By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
They may have gotten here in different ways from different directions, but the bottom bracket Ninth Region girls’ basketball semifinalists after Sunday’s first round victories, share a common quality.
Both coaches for the Holy Cross Indians and the Ryle Lady Raiders really like where their teams are right now.
And they’re looking forward to Tuesday’s semifinal game against one another at Truist Arena at 8.p.m.
“We’ll be confident,” Holy Cross coach Ted Arlinghaus said, with a 63-45 home win over Ryle just three weeks ago, to his Lady Indians’ credit.
“I feel good about ‘em,” Ryles’ coach Katie Haitz said of her Lady Raiders, winners of 12 of their last 14 and playing the kind of defense it takes to win now that it’s March.
“All four of us (with Tuesday’s other semifinalists Notre Dame and Highlands) should feel good about ourselves,” Haitz said.
Here’s how both lower-bracket teams advanced to Tuesday.
HOLY CROSS 58, DIXIE HEIGHTS 50
The weird thing about Sunday’s first evening game is that a favored Holy Cross team, now 27-5, was coming into this game as a district loser (from the 35th, to Notre Dame) while a 13-15 Dixie Heights team was a district winner (from the 34th).
Jumping out to a 7-0 lead, Holy Cross looked like the team that’s gone 20-3 since losing its best player, Dmyah Williams, to a knee injury nine games into the season.
Like the team that won the Kentucky All “A” Classic a month ago in Owensboro. Just not like a young team with six freshmen, an eighth grader and a pair of seventh graders that runs its offense with back cutters getting open layups and spot-up shooters getting free to knock down threes.
Only Dixie Heights, behind speedy junior point guard Asia Carner, wouldn’t go away. “An elite, elite scorer,” Arlinghaus called Carner, pleased that the Lady Indians made her take 19 shots to score her game-high 22 points.
That’s because the Lady Indians had their own scoring point guard in sophomore Jai Johnson listed as 5-foot-3 (“I’m 5-4,” she says with a big smile) after going head-to-head with Carner while scoring 15 points herself. “She’s so strong and so low,” Arlinghaus said, “you can’t get lower than Jay.”
As a veteran of both wrestling and football (“tackle football,” she makes clear), Johnson is hard to handle one-on-one.
If there were differences here that mattered, that kept Holy Cross ahead the entire way although the Colonels came within two the second half, how about these: Holy Cross had 12 assists to Dixie’s three and limited their turnovers to eight compared to Dixie’s 15.
“Experience,” Dixie coach Joel Steczynski said of his team with just “one active senior . . . Holy Cross got turnovers when they needed to.”
All in all, the kind of “survive and advance” win a team needs in tournaments. And an Arlinghaus kind of night in a game where three of the five Indian starters are Arlinghaus kin, the coach said, “with my daughter (Alyssa) and two nieces in the starting five” with first cousins Paige Arlinghaus and Avery Sturgeon.
And then there was major game sponsor Arlinghaus Plumbing (“third cousins,” Ted says, on the video and floor-side boards as well as sponsors of the ball boys and girls. “I love it,” Ted Arlinghaus said of the all-Arlinghaus environment at Truist Arena.
But maybe not as much as watching Alyssa hit all 10 of her free throws on the way to a team-high 17 points with eight of those free throws coming down the stretch as Dixie Heights – with Peyton Gibson also scoring 17 points — trying to close but without luck.
And now it’s up to him, Arlinghaus says, to get the game plan ready for Ryle like he did for Dixie. “Don’t put ‘em on the line and make them shoot contested two’s” was the word for the Lady Colonels. What will it be for the Lady Raiders? Check it out Tuesday.
RYLE 63, NEWPORT CENTRAL CATHOLIC 27
No mystery as to how this was going to go from the time Ryle’s 6-foot-5 freshman Jayden McClain swatted NewCath’s first two field goal attempts on the way to nine blocks – compared to one for the entire Thoroughbred team. While McClain, who is hearing from every major women’s college basketball power in the nation, didn’t know if the nine blocks was a personal record – “I don’t keep track,” she said – she did say she hoped to convey a message with them.
“Don’t come back,” she said. The low post area in the paint belongs to her. Unless, of course, she sets up behind the arc on offense and fires up a soft, arching three. McClain’s first two – of three for the game – swished on her way to an easy 14 points, second only to senior Jaelyn Jones’ 16.
“I’m having a lot of fun,” McClain said, “we’re all coming together.”
And just at the right time. “It’s going to be a great game,” Haitz said of the Holy Cross matchup. “They hit their threes against us . . . and they can drive it.” Although with McClain in there the way she’s playing, that could be an issue.
“I tell ‘em the first 28 games are scrimmages,” Haitz says. Now it’s game time. No surprises. With the way Northern Kentucky teams schedule now, she says, no one in Tuesday’s semifinals should be unprepared. And if there’s a surprise, what she’s really liking “is their IQ” and “the trust I have in them.”
NewCath coach Trevor Steiner had nothing but praise for his young team with six freshmen and five eighth graders that managed to win 20 games this season. “We said this is not a throwaway year and they really did buy in.”
One who did was junior Kendall Thompson, whose 15 points topped the Lady Thoroughbreds.
SCORING SUMMARY
HOLY CROSS 18 10 12 18—58
DIXIE HEIGHTS 13 10 9 18—50
Holy Cross (27-5): Johnson 6-17 3-8 0-2 15, Hunt 0-2 0-0 2-2 2, A. Arlinghaus 2-8 1-3 10-10 17, Sturgeon 3-7 2-4 0-0 8, P. Arlinghaus 3-9 1-4 1-3 8, Eberhard 3-9 1-2 1-2 8, Br. Saalfeld 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 18-51 8-21 14-19—58.
Dixie Heights (13-16): Carner 7-19 2-6 6-7 22, Gibson 6-12 0-1 5-6 17, Clark 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Roberts 0-3 0-1 0-0 0, Ragan 2-6 0-0 1-2 5, Allen 1-2 0-1 4-4 6, Tyler 0-2 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 16-44 2-9 16-19—50.
SCORING SUMMARY
NEWCATH 10 4 8 5—27
RYLE 22 10 15 16–63
NewCath (20-12): Reed 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Griffith 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, C. Giesler 0-3 0-1 0-0 0, P. Giesler 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Kohrs 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Cole 1-10 0-4 2-2 4, Bedinghaus 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Wilson 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Mumper 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Thompson 6-20 1-7 2-5 15, Kennedy 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Schill 3-6 0-0 2-3 8, Meyer 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Kevil 0-1 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 10-42 1-13 6-10—27.
Ryle (21-9): Toles 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Brown 0-0 0-0 1-2 1, Aschermann 2-2 0-0 0-0 4, Cooper 1-4 1-1 3-4 6, Dalhover 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Dowell 3-6 1-2 0-0 7, Jones 7-11 1-3 1-2 16, R. Warner 2-2 1-1 0-0 5, McClain 5-8 2-3 2-2 14, A. Warner 0-2 0-2 0-0 0, Hampton 5-6 0-1 0-0 10, Broz 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Dalton 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Buahin 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Wilkinson 0-1 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 25-42 6-13 7-10—63.