HAMILTON — Gracie Cosgrove was patient enough to trust her shooting abilities from behind the 3-point line Saturday night.
“The first half, I was struggling,” the Badin High School junior guard said. “I got into the locker room at halftime and said to myself, ‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’”
She went back out on the court and shredded the net the final two quarters.
Cosgrove dropped nine treys — including six in the second half — to register a game-high 31 points, Braelyn Even scored a cool 16 points and Badin blew by St. Ursula 83-40 at Mulcahey Gym.
The Rams (6-2) are on a six-game winning streak and have beaten their last four opponents by at least 15 points. Badin, which fell to Lakota East and Cincinnati Country Day to start the season, is 6-0 against St. Ursula in the last six years.
“We’re getting there. Have we arrived? No,” said Tom Sunderman, who is in his 16th season as Badin’s head coach. “But we’re getting there. The girls are starting to buy in.”
The Rams got offensive production from junior Ashley Pate (10 points) and sophomore Lily MacGowan (13 points). Pate is in her first full season after transferring to Badin last year.
Sunderman said the focus for his program heading into the new year is to get the returning players to ease some of the younger ones into the system.
“I look at it like this — we can’t have a good season without them,” Sunderman noted. “That’s what we have. We have two seniors and two juniors until Brooke Sebastian (injured) is back in another month. Then we have a lot of sophomores.
“We’ve said this all along so far that it’s going to be by committee and who’s ready that night. I think you’re starting to see some of that come along.”
Badin led 21-13 after the first quarter and 40-23 heading into the half thanks to a spark from MacGowan and Pate from the outside.
Cosgrove got into her groove by scoring 20 of her points in the second half.
“This is all-around stemming from our energy on defense,” Cosgrove said. “Defense does make offense.”
Badin had five players connect on 17 shots from 3-point range, including one from Even who does most of her work in the paint.
“We’ve been talking about what we’ve been doing well and to just continue to do what we’ve been doing well,” said Even, a sophomore. “We started transitioning more tonight once we stopped fouling. That helped us set up the 3s, which was good.”
St. Ursula (3-5) has lost three out of its last four but came off a 61-38 win at Fenwick last Saturday. Juniors Callie Nichols and Grace O’Toole had 10 points apiece to lead the Bulldogs.
UP NEXT
Badin travels to Talawanda on Wednesday. St. Ursula will play at Loveland on Thursday for Game 4 of an eight-game road trip. The Bulldogs will go an entire month without playing their next home game, which is set for Jan. 16 against Mount Notre Dame.
