Kourtney Shipley picked the perfect day to have one of the best games of her younger career.
Bradleyville’s sophomore guard exploded for 35 points, a new career-high, leading No. 2 Bradleyville to a 57-46 win over School of the Ozarks in the Class 1 – District 4 semifinals Monday evening at Keeter Gymnasium.
PHOTOS: BRADLEYVILLE VS. SCHOOL OF THE OZARKS – CLICK HERE
“She’s one of the best ball handlers in the area and not just handling the ball, but she’s also a floor general out there,” said Bradleyville coach Autumn Thomas. “She sees the whole floor and when there’s someone open she gets them the ball every single time. It’s a coaches’ dream to have someone like that.”
The Lady Eagles held a 22-15 lead at the half, but S of O would cut that to just one early in the third. That’s when Shipley heated up, scoring 21 of Bradleyville’s final 35 points.
It was Shipley’s sixth 30-point game of the season, but the Lady Patriots held her to just 14 points in the first meeting, a 52-44 win for Bradleyville.
Concerned with the Lady Eagles’ ability to shoot the ball, S of O decided to switch it up from the zone defense played in the first meeting.
“They did what I asked them to do,” said School of the Ozarks coach Andrea Martin. “Last time we played a zone they hit a bunch of 3s on us so we tried to play an aggressive man-to-man against them and Shipley got going; she’s tough to guard.”
The Lady Patriots run was keyed by senior Hannah Duncan, who scored a team-high 22 points and helped keep S of O in it. She even forced Bradleyville to throw some box-and-1 at her for extended periods of the second half.
Shipley and Duncan were the only players to reach double figures in the game.
Bradleyville’s Emily Todd and Dorian Hayes each grabbed 12 rebounds in the game, helping to negate S of O’s size advantage, which features four starters between 6-foot-2 and 5-foot-9.
“I thought our big girls, Emily and Dorian, did a great job on the inside of rebounding and defending,” said Thomas. “Sophia came in off the bench and did a good job as well. That was a big key tonight.”
After losing to Chadwick last year, Bradleyville is headed back to the district championship game where they will meet up with rival Hurley. The two teams split a pair of regular season meetings, also sharing the Mark Twain Conference title with S of O.
“We are excited,” said Thomas. “They beat us and then we beat them. I think it’ll be a good matchup, we’re hoping we can get them again. Our girls are really excited.”
After winning just eight games in the last two seasons, the Lady Patriots finished with double digit wins and a .500 record for the first time in program history. While they’ll have to figure out how to replace seniors Hannah Duncan and Emily Brown, Martin will bring back 6-foot-2 sophomore Brooke Housley and 5-foot-10 junior Evie Carswell, as well as junior point guard Emma Mackey.
“We are hoping this can be a springboard for us,” said Martin. “We lose a couple of seniors that scored a lot and grabbed a lot of rebounds, but I challenged the girls to step up. Shipley for them was a JV player and came off the bench and you see what she is now. A lot can happen over the course of a summer.”
Bennett, Langley combined for 51 in Hurley win over New Covenant
It wasn’t pretty at times, but Hurley made enough plays to slip past New Covenant on Monday, advancing to the district championship for the second time in the last three years with a 73-52 win over New Covenant.
PHOTOS: HURLEY VS. NEW COVENANT – CLICK HERE
Despite the win, Hurley coach Vicki Spivy wasn’t particularly pleased with her team’s effort.
“We are going to have to guard a lot better than we did tonight,” said Spivy. “I think we were just content with trying to outscore them tonight. Defensively we were all or nothing; we either got a steal or we let them shoot a layup. That can’t happen on Thursday.”
Hurley scored the first 10 points of the game, but from there New Covenant was able to make enough plays to remain a nuisance to the Lady Tigers behind 24 points from freshman guard Maggie Phipps.
New Covenant trailed 41-27 at the half and despite several second half spurts, never really threatened the district’s top seed.
Senior Zava Bennett battled illness to score a game-high 26 points, but was also helped by the play of sophomore guard Jordan Langley, who scored 24 points and canned seven 3s.
“She’s got the flu so she wasn’t 100% tonight,” said Spivy. “During one of our timeouts she had the bucket over there, she thought she might loser her supper, but hopefully we can get her healthy with a couple of days between games.”
While there is certainly no love lost between Bradleyville and Hurley, especially after splitting the last six meetings, Spivy downplayed the importance of the opponent, keeping the big picture in mind.
“We’re excited to be playing on Thursday, it didn’t matter if it was Bradleyville or School of the Ozarks,” said Spivy. “We just wanted to make it there.”
Bradleyville and Hurley are set to tipoff at 6 p.m. on Thursday for the Class 1 – District 4 championship.
