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"It's hard to beat a team three times in a row," Wise senior point guard Janay Borum said after her team did just that, defeating Northwestern 49-34 and earning the four-year-old school's first state tournament berth.

The Pumas will face Gaithersburg in a state semifinal game at 3 p.m. Thursday at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County in Catonsville. Gaithersburg beat Walt Whitman, 53-41, to win the 4A West Region title on Saturday.

Senior forward Tiara Smith had 15 points and Borum added 11 to lead the Pumas (24-1). Smith scored nine of her points in the first quarter when Wise built a 20-7 lead.

Northwestern kept it close at the start, trailing only 6-5 with 4 minutes, 17 seconds to play in that quarter. But the Wildcats then missed five consecutive shots and didn't score again until there were 35.7 seconds left in the period.

Northwestern (17-7) did rally in the second quarter. After Wise's Briana Gibson made two free throws, the Pumas led 22-7 with 7:14 to go until halftime. Northwestern scored 10 unanswered points to narrow the lead to 22-17 with 5:12 remaining before halftime. But the Wildcats did not score again in the first half, missing eight consecutive field goal attempts and two free throw attempts.

Wise was also struggling, scoring only five points over the last 5:12 of the first half to take a 27-17 lead into halftime. In the second half Northwestern closed the gap to six a couple of times, but could get no closer. Center Tiffany Wallace led the Wildcats with 10 points.

"It seems like we had two or three different game plans," said Wise coach Walter Clark. "I like the game plan that we had during the first quarter."

Northwestern coach Eric Sampson pointed to one statistic: The Wildcats made 5 of 20 free throws.

"Free throws cost us the game," Sampson said. "You're not going to win a championship game if you're not going to make your free throws."

Wise will rely on its four key seniors when it travels to UMBC's Retriever Athletic Center for the state tournament: Borum, Smith, guard Leslie Slayton and Gibson. Clark, who guided DuVal to state championships in 1991, 1999, 2000 and 2002, said having so many seniors isn't necessarily an edge over the competition.

"I have a veteran teams in terms of seniors, but they're awfully young in terms of those kind of situations," Clark said. "It'll be my eighth time there, so I'll see if I can calm them down a bit."