By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
St. Henry coach Dan Trame figured the only way his team would have a shot against a Notre Dame team that beat up on the Crusaders, 54-21, just three weeks ago was to take as few shots as possible.
Not for the first three quarters anyway. And against the bigger, deeper, more athletic Pandas, it looked like Trame was right. First quarter: 5-2 Notre Dame. The Crusaders, who had the Pandas chasing them all around the court, took just 12 shots in a first half that had them trailing, 10-8, at intermission.
“I just prayed that we’d stay in the game,” Trame said. “And then have a chance to win in the second half. I knew everybody was mad at me . . . I don’t care.”
Not everybody, as it turns out, was mad at him. Notre Dame coach Kes Murphy, who has matched up against Trame since they played against each other in high school, wasn’t surprised. “I’ve known Coach Trame for a long time . . . he put his team in the best position to win this game.”
Of course, that was after Murphy said, “We need the shot clock,” something the KHSAA has resisted concerning its cost and requirement for another person to run it during games. And then with this addendum about this first-round Ninth Region Tournament game that ended with Notre Dame’s 10-deep squad of athletes forcing St. Henry to open up and play faster as the Pandas gradually increased their lead to 22-10 after three quarters on the way to a 40-25 first-round win.
“It made us better,” Murphy said of surviving St. Henry’s unusual and well-executed stall ball they simply call “Five.” That’s for all five players to spread the floor as wide as they can. The extra five feet on each half of the college court – “that helped us,” Trame said – figures out to 250 additional square feet to spread out at the offensive end.
“We’re young and little,” Trame said, “it was common sense to spread the floor.”
It was after the first game these teams played, a 33-point Notre Dame romp.
“I was at home with Covid,” Trame said, and he missed the game but was able to watch it on TV. “I think it was 47-11 at halftime.”
When the teams drew for the regional matchups Friday, Trame was kidding that he “was taking 1000-dollar bids to draw us,” he said of the 14-16 regular season Crusaders. And then Notre Dame did. And Trame had to come up with a gameplan to avoid a second rout. And this was it.
Dribble, dribble, dribble. Pass, pass, pass. Throw it long. Throw it cross-court. Throw it anywhere the Pandas were not. Do not shoot it, as two Crusaders who fired up early threes learned to their chagrin.
“I calmly voiced my opinion” that they not do that, said Trame, who covered as much ground on the sideline as his players did on the court. “They responded,” Trame said proudly. “We had to sell them that this was the pathway to victory.”
And crazy as it sounds, the Crusaders scored more points against Notre Dame in a game they stalled for three quarters – 25 – than they did when they played it straight for all four when they scored just 21.
“You can’t really practice against that,” Notre Dame’s Murphy said. Especially when you don’t know it’s coming. “Just stay the course,” he told his players. And speed them up, which the Pandas did after halftime with Maya Lawrie leading the way with a game-high 13 points while 6-foot-4 Sophia Gibson added 10.
While the big court offered advantages for the spread-it-out Crusaders, it also worked in Notre Dame’s favor, Murphy said. “The court’s a big deal, thankfully we’ve got strength in numbers.”
And now comes a Highlands team that “last year ended our season,” Murphy said of the Bluebirds’ 39-37 win in the regional, which is something “we’ll remember.”
You have to go back to last year because these teams – unlike all the other top teams in the Ninth Region – do not play in the regular season.
What will it come down to? Like always in basketball, Murphy said: “Who makes more shots – and stops.”
SCORING SUMMARY
St. Henry 2 6 2 15–25
Notre Dame 5 5 12 18—40
St. Henry (14-17): McElheney 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Bain 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Jones 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Pieczonka 1-8 1-5 2-2 5, Sieg 1-2 0-1 0-0 2, Unkraut 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Armbruster 0-3 0-0 1-2 1, Powers 2-6 2-3 3-4 9, Slocum 1-2 0-0 4-4 6, Blackburn 1-2 0-0 0-0 2; TOTALS: 6-26 3-10 10-12 25.
Notre Dame (21-7): Stallard 1-2 0-1 0-0 2, Wagner 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, M. McGraw 0-4 0-3 3-4 3, Lenihan 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Young 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Holtzapfel 3-7 2-4 0-0 8, Ad. Lawrie 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, M. Lawrie 4-6 0-0 5-8 13, Burden 0-1 0-0 1-2 1, LaBourdeaux-Humphrey 0-3 0-1 1-2 1, Eberhard 1-1 0-0 0-0 2, E. McGraw 0-1 0-1 0-2 0, Gibson 3-7 0-1 4-7 10; TOTALS: 12-32 2-11 14-25 40.