The Butler County High School boys’ basketball team made history Tuesday night, rolling past Owensboro Catholic for a 73-57 win in the 3rd Region championship to advance to the state tournament for the first time in school history.
The Bears (23-8) jumped out to a double-digit lead by the end of the first quarter and never looked back. They’ll now play 6th Region champion Evangel Christian (29-6) in the first round of the KHSAA Sweet 16 at Rupp Arena on March 21.
With such a meaningful game on the line, the fervent Butler County faithful accounted for well more than half of the crowd, and the Owensboro Sportscenter was packed well before tipoff.
“All you have to do is look at the crowd,” said BCHS head coach Calvin Dockery. “Everybody has rallied around this team, and they’ve done almost beyond what I can dream. This is special. History has been made, and now you just have to figure out what you’re going to do with that.”
Ty Price led the way for the Bears with 36 points, including 17 in the fourth quarter. Though the Aces never quite threatened to get within striking distance in the second half, any time Catholic made a run Price had an answer.
“That’s what he’s supposed to do,” Dockery said. “He’s supposed to step up and make those shots. Ty is not afraid of the moment. He works, he puts in the time, and he deserves that opportunity.”
Butler County never trailed and jumped out to a quick lead. A jumper from Luke Beickman got the Aces within 10-8, but the Bears used a couple of 3-pointers to push their lead to 20-12 by the end of the first quarter.
Price hit Lawson Rice on a cut to the lane to put Butler up 28-18 late in the half. They led by double digits the rest of the game, using a 10-1 run over the next couple of minutes to take a 36-19 advantage into the half.
After a Price 3-pointer pushed the lead to 42-21, Catholic started to chip away at the deficit. Waryn Ebelhar pitched in 11 points in the third frame, which the Aces won 20-18.
A backdoor cut by Kaiser Frick got the Catholic within 56-42 early in the fourth before Price put the game away for good, knocking down 3 consecutive 3-pointers to give the Bears their biggest lead of the night at 65-42.
“They’ve got a good team,” OCHS head coach Tim Riley said of Butler County. “We needed them to shoot poorly and they didn’t. They hit 12 3s. It’s as simple as that. They sped us up in the first half, but the biggest thing is they just made shots and they bothered us because of their size.”
Dockery said defense has been Butler County’s focus for weeks now, and it showed with more than 10 blocks and several turnovers that resulted in points at the other end.
“We’ve gradually gotten better at defense, and we’ve changed some things and made some little tweaks in the way we were playing,” he said. “But the big thing is guys just bought in. They decided that is we’re gonna win a championship, we’re gonna have to be able to defend. They did it at a high level.”
Price’s 36 lead all scorers. Rice added 13 for the Bears. Catholic got 17 from Ebelhar, 13 from Beickman, and 10 from Tutt Carrico.
Riley said while they came up short, he was happy with how the season turned out.
“We had a great year. I really, really enjoyed my team,” he said. “We started slow because of the success of the football team, but we went 23-10. I’m very proud of my guys. We only had 2 seniors to play this year. We got back to the regional finals and got beat by a team that was better than us.”
The Bears, meanwhile, are ready to keep their historic season rolling. Dockery said many people may not have believed they could make it this far, but he team knew differently.
“There are always doubters,” he said. “We’re little Butler County. We sit over on the hillside. We’ve never done this before, so why should anybody expect that we can do it? That’s been our motto all year. We’ve worn it on our shirts, ‘Why not us?’ because that’s what we believe. We believed we had the talent to pull it off, it was just a matter if we would be able to execute in the big moment.”
Of how he felt following the win, Dockery said: “Special is really the only thing I can say. Special group, special moment, special opportunity.”
