By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
In a game of runs, Cooper’s youngish Lady Jaguars turned on the gas in the second half and pretty much ran away from the Jaguars of Louisville Mercy, 70-45, to advance to a 22 ½-hour span of the toughest challenge in Kentucky girls’ high school basketball.
The tournament cliché has always been to “survive and advance.” But it’s that “survive” part that will be the issue for Cooper, who in less than a full day coming out of the very bottom spot in the Sweet 16 draw, will start with Friday night’s feature 8:30 matchup against three-time defending state champion Louisville Sacred Heart, a national program with only one loss against a Kentucky team in the last four years and a 92-game in-state win streak just recently lost.
Survive that, against a team that beat Cooper early on, 60-49, and it’s then a 1:30 p.m. semifinal Saturday afternoon challenge before facing the probable upper bracket winner George Rogers Clark at 7 in a three-game gauntlet no one can really prepare for since there are no in-season tournaments that ever ask for teams to play that many games in that little time.
But what about Friday night? “Our girls will be ready for it,” Cooper coach Justin Holthaus declared for a team that improved to 26-5 with a share-the-ball mentality that starts three sophomores in a new-look group of Lady Jags.
They were ready Thursday, as the girls from Union showed what they could — and could not — do in a first half that saw them jump out to a 10-0 lead on their Louisville counterparts, then watch it wither away to 10-8.
The Ninth Region champs, with just one senior starter, then came right back to build up a 27-11 edge on another double-digit run – this time 14-0 – for a 27-11 lead that dwindled in the final 2:53 on a 7-0 Mercy run for a 27-18 Cooper halftime edge. The key first-half stat? Cooper’s nine turnovers.
The second half was a bit of a different story as 6-foot sophomore Haylee Noel and 5-9 junior Addyson Brissey just ran away from the Mercy defenders on 12-0 and 10-0 runs in a 43-27 second-half romp that saw Noel finish her double-double day with 24 points, 11 rebounds. The lefty Brissey hit on four threes on the way to 17 points and nine rebounds.
“We want to get down the floor quick,” Holthaus said of a transition game which had Noel and Alivia Scott dishing out five assists apiece. “We don’t have kids that need shots.”
But they do have Noel, who plays with an easy natural feel and the kind of speed that makes most of what she does as she flies around the court look easy. And when they needed her to score, that’s what Noel did.
“My teammates depend on me and trust in me,” Noel said. So when they needed her to score, that’s what she did. But to get those 24 points, Noel took just 12 shots, hitting 10.
No selfish play there. “That’s just not who we are,” Noel said. “We don’t have that one player, we have multiple players.”
“A great teammate and willing passer” is how Holthaus describes Noel.
Mercy coach Nick Cann said what he thinks makes Cooper especially tough is on the other side of the ball: “their on-ball defenders . . . their help side is so good, you’re not going to get any good looks reversing the ball.”
But there’s a problem taking it straight at Cooper, Cann said. “They are extremely active. There were times they physically just beat us.” And one other thing, “They have so many different kids, they’re hard to scout.”
“We did the best we could,” said Mercy senior Addyson Becker, who led the Jaguars with 12 points.
As to the challenge ahead, against a Sacred Heart team that was leading a 27-3 Johnson Central team, 61-16, after three quarters, and the rest of the field, is that “playing the top three teams in the ninth Region” helps, Holthaus says.
“We’ve got to be smart about how we handle the next couple of days,” he said. And a big part of that, which hurt Cooper the first time these teams played, was not shooting the ball well early.
“Sacred Heart does so many things well,” Holthaus says, “they defend so well. You can’t get yourself in a hole.” Because as those 92 straight Kentucky teams found out until Simon Kenton’s miracle upset of the Valkyries three weeks ago, you never get out.
SCORING SUMMARY
LOUISVILLE MERCY 11 7 9 18–45
COOPER 14 13 22 21–70
Louisville Mercy (19-14): Becker 4-7 0-1 4-7 12, Shepard 0-3 0-1 0-0 0, McCauley 1-1 1-1 0-0 3, Reitzel 2-18 0-6 2-2 6 Pifer 0-0 0-0 0-0 0,.Tahuberger 0-0 0-0 0-2 0, O’Bryan 2-4 2-4 0-0 6, O’Connell 1-2 0-0 2-2 4, Wolz 0-0 0-0 1-2 1, Shaw 1-1 1-1 0-0 3, Zulu 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Young 3-11 3-9 1-4 10, Bergrstrom 0-1 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS 14-46 7-23 10-19–45.
Cooper (25-5): Brissey 5-11 4-5 3-4 17, Noel 10-12 2-3 2-3 24, Rankin 4-10 1-6 0-1 9, Scott 4-5 2-2 0-0 10, Hooper 0-2 0-2 1-2 1, Breeze 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Hubbard 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Allen 0-0 0-0 0-2 0, Thompson 2-5 0-1 3-6 7, Cass 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Cooper 1-2 0-0 0-0 2, Murphy 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Benson 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 26-47 9-19 9-18 70.
Featured photo: Cooper’s Alivia Scott was a perfect two-for-two behind the three point line. (Photo by Bob Jackson/NKyTriunbe)