Owensboro Catholic held a 41-34 lead with 3:00 left Saturday against Meade County, but key Lady Waves buckets and a technical foul on the Lady Aces put Meade in its first 3rd Region Tournament final since 2014.
Meade County won the game 46-45 as semifinal day at the regional tournament delivered two marquee matchups after Apollo beat Breckinridge County in Saturday’s first game.
The Lady Aces were up three with less than 30.0 left when Kinsley Goetz grabbed a rebound. Goetz was fouled, but then she was assessed a technical after catching a Lady Wave player with an elbow.
Goetz missed the front end of the one-and-one, then Meade’s Peyton Bradley hit a pair of free throws to cut to it to 45-44 with 15.9 left.
It was then time for some senior magic as Jenna Gallimore went to the lane and scored with 4.5 left.
Meade County coach Dina Hackert said she knew just the play to draw up.
“Our seniors came through for us down in the end,” she said. “We designed that play at the end to Jenna. I knew they would go after PJ so we just ran a wheel around and had PJ jump stop. We knew she’d be open.”
Owensboro Catholic held a 13-6 lead after the first frame as the Lady Waves were having trouble on the offensive end.
Hackert said she knew it’d be difficult, given the ability of the Lady Aces on both sides of the ball.
“We came out a little flat,” she said. “Sometimes getting in the rhythm with things, we’re still struggling with that a little bit. Our kids generally, like Monday night, gained confidence as they go. We love our defense to be our offense. We know O-Cath has some knockdown shooters and they do well. If you take some chances, they make you pay. We knew we didn’t want to get in a halfcourt game. We thought we’d try to play good man and we knew when they brought the two bigs in with the high-low, we couldn’t contend with that so we prepared a little bit with a zone and I thought it did its job into the second half.”
The Lady Aces led 21-15 at the half but Meade County was gaining momentum.
The Lady Waves outscored Catholic 31-24 in the second half, in large part to the play of senior D Griffin.
Griffin didn’t score in the first half but she added 15 in the second half to help propel the Lady Waves to victory.
“We made some adjustments in the second half offensively,” Hackert said. “Teams are a little more tired and we kept talking about getting to the rack but making the right decision at the rack. A big difference is D (Griffin). She’s a senior. She can play like that and when we get four quarters out of her like that, it’s a good night for us.”
Goetz finished with 12 points to lead the Lady Aces while seniors Ally Maggard and Catherine Head each finished with eight points.
With the majority of their roster returning, Catholic coach Michael Robertson had a simple message for his team after the game.
“Keep your head up,” he said. “We played a heck of a schedule and did what we did. We just couldn’t buy a shot tonight. We did a lot of good things today, we did a lot of good things this year. We weren’t supposed to be in that game and definitely weren’t supposed to be in Tuesday night’s game but by God I thought we should have been in it. Ball doesn’t always bounce your way sometimes.
“I’m happy for my team’s experience that they got this year and hopefully we can build upon that next year.”
MEADE COUNTY 46, OWENSBORO CATHOLIC 45
OC (15-12) 13 8 9 15–46
MC (14-8) 6 9 15 16–45
OC: Hailee Johnson 4, Katie Riney 7, Ally Maggard 8, Catherine Head 8, Maddie Hayden 6, Kinsley Goetz 12
MC: Peyton Bradley 10, Jenna Gallimore 9, Anna Belle Babb 3, Sage Crawley 2, Katie Durbin 4, D Griffin 15, Emily Myers 3
2021 basketball coverage is presented in part by Rhoads & Rhoads Attorneys at Law.
