Dan Weber writes a sports column for LINK nky. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com.
“I call him a ‘Ferrari,’ ” Holy Cross Coach Casey Sorrell says of Jacob Meyer, his explosive, incredibly athletic junior leading the state in basketball scoring.
Playing with a power and speed not seen in Northern Kentucky – or anywhere else in the state – since maybe a Darrell Griffith at Louisville Male more than four decades ago, Jacob has been on track to accomplish something that, according to the KHSAA record book, has happened just four times in the history of Kentucky boys high school basketball.
Only three players over four different seasons (with Phelps’ Ervin Stepp doing it twice and most recently in 1978-79 and 1979-80) have averaged more than 40 points a game for an entire season. Through his first 19 games going into Lloyd Memorial’s Scheben Gym Friday night, Jacob was averaging 40.2 points a game.
But that game against the just-now-coming-into-their-own Juggernauts made it clear just how tough this is to do.
Against a big, smart, physical, disciplined Lloyd defense, the Ferrari kid blew a tire at the end of a speeded-up, end-to-end game where the two teams scored 160 points in 32 minutes. That tempo, unfortunately, may have been a beat too fast for the guys with whistles whose job it was to stay on top of it.
A half-dozen times Jacob drove the lane, drew contact and ended up on the floor. With no call. No block. No charge. Just play on.
“We wanted them to wall him up,” Lloyd Coach Mike Walker said of what would be his Juggernauts’ (perfect nickname in this one) 89-71 win, their 15th against just three losses in their best performance of the season.
“He’s a hell of a talent,” Walker said of Meyer, while figuring their size gave them a chance against the 6-foot-2, 180-pound lefthander who looks very much like he’d be at home as a wide receiver/running back in football. “We wanted to take away his drive. Our thing was to wall up and stay straight up.”
On his last power drive in the game, midway through the final period, Jacob hit the Lloyd “wall” not to mention the floor — and didn’t get up. His right ankle had turned over in a pile under the basket — no whistle — that had a five-on-four game going the opposite way as Jacob lay holding his ankle on the end line.
Not much happened the rest of the way as a disgusted Sorrell cleared his bench in a game where his Indians had been whistled for three technical fouls. The first — on Meyer — may have set the tone with an unbelievably silly call after he held up three fingers with a good-natured smile to the Lloyd student section that had been all over him after his first deep field goal dropped following a couple of early drives that were rejected.
It was more a tribute to the Juggs’ defense than anything. That the officials missed that would not surprise anyone in the near-capacity crowd that had braved a “14F” sign outside Scheben Gym to see if Lloyd – and Meyer – were for real.
“That happens,” Sorrell said as his Ninth Region All “A” champion Indians fell on the way to the Kentucky All “A” Classic for an opening round game Thursday against Lexington Sayre at Eastern Kentucky University (9:30 p.m.).”Our focus is to control what we can control. There were definitely some missed calls.”
Even in a game Meyer didn’t finish and where many of his shots that had a chance to fall in fell off, and against defenders with size to match his, he managed to score 34 points, dropping his average to 39.9. As we said, staying above 40 isn’t easy – especially against teams like Lloyd. Jacob is still 3.0 points a game ahead of the No. 2 scorer, Robertson County’s Justin Roberts, who is averaging 36.9.
“I’m really not thinking about that number,” Meyer said Monday night after his teammates, with him cheering them on, had come on strong to beat Holmes, 89-64, for their 15th win in 21 games. “Having these guys win without me should really help their confidence” going into the All “A” Classic.
But after doing dry needle rehab on his sprained ankle, the swelling is down, he’s been able to run and jump some and should be ready to go by Thursday, he says.
And that running and jumping matters in his game. Of Meyer’s 13 field goals Friday, two came on monumental flying dunks above and through traffic that had even the Lloyd students up and “oohing” and “ahhing.”
“Hats off to him,” Walker said. “Hope they win the All ‘A’.”
Hats off for the dunks including one on a lob from teammate Javier Ward that had Meyer flying above the “wall.” “My favorite of the year,” he says of his ability to dunk the basketball that started when he was “12 or13,” he says, and in a pre-game warmup “and I just dunked it.”
But if you watch how he does it, the ambidextrous athlete (he throws a baseball and football right-handed, writes and shoots basketball left-handed) dunks mostly with his right hand. He’s not sure why.
But he is sure of this: “When you’re dunking, there’s an adrenaline rush, an amazing rush.”
Meyer will need to keep hitting on 53.8 percent of his shots (297 of 552) and 81.0 percent of his free throws (149 of 184) for that to happen. And a six-deep team like Lloyd can make that difficult. No matter how hard or fast Meyer went, there always seemed a Jugg or two with his hands up and standing strong and lot of contact allowed.
That’s the problem when you’re a Ferrari. “Especially when he’s in the open floor,” Sorrell said. “He can start and stop” like nobody you’ve seen. But when the floor stops you, after you’ve hit “the wall,” life gets a little more difficult.
From three-point range, Meyer is hitting a respectable 34.2 percent (55 of 161). He says he thinks that’s the thing that surprises people – that he can score outside the arc. “They think I mostly drive.”
The Western Kentucky commit is also grabbing 7.6 rebounds a game and not afraid to take chances as he starts the play going the other way – in a hurry. Will he go one-on-three, -four, or –five? He will. He’ll go by them, past them, through them, and over them.
By the time he gets to Western, Jacob knows his game will have to change. “They want me to be the main point guard controlling the team,” he says, which is why his big emphasis this season is “to improve my ball-handling and defense.”
And that’s the big challenge playing high school now – combining doing his athletic best for what it will take for his team to win and preparing himself for all the basic fundamentals of playing in college.
How exactly do you do that? “That’s a hard question,” Jacob says after a long pause. No easy answer there. Just play on the best you can.
Especially against a team like Lloyd that has guys able to dish it right back, getting a total of 63 points and 33 rebounds from the trio of 6-5 E.J. Walker (27 points, 10 rebounds), 6-5 Garrett Vogelpohl (21, 12), and 6-2 Jeremiah Israel (15, 11).
After trailing much of the game, Meyer and 5-8 teammate Ward (25 points) led the Indians back to as close as a 61-58 deficit with a minute left in the third period. But they ran out of gas – and Meyer – in the final period.
–Dan Weber