By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
If district championship games, where both teams move on to next week’s regional don’t mean that much — as some charge — then why do they compete so hard?
Why did the players, coaches and the near-capacity crowd Thursday night at the Msgr. Thomas Finn Activity Center in Latonia get into it like they did?
Why did the noise reach an ear-shattering level at times?
And why were Notre Dame’s Pandas so thrilled to get out of Latonia with a 63-54 win over a Holy Cross team that kept making runs at them?
“It was a game of runs,” Holy Cross coach Ted Arlinghaus said. “They’d go on a run, we’d answer. They just made the last one.”
The Pandas also made the first one, with senior Megan McGraw — after two years playing soccer and now returning from a concussion that kept her out the last three weeks — firing in three straight first-quarter three-pointers in a 23-point NDA first period scoring binge that allowed the bigger, deeper Pandas to play from ahead the entire game.
That McGraw had made just five three-pointers in the 16 games she’d played was one of the reasons she got those shots. “Those are shots we’ll live with,” Arlinghaus said. And on this night, die with. “Hats off to them,” Arlinghaus said.
And to his own team, smaller at all five positions, for never giving up. Down by 15 through much of the third quarter that finished with Notre Dame leading, 51-36, and the Indians with no way to handle District Tourney MVP Sophia Gibson, a 6-foot-4 center headed to Yale, Holy Cross kept coming back.
Down just 58-54 after an Alyssa Arlinghaus scramble score in the lane with 58.0 seconds left and a chance for a quick score again, Holy Cross couldn’t get the final pass through the Notre Dame defenders and watched as the Pandas’ Addie and Maya Lawrie hit five of eight free throws for the final margin.
“We might have won,” Arlinghaus said, “if . . . “
But the Notre Dame defenders wouldn’t allow any “ifs”. It’s something their coach, Kes Murphy, had built into their final regular season trio of games in what could well be the state’s toughest finish.
All losses. To George Rogers Clark and Louisville powers Assumption and Sacred Heart. “Despite losing three in a row, we got better,” Murphy said, and his players agreed. “One hundred percent,” he said, “iron sharpens iron.”
The gameplan, Gibson said was “Heavy on defense and come inside,” she described it. Murphy’s version goes like this: “Our greatest strength is our numbers . . . we speed teams up.”
And with this goal: to make teams “lose their focus as they get fatigued.” Murphy said. “And we have kids who can defend with their hands and play straight up.”
But first there was Megan McGraw’s shooting. And if you think Holy Cross was a bit surprised, how about McGraw. “I’ve shot maybe just 10,” McGraw said, “my role is different from shooting.”
Until Thursday. “I was finding the gaps in their defense and when I got the ball, it felt good.” Ditto for her coach who said he was thinking one thought after Megan his those first three straight. “Give Megan the ball,” he said with a big grin.
And no, this was not a surprise for him, Murphy said. “She stayed after practice everyday shooting . . . when you prepare like that, it pays off.” It did for the Pandas. “That was a big deal,” Murphy said, then said it again. “That was a big deal.”
As was the work of Gibson, whose 17 points on seven-of-10 shooting and game-high eight rebounds made life difficult for a Holy Cross with no size inside to match the soon-to-be Ivy Leaguer.
With the Ninth Region draw Friday afternoon and four first-round games awaiting on Sunday at NKU’s Truist Arena, there’s not much time to prepare for the next step “in the toughest region in the state,” Murphy says.
And that’s something that’s changed Arlinghaus’ thinking about the import of the 35th District championship when it comes to winning the Ninth Region. It’s not necessarily a must win.
“To win it, you’re going to have to beat three Top-15 teams,” Arlinghaus said. So if you beat Notre Dame in the district, then you’d have gotten a district loser in the first round of the regional and would still have to beat two more top teams to win it. Now Holy Cross has to beat three of them next week.
“How many Top 15 teams are district runnerups?” Arlinghaus asked of his 13th-ranked Indians who got 17 points from Arlinghaus and 13 more from D’myah Williams, both sophomores? He’s pretty sure none of the winners will want to draw Holy Cross.
“We’ve already beaten Cooper (by 12) and lost at Highlands and at Dixie Heights by a point in each game,” Arlinghaus said – the first in two overtimes, the second in one.
SCORING SUMMARY
HOLY CROSS 12 11 13 18—54
NOTRE DAME 23 13 15 12—63
Holy Cross (25-7): Johnson 2-4 0-1 2-66, Arlinghaus 7-10 3-3 0-0 17, Nelson 3-6 1-4 3-5 10, Rhodes 0-2 0-1 0-0 0, Carter 3-8 1-1 1-2 8, Lehmkuhl 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Williams 5-110 0-2 3-6 13; TOTALS: 20-41 5-12 9-19 54.
Notre Dame (20-7): Stallard 6-12 5-9 0-0 17, M. McGraw 4-6 3-4 0-2 11, Lenihan 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Holzapfel 1-8 1-8 2-2 5, A. Lawrie 0-0 0-0 2-4 2, M. Lawrie 1-4 0-0 3-4 5, Burden 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Humphrey 2-2 0-0 0-0 4, Eberhard 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, E. McGraw 1-2 0-1 0-0 2, Gibson 7-10 0-0 3-5 17; TOTALS: 22-45 9-23 10-17 63.