The Lady Cougar basketball program completed a complete season sweep of the River Ridge District Tuesday with a convincing 58-46 win over the 17-7 Patrick Henry Patriots to lock up the River Ridge District Tournament Championship.
Pulaski County (21-3) went undefeated in district play throughout the regular season to win that title as well. Next up for the Lady Cougars will be an opening round home game Friday to kick off the Class 4, Region D playoffs against a familiar opponent, the EC Glass Hilltoppers.
“We made this a little harder than it had to be,” Lady Cougar Head Coach Scott Ratcliff said. “I thought we played sloppy in a lot of the game. We made some bad passes and we got into a little bit of foul trouble because we were reaching instead of moving our feet. That’s not going to cut it.”
After a back and forth first quarter that saw the Lady Cougars up 10-7 after one quarter, the two teams continued to find a rhythm. It looked like the Lady Cougars were going to start pulling away, but a few bad passes, a bad shot, and a few good shots by the Patriots resulted in another lead change.
Finally, with the score tied at 19-19 and just under two minutes remaining in the first half, the Lady Cougars made a move. Good free throw shooting by Keslyn Secrist, along with baskets by Hannah Keefer and Tori Vest, left Pulaski County up 25-19 heading into the halftime break.
The Lady Cougars built a quick lead to start the third quarter, at times as much as 12 points, but the Patriots continued to fight back. With Patrick Henry standout Makiya Lawrence not dressed for the game due a knee injury sustained last week and several Patriots getting into foul trouble, recovering was too tall a task.
With an 11-point lead midway through the fourth quarter, Secrist got the ball outside and went up for a short jumper. With 3:52 remaining in the game, that shot put Keslyn Secrist in the record books as the new all-time scoring leader for the Lady Cougar basketball program. The previous record of 1,309 points was set and held by Ally Fleenor in the 2021-22 season.
“We’ve been keeping track of it and when she got close, we made sure the right people knew,” Coach Ratcliff said. “We didn’t tell her. We didn’t want to put that pressure on her. She just needed to play ball and it was going to come. Just like Ally last season, she did this with the short year because of Covid, which makes it even more impressive.”
The Lady Cougars went on to take care of business, outscoring the Patriots 15-13 in the final period to earn the 58-46 win.
Secrist led all scorers with 22 points. Hannah Keefer had a big night with 19 points, most of those contested shots. Paige Huff added eight points. Tori Vest scored seven. Kenzlee Jones added the final two points.
Jada Cook scored 15 for the Patriots. Trinity Breedlove added 13 and Syna Nichols scored 11 points. Riley Beasley scored four and Aisa Banks added three in the loss.
“Keslyn did was she normally does,” Ratcliff said. “I thought Hannah and Kenzlee played tough tonight too. We need to be physical like that every night. We’ll take the win, but we needed to play better overall for sure. We’ll enjoy this one tonight and get back to work tomorrow. Friday is going to come real fast and EC Glass is going to be looking to break the streak we have going on them. They’d love nothing better than to end our season. It’s going to be like that every game. We better be ready for it, or we’ll be putting up the uniforms.”
The EC Glass game Friday is currently scheduled for a 6 p.m. tipoff at the Cougar Den. In other Class 4, Region D playoff games, #1 seed Louisa County will host #8 Halifax County. Pulaski County (#2) will host #7 EC Glass. Jefferson Forest (#3) will host #6 GW Danville. Western Albemarle (#4) will host #5 Salem.
The winner of the Pulaski County vs EC Glass game will play the winner of the Jefferson Forest vs GW Danville game. The winner of the Louisa County vs Halifax County game will play the winner of the Western Albemarle vs Salem game.