinal game). The game will be broadcasted on NJCAA TV and locally on 103.9 KNZA.