We’re not going to say this in the original French because we’re pretty sure the man who came up with this line in 1849, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, wasn’t a big basketball fan.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” J-BAK wrote in 1849, which come to think of it was way before Dr. Naismith invented the game anyway.
But it almost perfectly explains the Tuesday start of boys high school basketball here the way a Covington Catholic team that doesn’t much look like a Covington Catholic team with a bunch of little guys running around like crazy on every inch of the court, is just that – a bunch of little guys running around like crazy – and still No. 1 in Northern Kentucky.
Ask Simon Kenton. The Pioneers, with 7-foot-3 senior Gabe Dynes, invited the Colonels to Independence to open the season and were the first to see and experience how a new-look CovCath plans to stay on top. And yet do so in a radically different way from recent seasons when the offense started – and often ended – by throwing it into the big guys.
Not that the Colonels have any choice. There are no big guys. Unless of course you count footballer Aiden Jones, whose 250 pounds on a 6-foot-3 frame has the defensive end headed to West Point for football next fall. “He’s really strong,” Dynes said.
But that wasn’t really the plan here. “Play fast and get layups” was, Jones said.
Not just fast but like really fast. Especially on defense where the combination of fast hands and feet makes opponents, well, let Dynes explain it.
It made them “really nervous,” Dynes said of the Simon Kenton guards who couldn’t get the ball to a man posting up who was a foot taller than the man guarding him.
It was 47-20 at halftime and 61-26 when the Colonels called off the dogs late in the third quarter. CovCath had one run of 23-3. Forget the 67-44 finals score. It wasn’t that close.
“That’s the way kids want to play today,” said a pleased CovCath Coach Scott Ruthsatz after his 311th win at the Park Hills school. “You’ve got to be able to shoot it and you want to play fast and aggressive.”
And yet, while firing up 51 shots, the Colonels turned it over just three times. “Three times,” all-state guard Evan Ipsaro said proudly after a 15-point first half took all the mystery out of this one right away.
“When you have a guy like Evan,” Ruthsatz said of the now 6-1, 195-pounder headed to Miami of Ohio, “we spread things out for him” and he takes over early.
“We’ve got more freedom, no big guys clogging up the middle,” Ipsaro said as his perimeter mate Kascyl McGillis nodded in agreement.
“It just feels more free,” said Kascyl, who was joined in the four-guard, one-forward starting lineup by his 5-foot-10, 140-pound freshman brother, Athens.
And on each of Athens’s two three-pointers, matching his senior brother, the CovCath Crazies let the world know about Athens: “He’s our freshman, he’s our freshman.”
But it wasn’t just the McGillis clan hitting from long range. Ipsaro had two on his way to a game-high 20 points in 19:52 of action. Senior Brady Hussey, another returning starter, also knocked down a pair of threes, giving the four starters eight among them.
As for Jones, as he said, “play fast and get layups.” He got three of them whenever the Pioneers collapsed on Ipsaro in the lane. And did so with his quickness, which is the key here.
But not the only one. “Our senior class is pretty big,” Kascyl said of the eight seniors suiting up. “This is definitely the closest team I’ve been on,” Ipsaro said, “we trust each other a lot more than last year.”
In other words, if you bust your tail and get open, someone will get you the ball. CovCath had 14 assists, Simon Kenton just two.
“Our guards were nervous the way they defended us,” said the 200-pound Dynes, who would like to play at 240, and who has signed with Youngstown State in this, just his second year of basketball.
And rightly so the Pioneer guards were “nervous.” CovCath challenges every dribble, gets into every passing lane, and fights for every rebound.
Sophomore Simon Kenton guard Jay Bilton got his game going despite the pressure, finishing with 16 points, the same that Dynes scored when his guards were able to get him the ball in the second half and he got a couple of two-hand stuffs and a running reverse layup when CovCath got every one of the 15 players into the game.
“We were probably too aggressive the first half,” Ruthsatz said. But that set the tone. “We want to make it hard on you,” he said.
The 23 points CovCath scored off turnovers compared to Simon Kenton’s three made that clear.
But the big change is how much fun it is playing this way. “I’d say it’s more fun,” said Jones who took off just two days after football finished to transition to basketball. “I’m used to it.”
“I would say so,” Kascyl McGillis said of the fun of a “run and play fast” game plan.
BOX SCORE
COVCATH 22 25 16 4–67
SIMON KENTON 14 6 8 16—44
COVCATH: Ipsaro 8-6-2-2-20, A. McGillis 2-0-2-0-6, K. McGillis 4-2-2-0-10, Stewart 1-0-1-0-3, Johnson 1-1-0-0-2, Tranter 2-2-0-0-4, Bradshaw 0-0-0-0-0, Greis 0 -0-0-0-0, Hussey 3-1-2-0-8, Fryman 0-0-0-0-0, Ruthsatz 0-0-0-2-2, Link 1-1-0-2-4, Detzel 1-1-0-0-2, Kennedy 0-0-0-0-0, A. Jones 3-3-0-0-6, TOTALS 26-17-9-6-67.
SIMON KENTON: Krohman 2-1-1-0-5, Johnson 0-0-0-0-0, Polly 0-0-0-0-0, Bilton 6-5-1-3-16, Crisp 0-0-0-1-1, Brown 3-3-0-0-6, Bach 0-0-0-0-0, Gabbard 0-0-0-0-0, Bresser 0-0-0-0-0, Taylor 0-0-0-0-0, Taylor 0-0-0-0-0, Bowling 0-0-0-0-0, Dynes 6-6-0-4-16, Stone 0-0-0-0-0, Royer 0-0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 17-15-2-8-44.
