While the key members might be new, the defense is still the same as it’s been the previous five seasons for the Newport Central Catholic girls’ basketball team.
That defense helped NewCath overcome some offensive woes of its own in leading the way to a 40-24 win over St. Henry in the championship game of the Touchstone Energy All ‘A’ Classic Ninth Region Tournament on Saturday night at Newport High School.
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It’s NewCath’s sixth straight All ‘A’ Classic Ninth Region title and 10th in the 22-year history of the tournament.
NewCath (11-3) advances to the 16-team state tournament where it will play the 14th Region champion at 10 a.m. on January 25 at the Frankfort Convention Center. NewCath won the state title in 2010, was state runner-up in 2007 and reached the semifinals in 2009 and 2011. It also was state runner-up in 2001.
The Thoroughbreds, who lost three starters and three other seniors off last year’s team, held St. Henry to 18.2 percent from the field for the game and forced 18 turnovers. They caused St. Henry problems with their full court press, which helped force 13 first-half turnovers, and their half court defense prevented the Crusaders from getting into any offensive flow.
“When we got in our half court defense I thought we did a really good job,” said NewCath coach Ron Dawn, who is now 4 for 4 in All ‘A’ Classic Ninth Region title games as the school’s girls’ coach. “They didn’t get many good looks. I was pretty confident we would do a good job defensively tonight.”
St. Henry (14-3) scored just two points in the second quarter and that came on a fastbreak layup with 1:30 left in the first half that only cut the NewCath lead to 21-8. The Crusaders made just 3 of 19 shots from the field in the first half and didn’t reach double figures in the game until there was 3:05 left in the third quarter by which time they trailed, 30-11.
NewCath, which led 23-8 at halftime, had numerous chances to widen the lead, but missed several wide open 3-point attempts in the first half, most coming in the second quarter when St. Henry went to a 2-3 zone. The Thoroughbreds finished the first half 2 of 14 on 3-point attempts.
“It’s always a struggle offensively for us,” said Dawn.
Sophomore center Nicole Kiernan, who was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, tallied seven of her game-high 16 points in the third quarter and her basket with 6:28 left in the game put NewCath on top 36-19 to snuff out a mild St. Henry comeback attempt.
Dawn said he challenged his team before the season started that with the loss of so many key players from last season that this was the year for some of those players who were subs or even bit players a year ago to leave their mark on the program.
“I told them I remember back to when I played and I was a junior and we won the region and had three seniors that were all-region that everyone gave them all the credit and when we were seniors we wanted to prove that we could do it,” said Dawn, who played at NewCath. “I told them, nobody’s giving you any credit and you have to go out and prove it every night that you’re ready to keep things going and so far they’ve been doing that.”Senior guard Alex Schalk, who played in just 14 games last season but is a starter now, finished with nine points on three three-pointers and senior point guard Olivia Huber, who was a sub that averaged just 1.8 points per game last season, was named to the All-Tournament Team.
“It’s really nice, because we knew we lost a lot from last year and we knew we had to step it up and a lot of people are doing that this year,” said Huber. “I know me especially I had to step up in a big way as the point guard.”
Senior forward Aubrey Muench, who was one of two returning starters along with Kiernan, was also named to the All-Tournament team. Muench finished with seven points.
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