‘Going down fighting.’ Bowling Green battles, but Cooper advances to Sweet 16 semifinals
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2022 Girls’ Sweet 16 coverage
Click below to read all of the coverage from Kentucky.com and the Lexington Herald-Leader during the Girls’ Sweet 16 State Basketball Tournament in Rupp Arena.
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Calvin Head lived and died with every possession inside Rupp Arena, on both ends of the court.
He would whip his head around and react to whatever occurred when his Bowling Green girls’ basketball team had the ball.
He would contort his body into a crouch and raise his arms when the Purples were on defense.
It wasn’t enough to ever give Bowling Green a lead during a Mingua Beef Jerky Girls’ Sweet 16 State Basketball Tournament quarterfinal game Friday night against Cooper, but the effort and toughness Head got from his players left him beaming with pride once the game ended.
Cooper’s 55-47 win over Bowling Green was one of the most competitive wire-to-wire wins you’re likely to see, with the entire fourth quarter played within an eight-point margin.
“They kept fighting, scrapping, clawing, doing everything they can do to give themselves an opportunity,” Head, the Bowling Green head coach, said. “If you’re going to lose one in Rupp, that’s the way to lose one: Going down fighting.”
The reason for Cooper’s win can be traced back to the opening six minutes of the game, as the Jaguars established leads of 12-0 and 14-2.
“When you’re playing with a lead you feel a little more relaxed, a little bit more comfortable,” Cooper head coach Justin Holthaus said. “When you get off to a heavy start like that up 12-0, now you take a little bit of pressure off your defense, now you can be a little bit more in control and dictate what you want to do on that offensive end as well.”
That, combined with a game-high 20 points by sophomore guard Liz Freihofer, was enough to give Cooper a cushion that lasted the length of the game and pushed the Jaguars into Saturday’s Final Four.
Freihofer shot a perfect 6-of-6 from the field and was 8-of-9 from the free-throw line, but scored only four points in the second half.
“We knew that we had to come out here and it was going to be a war,” Freihofer said.
Cooper (24-9) will play Sacred Heart (34-3) in Saturday afternoon’s second state semifinal at 1:30 p.m.
Bowling Green (29-7) battled until the end, despite persistent foul trouble and injury issues that crept up during the game.
Junior guard Tanaya Bailey, one of the team’s leading scorers, left the game multiple times due to a lower leg injury, but returned each time to help the Bowling Green cause.
She finished with a team-best 17 points on 6-for-11 shooting from the field.
“I was hurting, but I didn’t want to let my team down,” Bailey said. “This is something we’ve been working for all year, and it’s something we wanted to accomplish as a team. So I felt like I had to go out there and do what I had to do to help my team out.”
Three Bowling Green players fouled out of Friday night’s game: Bailey, junior forward Meadow Tisdale and senior center LynKaylah James.
Bowling Green came as close as three points to Cooper in the second half, as Freihofer’s scoring dried up.
But in her place stepped junior Whitney Lind who scored 16 second-half points to finish the game with 19 points, along with seven rebounds.
“It was a full 32 minutes to get that one done,” Holthaus said.
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 9:27 PM.
