Cottage Hill girls coach Brad Newton summed up his team’s first quarter perfectly.

“Pretty rough start, wasn’t it?”

Indeed, it was. The Warriors went nearly seven minutes without a point in their Class 3A South Regional semifinal Friday night before Ashlyn Newton finally hit a 3-pointer with 1:24 left in the quarter.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been here,” Brad Newton said. “This is different. It’s different playing in this atmosphere, in a place like this, so it took us a while to get going and get adjusted. But I think once we finally saw one go through the basket, we were fine after that.”

Cottage Hill outscored Houston Academy 17-4 in the third quarter, led by 10 at intermission and cruised to a 40-24 victory at Montgomery’s historic Garrett Coliseum to earn a spot in next week’s regional final. It’s the first trip to a final for the Cottage Hill girls.

“It’s very special,” Newton said. “I have a bunch of excited young ladies in that lockerroom.”

The Warriors improved to 14-13 overall and ended an unlikely run by the Raiders (6-12). Dakota Freeman and Ashlyn Newton each scored 12 to lead Cottage Hill. Mary Helen Mendheim scored 12 for HA.

“I felt like the second quarter was really good,” Brad Newton said. “I felt like we upped our defensive intensity a little bit. We started to play the kind of basketball we want to play. We didn’t get off to a great start in the third quarter, but the last four minutes of the third quarter provided the separation that I thought was the difference in the game.”

Cottage Hill will play Straughn at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday for the right to go to the final four in Birmingham.

“We felt like this was a group that could make a run,” Newton said. “We were pretty banged up early in the year, so our record didn’t really indicate that we were a very good basketball team. Over Christmas we started playing well and, when we got in area play and started playing some 3A teams, we’ve really played well since then.”