Basketball: Lady Knights drop first-round playoff contest at Pinewood

The Bethlehem Christian Academy girls basketball team held its own Tuesday night against what Lady Knights coach Julie Cavoretto described as a “run and gun” offense Tuesday, but BCA couldn’t generate enough offense of its own in a 43-26 road loss to Pinewood Christian Academy in the first round of the GISA Class AAA playoffs.
Pinewood advances to the state quarterfinals Friday where it will face either Brookwood School or Notre Dame Academy. The outcome of that game was not known at press time. BCA finishes the season at 12-16.
The Lady Knights, the No. 4 seed from Region 4 kept the game competitive for most of the night and cut Pinewood’s lead to eight early in the fourth quarter. But BCA missed a few key shots and the Lady Patriots, the top seed from Region 2, took advantage and pulled away down the stretch.
Katherine Gano led the Lady Knights with 7 points. Brooke Peevy scored 6 points, senior Olivia Morgan had 5 in her final game, and Jadyn Goddard and Rebekah Doolittle finished with 4 apiece.
“Our girls made a great defensive effort to shut down a really good player for them who had put up a bunch of points on other teams,” BCA coach Julie Cavoretto said. “That’s was one of the things we were trying to do and we hung in there against a region champion. We had a lot of opportunities early, but the shots didn’t fall. Overall, though, I’m just really proud of the effort.”
It was an up-and-down season for the Lady Knights, who started out strong but saw the year uprooted with the midseason departure of former coach Mike Griggs last month. Griggs and school officials described the personnel change at the time as a mutual parting of ways,
Cavoretto, who was already on the BCA staff, was elevated to the head coaching role on an interim basis. And while there were some struggles early on after the change, she said the team played good basketball down the stretch.
After blowing out Loganville Christian in the first round of the region tournament Feb. 5 to clinch a state playoff spot, the Lady Knights lost to John Milledge Academy, 40-26, in the semifinals Thursday and 53-42 to Augusta Prep in the consolation game Friday.
“I don’t think those final scores were indicative of how hard we played,” Cavoretto said. “They rose to the occasion and started to peak at the right time. The effort and intensity really picked up.”
BCA will say goodbye to a pair of seniors in Morgan and Stella Byrd. Morgan bounced back from an early-season ankle injury and had a strong region tournament, Cavoretto said, scoring 16 in the consolation game.
“I was really proud of her and how she came on at the end of the year,” Cavoretto said of Morgan.