Larry Niemeyer has coached more 1,000 basketball games during his Hall of Fame career and he knows an outstanding player when he sees one.

Kennedy senior Courtney Strait fits the bill, and Niemeyer was determined to make somebody else on the Kennedy team beat the Jefferson J-Hawks Friday night.

They did.

Strait scored only four points in the first half but it hardly mattered as the Cougars walloped the J-Hawks, 81-39, on Hall of Fame night in the Kennedy gym.

"She's capable of hitting 35 or 40 points in a game," Niemeyer said. "We wanted to shut her down."

That part of the strategy worked in the first half, but nothing else went right for the J-Hawks. Kennedy jumped to a 13-0 advantage and held a commanding 37-14 lead at intermission, even with Strait held under wraps in the scoring column.

The Cougars (6-6, 5-5) tossed in a whopping thirteen 3-pointers, which may or may not be a school record. "That's close," said Kennedy Coach Dennis Roloff, who wasn't sure.

Strait leads Class 4A in scoring at 22.3 points and is one of the top players in the state. Niemeyer used a special zone defense with a chaser in the first half, with Kaitlin Davidson following Strait everywhere she went.

That gave all the other Cougars the green light.

"We told our kids before the game: It's time for the rest of the team to pick it up," Roloff said, "because we know there's going to be nights when Courtney doesn't score a lot of points."

Jefferson switched to a regular zone defense in the second half, but by then the Cougars were cruising. Strait hit three 3-pointers in the second half and finished with a game-high 15 points.

Nine Cougars hit 3-pointers. Madison Meier and Mariah Simmons made a pair while Kaylese Johnson, Taylor Wagner, Capria Davis, Aryn Nelson, Grace Reinhart and Taylor Sohn hit one apiece.

Kennedy scored 39 points on 3-pointers, matching Jefferson's point total for the game.

"That's the best we've shot all year," Roloff remarked. "Larry said, 'Well, they were wide open.' And I said we've had wide-open shots all year and we missed them.

"We put them in tonight. I felt very comfortable with the rest of the team. It was a team effort."

Simmons scored 13 points for the Cougars and Meier finished with 12 markers. Roloff used 15 players and 12 of them scored.

Kennedy grabbed a 30-point lead at 45-15 with five minutes left in the third quarter, then stretched the margin to 39 points at 58-19 with three minutes to go in the stanza.

Kennedy grabbed a 41-point lead at 72-31 with five minutes left in the game, at which point Roloff removed all his starters.

Maddie Koolbeck led the J-Hawks (5-8, 2-8) with 13 points. Rachel Broghammer scored 12.

"Kennedy played very, very well tonight and we were never in the game," Niemeyer said.

JEFFERSON (39): Davidson 3 2-2 8, Blietz 1 0-0 2, Jacobson 1 0-2 2, Broghammer 4 4-10 12, Koolbeck 5 3-4 13, Stromert 1 0-4 2, Brathwaite 0 0-2 0, Church-Green 0 0-0 0, Jonas 0 0-0 0. Totals 15 9-24 39.

KENNEDY (81): Meier 5 0-2 12, Strait 4 4-4 15, Johnson 2 2-2 7, Hendrickson 3 0-0 6, Botkin 3 3-5 9, Simmons 5 1-2 13, Holmes 0 0-0 0, Zinser 1 0-0 2, Wagner 2 0-0 5, Davis 1 0-0 3, Nelson 1 0-0 3, Reinhart 1 0-0 3, Schwartzhoff 0 0-0 0, Sohn 1 0-0 3, Yokota 0 0-0 0. Totals 29 10-15 81.

Halftime - Kennedy 37, Jefferson 14. 3-point goals - Jefferson none, Kennedy 13 (Strait 3, Meier 2, Simmons 2, Johnson 1, Wagner 1, Davis 1, Nelson 1, Reinhart 1, Sohn 1).