Leading by one with under two minutes to play in the third, Newport Central Catholic needed to find a way to separate from Lloyd Memorial in the championship game of the Stephanie Wilson Memorial Holiday Tournament.
They found what they needed on the defensive end, holding the Juggernauts to seven points in the last nine-plus minutes to earn the title on Friday night at Bellevue with a 55-36 victory.
Caroline Eaglin was named MVP of the tournament and rightfully so as she collected 77 points in the three games as they defeated Frankfort, Beechwood and finished it off with the Juggernauts.
Eaglin scored seven of the team’s eight points in the third as they kept a 34-30 lead into the fourth.
“I definitely wanted to be aggressive because a lot of them were foul trouble, especially their big girls so I just kept on driving, trying to get them fouled out and that’s what happened,” Eaglin said.
An Eaglin layup followed by a Jaylee Brannen triple started to create some separation for the Thoroughbreds in the fourth.
Sophia McCoin, who knocked down eight 3-pointers in Lloyd’s semifinal win, followed with a 3-pointer to make it 39-33 with 4:24 left. The Jugs would get no closer.
The stifling defense continued for NewCath, following with a 13-0 run to put the game away for good, leading 52-33 with under a minute to play.
“We got a little bit better pace down the stretch and I’d been kind of on them to get the pace all night. Lloyd, to their credit did a great job of kind of just slowing us down a little bit. We’re at our best when we’re out and running and getting opportunities in transition. It took us some time to get to that, but I thought in the fourth quarter we did a really good job of closing out and getting some easy buckets based on the pressure and the effort that we played with,” Thoroughbreds coach Ralph Meyer said.
The two teams had met on December 20, a 59-44 Thoroughbreds victory. That matchup played out similar to this one, a close game to the fourth quarter before NewCath pulled away.
“I told the kids that final score last time we played didn’t really equate to what that game was because it was tied late into that game as well. Similar deal today. We had to make some shots and they’d probably play zone again and obviously Caroline has been playing really well. I mean, she had 33 yesterday. She has 27 tonight. She’s been leading us all year long, probably the fourth or fifth leader leading scorer in the state at this point. So everybody kind of knows that 15 is gonna get gonna get some opportunities,” Meyer said.
The Jugs, down two starters and having two foul out in Friday’s contest, just didn’t have much left down the stretch.
“We were a little undermanned to begin with and then with the foul trouble just caught up to us there in the fourth quarter. We’re into our bench at that point and we’re extremely young, but we played our tails off and I couldn’t be prouder of them for how they played through the whole thing,” Juggernauts coach Paul Sturgeon said. “We play hard. Our girls play their tails off. They give maximum effort. We don’t have to coach that which is fantastic. As a coach we can just worry about basketball.”
They were led by McCoin’s 14 points, seven others entering the scoring column.
“We always talk about it’s not win or lose it’s win or learn. We’ll learn from this and these young kids are getting all this experience and they realize what it takes to play at the varsity level. That will just help us build going into the second half of the season,” Sturgeon said.
Eaglin netted 27 for NewCath as they won their fourth straight, Delany Green adding nine, Jaylee and Katelyn Brannen adding seven and six, respectively. Jaylee Brannen and Joelle Kinnett were also named to the All-Tournament team.