The defending Ninth Region champion Cooper Jaguars girls basketball team has really ramped things up recently.
Especially on the defensive end.
The Jaguars (27-3) showed the tenacity in a 75-23 victory over Newport Central Catholic (17-11) to open up the Ninth Region tournament quarterfinals on Sunday.
Cooper forced 23 turnovers and turned it into 35 points as a result of it.
“That’s where we hang our hat every single night is guarding at a high level. Proud of our defensive effort for sure. And not just our first group, our second group, just the intensity that we played with,” Jaguars coach Justin Holthaus said.
The confidence level is high too. Starting the game off, the Jaguars set up a play for Liz Freihofer to get her 1,000th point of her career, executing it and the game hitting a brief pause to recognize the junior for the accomplishment.
“It’s an awesome individual accomplishment, but just having all my teammates around me and support me and cheering me on it makes it so much better,” Freihofer said. “It was a little bit of pressure knowing I had to finish the first shot. I thought it was gonna be a little short, but it rolled in so that was nice.”
Freihofer is now the third 1,000-point scorer on the team, Whitney Lind clearing the 2,000-point mark in January while Logan Palmer accomplished the feat a few weeks back.
“A lot of us have played together forever and especially with Liz, we’ve played together since kindergarten. So for both of us to be able to get that and her to get that right now is pretty awesome,” Palmer said.
Palmer enjoyed her surroundings on Sunday at Truist Arena, knocking down all three 3-point attempts on her way to 19 points and hitting 8-of-11 from the field.
“Logan has really come on these last couple of weeks. It kind of started a couple of weeks back when we played Frederick Douglass. It’s just her confidence. She’s playing with a lot of confidence right now,” Holthaus said. “She’s doing a lot of things. She’s rebounded at a high level, she’s diving on loose balls, you can see from her face, it’s all busted up from the district championship. So when you’re doing that type of thing we know she’s locked in and now on the offensive end, she’s taken advantage of it as well.”
Cooper also dominated the glass, outrebounding the Thoroughbreds 39-14 in the contest and getting 24 second chance points to NewCath’s zero.
NewCath scored 53 in the first meeting between the two, a 72-53 Jaguars victory on Feb. 11, but things got away from them in a hurry quickly on Sunday. Cooper jumped out to a 12-0 lead before Caroline Eaglin got the Thoroughbreds on the board with 5:10 to go in the first.
Cooper would lead 23-7 after one, a 15-0 run stretching their lead to 36-7 before two Eaglin free throws ended the run with 4:47 left in the half to make it 36-9.
“When you draw the number two team in the state or whatever they are out of the gates in the region, it’s a tall task for anybody. Like I told the girls afterwards, you have to get everything right when you compete and have a team of that quality,” Thoroughbreds coach Ralph Meyer said. “They’re just really, really good. There’s no way around it. One through 10, they’re just deep. They’re experienced, they’re athletic, they shoot the ball well across the board, they run the floor as good as any team that I’ve seen. They did all those things well today.”
Cooper took a 46-13 lead into the break and got the game to a running clock on their first possession of the second half on a Palmer layup. Cooper’s reserves closed out the contest from about the midway point of the third quarter.
Palmer led Cooper with 19, Whitney Lind adding 12 and seven rebounds. Liz Freihofer chipped in 10 as nine different Jaguars scored in the contest.
NewCath’s season comes to a close with a 17-11 record and will graduate just two seniors. Eaglin, a sophomore, finished the regular season sixth in the state in scoring with 25.2 points per game.
“You lose the Ninth Region Player of the Year and turn around a year later and win 17 games. We played a pretty good schedule and you have a sophomore that really, really led this team this year. Caroline was a little bit in Rylee (Turner’s) shadow at times last year and is this year’s leading scorer in the ninth region for the regular season. Really proud of her effort and the team overall. We grew up a lot this year,” Meyer said.
Eaglin finished with 12 points to lead the Thoroughbreds, Jaylee Brannen adding nine.
Cooper will now face Notre Dame on Friday in the semifinals at 6:30 p.m. The Pandas defeated St. Henry in the second quarterfinal of the day on Sunday.
NEWPORT CENTRAL CATHOLIC — 7-6-7-3 — 23
COOPER — 23-23-22-7 — 75
NewCath (23) — Eaglin 12, J. Brannen 9, Reckers 2
Cooper (75) — Palmer 19, Lind 12, L. Freihofer 10, Thompson 8, Alexander 7, Brissey 6, Noel 6, K. Freihofer 5, Jones 2