By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
For much of this game, the Kentucky Girls All-Stars kept fighting back, down by nine points at halftime. And they did, finally catching up to a favored Ohio team to lead, 59-58, with less than 12 minutes left in the annual “Battle for the Border” at Thomas More Saturday evening.
And then they got smoked, 35-14, the rest of the way in a 93-73 loss. At the end of the third quarter, the Kentucky Girls were playing for the win. At the end of the game, they were playing to hold Ohio under 100 points.
Tough way to go out for the five Northern Kentucky girls in the game, right? Let’s ask Anna Kelch, from Simon Kenton’s 10th Region champs and state tournament quarterfinalists, how this game played out for her.
“It was an awesome experience. It made my heart happy, playing with all these girls I’ve played AAU ball with,” Kelch said of the five local players in the game. “It was fun, playing with them, staying in a hotel . . .,” every part of the all-star experience.
And no looking back – well, not much – at a game where four Northern Kentuckians on the floor together helped lead the charge after halftime, down 44-35, to re-take the lead.
But that wasn’t the end of the story.
An Ohio team that could run the floor and beat the Bluegrass girls down the court for layups, ended this story. While Kentucky struggled much of the game to put the ball in the basket, Ohio made it look easy with one fast-break layup after another.
“Forty of 80,” Kentucky coach Kirsten Collins of Calloway County said as she looked at the final stat sheet for Ohio. And at least half of those 40 came on shots in the paint. “They got lots of layups,” Collins said. Lots and lots of layups.
The problem was clear: “Our transition defense,” Campbell County’s Isabella Jayasuriya said, after Kentucky started missing shots (they hit on just 24 of 73 for 32.9 percent to Ohio’s 50 percent), “we did not handle that well.”
But for Jayasuriya, who will be heading to Thomas More next year, the entire experience “was really fun. It’s nice getting a feel of this place.”
“We had a lot of lapses defensively,” Collins said of her Kentucky team that was forced to take chances to catch up. “We rolled the dice . . . our shots didn’t fall . . . we needed to rotate better.”
Against an Ohio team with two players headed to Notre Dame, another to Ohio State, and others to Ohio U., Wright State, Tulsa and Akron, that didn’t work.
But the five local players did contribute to some of Kentucky’s success as well as that one comeback. Notre Dame’s Emma Holzapfel, headed to Bellarmine, and Kelch, who is Georgetown College bound, each had three three-pointers. With Jayasuriya also hitting one from deep, Northern Kentuckians managed to make seven of Kentucky’s 10 three-pointers as the rest of the squad managed to make just three of 17 from long range.
Kelch and Holzapfel, hitting on six of 10 threes, had nine points each, tied for second-most on the Kentucky team. Cooper’s Addison Brissey added six. Jayasuriya scored four points while grabbing a second-best seven rebounds for Kentucky. Simon Kenton’s Haylie Webb, also heading to Thomas More, didn’t score but pulled down six rebounds.
Ohio’s Game MVP was 5-foot-9 guard Kaylah Thornton, from Dayton Fairmont headed to Akron, who scored 15 points. Kentucky Game MVP was 5-7 guard Keziah Renee from Louisville Butler, who scored 17 points and is undecided on her college choice.
KENTUCKY-OHIO GIRLS SCORING SUMMARY
OHIO GIRLS 25 19 23 26–93
KY. GIRLS 26 9 24 14–73
OHIO: Buskirk 2-2 0-2 4, Crompton 1-2 0-0 2, Allen 4-10 1-2 11, Habra 4-4 0-0 8, Godby 1-1 0-0 2, M. Veith 3-7 0-0 8, Williams 5-12 0-0 12, Thornton 7-13 1-6 15, B. Veith 1-3 0-0 3, Bayliff 0-2 2-2 2, Jones 1-5 1-2 3, Fox 6-10 0-0 12, Korfhagen 3-4 0-0 7, Sturgill 2-5 0-0 4; TOTALS: 40-80 6-14 93. Three-point FGs: Allen 1, M. Veith 2, Williams 2, B. Veith 1, Korfhagen 1 (Total: 7-32).
KENTUCKY: Holzapfel 3-6 0-0 9, Lane 3-6 1-2 7, Brissey 2-11 2-4 6, Hamblen 2-6 0-0 4, Renee 5-9 5-8 17, Koch 1-7 1-4 3, King 0-1 0-0 0, Terry 1-3 0-0 3, Spivey 1-5 0-0 2, Webb 0-2 0-0 0, Kelch 3-4 0-0 9, Powell 2-5 5-8 9, Jayasuriya 1-6 1-3 4, TOTALS: 24-73 15-28 73. (Three-point FGs: Holzapfel 3, Kelch 3, Renee 2, Terry 1, Jayasuriya 1 (Total 10-36, 21.9 percent).