To hear sophomore guard Ellie Bigelow tell it, the cheese on the celebratory postgame pizza wasn’t even cold yet, and the Greenwood Christian girls basketball team was already starting to talk about the next challenge.
Sitting together last Saturday night after winning the school’s first regional championship (in any sport), the Cougars’ conversation began shifting toward Class A No. 1 Loogootee, their semistate opponent this Saturday afternoon in Jasper.
"Our whole goal was to not just win a sectional or a regional," junior Savvanah Frye said. "It’s to go to state. So after we accomplished that, that’s just a check mark. (Sunday), all the captains were texting each other like, ‘Have you seen the film on Loogootee?’ We’ve already been watching film. We’re already getting ready for next weekend."
One could certainly understand if the GCA girls wanted to spend a little bit of time basking in the glow of the regional title — especially given what it took to get it. The Cougars trailed Jac-Cen-Del by double digits late in the third quarter of their afternoon semifinal before storming back and outscoring the Eagles 24-3 in the fourth quarter to win by a dozen. Then, they fell behind North Central early in the championship game before pulling away late for a 74-65 triumph.
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"It’s hard not to think about Saturday, because it was such a great effort to come back," GCA coach Alan Weems said. "You don’t expect to come back on Jac-Cen-Del when they’ve got you down by 12. But our kids turned it up some, and as they turned it up, we actually were able to make some positive things happen."
But these Cougars, Weems noted, are a very goal-oriented bunch, and their to-do list didn’t end with a regional title. So while they did take some time over the weekend to savor the history they made, they refused to get caught up for too long.
By Sunday afternoon, the girls already had a group text message going, discussing whatever Loogootee video footage they’d been able to scrounge up online.
Once practice rolled around Monday, the regional memories had been completely tucked away in the Pensieve and all eyes were focused ahead on semistate and the Lions.
"We just want to make more school history, honestly," senior Alexis Mead said. "With the (regional) games on Saturday, we just did not want to lose. Our team had so much heart and grit that went into both of those games, and I think we definitely can use that same heart to win this next Saturday."
For the first time during this state tournament run, GCA will be an underdog on Saturday; both the ICGSA state polls and the Sagarin ratings consider Loogootee to be the best team in all of Class A.
But the Cougars don’t figure to get easily intimidated. They’ve picked up a pair of double-digit wins against Class 4A opposition this season, and they’re one of the hotter teams in Indiana right now, having won their last 13 games by an average of almost 29 points.
They’re confident that they can beat anybody at this point.
"We’re going in knowing that this is going to be a tough game," junior Izzy Reed said. "We’re going to have to play well. But no, I don’t think we really have any fear. We’re going to play the game of basketball, we’re going to do it to the best of our ability, we’re going to go in with a game plan and just plan on executing and playing to come out on top."
"We’ve all watched film, and we all know what they’re capable of," Frye echoed. "But we also know what we’re capable of, and we know that if we come out and we show up, we have a really good chance."
It helps that the entire Greenwood Christian community has rallied behind them. Despite being the smallest school remaining in the tournament (enrollment: 144), GCA has had some healthy crowd support behind it during the postseason. The unbeaten boys team has rescheduled its PAAC championship game twice so that the guys could be there to cheer on the girls.
There figures to be a buzz throughout the school all week, but the girls don’t consider that a distraction. Rather, they’re feeding off of the energy.
"I definitely think we’re embracing it," Reed said. "We’re a very small school — even just in the state tournament for 1A, we’re one of the smaller ones. But at this time, we really feel a ton of support and a ton of the GCA family coming around us, so I think we’re going to embrace that and really love and enjoy this next week of practice, enjoy this upcoming game and hopefully keep playing next week."
"It just made us want to play even better," Mead added, "so the more people talk about it, the more excited we get. We can’t wait for it to be here."
Johnson County hasn’t had a girls basketball team in the semistate round since 2007, and a win this weekend would make GCA just the third girls team in county history to play for a state title, joining 1996 champion Center Grove and 1998 Class 3A runner-up Franklin.
Should the Cougars extend their season with a victory in Jasper, don’t be surprised when, wherever the team stops for dinner on the way home, the conversation starts drifting toward Bankers Life Fieldhouse and whoever their final opponent might be.
Because with this group, there’s always another world left to conquer.
"We’ve made history," Bigelow said, "and I just want to keep that going."
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Class A Jasper Semistate
Greenwood Christian (23-5) vs. Loogootee (25-2)
When: Saturday, 4 p.m.
Where: Jasper High School
Admission: $10
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Class A Jasper Semistate
Greenwood Christian (23-5) vs. Loogootee (25-2)
Players to watch: Greenwood Christian — Ellie Bigelow, Savvanah Frye, Alexis Mead, Dory O’Dell, Izzy Reed; Loogootee — Kalea Fleming, Brooklyn Jones, Chelsie Sutton, Makenzie VanHoy
Sagarin ratings: Loogootee 80.88 (first in Class A, 55th in Indiana), Greenwood Christian 71.27 (fifth/109th)
Common opponents: Loogootee def. Trinity Lutheran 61-43 on Feb. 15; GCA lost at Trinity 59-47 on Jan. 7
What to expect: Something will have to give — the Lions have one of the stingiest defenses in Class A (34.48 points allowed per game), while the Cougars are among the state’s highest scoring teams (66.5 ppg). Only two teams have cracked the 50-point mark against Loogootee; GCA has only been held under 50 three times and is averaging 70.3 during its current 13-game win streak. The Cougars aren’t huge by any stretch, but they might be able to create some advantages in the paint against the Lions, who don’t have a player in the lineup listed above 5-foot-8. There’s no edge in experience — neither team has won a semistate before, and Loogootee’s last regional title before this year came in 2002, before many of the current players were born. GCA is a slight underdog on paper, but it also likely has the best player on the floor in Reed and a lot more offensive firepower. In a close game, that matters.
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