The junior drilled three 3-pointers, helping push a 26-16 lead at halftime into a nearly 20-point lead midway through the second half. 

“I’m a really good free-throw shooter, so I try to get to the free-throw line,” Johnston said. 

And that she did, finishing the night 12-for-14 from the line. 

“She’s our scorer,” Roseville coach Tanysha Scott said, adding how Johnston has expanded her role not only on the floor, but off the floor. 

“Not only our scorer, but she’s our leader,” Scott said. “Really trying to get her to be more of a vocal leader is really taking her game to the next level.” 

That leadership quality from Johnston seems to have been noticed from Raiders players. 

“She’s such a leader,” senior forward Hannah Herffernan said. “Whenever we have success, she’s the one leading.” 

Scott knows there’s still more to be given and seen from Johnston, something she says is nothing new about her style of coaching. 

Johnston wasn’t the only player that seemed prepared Tuesday night. The whole Raiders squad looked hungry, Wrestling to the ground to fight for each loose ball, and trying to contain the forwards of Spring Lake Park. 

Roseville suffered its first loss of the season to the Panthers, a tight four-point loss. The Raiders knew what to look for in Tuesday’s game, and how to execute it. 

“Just to get those 50-50 balls, be tough,” Johnston said. “When we played them the first time, we played kind of slow. This time we wanted to play at our pace.” 

Heffernan and Kendall Barnes each added eight points for the Raiders, all while containing the Panthers’ leading scorer Bella Sutch. 

Sutch, a forward, scored 17 points, but nine of those came from the free throw line. Nothing came easy for her or her teammates. 

“The biggest thing for us was rebounding,” Scott said. “They have big girls, they have rebounders…..we knew we were going to be outmatched with size, but we wanted to make sure we get in there and put our bodies on them and then attack them too.” 

The Raiders advance to play in the section championship game where they will meet Maple Grove. Roseville will look to win its first section title in four years. 

For now, the Raiders will celebrate this one. After all, Spring Lake Park ended Roseville’s season last year in the exact same round, the section semifinals. 

“We wanted revenge,” Heffernan said.