BLOOMINGTON — Richwoods bounced back from its first loss of the season in Friday’s semifinal to take third place at the State Farm Holiday Classic.

The Knights (16-1) pulled away from St. Ignatius in the fourth quarter for a 63-57 win.

“We learned a lot about ourselves in the last two weeks at the Sterling Tournament and coming here,” Richwoods coach Todd Hursey said. “I think that we hopefully learned that when we stay composed and move the ball, we’re hard to beat.”

After falling behind 22-16 after the first quarter, Richwoods stepped up its defense by closing out on the Wildcats’ 3-point shooters.

“I think we did a better job of rotating the matchup and closing out on their shooters to where they couldn’t get their feet set and I think Cam (Taylor) did a better job of not trying to take away the high post (and instead) let her catch it and slide,” said Hursey.

It was a matchup of two, similar teams with good post players and guards that could shoot.

“I thought our gameplan was to be patient on offense, attack the rim when we had one-on-one situations and kick it when we didn’t and I thought we did that really well,” St. Ignatius coach Cara Doyle said. “Unfortunately, they did it really well and they shot really well.”

The Wildcats (11-4) were led by junior guard Molly Gannon, who scored a team-high 18 points, and senior forward Campbell Montgomery, who had 15. They combined for 57.9 percent of St. Ignatius’ scoring.

Richwoods was led by Kourtney Crane, who had a game-high 21 points, and Jaida McCloud, who added 16.

Aaron Ferguson can be reached at 686-3207 or aferguson@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @Sports_Aaron.