‘We weren’t going to let anything stop us.’ Sacred Heart wins record 4th straight Girls’ Sweet 16
Sacred Heart captured an unprecedented fourth straight girls basketball state championship and increased its KHSAA record to eight titles overall in a 60-49 win over McCracken County on Saturday in the Mingua Beef Jerky Girls’ Sweet 16 at Rupp Arena.
Reagan Bender, Angelina Pelayo and Claire Russell all took part in the first state title of this run in 2021 when they were freshmen. Bender scored 18 points, Pelayo had 13 and Russell pulled in four rebounds for the Valkyries on Saturday.
“We wanted to be the first to win four in a row and we wanted to make history,” Pelayo said. “We came in with that as our mindset. We wanted to win. We weren’t going to let anything stop us.”
Sacred Heart (30-7) was one of only two girls programs to achieve a three-peat in basketball, having done so during this run and its titles from 2002 to 2004. The old Laurel County won three straight state titles from 1977 to 1979 and is tied with Butler and Ashland Blazer for second place in overall titles with five.
Ranked as the No. 1 team in the state all year by every measure, the Valkyries’ fourth state title in a row extended their streak without a loss to a Kentucky team to 73 games, a stretch that dates to the middle of the 2021-22 season.
“I just can’t say how proud I am of these girls and how hard they worked and the pressure that they played under,” Sacred Heart coach Donna Moir said. “You know, we got everybody’s best shot, and they didn’t back down.”
The Valkyries did not have an easy path to the finals. Sacred Heart defeated No. 3 George Rogers Clark 57-46 in Wednesday’s opening round, took down No. 6 Bethlehem in 71-47 on Friday and defeated No. 2 Cooper 58-50 in Saturday morning’s semifinals.
“I think that we prepare for anything that comes for us,” Bender said. “Every year we’ve had the hardest schedule we can get. … Everything just led up to this moment here.”
McCracken County, runners-up to Sacred Heart last year in game that got away from the Mustangs early, stayed right with the Valkyries in the first half and took a one-point lead late in the second quarter when Claire Johnson completed a three-point play to make it 26-25 with 1:39 left till the break.
But Sacred Heart answered with five straight points on a 3-pointer by Bender and a post-up by ZaKiyah Johnson to take a 32-28 lead into the locker room. Then, early in the third quarter, Sacred Heart seized on a pair of McCracken turnovers to take control of the game.
Johnson converted a three-point play, made a steal at halfcourt for a layup and then picked up a loose ball underneath the basket and drove full court into the lane before executing a no-look pass to a wide-open Bender in the right corner. Bender’s 3-pointer completed an 8-0 run that pushed Sacred Heart’s advantage to 42-30 just 2:10 into the third quarter.
“That was really big,” said Johnson, who earned her third consecutive Girls’ Sweet 16 most valuable player award with 21 points, six rebounds and four assists. “I love getting my teammates involved better than scoring any day … I want to see them succeed as much as I can.”
McCracken never recovered and trailed by at least nine the rest of the way. Mustangs coach Scott Sivills acknowledged Sacred Heart’s early third quarter run proved devastating.
“Those three plays really was the game,” Sivills said. “If we can go back and change that, maybe be a whole different outcome, but they made the plays where we didn’t.”
McCracken County (31-6) earned its second straight runner-up trophy on its third state tournament appearance, all in a row. McCracken was founded in 2013 upon the merger of the old Heath, Lone Oak and Reidland high schools.
“I thought we had a valiant effort this entire game,” Sivills said. “They had to earn that championship.”
Claire Johnson led McCracken with 24 points. Fellow senior Mikee Buchanan added 19. They both spoke of being proud of the legacy they’re leaving behind for players who might one day grasp the golden basketball trophy for the Mustangs.
“I feel like every year we’ve been on this team, we’ve made history,” Buchanan said. “That’s been really cool being part of. We just hope to keep the next kids looking forward to something like that.”
Attendance down
This year’s state tournament drew 30,257 fans, according to data provided by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association, down from last year’s 32,055.
The number represents the lowest non-COVID era turnout since the event’s final stint at Northern Kentucky University’s Truist Arena in 2018 (29,843) and one of the smallest total crowd’s in the event’s history since its first in 1978.
The championship game between Sacred Heart, a girls-only Louisville private school, and McCracken County, one of western Kentucky’s largest public high schools, put 3,562 in Rupp on the final night of the tournament, also among the fewest since the tournament began.
The Girls’ Sweet 16 moved to Rupp Arena in 2019. That first year, the event had the second-best turnout with 40,851 over 15 games. The Girls’ Sweet 16’s highest turnout occurred in 2011 when 43,406 came to Western Kentucky University’s Diddle Arena.
This story was originally published March 16, 2024 at 10:37 PM.
