Thanks to St. Elizabeth Healthcare Sports Medicine for sponsoring our girls’ high school basketball coverage once again this season. See all of our girls’ basketball stories here and watch for state tournament coverage March 8-12 from BB&T Arena on the campus of Northern Kentucky University.
By Evan Merrill
NKyTribune contributor
Forty seconds are left and the score is tied. The stage is set for a dramatic ending in the 9th Region girls’ basketball semifinal game between Holy Cross and Cooper on Friday at BB&T Arena.
Holy Cross senior guard Aleah Tucker’s holds the ball for the last shot. She passes it to the corner for a wide open 3-pointer by one of her teammates, but it doesn’t fall.
The Cooper team that tied the score with a frantic 16-point rally retrieves the rebound. Junior guard Lexi Held immediately looks up to find senior teammate Kendra Smith streaking down the court with no one in front of her. Held gets the ball to Smith and she coasts in for a breakaway layup to give her team a 51-49 miracle victory.
That’s how one of the most memorable games in the history of the Cooper girls’ basketball program ended to put the Jaguars in the regional final against Holmes at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
Cooper coach Nicole Levandusky said she was screaming for a timeout before Held made the pass to Smith on that game-winning play.
“Thank goodness the officials didn’t hear me,” the coach said. “As soon as I saw Lexi let that ball go, I dropped my hands. It fell the right way for us at the end, huge layup by Kendra to finish it.”
The game was back and forth until the third quarter when Holy Cross went on an 11-0 run to open up a 45-30 lead. When the Indians expanded the lead to 16 points with 5:40 left in the fourth quarter, they seemed to be running away with the game.
“The biggest thing (was) we didn’t quit,” Levandusky said. “Holy Cross had a great game plan. They slowed us down. They didn’t let us get into our rhythm. It almost worked. Our girls at the end basically stole it from them.”
After Cooper senior forward Hailey Anderson strung together a couple of layups, the Jaguars applied a full-court press that forced Holy Cross to commit several turnovers.
“What was going through my head was, ‘I don’t want this to be my last game,’” Anderson said. “When they called a timeout, the other Hailey (Nicholas) came up to me and said, ‘Don’t make this our last game.’ We’re both seniors. That was our goal, we didn’t want it to be our last game.”
The Jaguars scored the points they needed off Holy Cross turnovers and tied the score on a Held jump shot that set up the dramatic ending.
“Cooper picked up the intensity,” said Holy Cross coach Kes Murphy. “We didn’t execute our stuff or respond well. We got super tentative. It’s happened previously in the season where teams pick up the pressure and we kind of folded.”
Holy Cross sophomore Olivia Crigler hit some big shots for the Indians and finished with 23 points. The scoring leader for Cooper was Anderson with 14 points. Held had 10 points, five rebounds, three assists and four steals.
Cooper shot 35.7 percent (20 of 56) from the field while Holy Cross made 48.5 percent (17 of 35). The Indians had a 31-28 edge in rebounds with Tucker pulling down eight.
This is the first time Cooper has played in the regional tournament and the Jaguars will take a 22-7 record into Sunday’s championship game. Holy Cross finishes with a 19-11 record.
The only seniors on the Holy Cross roster are Tucker and Courtney Turner. They were members of the team that won both the All “A” Classic and post-season state tournaments in 2015.
“They’re probably the two most decorated kids in Holy Cross history, and for that matter the entire Northern Kentucky region,” Murphy said. “They knew how to win. They knew how we operated and it transcended down to our younger kids. Hopefully, they (younger players) learn from this and we get better from this.”
COOPER 8 14 8 21 — 51
HOLY CROSS 7 13 18 11 — 49
COOPER (22-7): Anderson 6 1 14, Held 4 2 10, Smith 1 2 4, Nicholas 2 0 4, Mitchell 3 0 8, Smith 1 0 3, Bleska 2 1 6, Rivera 1 0 2. TOTALS: 20 6 51
HOLY CROSS (19-11): Crigler 7 6 23, McClendon 2 2 6, Turner 0 2 2, Tucker 3 0 6, Thomas 5 2 12. Totals: 17 12 49.
Three-pointers: C — Mitchell 2, Anderson, M. Smith, Bleska. HC — Crigler 3.