‘Nobody’s ever done this.’ Sacred Heart on verge of hoops history after overcoming Cooper.

Thirty-two minutes separate Sacred Heart Academy from an unprecedented achievement.

The top-ranked Valkyries stymied No. 2 Cooper for a 58-50 victory in the semifinals of the Mingua Beef Jerky Girls’ Sweet 16. The win put them in Saturday’s championship game — where they defeated McCracken County — and on the precipice of a fourth straight KHSAA title.

No Kentucky basketball team — boys or girls — has won four consecutive state championships. Only five girls teams have even won four, period; Sacred Heart will try to extend its state-leading total to eight.

“‘Unprecedented,’ that’s a word that we talk about all the time,” Sacred Heart coach Donna Moir said. “We’ve actually looked up the definition, because nobody’s ever done this.”

Several coast-to-coast layups — including one to close the first half — were among several afternoon highlights posted by Valkyires junior ZaKiyah Johnson. The 2025 Miss Basketball front-runner, who counts South Carolina and UConn among more than 40 college offers, finished with 15 points, nine rebounds, four assists and three steals.

Tootie Jordan, a 5-foot-3 freshman, led Sacred Heart with 17 points. She injured her left ankle early in the second quarter but continued to play with a limp.

“It hurt really bad and Donna tried to rush me, she’s like, ‘Come on Tootie, I need ya,’ and I’m like, ‘Hold on, wait, I need to give it a second,’” Jordan said. “I waited ’til halftime, got it taped, put Icy Hot on it and said, ‘I wanna win.’ So I went out there and did it for my team.”

Cooper struggled from the floor in the first half, managing just five makes on 26 shots after jumping out to a 5-0 lead and holding Sacred Heart scoreless for almost four minutes. It improved to 17-for-48 overall by the end, 11 of its makes coming from beyond the 3-point line. Liz Freihofer (15 points) and Bella Deere (nine points) made three each while Logan Palmer (15 points) had two.

“It has been a battle every time we’ve played them,” Moir said. “They came out with an awesome game plan.”

It was the third time the state’s top two teams played this season, and it was the third time Sacred Heart came out on top after a tight fourth quarter. Freihofer, who has signed to play at Eastern Kentucky, got the margin to 47-42 on a jumper in the lane with 1:54 to play, but Jordan connected on four free throws over the next 40 seconds to push the lead back to nine. The Jaguars didn’t get closer than seven points after that.

“There was no doubt in my mind that we were going to come out here and fight and give it our all until the end,” Freihofer said. “The fourth quarter, we knew we had to make a push and we were gonna be physical with them, give them everything we had.”

Sacred Heart hasn’t lost to a team from Kentucky since Feb. 13, 2022, a 98-96 defeat in double overtime at Mercy Academy. It overcame McCracken County 68-53 for last year’s state title and scrimmaged the Mustangs in the preseason.

Several Sacred Heart seniors — Reagan Bender, Angelina Pelayo and Claire Russell (10 points, eight rebounds and three steals Saturday) — were part of the rotation when the Valkyries won their 2020-21 title, the first of what could soon be a four-peat. Jordan, bum ankle and all, can’t wait to help their bid for history.

“I want to be part of the team that everybody’s talking about,” Jordan said.

This story was originally published March 16, 2024 at 4:16 PM.