Sixteen facts to get you ready for the 2020 Girls’ Sweet 16
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2020 Girls’ Sweet 16 preview
Click below to view all of our content previewing the 2020 Mingua Beef Jerky/KHSAA Girls’ Sweet 16 Kentucky high school basketball state tournament, to be played March 11-15 at Rupp Arena in Lexington.
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Sixteen facts to get you ready for the 2020 Girls’ Sweet 16
2020 Girls’ Sweet 16: A look at every team and how they got to Rupp Arena
How to follow the 2020 Kentucky girls’ Sweet 16 basketball state tournament
2020 Sweet 16: Rosters for every girls’ basketball team in the state tournament
2020 Sweet 16: Statistics for every girls’ basketball team in the state tournament
The 59th Mingua Beef Jerky/KHSAA Girls’ Sweet 16 tips off Wednesday with Kentucky’s region champions squaring off for the ultimate prize: a state title.
Will there be another repeat winner? Who has the toughest road? Who are the biggest stars of the tournament? Here are 16 notes to get you ready for this week’s run to glory:
1. Back-to-back? Ryle will be looking to become the fifth team in the girls’ modern era to repeat as champions, joining the doubles of Mercer County (2017-18) and Lexington Catholic (2005-06). Sacred Heart (2002-04) and Laurel County (1977-79) each achieved a three-peat.
2. Playing favorites: If not for a loss to Bullitt East on the last day of the regular season, Sacred Heart, a four-time state champ, would be the runaway choice to get its first title since 2004. The Valkyries were No. 1 in the Associated Press poll and the Cantrall Ratings for most of the season.
3. The next Miss Basketball. Ryle has the odds-on favorite for Kentucky’s highest individual basketball honor in senior guard Maddie Scherr, but there are eight other nominees who will be participating in the tournament. Though voting has finished, here’s your chance to see what all the fuss is about.
Scherr, an Oregon commit, was recently named Kentucky’s Gatorade Player of the Year for the second season in a row and she has a McDonalds’ All-American selection, Sweet 16 MVP award and state championship on her resume.
The first-round game between Sacred Heart and South Laurel will have three Miss Basketball contenders on the court at the same time. Sacred Heart has University of Kentucky commit Erin Toller, who shared 7th Region player of the year honors with Christian Academy-Louisville’s Shelby Calhoun. South Laurel teammates Ally Collett (Western Kentucky) and Amerah Steele (Eastern Kentucky) shared 13th Region player of the year honors.
Rounding out the Miss Basketball nominees are Henderson County’s Emilee Hope (Oakland City), Owensboro Catholic’s Hannah McKay (Murray State), Elizabethtown’s Whitney Hay (Belmont), Clark County’s Kennedy Igo (Northern Kentucky), and Casey County’s Lauren Lee (Campbellsville).
The next Miss Basketball will be announced April 5.
4. Also college-bound. Among the other players in the tournament who have announced to be going on to the next level are: Elizabethtown’s Ellie Taylor (Northern Kentucky); Bullitt East’s Kennedy Griffin (IU East) Lexi Taylor (Georgetown) and Madison Thornton (Kentucky Christian); and South Laurel’s Sydnie Hall (Lindsey Wilson).
Franklin County junior Brooklynn Miles is an ESPN.com four-star recruit with several Division I offers, including Kentucky.
5. Toughest bracket. Wednesday’s first round features what looks to be the hardest path to the championship with Dave Cantrall’s Rating the State showing five of the top seven teams in the field in Wednesday’s upper bracket: No. 1 Elizabethtown, No. 2 Anderson County, No. 4 Ryle, No. 5 Bullitt East and No. 7 Casey County.
6. Toughest opener. Also according to Cantrall, Wednesday’s and Thursday’s noon games promise two of the best first-round matchups of the tournament with No. 1 Elizabethtown taking on No. 5 Bullitt East on Wednesday and No. 3 Sacred Heart facing No. 6 South Laurel on Thursday.
7. Hurt and healing. Sacred Heart’s Destinee Marshall broke two bones in her left hand in a car accident on the final day of the team’s regular season, ending her high school career. While a potential devastating blow losing the Radford commit, the Valkyries responded by rolling through their district and region.
Meanwhile, Ryle’s Scherr has battled a bum ankle for parts of this season and sprained it again in the first quarter of their regional finals against Notre Dame and sat out the rest of the game as a precaution.
South Laurel’s Collett looked to be done for the year after suffering a partial PCL tear in her right knee in January, but was able to begin rehabbing almost immediately and get back in action a month later, helping lead her team to Rupp with 26 points in the region finals.
8. Streaking. Surprisingly, the longest win streak heading into the tournament is just nine games, held by both Anderson County and Ryle as every contender took at least one loss in February. Four teams, Henderson County, Bullitt East, Casey County and Pikeville all lost in their district finals but, of course, got better, winning three straight.
9. It’s been a while. It’s been so long since Bullitt East has been to the Sweet 16, they were representing a different region when they did. Now the 6th Region champ, the Chargers represented the 8th Region on their other two trips in 2004 and 1991. The 16-year gap between appearances is the largest in this year’s field.
10. Repeat contenders. Five teams return from last year’s tournament with Clark County making the most consecutive trips at four. Ryle’s only three state tournament appearances have been in the last three years. Owensboro Catholic is also on its third consecutive appearance, while Henderson County and Pikeville are on back-to-backs.
11. Most appearances. Marshall County, a two-time state champ out of the 1st Region, has the most Sweet 16 appearances in the field with 23. Henderson County follows with 16, and Clark County has 14.
12. Fewest appearances. Letcher County Central, Casey County, Ryle, Bullitt East and South Laurel have been to the Sweet 16 only three times apiece. South Laurel beat North Laurel in the 13th Region finals to get here. Before Laurel County was split into North and South, its pre-split team made nine state trips with five titles, the last coming in 1991.
13. The champs. Ryle (2019), Sacred Heart (1976, 2002, 2003, 2004), Elizabethtown (1998) and Marshall County (1982, 1984) are the only teams in the field who have won the title before.
14. Cinderella. The 14th Region’s Letcher County Central holds the distinction of being the lowest Cantrall Ratings team in the field with a 63.7 score in the computer-generated list. They also face one of the most lopsided first-round games having to go against defending champion Ryle. The Raiders rank as the tournament’s No. 4 team with an 85.7 rating.
15. Mismatch on paper. The Cantrall Ratings say the next biggest mismatch will be No. 12 Franklin County against No. 2 Anderson County in the second game of Wednesday’s night session. But the Flyers have a game against the Bearcats under their belt, taking a 62-52 loss in Lawrenceburg on Jan. 21. Revenge would mean a quarterfinal berth.
16. RPI. With the Sweet 16’s annual random draw continually producing matchups where top-ranked teams can have an expected deep run cut short by happenstance, there have always been critics hoping the tournaments will one day be seeded.
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association used a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) to seed part of last season’s football playoffs, and has been making them public in several other sports, including basketball, over the last year as an experiment. The KHSAA’s basketball RPIs stopped calculating at the end of the regular season.
Just for fun, looking at the experimental rankings shows only five top 10 RPI teams made it to the state tournament: No. 2 Sacred Heart, No. 5 Anderson County, No. 6 Elizabethtown, No. 8 South Laurel and No. 9 Casey County.
Perhaps hardest done by the RPI system would have to be defending champion Ryle, coming in at No. 52 thanks mainly to it having played 10 out-of-state opponents (and pretty tough ones). The KHSAA’s RPI formula gives out-of-state opponents credit for having only .500 records, regardless of what they actually are (and Ryle’s foes are way higher).
But whatever the RPI rankings, the KHSAA has said there are no plans to use it to seed tournaments in any other sport.
So, for now, RPI is just for debate. We’ll find out who’s really No. 1 come Sunday.
Girls’ Sweet 16
At Rupp Arena
Wednesday
Noon: Elizabethtown (27-5) vs Bullitt East (24-7)
1:30 p.m.: Ryle (22-11) vs. Letcher Co. Central (25-10)
6:30 p.m.: Casey Co. (27-7) vs. Pikeville (26-7)
8 p.m.: Franklin Co. (27-7) vs. Anderson Co. (30-5)
Thursday
Noon: South Laurel (26-6) vs. Sacred Heart (32-2)
1:30 p.m.: Marshall Co. (24-9) vs. Henderson Co. (22-7)
6:30 p.m.: Bowling Green (28-6) vs. Russell (26-8)
8 p.m.: Clark Co. (22-10) vs. Owensboro Catholic (25-10)
Friday
Quarterfinal games at noon, 1:30, 6:30 and 8 p.m.
Saturday
Semifinal games at 6:30 and 8 p.m.
Sunday
2 p.m.: Championship game
Cantrall Ratings
1. Elizabethtown, 86.4
2. Anderson Co., 86.2
3. Sacred Heart, 86.1
4. Ryle, 85.7
5. Bullitt East, 84.9
6. South Laurel, 84.1
7. Casey Co., 83.2
8. Henderson Co., 82.8
9. Clark Co., 82.5
10. Bowling Green, 80.3
11. Marshall Co., 80.1
12. Franklin Co., 80.0
13. Russell, 77.9
14. Owensboro Catholic, 75.8
15. Pikeville, 69.5
16. Letcher Central, 63.7
This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 7:19 PM.
