By Dan Weber
NKyTribune reporter
Here’s a thought. Time to change the name of the 33rd District Championship game to what it’s become.
The Ninth Region Girls Basketball Championship dress rehearsal.
The game that no one wanted to talk about last week at the district, when these teams met, is here, as we – and the Cooper and Ryle people – pretty much expected.
Ryle’s Sarah Baker and Jaelyn Jones double-team Holy Cross’ Aaliyah Hayes (Photo by Dale Dawn)
It’s the Lady Jaguars vs. the Lady Raiders. Saturday Night. Truist Arena. 7 p.m. Get your tickets.
Not that it came all that easily for a 24-8 Ryle team challenged by the region’s third-best team – Holy Cross – in Friday night’s second semifinal game before coming from behind for a 69-57 win thanks to a third-quarter burst of three-pointers and a fourth-quarter finish with a flourish, hitting 14 of 16 free throws.
Waiting in the wings was a top-ranked Cooper team that opened the night with a 53-30 romp over Notre Dame.
Of course the rematch was something she was thinking about, Ryle Coach Kaitie Haitz admitted, even if she didn’t want to talk about it last week. “You always have it in the back of your mind.”
Appearing with her Raiders in the championship game for the fifth time in six seasons, Haitz knows she’d better be preparing even if she’s not talking about it to her players. “You have to plan for it but the girls have to handle the task at hand.”
Ryle’s Quinn Eubank tries to avoid shot-blocker Julia Hunt on this drive to the basket. (Photo by Dale Dawn)
On this night, that task was a plucky, upward-bound Holy Cross team that had already won the All “A” state championship and with a 22-21 lead at halftime, it didn’t appear like the Indians (26-8) were about to back down.
Ryle had to make that happen, which the Lady Raiders did in a third-quarter blitz that benefited from a pair of threes each from senior Austin Johnson and University of Cincinnati-bound Abby Holtman igniting a 21-11 run in just over five minutes.
“We lost their shooters,” Holy Cross Coach Ted Arlinghaus said of the Indians’ full-court pressure. “We know Abby Holtman can shoot it, that’s why she’s a Division I player.
One more big difference. Holy Cross had opportunities to lengthen that first quarter lead but hit just four of 11 free throws. Ryle, meanwhile, barely missed.
Leading scorers Holtman (22 points) and junior Quinn Eubank (19 points) hit on a combined 17 of 18 free throws as Ryle finished 20 for 23. Holy Cross converted just 10 of 20.
“That hurts,” Arlinghaus said, “we were 65 percent for the year but it reared its ugly head tonight. But we got to the line 20 times, we took it to ‘em.”
But on this night the way this Ryle team played, that wasn’t enough.
“I think it was more to come out quick, to dictate the pace,” Holtman said of that 24-point Ryle third quarter — “just attacking.” As Raiders, Lady or otherwise, are supposed to do.
Johnson thought it was Ryle’s “togetherness . . . every possession has to be together. And our communication and movement with the zone.”
Ryle’s Quinn Eubank drives for two of her 19 points against Holy Cross’ Julia Hunt. (Photo by Dale Dawn)
So much movement and communication that at times, Holy Cross’ 6-foot-2 junior post player Julia Hunt, who finished with 13 points, eight rebounds and three blocks, had four Raiders swarming her.
“Sometimes you gotta’ send four,” Johnson said with a big grin, so that’s what Ryle did. And why they’ll be back here on Saturday.
Despite their coach’s attempts to keep them thinking about “the task at hand,” Holtman admitted that “you can’t help but not to think about it.”
You can’t if the two schools are barely 2.3 miles apart in Union. And played one another in the district championship last year and then a week later in the regional championship game. And now here they go again, with Cooper having won the last three.
“It’s a big rivalry,” Holtman said, “we’re glad to do it on a big stage.”
As for nailing all those free throws, “That’s huge for us,” Haitz said, “that hasn’t always been the case.”
But despite their proximity, the players say they seldom run into their rivals in town. Haitz can only remember one time “startling,” as she put it, a Cooper player when they ran into each other at – where else? – “Kroger’s.”
Just as they’re going to run into one another Saturday. “It never gets old,” Haitz said of the winning that it takes to do that.
Ditto for Cooper, she said. “He’s (Justin Holthaus) got a great team.”
Holy Cross’ Arlinghaus, who uses a rotation with nine players getting double digit minutes including three underclass starters and eighth grade phenom DMyah Williams, is aiming to join them soon.
With the way his four seniors have helped the program improve every year, Arlinghaus can see it coming. “Last year, people didn’t know who Holy Cross was . . . Now they do.
“I think we can be a Top 10, Top 20 program (in the state) year in, year out.”
And they’re not even in Union.
BOX SCORE
RYLE 13 8 24 24—68
HOLY CROSS 13 9 19 16—57
RYLE (24-8): Eubank 19, Jones 2, Baker 10, Holtman 22, Johnson 12, Carrigan 3, Snider 0, Fong 0, Singel 0, McGuire 0, A. Warner 1, R. Warner 0, Hill 0, Thomas 0, TOTAL: 69.
HOLY CROSS (26-8): Hunt 13, Hayes 8, Wimzie 9, Lewis 4, Aleah Arlinghaus 12, Williams 6, Nelson 2, McCoy 0, Bottom 3, Alyssa Arlinghaus 0, Carter 0, Lehmkuhl 0, Rieselman 0, Rhodes 0, TOTAL: 57.
