It isn’t easy to beat the same team three times in one season, especially when the first two meetings featured an overtime game and were decided by just nine total points.

After those two close contests in River Valley Conference play, Tri-Point (24-7) made it a trio of wins over Clifton Central (20-11) with a 51-31 home win in Thursday’s RVC Tournament championship game.

With the Class 1A Clifton Central Regional getting underway Saturday, these conference rivals could very well meet again for Round 4 in Monday’s semifinal.

Tri-Point added a tourney title to its resume Thursday after going 16-0 in RVC play for the second season in a row, but even with last season’s success, there was uncertainty for the Chargers this season with just seven players on the roster and a first-year head coach.

Senior Adriana Hummel, who had a game-high 19 points Thursday, said the team has done a great job putting those obstacles behind them.

“We’ve improved a ton throughout the season, and from the past two games (with Central),” she said. “In the beginning there was about six girls, and we truly just doubted ourselves. Coming to play these (RVC) games, and winning every single one, we were just so amazed and surprised we could do that.”

Last season’s conference title was the first for Tri-Point since 1999, which was also the season with its most-recent regional title.

Head coach Dalton Reed, who was an assistant the last three seasons, said it’s been great to see this team duplicate last season’s success even with half the rostered players.

“These girls are the hardest-working group I’ve been around,” he said. “That was our 31st game this year, and every single game they’ve brought it. We ran into a couple injuries a couple weeks ago, and they still pushed through those. They work hard and they’re never complaining. They’re a great group.”

Early on Thursday, it looked like the Chargers and Comets were heading for another close game.

Tri-Point led 8-4 after the first quarter and Central tied things 11-11 early in the second, but the Chargers started to pull away by closing the half on a 12-0 run.

The 23-11 halftime lead grew to 36-21 by the end of the third quarter, and after Central battled back a bit to make it 41-31 three minutes into the fourth, a 10-0 run from the Chargers put the game away.

Lexa Porth and Madison McNeill joined Hummel in double figures with 12 and 11 points, respectively.

Central got nine points from Alexis Prisock and five apiece from Eriannah Martinez and Kaitlyn Balthazor.

The Comets face Momence to open regional play Saturday, a team they beat by 36 and 30 points earlier in the season.

A third win over Momence would lead to a rematch with Tri-Point, and head coach Henry Hines said he hopes the team got some shooting struggles out of the way Thursday rather than in the regional.

“We knew we could have (Tri-Point) twice in five days, so I told them if we were going to have a bad game, I’d rather it be now because the second season starts Saturday,” he said. “Every now and then we have nights like tonight. Our energy was low to begin with, and for whatever reason we had the inability to make shots.”

Still, the Comets have a second straight 20-win season for the first time since 2008 and 2009.

As the Comets head into the postseason searching for their first regional title since 2017, Prisock said she feels they are in a good spot to bounce back and start the postseason on a high note.

“I’m really excited,” she said. “I think we’ll get a good get-back from this game. Our game Saturday versus Momence should be a really good one, and we’ll be able to play at home.”

Should that game result in a win, and another matchup with Tri-Point, Prisock said she and her teammates now have more of an idea how to make the fourth time the charm.

“It’d be nice to hit our shots, because we sometimes feel like we can’t hit them here, and work against their zone defense, because sometimes we can’t break that,” she said. “But I think it’ll come down to who wants it more.”