REGION REIGN: Lady Wildcats rout Metcalfe for first state trip since 2009

Published 10:13 am Sunday, March 9, 2025

By Jeff Nations

LaReesha Cawthorn never doubted, not for one second.

Even when Franklin-Simpson’s star forward was drawing tons of attention, double and even triple teams, from Metcalfe County in Saturday night’s Region 4 Girls’ Basketball Tournament, Cawthorn knew her team was not going to be stopped from winning.

Sure enough, Cawthorn’s teammates picked up the scoring slack early, the Lady Wildcats got rolling and never stopped on the way to a 72-45 victory at E.A. Diddle Arena.

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Next up – the KHSAA Girls’ Sweet Sixteen at Rupp Arena in Lexington. Franklin-Simpson (28-2) will face off against Region 10 winner George Rogers Clark on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

It is the first state tournament appearance since 2009 for the Lady Wildcats.

“I knew going into this game that my team was very locked in,” Cawthorn said. “We had the sense that we lost last year, this is where we wanted to be. We wanted to win this and we wanted to be going to state, so I knew we were locked in and nothing was going to stop us from winning this game.”

Cawthorn, a 6-foot forward who has signed with Tennessee Tech, ultimately put up her usual numbers with 19 points and seven rebounds along with five assists and four steals.

In the early going, Metcalfe County (27-6) held Cawthorn in check – but at great cost. Fellow forward Kloie Smith started getting uncovered in the paint and scored a pair of baskets, while guard Naja Nolan connected twice from 3-point range as the Franklin charged out to a 15-6 lead by the end of the first quarter.

It was the start of a huge night for Smith, who finished the night shooting 10-of-14 from the field for 21 points. Smith also tallied a double-double with 11 rebounds and had five assists, four steals and two blocks.

“Whenever you try to stop Reesha – she’s a really good player, but whenever you try to stop her that’s leaving all of us open and we moved the ball really good tonight with passing it and looking for our shots,” said Smith, a junior. “And we were really aggressive tonight.”

The Lady Hornets were still in the game and surged to start the second quarter. Sophomore forward Jozie Allen, who has played the past few weeks and entire postseason with a torn ACL, scored a pair of baskets inside and Kassady London knocked down a 3-pointer as Metcalfe rallied to within four at 16-12 with 6:21 left in the first half.

The Lady Wildcats answered with two straight baskets – a jumper by Vanessa Ray and then Cawthorn’s first points of the night on a short bank in the lane – but Metcalfe hung close when LeeElla Boles scored on a fast break and drew a foul for a three-point play.

Franklin then delivered the knockout with an 11-0 run finished off by Smith’s offensive putback that put her team ahead 31-15 with 1:55 left in the half.

Allen finally broke up the Lady Hornets’ nearly four-minute scoreless stretch with a free throw, but Franklin-Simpson then scored seven straight before Metcalfe got two quick scores over the last 27 seconds to trim the marging to 37-20 at halftime.

“Metcalfe plays so hard and they’re such a well-oiled machine in what they do,” Franklin-Simpson coach Ashley Taylor said. “I thought that we came out, executed early and then we started making shots. And when we’re making shots from the outside, we’re really hard to beat because we have our inside presence with our post too. So I just thought that everybody was really dialed in on our team, ready to go, executing on both ends of the floor.”

The Lady Wildcats kept pulling away from there, forcing eight third-quarter turnovers while outscoring Metcalfe 20-6 in the period to lead 57-26 heading into the fourth.

Allen hit the floor hard on a play in the first minute of the fourth and did not return. London, Metcalfe’s leading scorer this season, finished with a team-high nine points.

Lady Hornets coach Heidi Coleman said her team just “didn’t have it” on Saturday night. Metcalfe County, which saw an 11-game winning streak end with the loss, was playing in just its second-ever regional championship and first since 1992.

“The only way we would be able to really compete with them is if they missed outside shots because we were going to spend a lot of time trying to keep LaReesha from getting the ball,” Coleman said. “But we knew if they started hitting outside shots that we were going to have to come outside of the paint. I think honestly they hit more shots than they usually do. At that point it kind of broke us because we don’t really have a match … Josie is a phenomenal player but with that knee injury we don’t really have a anybody with the size and the quickness to be able to keep up with (Cawthorn). So when we were chasing after her, it opened other people up.

“Ultimately again, they hit outside shots and shots they don’t normally hit. We didn’t execute our offense at all in the first half. We hung with the initially because they were missing shots, we were missing shots — we were going back and forth. But when their shots started dropping, we didn’t execute on the offensive end.”

Nolan added 13 points and Ray had nine for the Lady Wildcats, who tallied 25 assists and 14 steals in the win.

“We knew that we just really had to lock in defensively to really be able to get the job done,” Cawthorn said. “I think that’s really what got us through this. We got a lot of defensive stops early in the game and I think that kind of shook them up and got them sped up. They’re only like a five- or six-girl rotation, so it got them tired really quickly. And then throughout the game with them double-teaming me, that gave my other post down there (Smith) her time to shine. She made me so proud tonight.”

Now it’s on to Rupp, where the Lady Wildcats hope to keep this stellar season going.

“I’m so happy for our girls, our coaches, our community, our school – man, we put a lot of work into this,” Taylor said. “This has been building for a couple of years now. This team has been working towards this goal. So to accomplish it their senior year, man, it’s an amazing feeling.”

MCHS 5 15 6 19 – 45

FSHS 16 21 20 15 – 72

MCHS – London 9, Boles 8, Jolly 8, Allen 7, Glass 7, Blythe 2, Compton 2.

FSHS – Smith 21, Cawthorn 19, Nolan 13, Ray 9, Brown 4, Savage 3, Riley 2, Butler 1.

Sports Editor, Bowling Green Daily News

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