MASSILLON — Entering Thursday's regional, Hiland girls basketball coach Dave Schlabach was most concerned about St. Thomas Aquinas' trio of 6-foot posts. Ultimately, though, it was his own "big" girl, 5-foot-8 Rachel Horn, that had outsized influence — and her presence loomed largest 20 feet from the basket.

Horn had a game-high 15 points on five 3-pointers as the Hawks routed the Knights 56-30 in Thursday's Div. IV Massillon Regional semifinal. Hiland, now 26-1 and ranked No. 1 in the state, has now won its five postseason games by an average 40 points. The Hawks will play Cuyahoga Heights in Saturday's regional final at 7:30 p.m. for a spot in the Final Four.

Schlabach felt that the Knights' size would make them one of Hiland's most challenging assignments all year. However, the results were the same, with the much smaller Hawks nonetheless winning the battle inside. The Knights' trio of Nicole Newman, Katie Hiestand and Rachel Hiestand combined for only 16 points, with Newman putting up a team-best nine.

"I thought it'd be the most physical game of the year," Schlabach said. "Our post kids moved them away from the basket. We'd seen them (overpower) teams in the post. We were going to let them shoot from the perimeter, and if they made it, so be it, because they'd hurt teams so bad inside 5 feet."

The Hawks, meanwhile, did nearly all their damage well beyond that range. After Rachel Hiestand scored on a layup to open the game, the Hawks rattled off an 8-0 run thanks to a layup by Brittanny Miller and then a pair of 3-pointers from Horn and Kennedy Schlabach. After Aquinas cut the deficit back to 8-7, Hiland answered right back with two more treys, one from Alex Troyer and another from Horn. Hiland went 4 for 6 from beyond the arc in the opening frame and from there heated up faster than Stouffer's lasagna, canning 11 for 18 from downtown for the night.

"More people scored for them tonight than in the games we saw," Aquinas coach Rob Rhodes said. "They shoot the ball well and we dug ourselves a hole."

The turning point came at the end of the second quarter. Aquinas had whittled the lead down to one possession (21-18), but Hiland scored the last four points of the half, one on a freebie from Angela Troyer and then, after a defensive stop, Kennedy Schlabach hoisted up a buzzer-beating trey from 25 feet out to stretch the lead to 25-18 at intermission.

"I was screaming for her to pass," coach Schlabach admitted with a smile.

The momentum change carried into the third quarter as Hiland's depth eventually wore down Aquinas. The Hawks forced the Knights to turn the ball over on seven of their first 10 possessions en route to 18 unanswered points to start the third quarter, and a 22-0 run dating back to the final minute of the second stanza. During that stretch, Horn knocked down two more 3-pointers, along with one from Jessica Troyer and another from Angela Troyer.

"We were right there and then they shot lights-out in the third quarter," said Rhodes, whose team committed 21 miscues against Hiland's rotation of a dozen. "You're fresh in the first half, but we only play seven and then we got tired. They continued to press and they go so deep. We've been successful against teams that have played like that, but they're more disciplined than any team we've played."

A year after graduating one of the most prolific scorers in school history in Regina Hochstetler, Schlabach has emphasized that his team's greatest strength this year is its balanced scoring. While the squad's top two shooters, Megan Beachy and Kennedy Schlabach, combined for 38 points in the district final win over River, on Thursday the only player in double figures was Horn, who's averaged 3 points this year.

"Rachel's scoring has been non-existent since the Classic and we're glad she let it loose," coach Schlabach said. "I wanted her to take a couple perimeter shots just to get their bigs away from the basket — I didn't care if she made them. She's a streaky shooter and when it happens, it happens."

Aquinas was making its first regional appearance since 1994 and Rhodes said the Hawks are the program that every school wants to emulate.

"My daughter knows all about Hiland because we go to the state tournament," the coach said. "We were fired up to prove ourselves against one of the best programs in the state."

In the end, it was the Knights looking up at the undersized Hawks.