Trailing by eight after a Notre Dame basket to start the second half, it looked as if Holy Cross would be staring down a ninth straight loss to their 35th District rival.
But the Indians (16-5, 2-0) turned up the full court press on the Pandas (11-5, 2-1), finally started to make some shots and turned the tables for a 37-29 victory on Thursday night at the Thomas B. Finn Activity Center.
Julia Hunt and Nejai Lewis came in as Holy Cross’ top scorers on the season, but it was a Aaliyah Hayes and Aleah Arlinghaus helping provide the offensive spark in the second half and leading the team with 11 and nine points, respectively.
“We go pretty deep this year. We go nine, 10 deep and I think that was to our advantage in the second half,” Indians coach Ted Arlinghaus said. “I thought in the second half we needed to change the pace of the game. We needed to speed it up because clearly in a half court setting, they make it really hard to score obviously, we only had 11 points at halftime, so I felt like we had to kind of muck up the game. Even if we uglied it up a little bit. Just get a little scramble mode, make them play at our pace.”
Hayes’ triple ignited a 17-3 Holy Cross run with 4:41 left in the third all the way to the 6:13 mark of the fourth. Arlinghaus hit a couple of jumpers in that timeframe as well.
But before all that, things got a little chippy and it seemed to have sparked Holy Cross when Notre Dame’s Sophia Gibson and Indians’ Miyah Wimzie were issued technical fouls after an altercation between the two.
The Indians then forced a handful of turnovers, helping turn into easy baskets as DMyah Williams layup off a steal gave them their first lead at 20-19 with 2:06 left in the third.
The two would go into the fourth knotted at 22.
Julia Hunt’s first field goal of the night gave the Indians a 24-22 lead to start the fourth and it was a lead they’d never surrender, Hunt finishing with seven points, six of them coming in the final frame.
“I was really proud of Julia. She didn’t have a great first half, but she kept fighting and fighting and kept battling. The second half she finally got something to go and that’s why in my opinion, she’s Player of the Year in the Ninth region. Just so many things that she does for us whether it’s from helping us beat a press, get us out of trouble, scoring points, rebounding, blocking shots, she controls the game on the defensive end of the floor. And you can tell when people drive, they just kind of look in there. They’re always trying to be aware of where she’s at. And so I was really proud of how she stuck with it tonight,” Arlinghaus said.
After trailing by as much as six, Notre Dame was able to get the game back down to a one-possession game after Maya Lawrie’s putback making it 30-27 with 3:26 to play, but the Pandas didn’t get much else going from there, a Lawrie layup the only bucket for them the rest of the way. The 29 points was their lowest total this season.
“We had open shots and they just weren’t falling,” Pandas coach Kes Murphy said. “Defensively we played really well. That was probably our worst shooting performance of the season. Hopefully we’ll get to see them again and we’re hoping to play them in a district championship at our house.”
The Pandas had four different players score six points, Lawrie, Noelle Hubert, Kendra Collins and Rosemary Miller.
The inability to put a full game together haunted the Pandas again, a reoccurring theme in their five losses this season.
“We just don’t put multiple quarters together. Just can’t get in a groove to where we are consistent,” Murphy said. “Is that youth? Yes. Is that an excuse? No. We’re still a group learning to play together. Still working on that growth process, being on the same page, getting down many details, coverages and understanding all that. When we don’t do that, we revert back to old ways.”
Notre Dame built a 17-7 lead in the first half, holding the Indians nearly eight minutes without a point.
They’ll return to action on Saturday in Columbus, Ohio when they play Archbishop Hoban out of Akron in the Battle at the Hawks Nest.
Holy Cross has one more matchup before they head down to Richmond for the All “A” state tournament at Eastern Kentucky University on January 25, facing Holmes on Friday at 6 p.m.
Thursday’s win should give them a lot of confidence heading down to EKU.
“Just mentally we needed to clear that hurdle, get that monkey off our back just to say hey, you know what, we can do this. And I think that it really helped us,” Arlinghaus said.
NOTRE DAME — 13-4-5-7 — 29
HOLY CROSS — 7-4-11-15 — 37
ND (29) — Hubert 6, Collins 6, Lawrie 6, Miller 6, Gibson 4, Kirtley 1
HC (37) — Hayes 11, Arlinghaus 9, Hunt 7, Lewis 6, Williams 3, Nelson 1