‘They continue to amaze me.’ Sacred Heart puts away Owensboro Catholic in second half.
The back-to-back reigning state champion Sacred Heart Valkyries know how to finish strong.
In the first round of the 2023 Mingua Beef Jerky Girls’ Sweet 16 State Basketball Tournament, the Valkyries found themselves in an 18-18 late-first half battle with Lawrence County before winning by 37.
And, in Friday’s quarterfinal against Owensboro Catholic, the Valkyries led only 20-14 with less than four minutes remaining in the first half. They proceeded to win the quarterfinal matchup 67-45.
The common factor? Once the clock ticks down below three minutes in the second quarter, Sacred Heart slowly but surely finds its offensive rhythm.
“These girls, they continue to amaze me,” said Sacred Heart head coach Donna Moir, who is seeking her seventh state championship as a player or coach at the school. “You know they love to play basketball, they work on their game all the time. And I have the ultimate confidence in them. I know we’ve got a lot of great scorers, but we really pride ourselves on defense and, we were stopping them on the defensive end. And I just really felt like our offense was going to come.”
And come it did.
In the third quarter, Sacred Heart opened things up. Building on the foundation of the 11-point lead they created late in the second period, the Valkyries outscored the Aces 19-9 in the third.
“We fought, I thought,” Owensboro Catholic head coach Michael Robertson said. “We just couldn’t hit any shots today. And I don’t have the final sheet, but we struggled shooting the ball. I guess we left it all out there on Wednesday. But that’s a good team over there. They’re very difficult to guard, and the people that we were wanting to take shots, took shots and hit shots. So credit to them.”
Owensboro Catholic (26-10) finished with two players in double-figure scoring, Hailee Johnson (12 points) and Karmin Riley (11). The team shot just 34.1 percent from the field. And, though the Aces did their best to hold on defensively, it’s not easy to prepare a game plan against Sacred Heart.
With three players, ZaKiyah Johnson (22.2), Reagan Bender (15.0) and Angelina Pelayo (11.7), averaging double-figure scoring this season, Sacred Heart benefits from its versatility. Following Friday’s tight first half, the Valkyries viewed the second as an entirely new ball game.
“We say ‘0-0, It’s a whole new game,’” Sacred Heart junior guard Emi-Lee Howe said. “We got to come out stronger than ever. Yeah, I think we do that very well. We usually warm up a little bit before second half to get us back into our rhythm and then we fall back right back in it.”
The Valkyries remain undefeated in the state of Kentucky and boast an overall season record of 34-3, with each of those losses coming at the hands of nationally-ranked teams La Jolla Country Day (Calif.), Archbishop Mitty (Calif.) and Incarnate Word Academy (Mo.).
Pelayo says the team’s ability to finish games strong comes from the girls’ trust in one another.
“I’d say we trust each other a lot,” Pelayo said. “We know that some people are gonna have off days and some people aren’t gonna shoot the ball or finish well but like we’re always gonna have somebody that’s going to step up and we trust our teammates enough that we know that we’ll always get it done.”
Johnson led the Valkyries with 23 points. Pelayo contributed 13 points and nine rebounds.
Sacred Heart was to face George Rogers Clark in the Sweet 16 semifinals on Saturday morning.
The Cardinals came the closest of any team in Kentucky to beating Sacred Heart this season, falling 54-53 in Winchester on Feb. 7. George Rogers Clark (28-7) has won 11 in a row since then.