LEXINGTON – If you’re going to win a state championship, this is the game you must win. A game you easily could lose. Maybe one that for a half, you should lose.
Only you don’t. Now of course, you have to win every game in the Sweet 16, you gotta’ go four for four. One loss and home you go. And here it was, the first game out of the box.
You couldn’t blame Covington Catholic fans for wondering if their Colonels were about to have to get on the bus and head back to Park Hills almost before they had time to enjoy that famous Rupp Arena ice cream.
They were down 10 to the hottest of hot-shooting Ashland Tomcat teams, a veteran club CovCath had already lost to this season, a confident team that was hitting shots from three when it looked like they couldn’t even see the basket, and banking them in if and when they had to. And it wasn’t even halftime yet.
And then a sign of hope. CovCath senior Mekhi Wilson, playing like a star off the bench, caught it and shot it from the right corner with a second left in the first half. Swish.
Instead of trailing by 10, 40-30, the Colonels were down 40-33 with the pick-me-up they needed going into halftime. “Being down seven instead of 10 is huge,” CovCath Coach Scott Ruthsatz said. Down double digits just has an entirely different feel.
But if anyone would have told you the only team that would have a double-digit lead the second half would be CovCath, you would have thought they were crazy. And then it happened. Evan Ipsaro got the scoring started for CovCath on a steal and score after 35 seconds and CovCath was off to its own eventual 29-15 run for an improbable 76-65 win Thursday.
Chandler Starks started pushing the much smaller Tomcats around with his 6-foot-6, 230-pound frame as he posted up, played with patience and knew they couldn’t handle him on his way to a 21-point, 12-rebound game. “Best game of his life,” Ashland Coach Jason Mays said admiringly.
“I knew I didn’t play my best game in Ashland,” Starks said of that 71-60 CovCath loss at the end of January. “I knew we had to play better.”
After a 15-5 CovCath run the first five minutes after halftime, the Colonels had a three-point lead, 48-45. And they were doing it the hard way – with defense and rebounding.
And that’s despite the amazing marksmanship of 6-2 Ashland senior Cole Villers, playing on a torn meniscus, who scored 25 points – 16 in the first half — while hitting seven of 14 three-pointers with Wilson’s hand in his face – “as much as I could,” Wilson said of his defensive efforts while finishing with 13 big points off the bench.
But if the Colonels didn’t have much luck with Villers, they pounded the boards for a 30-12 advantage with the 5-11 Ipsaro grabbing seven and 6-8 Mitchell Rylee six.
“They were grittier than us,” Ashland’s Mays said. “When you get out-rebounded 30-12 and shoot 30 percent in the fourth quarter . . . credit Covington Catholic. It was a tale of two halves and they won the second half and the ball game.”
One stat lost in the hot-shooting Tomcats’ first half when Ashland hit 15 of 23 shots, CovCath made 16 of 23. But only one three from Wilson to Ashland’s seven. That was the difference. But after going seven for 12 from three the first half, Ashland was limited to five of 15 the second half as CovCath defended — and did so without fouling.
For the game, CovCath shot an incredible 66.7 percent (30 of 45) to Ashland’s 50.0 percent (24 of 48).
“We did a better job trusting the game plan (the second half),” said the athletic Ipsaro, whose game-high 26 points with eight of eight from the line to go with nine-of-15 shooting, made him the player of the game even over Villers.
Ruthsatz put in a plug for his “senior leader” Rylee, who didn’t have his best game with 11 points in addition to his six rebounds, “but he’s a total team leader.” And he had a couple of power dunks, one to beat the buzzer at the end of the first quarter, when the Colonels most needed an emotional boost.
For CovCath’s 29-4 Colonels, who will face a 29-6 Lyon County out of the Second Region in the 6 p.m. game Friday, this was their 11th straight win over the last six weeks. “The last time we lost was that game at Ashland,” Ruthsatz said. Lyon County has won 10 straight.
No doubt the happiest folks in Rupp Arena where the CovCath yell leaders who are required to wear matching outfits, blue-and-white versions of Indiana’s striped warmups, instead of their regular student garb. They break these out every year here because the KHSAA won’t let anyone not in matching outfits lead cheers. Not that the “Colonel Crazies” really need leaders.
But in a game like this, when more often than not a Colonel player or coach was gesturing to the CovCath fans to keep it up, even when they were down 10 early, having that support matters.
“We feed off it,” Ipsaro says. And often, Wilson was asking them to amp it up despite how loud they were.
By the time this one was over, the “Colonel Crazies,” who showed up in matching green St. Patrick’s Day t-shirts, weren’t wearing any shirts – except for the yell leaders, who had to keep theirs on or sit in the stands.
Like the team they root for, they’ll be back Friday. Hard to say what kind of shirts they’ll be wearing then.
