Dan Weber writes a sports column for The River City News. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com.
Only four other basketball teams in Northern Kentucky history have been asked to handle the challenge Kevin Listerman’s Highlands Bluebirds face this season.
Defend a state basketball title.
It’s not easy even if you can play fast and shoot it from deep. Even if you score 78.0 points a game, sixth-best in the state. Even with the state’s third-best three-point shooter — Will Herald (47.6 percent) — and the fifth-best overall shooter — Cole Kocher (69.8 percent).
Not even coming off a six-game win streak having scored 90, 86, 94, 91, 90, and 90 points to improve to 17-6. And not even when you’re at home in front of a fired-up O-Zone student section in a gym filled almost to capacity with the jerseys of super-scorers Scott Draud and Jaime Walz looking down next to last year’s state championship and Sam Vinson Mr. Basketball banners.
And finally, not even with the man who put the Birds on the basketball map, Kenney Shields, sitting in the front row and gladly letting the Ft. Thomas folks who will always worship the onetime St. Thomas, Highlands and NKU coach take selfies with them.
Nope, not even then. Here’s the problem – actually two problems — for the Bluebirds.
“I do feel other people get up more for us, give us more than their best shot,” Listerman said Tuesday night after his defending state champs hosted a Lloyd Memorial team that’s the best to represent the Erlanger school in decades.
Even with an 8-1 record against regional opponents, 90 points wouldn’t have been enough for the defending state champs on this night against a Lloyd team playing as well as it has all season.
Make that a Lloyd team that has more players, more big and strong athletes all of them healthy now, with a tad higher RPI rating and a bunch of guys — 6-foot 2 athletic guard Jeremiah Israel, 6-3 lefty shooter Teyon Neale, and a pair of 6-5 inside guys, EJ Walker and Garrett Vogelpohl — the Birds just could not match up against in a fast-paced 91-78 loss.
“They finally listened to us,” Lloyd coach Michael Walker said of his 18-5 Juggernauts. “They executed the game plan.”
Which was? When the hustling, speed-it-up Bluebirds came out to challenge them out top with their pressure, get the ball to Walker down low and the 6-2 Israel anywhere around the lane and watch them go.
“They’re good enough to beat tough teams,” Listerman said of Lloyd. That hasn’t always been the case.
And for the first 4 1/2 minutes in this one, that wasn’t the case here. The fast-starting Birds jumped on the Juggs, 18-9, before Lloyd figured out what was going on. And when they did and got up to speed, that was pretty much it.
First the Juggs ran off a quick 11 points in just over two minutes to take a 20-18 lead that they gave up just once on the way to 49 first-half points that Highlands kept within single digits (49-40) thanks to Herald’s desperation three from somewhere in the vicinity of the Lloyd bench at the buzzer.
“I didn’t feel like us slowing the game down would do much good,” Listerman said. So they did the best they could, playing as fast as they could and getting it back to five at 66-61 with one defensive scramble play and score after another as the home crowd took the roof off the place.
And then one after another, the Lloyd players made plays. “They executed their game plan really well,” Listerman said, “that’s what this game is all about.”
And Highlands? “We did not do a good job matching them,” Listerman said of a game more physical than you’re likely to see most nights in Northern Kentucky. The speed of the game may have influenced the lack of whistles.
“They were very physical tonight,” Listerman said, “they pushed the envelope.”
Handling that kind of physicality “is something we haven’t been able to do and have to figure out,” Listerman said although with no player bigger than 6-3 and no real muscle, that’s not going to be easy.
Not when a team like Lloyd can run out the senior Israel with his game-high 30 points from inside and out, or Walker with 20 more down low, or Neale with 17 from the corner, or Vogelpohl with 10 more inside.
Highlands was led, as it often is, by the scrappy duo of the 6-1 Herald with 27 points and 6-3 Zach Barth with 18 more while the 6-3 Kocher fought hard for his 12 inside.
–Dan Weber