And the Tippecanoe student section was behind the basket doing its best to distract McDavid. So Cougars guard Sara Thornton did what senior leaders do.
“I went up to her and said, ‘Look, you got this,’ ” Thornton said. “ ‘We shoot them every day in practice. Just knock them down.’ ”
McDavid made the first one and that was enough to lift the Cougars to a 63-62 victory Saturday for their first league title since Thornton and point guard Stefanie Davis were freshmen.
“It’s a good accomplishment for them because we had no clue what the season was going to be like,” said coach Ed Foulk, whose team had lost leading scorer Paige McCrary to graduation and came in with only five proven varsity players.
Kenton Ridge (20-1, 10-0) beat Tipp (18-3, 8-2) for the second time to avoid sharing the title with the Red Devils.
“We came into the game knowing we had the title, but we wanted it all to ourselves,” Thornton said.
Kenton Ridge won the first meeting 54-52 on Jan. 4. The Cougars had to hang on this time after leading by as many as 16 in the first half and by 10 with two minutes left in the third quarter.
“We knew we’d battle back,” Tipp coach Aaron Jackson said. “We knew we had the toughness and the girls would work hard. Just to know that we were three points shy of being 10-0 ourselves makes it a little bit more difficult.”
The Cougars had to do it without Davis in the final two minutes after she fouled out with 16 points and four 3-pointers.
“Coach Foulk was a little excited, that’s how he gets,” Thornton said. “But he told us we could do it with this group.”
After Tipp closed the third with an 8-0 run to trail 50-48, the lead changed hands six times in the fourth quarter. Sydney Bates hit a big 3-pointer for KR to tie the score at 60 with 1:53 left. Thornton’s fast-break layup put the Cougars up 62-60 with 31 seconds left.
Tipp’s Halee Printz tied the score again with 11 seconds left on two free throws for the last of her 24 points. Thornton then passed into the lane to McDavid, but Tipp knocked the ball out of bounds with 2.2 seconds left.
On the inbounds play from under the basket, the pass was lobbed to McDavid in the lane and she was fouled trying to score. Then she made the first free throw to finish with 19 points.
“It was hard,” she said, “but I pulled through it.”
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