Scott Ruthsatz has one goal every season. Win a state championship for his Covington Catholic Colonels. For a Ninth Region and a Northern Kentucky that didn’t win one for 64 years until Simon Kenton did in 1981, that’s some out-of-the-box thinking.
But for Ruthsatz, and his Colonels who will head off to Rupp Arena Thursday morning, it’s paid off. Two state championships in his nine seasons in Park Hills. Six Sweet 16 trips. There’s a reason that when CovCath comes to your gym, they have their own stat crew, print their own stats for everybody there instantaneously, and will gladly give you one.
They work at it. It’s just one small thing but it exemplifies how Ruthsatz’ CovCath program does what it does. They work really hard at it. And as a private diocesan school, they attract kids who want to work at it as well.
Like that state championship goal. It’s the way Highlands did it in football for all those years and how Beechwood does it now. You can’t be afraid to put the goal out there just because you might not make it.
Even though you can’t possibly control all the variables that go into the pursuit of a state title year after year after year. But you can control what you do.
Take this year for example. Ruthsatz was talking over the spring and summer about how hard his kids were working, about how good junior point guard Evan Ipsaro was looking, about how enthused he was about the way this was going to play out. About how he thought maybe they’d have a chance.
And about how hard he was going to challenge them. And do so with an obstacle-laden schedule that a team with just one senior starter would have to grow up fast against. Like how on the first weekend of the season, CovCath opened against Ninth Region runner-up Dixie Heights on a Friday night followed by a 2 p.m. game the next afternoon in Lexington against a tough Paul Dunbar team.
Or how the next weekend they’d play Cincinnati LaSalle on a Friday and then head off to Indianapolis the next day to play Indiana’s top team – Cathedral.
Or how the next weekend they were in Louisville for the King of Bluegrass Tournament where seven of the teams in that tourney – Louisville Male, North Laurel, George Rogers Clark, Oldham County, Lyon County, Ashland Paul Blazer, and CovCath – are part of this week’s Sweet 16.
CovCath won the KOB crown with wins over Trinity, Fairdale, Male and North Laurel but it hasn’t been all wins for the 28-4 Colonels. They ventured on the road to Louisville again and lost by five, 73-68, at Male. And then heading 150 miles east along the Ohio, dropped a 71-60 game in Ashland to Blazer in their worst performance of the season at the end of January.
That’s the same Blazer team CovCath will open against in the Sweet 16 at 8:30 Thursday night in the very last of the Sweet 16’s eight first-round games that open with four on Wednesday.
That loss is actually the good news. Ashland was hot, hit 10 three-pointers and shot a ton of free throws – 29 to CovCath’s 16, making 13 more than the Colonels. “That’s life on the road,” Ruthsatz says, “you’ve got to live through it.”
And get better as a result. The elevation of sophomore Brady Hussey, whose defense has helped to give Ipsaro “more freedom” to not have to run through screen after screen after screen on defense is one difference.
“It all starts at the defensive end,” Ruthsatz says, “getting Brady to be able to lock down their top offensive threat.” And then they have 6-foot-6, 230-pound junior Chandler Starks now able to guard any of the five positions.
If they can handle Ashland’s physicality and get their bigs – Starks and 6-8 Mitchell Rylee — “to play low and with leverage” against an Ashland team with no one bigger than 6-3 or 6-4, Ruthsatz says they can get the job done against a team they failed to do so the first time.
“Any time you lose, you always want to avenge a loss, it’s just that sometimes you don’t get the chance to do it the same year,” Ruthsatz says. CovCath will have to handle slick point guard Colin Porter, who scored 19 with nine rebounds the first time they played. Ethan Sellers (20 points the first game) and Cole Villers (12) give the Tomcats a trio of offensive threats.
Going into every tournament, “We always anticipate that we’re going to win every game,” Ruthsatz says. And just as they do with everything, the Colonels will have had four postseason practices at UC’s Fifth-Third Arena, learning to handle both the big arena shooting background and bright lights not to mention Rupp’s 94-foot college floor, 10 feet longer than the standard 84-foot high school floor.
“We’re lucky,” Ruthsatz says of the four games they’ve been able to play at NKU’s BB&T Arena. “Not everybody in Kentucky has those places like we do.”
But if CovCath has good luck there, drawing into the last game on Day 2 in the bottom bracket, should they keep winning, the Colonels will have to play four games in 46 ½ hours. A team in the first game in the upper bracket will have 79 hours to play those same four games.
Get to the finals at 7 p.m. Saturday and CovCath will have to play three games in 22 ½ hours and the final two games in 5 ½ hours. For a team from the upper bracket, those numbers are three games in 32 hours and two games in eight hours on Saturday.
“You can’t do that at the King of the Bluegrass or any Christmas tournament,” Ruthsatz says of the impossibility of replicating that Sweet 16 challenge. No one would schedule a high school team like that. Or any team. In any sport. They almost never make golfers play that much.
Here’s just one example: Say you win the second game Saturday tipping off at 1:30 and you’re out of Rupp at maybe 3:30-4 if you’re lucky. Now what? You have the state championship game tipping off at 7. You don’t even have time to drive out to your hotel on the outskirts of Lexington and back. Where do you shower?
Do you have time to eat? Or is it too close to the next game? And what about icing your guys down? Where do you do that? And what about a film session and scouting report? “It’s a challenge for sure,” Ruthsatz says.
One plus for the Colonels. Louisville Sacred Heart just did that and survived from the bottom bracket to in it all. Of course, they were way better than the other 15 teams in the Girls Sweet 16.
“We’re not,” Ruthsatz says, “but our AD, Tony Bacigalupo, is definitely going to check with Sacred Heart for some ideas that could help us.”
CovCath will leave to a sendoff from its Park Hills campus Thursday morning, get to Rupp to let their young players “watch the 11 a.m. game and get some of that famous ice cream,” then head out for the pre-game meal and then back for the late game.
“No shootaround,” Ruthsatz says. They don’t usually do a shootaround on game day so as normal as they can keep things, as tough as that is to do, that’s what they’re going to do.
SWEET 16 FIRST-ROUND SCHEDULE
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Jeffersontown vs.Lincoln County
(at Rupp Arena) – 11:00 AM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
Muhlenberg County vs.North Oldham
(at Rupp Arena) – 1:30 PM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
Perry County Central vs.George Rogers Clark
(at Rupp Arena) – 6:00 PM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
North Laurel vs.Pikeville
(at Rupp Arena) – 8:30 PM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Warren Central vs.Male
(at Rupp Arena) – 11:00 AM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
Lyon County vs.John Hardin
(at Rupp Arena) – 1:30 PM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
Henry Clay vs.Murray
(at Rupp Arena) – 6:00 PM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
Covington Catholic vs.Ashland Blazer
(at Rupp Arena) – 8:30 PM UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16®
⇄
