By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
It was a bold strategy.
But that’s what you get when you have two of Kentucky’s bigger high schools from one of the state’s smaller towns going against one another for a 33rd District championship that once belonged to one of them and now the other wants to keep.
Say hello to Cooper-Ryle, a rivalry for two teams from opposite sides of a town of 7,416 with players who have known each other since grade school. And played against each other all through high school.
Speed’em up, was Ryle’s game plan here. Challenge everything Cooper wanted to do. Everything. On the second bounce, a dribbler could expect another hand or two, from the other team, on the basketball. Get a steal in the lane and you were only 50-50 to make it to half-court. Head’em off at the pass, as they used to say in those old Westerns.
Just more of the same old rivalry, right Cooper Coach Justin Holthaus? Just like always?
Uhh, no.
“That was extra,” Holthaus said as he schemed out the post-game net-cutting scenario for his players after his Lady Jags’ 61-48 win. This game had an edge even this rivalry hadn’t seen.
Just ask Cooper’s Logan Luebbers Palmer as she worked on getting her postgame injured nose squared away after a 13-point effort.
“Definitely more physical,” this time around, she said detailing her three collisions – with an elbow, a head-to-head shot and as it turned out, a scratch that had them taking timeout to clean the blood off the floor.
“They’re playing hard, we’re playing hard,” she said. Stuff happens. “They wanted to speed us up.”
That was the theme from the Cooper folks. “They have all those athletes and that physicality,” Holthaus said. But he wasn’t sure “any team can keep that up for four quarters.”
Not that the Raiders didn’t try in this matchup of two of the top three teams in the Ninth Region – No. 1 Cooper at 26-3 now, No. 3 Ryle at 22-8.
What kept that from happening for Ryle, losing a second straight district title to Cooper after dominating the years before that, was 5-foot-10 junior point guard Liz Freihofer, who shoots it so well now that Holthaus switched her from point guard to more of a scorer as she and her senior sister, Kay, also named to the all-tourney team, dominated the perimeter play.
And we haven’t even mentioned Whitney Lind, Cooper’s Ninth Region Player of the year and Kentucky Miss Basketball candidate.
But first let’s talk about Liz Freihofer, who hit 11 of 12 free throws, nine out of 10 in the fourth quarter, that made Ryle’s play-from-behind fouling strategy of little value.
“She’s grown up as a junior,” Holthaus said, “she wants that moment.” With a game-high 21 points, the poised combo guard had a number of moments that earned her MVP honors for the 33rd District tournament.
And like all her teammates, she said of Ryle: “You know they’re going to try a bunch of pressure . . . they’re a great defensive team.”
But that’s not all. “There’s something about this game. I’ve been playing against them since the eighth grade,” Liz Freihofer said, “it definitely gets us up.”
“It’s hard,” said Lind, who will be heading to Lehigh for college next year. “It’s tough. We’ve been playing against them for five years.”
Limited to 12 points, five under her average, the 6-2 Lind said it didn’t matter to her as she rebounded, deflected balls, tipped rebounds to herself and pretty much demonstrated the finesse plays her game is known for. “I think I did a little bit of everything,” she said as she was named all-tournament. “I maybe didn’t finish as strong as I should have but we won and that’s what matters.”
Ryle led once, at 2-0, and it was tied twice, at 2-2 and 4-4 but that was it. Cooper took an early lead behind Lind’s eight first quarter points and never and never let it get closer than four points in a first half that ended with Cooper up 12, 43-31.
Both teams move on to the Ninth Region Tournament that opens at NKU’s Truist Arena in an all-day session Sunday.
Ryle was led by junior center Sarah Baker’s 15 points with freshman Jaelyn Jones adding 10 and senior Austin Johnson adding eight. Both Baker and Jones were named all-tourney.
BOX SCORE
RYLE 13 8 10 17—48
COOPER 17 15 11 18—61
RYLE (22-8): Eubank 8, Holtman 4, Johnson 9, Jones 10, Carrigan 2, Baker 15, TOTAL: 48.
COOPER (26-3): Noel 8, Lind 12, K. Freihofer 7, L. Freihofer 21, Palmer 13, TOTAL: 61.