Cedar Catholic girls enter State Tourney as third seed
HARTINGTON - It’s state girls basketball time and that means the normal trip for the Cedar Catholic Lady Trojans.
But this time the Lady Trojans expect much more.
Last year as a 10-13 team, they were the hunters as they went into the field as a No. 8 seed and promptly knocked off No. 1 Weeping Water, 54-49, in the quarterfinal and ultimately finished fourth.
Now, the tale is different, as the Lady Trojans (18-7) are the No. 3 seed and set to do battle with No. 6 South Platte (20-2) at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, at Lincoln Southwest High School.
A win propels the Cedar girls into a semifinal against either No. 2 Weeping Water or No. 7 BDS in a 4 p.m., Thursday, semifinal at Pinnacle Bank Arena.
It was all made possible after a 36-30 District final win over No. 14 Summerland Friday.
So, now having survived an upset bid, the Lady Trojans go to Lincoln as a different group of players from a year ago.
“These are very similar teams as we only lost three seniors last year,” Coach Wortmann said. “I feel the seniors are leading the way and using the past experiences to help get through these tough games.
Wortmann said he doesn’t know much about South Platte, but does know his team will need to play good defense against them.
“South Platte is a team we have not seen yet, and will need to play very good defense but that will be the key for us next week. If we can play together and battle to the end, we can make some noise in the tournament,” he said.
From Kuehn’s perspective, many of the players are back from last year, but the current roster has a different make up and approach to the game.
“A lot of new girls had to step up and they had to play some big and important roles and they’ve been able to do that really well,” Kuehn said. “Our team communicates and gets along super well. All of our girls last year also grew a lot as players and knew we didn’t want to experience the same feeling as last year, of losing in the second round.”
Also, with the age of COVID-19, the summer became more about chasing basketball titles than going to malls, get togethers and the like, simply because of what they could or could not do.
“Every time we lose a game, we get upset with ourselves and last year it would be more like, ‘OK, they were a good team, so it’s all right that we lost,- Kuehn said, noting this team takes losing more personally this season. ‘We put so much time into it that at this point we should be winning. We have had a lot of things taken away and there are a few things we get to have. For our senior year, there are only a few things we can go in and win.”
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