It can be the best single day of the season in Ninth Region boys’ basketball. If the advancing district losers are competitive, that is, and believe they can win when they draw against the winners.
That way you can get a whole day of hoops with a couple of teams who think they have a chance to do some damage even coming off a loss. They have new life.
Which certainly was the case in Saturday’s opening round at NKU’s BB&T Arena. District 37 winner, and defending state champ Highlands, went against a District 33 runner-up Lloyd Memorial team that handled the Bluebirds, 91-78, barely three weeks ago in Fort Thomas.
Then along came Cooper, runner-up in the 33rd District, but No. 2 in the RPI to season-long No. 1 Covington Catholic, the team they drew.
Games like these are why they give teams second chances. Although the Lloyd fan base – and especially the students – might need to figure their 21-7 Juggs are pretty good and start showing up. Maybe the same for Cooper, too, as the Jaguar fans turned out in greater numbers for the girls’ team Friday night on their way to a regional title than for their guys facing CovCath.
Folks, you shoulda’ been here.
LLOYD MEMORIAL 75, HIGHLANDS 64
The first thing you notice about these two teams is that Highlands doesn’t seem to quite match up with Lloyd’s size and physical presence now that Mr. Basketball Sam Vinson has left for NKU.
And while Lloyd continues to list freshman EJ Walker at 6-foot-5, his dad, Lloyd Coach Mike Walker, admits “that he’s 6-7 now.” He just keeps growing, as do the Division I college offers. He has two now – Duquesne and Youngstown State. “There’ll be more,” his dad says.
But it wasn’t their physicality that earned the Juggs their first region win since 2012 (also over Highlands) with only one other trip (in 2017) the last decade.
It was their ability to shoot the ball. From afar. Against the fly-down-the-court-and-fire-it-up Birds, you better be to score the ball. Hitting 23 of 40 (57.5 percent) from the field and an even better 11 of 19 (57.9 percent) from behind the three-point line, they did just that.
“We’ll take that,” Coach Walker said after the game with a big laugh. He’ll also take the kind of balance that put five players in double figures led by senior sharp-shooter Ryan Davis, out for six weeks with a meniscus injury before just now returning to some sort of form with a team-high 18 points including five of eight from three-point range.
“That was my main role – catch and shoot it,” said Davis, who missed the Lloyd win at Highlands three weeks ago. “I think I was kind of under cover . . . they didn’t know I was coming.”
Down 14-7 early, Lloyd used a trio of Davis threes to get the lead back as Highlands was being carried by the scoring of William Herald, whose 29 points on nine-of-14 included five of nine from behind the line, carried the 22-9 Birds for three quarters.
But with 6-3 guard Jeremiah Israel (16 points including a two-hand stuff off the dribble against the Highlands half-court defense), Walker (13 points, five rebounds) and 6-4 forward Garrett Vogelpohl (12 points, nine rebounds), Lloyd just kept extending its lead in the final quarter. From four points to 11, on a final Davis three with 2:05 left, the Juggs would not be denied.
And forget that stuff about Lloyd coming in off a district finals loss. “The district is a bonus,” Walker said. But it doesn’t really count for anything when you get the chance to go to the region and start over with everybody 0-0, he reasoned.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better draw,” Walker said. “Now the second round could be a little rough,” he said with a nod to CovCath’s Colonels as they rolled by for their date with Cooper.
COVCATH 49, COOPER 37
To play . . . or not to play . . . CovCath has been the choice of the region this year with just seven of CovCath’s 27 regular season games against region opponents, the fewest regional games of any No. 1 team in any of Kentucky’s other 15 regions. Cooper, along with Highlands and Lloyd in CovCath’s bracket had not faced the now 26-4 Colonels this season as they beat all opponents by a second-biggest margin in the state – 22.1 points.
So here it was, tied at 36 at the end of three periods. “We were right there,” Cooper Coach Tim Sullivan said later of his team that finished 22-7. “But we had to play 32 minutes to get it done.”
And that’s the problem playing against this CovCath team, especially on a college court that’s 10 feet longer than a regulation high school court (94 feet vs. 84). Playing all the way to the final buzzer is tough against the Colonel’s physical pressure.
“We actually practiced twice on UC’s court to get ready for this,” CovCath 6-8 senior center Mitchell Rylee said after a dominating performance (16 points, 12 rebounds) that saw the Colonels grind out a crushing 13-1 fourth-quarter effort for the win.
“They’re just so big and strong,” Sullivan said. “We didn’t lose, they just beat us.”
And as much as this is a team game, the guy who rallied his game – and his team – was junior point guard Evan Ipsaro, who started the game missing his first six shots and even a free throw for the 88.5 percent shooter, one of the state’s very best.
“You’ve got to forget about it,” Ipsaro said after finishing with 13 points and nine of 10 from the line, “even if it’s not possible. As Coach Freddie (Assistant Joe Fredrick) says, you have to trick your mind that you’re a good shooter.”
Twice in the second half, Ipsaro made length-of-the-court scoring drives – once off a rebound, once off a steal – that kept CovCath in it against a Cooper team executing its game plan to perfection. Gritty point guard Yamil Rondon, just a freshman, and skilled 6-9 junior Caleb Brooks, with 12 points each, made life difficult for CovCath defenders – for three quarters, anyway.
They’ll be back next year and Sullivan says he just might turn them loose – “although maybe not against those guys (CovCath), but we’ll still play defense.”
As will CovCath. “We wear people out,” Rylee said. “But we’ve got to come prepared against Lloyd, the way they shoot it. We’re going to have to close out on them.”