JASPER
In time, Izzy Reed emerged from her team’s locker room Saturday afternoon, the Greenwood Christian forward’s eyes reddened from moments shared with teammates after a difficult loss.
It was the first time in nearly two hours Reed’s every move wasn’t shadowed by a Loogootee defender.
Or two. Or three.
Loogootee’s interior players stayed close to Reed during the Class A Jasper Semistate, holding Johnson County’s career scoring leader to a season-low eight points — her only non-double-digit since January 2019 – in a 43-33 victory.
The Cougars close with a 16-7 record, the final breaths of their season taking place on the Jasper hardwood for a second consecutive year. The 5-foot-8 Reed, who made all-out effort her calling card in totaling 2,064 career points, had scored 10 or more points in 61 consecutive games prior to Saturday.
Reed, the opposing squad’s defensive focus much of her GCA career, said Loogootee wasn’t doing anything different from what she had grown accustomed to.
“It was tied late in the fourth quarter, and we put ourselves in a position to win, but … things happen,” said Reed, who also led all rebounders with 13. “Loogootee stayed calm and held their composure, and they ended up winning. Kudos to them for just being able to pull it out for a second year in a row.”
The Lions (20-4), the defending state champs, broke free from a 31-31 tie with 3:47 remaining in the fourth quarter, knocking down 8 of 10 free throws in the process. In contrast, the Cougars struggled at the charity stripe on the day, hitting just 2 of 9.
Greenwood Christian fell behind after one quarter, 13-5, stared up at a 21-14 deficit at halftime and twice trailed by nine points in the third.
Cougars senior guard Brooklyn Stubblefield led her team’s comeback, making a layup at the 1:27 mark of the third quarter and drilling a 3-pointer from the top of the key at 49.5 to cut the Loogootee lead to 25-21. Reed’s first points, a layup after a nice baseline feed from junior guard Ellie Bigelow, made it a two-point spread, but the Lions countered with a late layup by forward Kylie VanHoy.
GCA tied it again at 29-29 on junior Danielle Simon’s drive to the hoop at 4:31 of the fourth, a sequence followed by a Loogootee hoop and another basket by Reed. Lions senior guard Kalea Fleming, the game’s leading scorer with 16 points, hit a runner off glass with 2:55 left to give her team the lead for good.
“Listen, (Loogootee) is good. They’re really good. Let’s call it the way it is,” GCA coach Alan Weems said. “It’s 31-31, and the next thing you know, it’s 43-33. But I’m so proud of all these kids for the efforts they put in to get to this point. The semistate two years in a row, in the big scheme of things, most schools don’t do that.”
Stubblefield, who played her first three seasons at Greenwood before transferring, led GCA with 14 points. Simon scored five off the bench to go along with four rebounds. The Cougars other senior, 5-9 forward Savvanah Frye, had two points and three boards in her final prep outing.
The seniors were instrumental in the Cougars going 75-31 over the past four years, including 16-4 in the postseason. Leading the way was Reed, who averaged 12.4 points and 8.2 boards as a ninth-grader and only got better.
“I just told her in (the locker room), as a third-grader, I saw you and you had a volleyball in your hands three-fourths of the time,” Weems said. “We can’t anticipate this type of career. I mean, it’s just impossible to anticipate. (Reed’s career) is going to be measured in a lot of ways, but maybe the most important way is the number of wins she put up.
“Fifteen or 16 tournament wins is really solid. And just the great young lady that she is. And the student that she is. And the example she sets for so many young people. You can’t quantify her value to GCA.”
