The Hopkinsville Lady Tigers are closing in on a decade of consecutive trips to the girls’ 8th District championship game. The Lady Tigers earned their 9th straight trip to the title contest with a resounding 76-9 win over the Heritage Christian Academy Lady Warriors in Tuesday night’s second semifinal game at Lyle Dunbar Gym.
The young and thin Lady Warriors were simply overwhelmed by the Hopkinsville pressure defense. That defense not only resulted in turnovers, but with Heritage dressing only seven players for the game, it did not take long for the Lady Warriors to physically start feeling the effects of working so hard to simply just to get the ball across the mid-court line.
That Lady Tiger pressure forced Heritage Christian into 20 first-quarter turnovers. That number would be 38 by halftime. For the night, Hopkinsville forced HCA into 46 turnovers, many of those leading to quick scores under the basket or layups.
The Lady Tigers took care of things quickly in this one. Hopkinsville scored the first 20 points of the game. A 3-pointer from Kate St. Martin temporarily slowed the tidal wave down, but Hopkinsville was still up 24-3 after the opening quarter.
While Heritage was having trouble getting into their offense, the Lady Warriors, on the other end, had no answers to the Lady Tigers’ inside-outside combo of Shiyah Forte and Alicia Davis, who were able to operate pretty much at will.
After an early second-quarter basket from Kynlee Henderson, things went from bad to really bad quickly for the Lady Warriors. Hopkinsville scored 27 consecutive points to end the half with a 53-5 lead. Forte, Davis, and Kahtahvia Fleming, combined to score 34 first-half points for Hopkinsville, many of them the direct result of the ballhandling issues for the Lady Warriors.
Hopkinsville came out of the break and scored the first 8 points of the second half to complete a 35 point run and run the lead out to 61-5. With the running clock, the rest of the game played out pretty quickly. The Lady Tiger lead was 64-9 at the end of the third.
Hopkinsville reserves then pitched a shutout in the final quarter to close out the win.
Hoptown’s Alicia Davis was the leading scorer in the game with 16 points, 14 of them coming in the first half. MaKaya Payton chipped in with 15 points. Shiyah Forte added 11 points in limited duty for the Lady Tigers. Kahtahvia Fleming also ended up in double figures with 11.
Kate St. Martin was the top scorer for the Lady Warriors with 5 points on the night.
Heritage Christian sees its season come to an end at 1-18. The lone win came in district play against Fort Campbell.
The win, which was their 5th in a row, improves the Lady Tigers to 10-9 on the year. Hopkinsville, who won the 2022 district title will now take on the defending champs, the Christian County Lady Colonels in Friday night’s girls’ championship game at 6pm at Christian County High School.
HHS — 24 29 11 12 – 76
HCA — 3 2 4 0 – 9
Hopkinsville – A. Davis 16, Payton 15, Forte 11, Fleming 11, Wilson 7, L. Davis 6, Watkins 6, Sharber 4
Heritage Christian – St. Martin 5, Robson 2, Henderson 2
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Not a good year for the Warriors?