WEST POINT, Neb. - One year after the Thayer Central girls basketball team set a program record with 17 wins and qualified for a district final for the first time ever, the Titans one-upped themselves by winning a new record 18 games and returning to the district final for the second year in a row.  

But once again, the Titans were topped at the final benchmark before the state tournament: this time, Thayer Central, a team that’s still learning how to win this time of year, was defeated by a Guardian Angels Central Catholic program that has won a ton of games this time of year: the #7-seeded Bluejays booked another trip to next week’s state tournament by defeating #10-seed Thayer Central 58-38 in the Class C2-7 district final on Friday night in West Point.  

GACC won 65-49 in the first ever meeting between the schools in a holiday tournament a couple of days after Christmas. Thayer Central kept that close very close through the first half before GACC started to pull away in the third quarter, but this time, almost exactly two months later, the Bluejays began to soar much sooner into the contest. 

TC held early leads of 4-0 and 7-4 before GACC scored seven in a row to go up 11-10 – and they never trailed again. Paige Tietjen did all she could on the offensive end to keep her team in striking distance, hitting three three-pointers in the first quarter, but senior Izzy Kreikemeier was unstoppable for Guardian Angels. She wreaked havoc near her own three-point arc and she and her Bluejays forced steal after steal in the second quarter, most of which resulted in fast-break buckets for the Bluejays’ star senior. She scored 21 points in the first half alone and GACC outscored Thayer Central 15-6 in the second quarter to begin to build a lead that was too big to overcome.  

The Titans never quit fighting and cleaned things up more as the game went on, but they could not generate enough offense outside of Tietjen to keep pace with the Bluejays. Ahead by 17 at the break, the Bluejays added two more to the edge after the final two quarters and coasted to a 59-38 win, ending the winningest season the Thayer Central girls have ever enjoyed. 

Kreikemeier paced all players with 27 points in a standout performance. Adyson Luebbert scored 15 for the Bluejays, 11 of which came after halftime. Tietjen finished with 20 points to lead the Titans. In the initial 2025 state tournament bracket released late Saturday by the NSAA, Guardian Angels is the #8 seed in the C2 tournament and will face #1-seed Johnson-Brock in the first round at 9 a.m. on Thursday, March 6.