By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
LEXINGTON – The Rupp Arena ceiling is so high, the basket backgrounds so far away, the 21,000 seats so imposing, the 94-foot college floor just enough longer that it will catch up with you eventually. That’s what they say.
Good luck when you get to Lexington for the Sweet 16, Pandas, you’ll need it. Almost everybody does.
OK, maybe not everybody. On a night when the Pikeville High School band played its version of the Notre Dame Fight Song to send the Panthers on and off the floor, the real Notre Dame must have known this team was in the right place.
Where its three-point shooting would exceed all who came before it in a record-breaking performance for the Kentucky girls’ state tournament.
It started out with a bit of a switch. With just 1:17 gone, NDA center Sarah Young, all 6-feet-2 of her, found herself wide open outside the arc as Pikeville dropped off. No need to guard a center way out there, they figured.
So Sarah did the one thing that made sense as Pikeville guarded five on four. She eyed the basket with a softly arcing three-pointer. Swish.
A minute later, Sarah came down the floor and the Panthers were guarding – or not guarding – her out on the floor the same way. So she let fly again. Swish.
“I don’t usually hit that many of three’s,” Sarah said after Notre Dame’s 77-38 romp over Pikeville Wednesday evening “so I just kept shooting.”
The win has Notre Dame moving on to Friday’s 1:30 second-round matchup against Taylor County, a 60-58 winner over West Jessamine, in the final upper-bracket game Wednesday.
Young wasn’t the only one. Emma Holzapfel, who is supposed to take those long-range shots, hit one with a little over a minute left in the first quarter. Then another seconds later to conclude a 13-0 run to put the Pandas on top, 19-7.
Then Holzapfel hit another, farther out this time, followed by one from Joslyn LaBordeaux-Humphrey. And then Young came back with her third. And Holzapfel matched her to make it 36-16 at intermission.
From the box score, the numbers were not to be believed. NDA launched 15 threes, hit 10 of them. Of their 11 field goals, just one was a two-pointer. Who needs to go inside when you can do that. UK fans at Rupp seemed puzzled. They weren’t accustomed to seeing a team shoot three’s like that, not on this floor this year.
Bemoaning his team’s semi-slow start, NDA coach George Stoll acknowledged however that “we can get hot and when we shoot it, we can be tough to beat.”
“We tried the best we could,” Pikeville coach Denise Campbell said as her team finished 22-9 on the season. “The effort was there. We had a hand in the face and still they knocked down shots.”
Indeed, they did. Only with a different stable of shooters in the second half. Junior Amelia Stallard fired in five three’s on six shots after intermission, knocking down three in just over a minute – from 6:43 to 5:28 – as the margin kept expanding.
But clearly the word had gotten to the NDA bench that the last Stallard shot tied the girls’ state tournament record of 16. And now the pressure was on the backups on the floor. Who will it be? Who can pull the record trigger?
Senor Kylee Wagner could. And did. With 3:48 to go, she nailed the 17th and final three to make the score, 71-32.
“I did know,” Stoll said of the record, but made it clear that “we just ran our offense.” No special effort to get that last three.
Actually, Stoll was thinking other thoughts. “I said ‘they’re not getting over 40’.” And they didn’t.
“We were playing really selfless,” Stallard said as the Pandas improved to 25-7.
Now we have “to keep our composure,” Holzapfel said after scoring 19 points, the same as Stallard. Young added 16. And among those three, they finished with a not-to-be-believed 14 of 17 on three-pointers.
Stoll had one more request of his players and it didn’t involve shooting.
“Make them feel us,” he said of the need for the Pandas to play with physicality on defense – and on the boards, where they had a 33-23 edge.
But they shot it so well, that’s all that anyone is going to have any feelings about after this one.
SCORING SUMMARY
PIKEVILLE 7 9 14 8
NOTRE DAME 19 17 21 20—77
Pikeville (22-9): Alvin 9-18 1-5 2-3 18, Lin 0-8 0-1 0-0 0, Walters 2-7 2-3 0-0 6, Woods 0-5 0-0 2-2 2, Rogers 1-3 0-0 0-0 2, Oliver 2-4 0-0 0-0 4, Ca. Compton 0-2 0-0 0-0 0, Patton 0-0 0-0 1-2 1, Ch. Compton 1-2 0-1 0-0 2, Justice 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Martin 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 15-49 3-10 5-7 38.
Notre Dame (25-7): Stallard 7-8 5-6 0-0 19, McGraw 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Holzapfel 6-8 5-6 2-2 19, LaBordeaux-Humphrey 3-8 1-2 2-3 9, Ad. Lawre 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Wagner 2-5 2-3 2-2 8, An. Lawrie 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Middendorf 2-5 0-3 0-0 4, Mauller 0-1 0-0 2-2 2, Copeland 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, S. Lawrie 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Crisler 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 25-46 17-26 10-11—77.