It would have been the perfect lede (as we spell it in the news business). How nothing would have better told the story of the Ohio-Kentucky All-Star Basketball doubleheader than this one single play.
How Thomas More-bound Jenna Lillard, the Ludlow High 2000-point scorer, on a head-down dive into the stands to chase down the basketball was so intent on making the play, she didn’t realize that the two people sitting in the first row who she landed between were the very grandparents she had decided to stay home for her college career so they could see her play as they did every game in high school.
It would have been – except for this. Except for the Kentucky Boys team that rallied late in the second game around a little scorer and a big defender/rebounder for one of those resounding, rewarding turnarounds you rarely ever see in an all-star game where too often it’s about guys getting in their shots and making their own plays on offense.
But not on this night.
KENTUCKY BOYS ALL-STARS 85, OHIO BOYS ALL-STARS 84 (Overtime)
Kentucky Mr. Basketball Turner Buttry, barely 5-foot-10, provided just enough offensive push at the finish. Covington Catholic’s Mitchell Rylee, all 6-foot-8 of him but not even close to the biggest guy on the floor, did the rest.
Together, Bowling Green High-product Buttry and the Northern Kentuckian Rylee, with help everywhere you looked up and down the roster, pushed the Kentucky kids to overcome a 69-60 deficit with 9:25 left on a 17-5 run the next eight minutes that allowed them to withstand some late bobbles and get this game into overtime.
And then they defended down to the last tenth of a second with Rylee batting away the final Ohio attempt so it couldn’t be rebounded.
Not your typical all-star game when all the talk is about defense and rebounding. “And not turning the ball over,” Rylee added.
“But that’s the typical game for me to want as a coach,” Kentucky’s James “Boo” Brewer said. “That’s the game I learned from Denny Crum at Louisville.”
Rylee agreed. “That was the commitment we made in four practices since we got here at the hotel Thursday night,” said Rylee, who reiterated that his commitment to Miami of Ohio is “100 percent” now that former Xavier Coach Travis Steele is the new hoops boss in Oxford. But it was the commitment these Kentucky players made to one another that pulled them through, said Rylee, the lone Northern Kentuckian on the boys’ stars.
“It was an unbelievable experience,” Rylee said, of what he learned from his first post-high school competition. Like the first time he went to stuff the basketball for what would have been the game’s first score – only to have his dunk blocked with two hands by another, actually bigger, 6-8 guy, Heath’s Brandon McLaughlin.
“You get a feel for the game,” Rylee said, and that feel was? “He’s bigger than me,” Rylee said. So the next three opportunities he had at the basket, he used his body, used some finesse, took his time and got the score over a defender. Although on his fourth and final attempt, he did get his dunk in overtime to tie it at 82.
But it was his defense on the shooter and then his rebounds the next couple of possessions that gave Buttry an opportunity for floater in the lane followed by a free throw from Fern Creek’s Darien Lewis to get the Kentucky team to its game-winning 85 points. But only after those defensive stops and rebounds.
Rylee was there for all of those in a game where they try to get equal early minutes for the players but it was Rylee’s number they called all the way in crunch time the second half when Kentucky made its big run.
“It means a lot to me,” he said, of being in there for the winning minutes, “it means I earned the coaches’ trust.”
Indeed. Here’s Brewer’s take on Rylee. “He’s a great player . . . it’s been a great pleasure coaching him . . . he’s so smart . . . he really settled our defense down.”
And in the end, that’s what mattered. Although former Louisville basketball star Brewer said the wearing of the blue and breaking the huddle with “1-2-3, Kentucky,” caused him more than a little angst.
But the win, and the way it happened with his team playing the way he could only hope it would, made this “a great All-Star game for me,” Brewer said. “It’s good to go out with a W.”
OHIO GIRLS ALL-STARS 99, KENTUCKY GIRLS ALL-STARS 84
As it turned out, Northern Kentucky had five players, not the originally announced four, in the girls’ game when Simon Kenton’s Serenity Webb joined the squad as a late replacement for a player who couldn’t make it.
But against an athletic Ohio team with a couple of McDonald’s All-Americans and speed and length everywhere, there wasn’t a lot Kentucky could do for the full 40 minutes despite somehow managing a 48-46 halftime lead.
“I really thought we were going to win,” said Lillard, a 6-foot forward who won the one-on-one contest at Friday’s Slam Jam. And yes, she knew where her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Lillard were sitting, it’s just on that play she didn’t have time to check, keeping her eyes on the ball.
Not a problem, said Ralph, who at 6-7 was one of the first big men to play high school basketball in the Ninth Region in 1957 when he graduated from Ludlow High. Jenna is his favorite grand-kid, he says with a big smile. That she’s a basketball player doesn’t hurt.
While the game may have been a loss, the week was a winner both Notre Dame’s Lacey Bradshaw and Lillard agreed. “I loved the chance to meet so many new people,” said Bradshaw who will be heading off to Morehead State. “We got to bond with one another.”
For Lillard, it was the chance to start her college prep work. “You realize you’re definitely not the best player on the team,” when Miss Basketball, Anderson County’s Amiya Jenkins, who is going to the University of Kentucky, led the Kentucky team with 20 points for MVP honors. That’s the same number that Ohio MVP Chance Gray, out of Winton Woods and headed to Oregon, scored. She had lots of help with 13 Ohio players scoring including four in double figures while two-time Ohio Miss Basketball KK Bransford, heading to Notre Dame, was limited to just nine.
For the Northern Kentucky contingent, Notre Dame’s Macie Feldman, who led an early burst to the lead with a quick four points after she entered the game. Newport Central Catholic’s Rylee Turner added five and an equal number of rebounds with Bradshaw and Lillard each scoring four and Webb two.
“It was just a special event for these kids. . . it’s all about exposure for them,” said NewCath coach and Kentucky assistant Ralph Meyer III. His player in the game, Turner, is still looking to make her college choice while Meyer is not optimistic he’ll find a way to replace “her 26 points and 12 rebounds next year.”
