Dan Weber writes a sports column for LINKnky Media. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com.
Disregard those driving directions from Google Maps. You’re still going to have to go through Union to get to Rupp Arena. Only this year, you’ll have to take a little detour off US 42, four miles or so down to Longbranch Road to the other side of town.
For the first time in history, the Union team heading to Lexington for the Girls Sweet 16 will be the Cooper Lady Jags (23-9) who finally caught up to big-sister Ryle in Friday’s Ninth Region finals at NKU’s BB&T Arena.
The scoreboard had it a comfortable 53-45 margin at the finish. But a minute-and-a-half earlier, it was 45-43 as Ryle’s full-court pressure was starting to have an effect.
But Cooper had the antidote when it mattered most. Get the ball to junior guard Kay Freihofer, back and healthy after missing seven weeks of the season with a broken left hand. She was the difference early with her scoring — and late with her confident ballhandling under pressure. Kay hit for 15 points (14 in the first half) going three for three on three-pointers.
That matters because Cooper’s tough defenders didn’t allow Ryle’s shooters a single three-point field goal. And if Kay needed help, all she had to do was look toward her sophomore sister Liz, who led the Lady Jags with 19 points on six-of-11 shooting. And like her sister, Liz was perfect from three-point range, hitting two of two.
“Me and Liz,” Kay Freihofer said as she posed with her regional MVP trophy. “It’s nice having your sister out there. She helps me.”
In fact, in order to have a backup ball-handler in case Kay got hurt, Cooper has been working with Liz at point guard since the summer, Coach Justin Holthaus said. Now they have two of them, both of whom can dribble with their off hand – on the left side – against pressure as well as with the right.
Not a bad deal for Holthaus, who came over from assisting with the Cooper boys’ team that went downstate in 2017 and beat CovCath on this floor in the regional final that year. That experience helped him “get us through all the hoopla, the turning out the lights . . . “
But nothing maybe helped him more than this: “Four of our five starters are sisters,” Holthaus said as the Lady Jags tried to get him to cut down the last piece of the net they’d saved for him.
Jesse Palmer and Logan Palmer are the other sibling pair of starters. Only Whitney Lind, who added 11 points and five rebounds, was out there alone.
But the talk of points may be a bit misplaced here. Cooper won this one with defense. “We like to attack a lot,” Kay Freihofer said of how Cooper will not let a dribbler have free rein on the court but will have to handle their physicality.
“We set up multiple screens for Abby (Holtman, leading scorer),” Ryle Coach Katie Haitz said, “but they did a great job on her.” On everybody, as Ryle could pull the trigger on only six shots from behind the arc, hitting none with Holtman going without a field goal in her four threes and all six shots.
“We played a lot of pressure on her, keeping her off the (three-point) line,” Kay Freihofer said. For the game, Ryle hit on just 14 of 41 field goals to Cooper’s 16 of 34 (47.1 percent).
“I couldn’t be more proud of our team,” Haitz said. “We came back.” For the season, the teams split four games with Ryle taking the first two and Cooper, with Kay Freihofer back, the second two.
But the comeback came only so far. When they got within two, 45-43 with 1:32 left, Ryle had to foul and Cooper went on an 8-0 run hitting eight of 10 free throws while not putting Ryle on the line.
Austin Johnson, named to the All-Region team with Holtman, led Ryle with her quickness getting her 15 points. Logan Palmer joined the Freihofer sisters as Cooper’s All-Region players.
Cooper will move on to play the 15th Region winner (most likely a 29-2 Pikeville team) at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in the lower bracket in Rupp Arena. Win that game and Cooper will face the winner of the Fourth Region (Franklin-Simpson, 23-3, or Bowling Green, 26-7) vs. the 14th Region champ (Letcher County Central, 26-9).
“We’re going to enjoy the heck out of this,” Holthaus said as the Cooper Family clearly was already doing so with parents and players, teachers and fans, still on the floor a half-hour after the game. So much so that the NKU crew came up and asked if Holthaus could help them get everybody off the floor so they could start getting ready for Saturday’s four Ninth Region boys’ games.
And no, he said, you’re not going to see him do “the Griddy,” a version of Bengal Ja’Marr Chase’s end zone celebration that he performs at his players’ request after every win. “It’s more of a locker room thing,” the father of four young boys said.
“I’d give him an eight out of 10,” Freihofer said of her coach’s dancing ability. “He’s getting better.”
Now it’s up to the Lady Jags to do the same. “They started believing in each other a couple of weeks ago,” Holthaus said. Now “our community has gotten even tighter around this team.”
ALL-REGION TEAM: In addition to the five players in the championship game: (Kay Freihofer, MVP, and Liz Freihofer and Logan Palmer along with Ryle’s Holtman and Johnson, eight other All-Region selections were named Friday. They are: Rylee Turner and Caroline Eaglin, Newport Central Catholic; Jenna Lillard, Ludlow; Madelyn Lawson and Samantha Berman, Dixie Heights; Macie Feldman, Notre Dame; Marissa Green, Highlands; Miyah Wimzie, Holy Cross.
–Dan Weber
