Owensboro Catholic had a blowout 70-27 victory over Apollo in their first district matchup of the new season. The highlight of the night was a 20-point performance by Hailee Johnson to help Catholic get the win.
The Lady Aces meant business in their first district match as they amassed a big 29-7 lead by the end of the first quarter. Their momentum didn’t let up and OCHS put the game out of reach for AHS at halftime with a lead of 44-15. Owensboro Catholic’s offense was making the most of their open shots that resulted from their on- and off-ball movement. Head coach Michael Robertson still sees room for improvement when playing against the zone, he said.
“We’ve been working on that, but I still think we were a little bit slow,” he said. “Our ball movement against the zone wasn’t as good as I wanted. We weren’t getting the ball inside and attacking. We were settling for a lot of jumpers. Luckily tonight they were falling, but I want to get more in-and-out out of our offense. We’ll get there, we just got to work on it.”
The third quarter saw multiple three pointers from Johnson and Karmin Riley. Johnson and Riley both made 4 three-pointers during the game with both girls making back-to-back threes in the third quarter to help OCHS extend their lead even further to 61-22. Robertson was glad to see tonight’s intensity as well as the shooting performance after their low field goal percentage in their last match.
“We matched their intensity, and I was worried about that,” he said. “We wanted to come out and play strong and we did. Jumped out to about a 9-0 lead. The defensive pressure was good. We got some easy buckets. Seeing the ball go through the basket helped, especially after Tuesday when we really struggled to shoot the ball. So, that was good to see.”
The offense of the Lady Aces overwhelmed the E-gals and opened them up for plenty of open shots. The Apollo defense didn’t just lie back however, as Jennifer Lee and Jenn Dant fought diligently for rebounds on both ends of the floor. Dant and Lee led the E-gals in scoring with 13 and 12 points respectively. They battled hard in the paint to make sure Apollo had some success on field goals.
Owensboro Catholic pulled away and won the game 70-27. Johnson finished the game with 20 points and led the team in scoring. Riley finished not far behind with 18 points.
