Lakewood Ranch girls basketball coach Tina Hadley going to second final four but with a different team

LAKEWOOD RANCH -- Tina Brooks cleared some space and grabbed the rebound as the final seconds ticked off to give John Harder his first state girls basketball championship.

The picture of that moment 21 years ago still remains clear as a bright sunny day in the mind of Harder, who has won three state championships at Southeast in a storied coaching career that began in 1985.

Tina Brooks is now Tina Hadley. She is the girls head basketball coach at Lakewood Ranch, which will be making its inaugural state final four appearance Friday in the Class 7A semifinal.

She is the only person with the Lakewood Ranch program that has played in the state final four. Harder knew back then that Hadley would make a good coach.

"I saw in high school that she had tremendous interest in the things I was doing and hung out in Room 301 a lot," Harder recalled. "She would pick up the mail from the front office and go through the individual letters our players were getting. Back then, there was no Internet or cell phones.

I can see it like it was yesterday."

Chountelle Bullock, the star player on the '85 team (20 ppg/12 rpg), who went on to play at the University of Miami, saw Hadley has a player coach in those day.

"She was always meant to be a coach. She can get anything out of a player," Bullock said. "If we needed a rebound she would clear out the whole other side. She was good at fundamentals and able to motivate the team. She was fearless and we could always depend on her."

Hadley says she had no thoughts of becoming a coach though her career seemed headed that way. She went to Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, where she had a 2,000-point career, averaged 21 points per game her senior year and was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 1991. She worked as an assistant coach at Cheyney for two years after her graduation in 1990.

Hadley went back to school in New York for two years to become a licensed funeral director and came home in 1997 to run her mother's business, Riggins & Daughter Funeral Home. Now she operates a funeral home in St. Petersburg.

Hadley has never forgotten the '85 team, though at the time she didn't think about coaching.

"I remember that we never gave up. We refused to lose," Hadley recalled. "That last game, it was close in overtime. The ball was shot, and I said I am getting the rebound. I got it and held on."

Though she was only 5-foot-8, Hadley could jump and was incredibly strong. It helped her on the boards, but she says rebounding is mainly about effort.

Her Lakewood Ranch team is a testament to that belief. LaDazhia Williams, the Mustangs superstar, 6-3 junior center, leads the team in rebounds, but all her other players are fierce around the boards.

Hadley hopes her experience will help Friday when the Mustangs take on Niceville in the Class 7A semifinal, which tips off at 10 a.m.

Williams is her dominant player, just as Bullock was back in 1985, but otherwise they don't have any similarities, Hadley said.

"They have totally different personalities. LaDazhia is a more versatile player, but Chountelle was more flamboyant and boisterous. She was 5-11, but she could jump," Hadley said.

When asked if her 1985 Southeast team could beat this year's Lakewood Ranch team, Hadley laughs and then takes a while to answer.

"Girls basketball today, the players are a little more skilled because they play all year-round, and everyone has a personal trainer. Their skill set is probably a little higher," Hadley said. "Today's players have a higher basketball IQ. When I was coming through we didn't play basketball year round."

That 1985 team had a talented, athletic, quick point guard in Leslie Baker. Lakewood Ranch has Kailyn Scully, who gets the most out of her skill set and can handle the ball and shoot.

And who would win?

"I don't know. I want to say my Ranch team would beat them. They have overall more weapons and more discipline," the coach says.

But the '85 Southeast had Tina Brooks, and that might have been the difference.

Alan Dell, Herald sports columnist/writer, can be reached at 941-745-7056. Follow him on Twitter @ADellSports.

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Lakewood Ranch girls basketball coach Tina Hadley going to second final four but with a different team ."