Lady Bobcats exceed expectations with 25 wins, postseason run to state tournament

The Berryville Lady Bobcats’ 2024-25 basketball season came to an end with a 62-36 loss to Arkadelphia in the first round of the Class 4A state tournament on Wednesday, March 5, in Magnolia.

As disappointing as that loss was for the Lady Bobcats, however, coach Daniel Cornelison said his team realized its full potential by winning 25 games, reaching the championship game of the regional tournament and making the program’s first state tournament appearance in six seasons.

“I think it was a season where we exceeded expectations,” Cornelison said. “I don’t think any of us coaches saw us achieving as much as we actually achieved.”

As the season went on, Cornelison said the coaching staff saw some subtle signs of a team that could be competitive in the postseason.

“We saw little things with them that we were doing,” Cornelison said. “We switched up quite a bit of what we were doing both defensively and offensively, and you could see it really start to kind of click with them. And once it really started to make sense and they got some success early with it, the buy-in was there and then I thought: ‘You know, we can at least make some noise I think and maybe be a disruptor.’ But to do all the stuff we did was pretty cool. I’m really happy for the kids.”

The Lady Bobcats won several close games throughout the season and also demonstrated a complete refusal to surrender, as illustrated by their regional semifinal victory over Pea Ridge on Feb. 28, when Berryville erased a 10-point deficit in the final four minutes of a 50-47 victory. Just 24 hours earlier, the Lady Bobcats has kept their season alive and clinched a state tournament bid by outscoring Waldron 17-4 in the fourth quarter of a game that had been tied at the end of the third.

In their own Holiday Hoops tournament in late December, Berryville rallied from an early 21-4 deficit to beat Heber Springs 4744, then overcame a seven-point deficit in the third quarter to beat Mayflower in the tournament’s third-place game.

“That’s the one thing about this group that I really admire the most is they never quit,” Cornelison said. “They just competed until the last second. We won a

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lot of close games. You have to have grit and determination to win a lot of those games, and we won a lot of them. Those could go either way, but they just kind of refused to lose in those games. So, I was really proud of how hard they competed and the effort that they played with. When you do that, good things happen a lot of times,

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and they just really bought into that.

The state tournament loss to Arkadelphia was the final game for seniors Sophie Bartos, Kynadee Hopper and Taelor Tomlinson — all of whom made key contributions to the Lady Bobcats’ postseason run. But Berryville has plenty of experience returning with juniors Hailey Howerton, Tessa

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Johnson, Kaylyn Smith and Paige Thurman all starting most of the past two — and in Smith’s case, three — seasons.

“We’ve got a lot of kids coming back and our younger programs have had a lot of success this year,” Cornelison said. “So, barring any major injuries or something like that, it’s kind of set up for us to have some success.”