Before the season, Concordia College Alabama women’s basketball coach Howard White challenged his team to try to get back to the national championship.  Mission accomplished.

Now, they’ll shoot for their second straight United States Collegiate Athletic Association national title.

The Hornets overwhelmed Silver Lake 95-82 Friday, in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. Concordia led by as many as 29 points and earned the right to play Berea College for the title on Saturday at 3:15 p.m.

“We’re a stabilized program, and we’ve got a lot of tradition here as far as a winning mentality,” White said. “When I recruit them in, I let them know this is a winning program. It’s not just a program to go in and play college basketball. We’re a winning program. We expect to win.”

The Hornets were a bit sluggish Friday morning after staying up late to cheer on the Concordia men, whose game lasted until the wee hours of the morning Friday.

Concordia led only 20-18 after the first period but put the game away in the second quarter. The Hornets outscored Silver Lake 26-10 in the second quarter.

“The pressure defense got to them, and they made them to turn the ball over. We played pretty good defense and got out on their 3-point shooters,” White said. “We were not allowing them to shoot a lot of threes and those long shots, we were turning them into layups. We’ve got to continue to do that [Saturday].”

Concordia was led by Lashanique Youngblood, who had a triple double with 16 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists. Shuntavia Harris led the Hornets in scoring with 25 points and had 14 rebounds.

Carshava Sulton also scored 16 points and added 6 rebounds. Reneseya Brown joined them in double figures with 13 points and 10 rebounds.

Concordia won the rebounding battle 54-36.

White said the team was given the day off Friday and will get its legs ready for Saturday’s title game.