LAFAYETTE – All you need to know about Country Day’s Monday semifinal was this – when Jordan McGuire was fouled 3-feet from the goal and was falling backwards, he arced the ball up off the glass and into the basket.

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Coach Mike McGurie instructs his team against Arcadia.

Arcadia had no answer for anything Metairie Park Country Day threw up in the Cajundome, and the No. 3 Cajuns breezed into the Class 1A finals with an 80-58 win over the second-seeded Hornets.

But it was Eddie Ludwig who carried Country Day. He finished with 33 points, 12 rebounds and blocked four shots to pace the Cajuns into the finals against the winner of Tuesday’s Christian Life-White Castle game.

“Eddie comes to play every night,” Country Day head coach Mike McGuire said. “The last 10 games or so, he kind of dominated the teams we played. Eddie knows. He has played a lot of basketball. He rises up in the big games.”

Indeed, he does. He scored 42 points in the quarterfinal win, and has more than 30 points in every playoff game thus far.

The shooting percentages told the story of the game. Country Day shot a blistering 90 percent in the third quarter, and finished shooting 73 percent. Meanwhile, Arcadia went dry in the third, going 2-of-11, and ended up 33.9 percent from the floor.

Ludwig nearly had a double-double in the first half, and his two blocked shots in the first three minutes set the tone for the game.

“I just wanted to let them know I was there,” Ludwig said. “He (Arcadia’s Kourtney Roberson) has had some success against me over the summer. I was trying to send a message early.”

Message received.

“We knew he was a good player coming in,” Arcadia head coach Shane Lee said. “We thought he could at least slow him up. He did what he wanted to against us.”

McGuire, who finished with 18 points and four assists, and Ludwig combined in the opening minute to give Country Day a 2-0 lead. It was a sign of things to come.

If not for the 3-point shot, Country Day’s opponent would have been vanquished in the first half. Arcadia sank five 3’s in the opening 16 minutes, and was able to keep the Cajuns’ lead to fewer than 20 points the whole half.

Back-to-back-to-back-to-back treys changed the lead in the middle of the first quarter, with the Cajuns’ Noel Keuboun sinking the last in the barrage. It gave Country Day an 11-9 lead, and the Cajuns never looked back, as Keuboun’s 3 was the first in a 17-5 run by the Metairie school.

The first half, in fact, took Arcadia out of its game plan, Lee said. Ludwig certainly played a part in that.

“They outplayed us,” Lee said. “They were disciplined in their offense. They jumped on us early. They hit 50 percent in the first quarter and got us out of our zone.”

For Country Day, the ending to the first half was a prelude to a third quarter that all but ended the game. The Cajuns shot 90 percent on 9-of-10 shooting, and outscored the Hornets 24-10 to push a 13-point halftime lead to nearly 30.

The big question for Country Day coming in was how it would handle Arcadia’s Roberson, a 6-foot-10 center. But Ludwig more than held his own. Roberson had more fouls than points heading into the fourth quarter, and when he fouled out midway through the final eight minutes, had only nine points.

“The guy is great,” McGuire said. “We’ve heard all week he’s the best junior in the state. We heard he’s going to take it to us. Eddie’s played AAU with him. He’s not going to back down.”

Country Day now plays either White Castle or Christian Life, teams that have combined for four finals berths in the past five years. The Cajuns lost to Christian Life last year in the finals, and beat White Castle on Feb. 9 69-51.

But McGuire knows it won’t be no matter who his Cajuns plays.

“We have to play this well or better to win a state championship. Each round gets more difficult,” Country Day’s head coach said. “If you’re going to beat a champion … you’ve got to play like a champion. Tonight, we played like Champions. We’ve got to carry that over Friday.”