It’s been 7-and-a-half months and it’s still the meme that won’t go away for the Northern Kentucky University men’s basketball program.
“Those four to six minutes,” fourth-year coach Darrin Horn says, eyes straight ahead at a Truist Arena luncheon Thursday to introduce the latest version of the Norse. But he was thinking back to that March evening when NKU’s ticket to the NCAA tournament was pick-pocketed by a Wright State team trailing 57-41 well into the second half.
“We freaked out, all of us,” says fifth-year senior Trevon Faulkner, one of the three preseason All-Horizon League players on this NKU team picked to win it all this time around in a tie with Purdue-Ft. Wayne. “We put the work in…“
And then the dream was gone.
“It affected all of us in that moment,” said the 6-4 wing Faulkner, out of Harrodsburg, declaring it was the key reason for his return – “to get back to a championship.”
So how are they handling it, Horn was asked. “Not very well,” he said of a team “that had played so well down the stretch” winning 15 of its last 17 games only to lose that last one that mattered the most.
Played so well “short of those four to six minutes,” Horn said. And yes, the subject very much comes up in practice as a lesson in how so much you work for so long can be gone just like that when you don’t make plays.
“The one thing I took out of that was to play more poised,” Faulkner said.
“We don’t ever want feel like that again,” said Sam Vinson, the former Highlands Mr. Kentucky Basketball and breakout freshman star in the Horizon a year ago and the second of NKU’s preseason all-league picks who has put on 10 to 12 pounds of muscle as the 6-5 perimeter player heads into his second season.
His goals are four-fold: “Playing more physical on the offensive and defensive sides, being more efficient, getting to my spots, and being a more confident player.”
Not a dime’s worth of difference between Sam’s goals and that of this team. They’re on the same page here, along with their coach.
Horn says he’s been coaching college basketball for 25 years and won’t guarantee his guys anything other than doing everything possible to make them better – “player development,” says the former head coach at Western Kentucky and South Carolina.
That starts with a weight and conditioning program as good as any, Horn says, with a dedicated director of sports performance seldom seen outside the Power 5 programs in Tyler Janota, who had been with Horn when he was associate head coach at Texas.
But it’s not just the Norse bodies that are getting beefed up. So is the schedule, and with some big-time opponents coming to Highland Heights like a Kent State team picked to win the Mid-American Conference for the Nov. 7 opener.
And of course, a University of Cincinnati team in a return game here Nov. 16 in exchange for using Truist Arena when the Bearcats’ Fifth-Third Arena was being remodeled.
“I heard the lower bowl is sold out,” Vinson said. “It’s going to be packed,” it’s “a huge game for us.”
Florida Gulf Coast, Tennessee Tech, and Eastern Kentucky are other interesting non-league teams coming to NKU. And then there’s this. On Wednesday, Dec. 7, the Norse will be tipping it off against a Pac-12 team – Washington State – in Pullman, Wash., a place Horn has never been to in his quarter-century of college coaching.
Flying out nearly 3,000 miles to the Palouse in the middle of the week in December? Why?
“We couldn’t get any other Power 5 teams to play us,” Horn said. And Washington State didn’t want to either the first time NKU asked. But WSU finally came back and said yes.
The way the NCAA ranks schedules now, with the NET system replacing the old RPI, makes it tougher for Horizon League teams to schedule since the entire league is rated as a Quad 4, Horn said, and not a plus when calculating NCAA tourney possibilities. For teams in the middle like NKU, it isn’t easy moving up.
“We wanted to test ourselves,” Horn says of what he called “the toughest schedule ever for NKU.”
One thing that makes this schedule tough is how out of whack the Horizon League schedule is, with the Norse on the road seven of their last eight games in February, all in the league. Sure, they get the early half of the schedule at home but finishing on the road like that will challenge every part of this team’s ability to play with poise.
With four starters back – including 6-2 junior Marques Warrick out of Lexington Henry Clay, also an all-league preseason pick, and the athletic 6-8 Chris Brandon out of Houston – the Norse look like they could be up to the challenge.
That’s especially so since the fifth piece of the starting lineup puzzle is transfer point guard Xavier Rhodes, a fifth-year redshirt from Florida Southern who looks to have the size, at 6-1, and the experience to distribute the ball to NKU’s trio of perimeter scorers.
Waiting in the wings is 6-6 junior Trey Robinson from Hamilton, Ohio, who can play virtually any position depending on how fast the Norse want to play. “Tremendous experience and athleticism, we haven’t had that,” Horn says.
One other player to watch for is 7-0, 215-pound sophomore Imanuel Zorgvol, an athletic big man who can run and jump out of Paramaribo, Suriname. “A long way to go basketball-wise,” Horn says, but “with size and athleticism we haven’t had.”
NKU Regular Season Schedule
DATE OPPONENT
Mon, Nov 7 vs Kent State
Sat, Nov 12 vs Cincinnati Clermont
Wed, Nov 16 vs Cincinnati
Mon, Nov 21 vs Florida Gulf Coast *
Sun, Nov 27 vs Tennessee Tech
Thu, Dec 1 vs Youngstown State
Sat, Dec 3 vs Robert Morris
Wed, Dec 7 @ Washington State
Wed, Dec 14 vs Eastern Kentucky
Sun, Dec 18 vs Miami-Hamilton
Wed, Dec 21 @ Florida Atlantic
Thu, Dec 29 vs Wright State
Sat, Dec 31 @ IUPUI
Fri, Jan 6 vs Oakland
Sun, Jan 8 vs Detroit Mercy
Thu, Jan 12 @ Milwaukee
Sat, Jan 14 @ Green Bay
Thu, Jan 19 vs Cleveland State
Sat, Jan 21 vs Purdue Fort Wayne
Thu, Jan 26 vs Green Bay
Sat, Jan 28 vs Milwaukee
Thu, Feb 2 @ Robert Morris
Sat, Feb 4 @ Youngstown State
Fri, Feb 10 @ Wright State
Sun, Feb 12 vs IUPUI
Fri, Feb 17 @ Purdue Fort Wayne
Sun, Feb 19 @ Cleveland State
Thu, Feb 23 @ Detroit Mercy
Sat, Feb 25 @ Oakland
* Game played at neutral location
NKU Men’s Basketball Roster
Isaiah Mason
G
6’4″ 175 lbs So.
Bowling Green, Kentucky Bowling Green High School
Trey Robinson
G
6’6″ 220 lbs Jr.
Hamilton, Ohio Hamilton High School
Sam Vinson
G
6’5″ 205 lbs So.
Fort Thomas, Kentucky Highlands High School
Marques Warrick
G
6’2″ 185 lbs Jr.
Lexington, Kentucky Henry Clay High School
A’lahn Sumler
G
6’3″ 185 lbs Fr.
Buford, Georgia Buford High School
LJ Wells
F
6’8″ 205 lbs Fr.
Eau Claire, Wisconsin Eau Claire Memorial High School
Imanuel Zorgvol
C
7’0″ 215 lbs So.
Paramaribo, Suriname Central Florida Christian Academy
Xavier Rhodes
G
6’1″ 170 lbs R-Sr.
Lee’s Summit, Missouri Florida Southern College
Mitchel Minor
G
5’10” 175 lbs Fr.
Taylor Mill, Kentucky Scott High School
Cole Sherman
G
5’11” 190 lbs Fr.
Louisville, Kentucky St. Xavier High School
Cesar Tchilombo
F
6’9″ 205 lbs Fr.
Democratic Republic of the Congo John Carroll High School
Chris Brandon
F
6’8″ 220 lbs Sr.
Houston, Texas Detroit Mercy
Trevon Faulkner
G
6’4″ 200 lbs 5th
Harrodsburg, Kentucky Mercer County High School
Jake Evans
G
6’1″ 190 lbs Jr.
Louisville, Kentucky Male High School
Hubertas Pivorius
G
6’2″ 170 lbs So.
Vilnius, Lithuania Christopher Columbus (Fla.) High School
Noah Hupmann
C
7’1″ 225 lbs Jr.
Union, Kentucky Covington Catholic High School