‘We really wanted that win.’ Huge second half lifts Henderson over Owensboro in Sweet 16.
Atylia Green scored 10 of her team’s 12 third quarter points, including back-to-back 3-pointers that vaulted Henderson County to a lead it never relinquished as the Colonels defeated Owensboro 43-39 Thursday in their first-round game at the Mingua Beef Jerky Girls’ Sweet 16.
Henderson trailed by as many as 12 points in the first half and was behind 26-19 at the break. But the Colonels rallied to the lead thanks to Green and their defense, which held the Red Devils without a field goal in the third quarter amid a 12-2 run.
“The energy from our bench really helped out and everybody hyping each other helped our defense,” Green said. “It just being a big rivalry game made me pumped up for it.”
Henderson County and Owensboro neighbor each other in western Kentucky, and the two played earlier this season with the Colonels winning 56-48. But that game included 17 points from Henderson leading scorer Brooklyn Gibson, who suffered a minor, but season-ending knee injury in the 3rd Region Tournament semifinals.
“They’re only 30 minutes away from us, and we played them growing up too,” Henderson’s Anna Kemp said. “And so just coming out there knowing that we have to give it our all — even though we were short a player, we really wanted that win.”
A win in their Rupp Arena rematch would need contributions from everyone. Allyson Rideout scored eight points for the Colonels, including a pair of pivotal 3-pointers. Adalyn Gish and Anna Kemp scored six each.
“We lost some of our firepower there on offense, but defensively, we still have enough pieces to hold things together,” Henderson head coach Stephen Haile said. “I just can’t talk enough about the defensive effort. In the second half, we allowed 13 points,”
Green finished with a game-high 17 points Her layup to open the second half was followed by another by Rideout. Green then went on a personal 10-2 run against the Red Devils.
“Atylia, she can be streaky,” Haile said. “She hits one or two and she gets her confidence up, and she’ll hit four, five, six, seven in a row. Those were just huge shots in a low-scoring game that put us in a good position to win.”
Things looked grim for the Colonels in the first half, especially after Owensboro outscored Henderson 19-9 in the first quarter. Unique Carter-Swanagan led Owensboro with 15 points and scored five straight points in the second quarter to give the Red Devils their biggest lead at 26-14 with 3:25 till halftime. Heleina John knocked down a 3-pointer as well in scoring 10 of her 13 points in the first half.
The Colonels (26-7) did not panic.
“The main thing was just to ‘stay the course,’” Haile said he told his team. “(Owensboro) made some shots that they don’t normally hit in the first quarter. … ‘Don’t get your head down. We’re going to have a chance to win this basketball game if we fight back with our defense.’”
Owensboro (21-12) went cold in the second half, missing all 14 of its shots in the third quarter and making only three of 14 shots in the fourth. The scoring drought also led to problems defensively, Owensboro coach Jansen Locher said.
“We just couldn’t get things going offensively, and anybody that’s watched us play knows that once we can make some shots and get our defense setup, that’s when we really get going,” Locher said. “It was hard to get our defense set up the way that we wanted to without making a shot.”
