Hartington Cedar Catholic kicks off NSAA state tournament with a win, EPPJ ends run at 22-5

LINCOLN, Neb. (KTIV) - All eyes were on Lincoln, Nebraska on Wednesday as the state of Nebraska kicked off day one of the girls high school basketball state tournament.

Elgin Public/Pope John started all the action as they took on #2 Centura.

The Wolfpack would open the scoring in this one with a mid range jumper from Keyara Eisenhauer, and that one gets the crowd majorly pumped up.

Later on, Maddie Kolm would catch the pass from Ashlynne Charf and drill the long range two to eat into the Centura lead.

Charf would then get in on the assisting end as she drives and kicks to Kate Furstenau who knocks down the shot.

The Wolfpack keep moving the ball and eventually Charf gets it in on the drive and finishes through the contact.

It was a strong fight from the Wolfpack but they would fall short in this one as Centura wins 45 to 27.

“I told the girls, and my assistant said the same thing, the season is over but now the new season starts. Now we got to be ready to go from now to November, because that’s where you make your biggest improvements and be ready to go. We’ll have another good team next year, it’s just sad to see this one end,” said Randy Eisenhauer, Elgin Public/Pope John head coach.

The Wolfpack close out their season with a 22-5 record.

Also in quarterfinal action was Hartington Cedar Catholic facing Johnson-Brock. The Trojans came out firing on all cylinders knocking down a nice three ball from Makenna Noecker as they start heating things up.

Noecker would continue to create her own shots as she puts it up and in from the mid-range to extend the Trojan lead.

And they just keep going with it adding the cross-court pass to the corner leading to a Kathlyne Jones three ball for the Trojans.

Cedar Catholic is moving on to the semifinals taking the win 69-36.

“Our main goal was to come out strong. We have been preparing really hard for this team this following week, so we were just really confident in what we were doing, we knew what every one of their girls were going to do. To reflect that, we were able to get a lot of offensive buckets, it just worked out really well,” said Laney Kathol, Hartington Cedar Catholic senior.

The Trojans will take on Centura in the D-1 state semifinal on Friday with the chance to compete for the championship.

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