By Dan Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
Looking in from the outside, you could say that Sunday night’s first-round Ninth Region girls’ basketball tournament games make the argument for changing the way the KHSAA does regional basketball.
Seed the eight teams as the KHSAA does for district tournaments, some would say, so you don’t have Northern Kentucky’s top two teams – and two of the top four teams in the state, Cooper and Holy Cross — in the same bracket and playing in the semis not the championship game? What would be wrong with that?
Actually, there is something wrong with that, said Holy Cross Coach Ted Arlinghaus after his fourth-ranked Indians knocked off St. Henry, 77-38, for their 19th win in their last 20 games.
“If you go with the chalk and Cooper and we play Friday night, we’ve still got to play our game. For us to win, we’ve still got to beat both Ryle and Cooper, it’s just the order that would be different.” So keep it as it is, Arlinghaus says: “I’m a little bit of a purist.”
Cooper’s Justin Holthaus agrees. “If you seeded the Ninth Region this year, you’d have us, Holy Cross and Ryle 1-2-3,” Holthaus said. So two of the top three would be from the same district. “I really like the way it is.”
Cooper and Holy Cross playing Friday or Saturday doesn’t matter to either coach. “We’re super excited to be playing them,” Holthaus said.
But what about the mismatches when the better programs at the top of the region just keep separating themselves from the others? What about a team like St. Henry, after losing to Holy Cross, 78-42, back in November, having to play Holy Cross again?
Or a game like the nightcap where big Class 6A school Cooper, No. 2 in the state, led Class A Bellevue, 23-0, after the first quarter? Isn’t that a problem? Shouldn’t someone protect the small schools? Aren’t Kentucky and Delaware the only two states that have all schools, no matter what size, competing in the state tournament?
They are. And that changes how these coaches think about this. Even though with the loss, St. Henry finishes up 15-15 and no winning record and with back-to-back losses — 48-22 (to big school Dixie Heights) and 77-38 to close out the season? Is that a good thing?
“Absolutely,” says St. Henry Coach Todd Smart. “It’s a chance to see what high school programs like Holy Cross are like,” he said. They learned some things here, going against a program like Holy Cross, Smart said. “We had a 22-3 JV team so we’re getting there.”
The big thing that matters with the small school situation, Smart says, with three of whom were here Sunday night, “is to be flexible, especially at a school like ours where volleyball and soccer are so big. If a player (playing multiple sports) has to miss a practice, you have to just go with it.”
And you just had to go with it when Cooper, the No. 2 team in the state, jumped out to a 27-0 lead on a Bellevue team that won 22 games and made its first regional since 2010. Which explains the strong, loud Bellevue crowd in Truist Arena. Did a single one of them think the Tigers, from a 230-strong student body, were going to take down mighty Cooper, with nearly 10 times that many?
Nope. But they took away something else that Sunday’s 70-27 loss to Cooper can’t take away. “In 2010 we got here through the district draw,” Bellevue Coach Tommy Sorrell said. This is the first time Bellevue made it on its own, winning its way in with its first-ever district tournament win over Newport Central Catholic.
“If you could have seen the looks on our kids’ faces as they came running over to me,” Sorrell said. Well, you’d understand. You can’t take that away from them. “We achieved all our goals,” he says of the school-record 22 wins from a conference title to a regional berth.
And with an all-undergraduate roster, “We’re upping our schedule a bit next year,” Sorrell says. And there’s an excitement about the offseason that hasn’t been there.
HOLY CROSS OFF TO SLOW START, FINISHES FAST
As if to prove his point, Smart had his Crusaders in a diamond-and-one enabling them to keep Holy Cross’ 6-foot-2 Julia Hunt, the Ninth Region Player of the Year, in check with an extra defender. And for a while the Indians were standing around and shooting jump shots in a 15-10 first quarter.
“Once we started attacking and going inside-out for our threes,” Arlinghaus said, things turned around for his team. “When Julia wasn’t able to get her shots, we were able to swing the ball and I was able to step up and hit my shots,” said Holy Cross freshman Alyssa Arlinghaus, the coach’s daughter who hit three of her four long-range shots for 11 points.
Alyssa Arlinghaus was one of five Lady Indians in double figures – four with 11 points — with starter Aniyah Carter adding nine points. Aaliyah Hayes hit 17 to lead the way with three others at 11 – Hunt, Aumani Nelson and Miyah Wimzie.
“We’ve been doing that all year,” Arlinghaus said. “We have the weapons.”
So did a pair of St. Henry seniors with Kayla Unkraut’s 16 points leading the way followed by post player Taylor Hill’s 11.
And now Holy Cross has a Cooper team the Lady Indians had to cancel a midseason game against in order to play all four games of the All “A” Classic in Corbin that Holy Cross won for a second straight year.
“A lot of people have been penciling us in for Cooper Friday,” Arlinghaus said. But first they had to win Sunday. And now those people with pencils are correct.
By Friday night, one of the state’s top four girls’ teams will be gone.
SCORING SUMMARY
ST. HENRY 10 7 12 9–38
HOLY CROSS 15 24 19 19–77
ST. HENRY (15-15): McElheney 0-1 0-1 2-2 2, Bain 0-1 -0-1 0-0 0-0 0, S. Bollman 1-1 0-0 2-2 2, McDermott 0-1 0-0 1-2 1, Pieczonka 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Ja. Knollman 0-4 0-4 0-0 0, Mason 1-1 0-0 1-2 3, Jo. Knollman 0-3 0-3 0-0 0, Unkraut 7-15 1-5 1-1 16, McCormack 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, K. Bollman 0-0 0-0 1-2 1, Logan 1-3 0-0 0-0 2, Powers 0-2 0-1 0-0 0, Sieg 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Hill 4-6 0-0 3-4 11; TOTALS: 14-40 1-16 9-15 38.
HOLY CROSS (28-5): L. Hunt 1-1 0-0 0-0 2, J. Hunt 5-7 1-1 0-0 11, A. Arlinghaus 4-6 3-4 0-0 11, P. Arlinghaus 1-1 0-0 0-0 2, Sturgeon 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Hayes 7-10 2-4 1-1 17, Nelson 4-10 2-4 1-1 11, Hill 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Rhodes 0-2 0-1 0-0 0, Wimzie 5-8 1-1 0-0 11, Carter 4-7 1-3 0-0 9, Klaiss 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Bowens 1-2 1-1 0-0 3; TOTALS: 32-55 11-22 2-4 77.
COOPER ROLLS OVER A GAME BELLEVUE BUNCH
When the scoreboard read 23-0 at the end of the first quarter, and then 27-0 with 5:41 left in the second quarter, Bellevue Coach Sorrell had just one thought: “Please make a basket,” he prayed. Thankfully, junior Ally MacPherson did just that, hitting a three-pointer for starters.
“Our girls were just so nervous,” Sorrell said. “I could see it in their faces. And then ‘we can score now’.”
He recalls thinking at the regional draw when he realized he was going to get either a Holy Cross team that beat them by 38 points in the All “A” Classic or No. 2 in the state Cooper, he hoped for Cooper. His girls didn’t know anything about Cooper.
Which was the problem in preparing them for this game, Sorrell said. Make it clear how good Cooper was and “they’d be intimidated.” But then how do you get them ready for this game?
Good question. No easy answer. “Correct,” Sorrell said.
Although his Tigers know how good Cooper is now. It was 41-15 at halftime but that meant Bellevue competed in an 18-15 second quarter.
“Kudos to Bellevue,” Cooper’s Holthaus said, “for all the energy and excitement they’ve brought to their community this year.”
As for his 27-4 team right now, with 23 wins in the last 24 games, Holthaus realizes it’s all about Friday night. “We’re excited, we’re super excited,” he said of the big matchup that didn’t happen in the regular season when Holy Cross had to cancel because of their participation in the All “A” Classic in Corbin.
Despite their 70 points, the Jaguars had just one player – Logan Luebbers Palmer – in double figures with 11 points. But 11 Jags in all scored with four more scoring at least eight. Haylee Noel had nine while Addyson Brissey, Liz Freihofer and Simone Smith had eight each.
But if you’re looking for a stat combo that tells the story, Cooper had 31 field goals to three turnovers. Bellevue had 10 field goals to 18 turnovers. The first half was particularly one-sided with Bellevue’s 14 turnovers more than doubling the Tigers’ six turnovers.
SCORING SUMMARY
BELLEVUE 0 15 4 8—27
COOPER 23 18 23 6—77
BELLEVUE (22-10): Long 4-7 0-0 0-0 8, Jayla Dowell 0-5 0-3 0-0 0, MacPherson 2-9 2-6 0-0 6, Wight 0-1 0-0 2-4 2, Sorrell 2-3 2-3 0-0 6, Reed 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Massey 0-3 0-2 0-0 0, McCarty 0-3 0-0 0-2 0, Jayda Dowell 2-5 1-3 0-0 5, Meyers 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 10-36 5-17 2-6 27.
COOPER (27-4): Brissey 4-7 0-2 0-0 8, Jones 0-2 0-1 0-0 0, Noel 4-5 1-1 0-0 9, Rankin 2-5 0-1 0-0 4, Alexander 1-4 0-1 2-2 4, Scott 1-2 0-0 0-0 2, Deere 2-3 0-0 1-2 5, Thompson 3-3 0-0 0-0 6, Cooper 2-3 1-1 0-0 5, Freihofer 3-9 0-2 2-2 8, Luebbers-Palmer 5-6 1-1 0-0 11, Smith 4-6 0-1 0-0 8; TOTALS: 31-55 3-11 5-6 70.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.