By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Seven seniors on the Lloyd boys’ basketball team want their final season together to be something special, and they’re off to a good start. The Juggernauts have a 5-1 record going into Monday’s game at Bellevue. Three of their victories were against teams ranked in the top 10 of the Northern Kentucky preseason coaches – Newport Central Catholic, Holy Cross and Holmes.
“We’re playing good basketball, but we’re not in a situation where there’s no room for improvement,” said Lloyd coach Mike Key. “I don’t think we’ve played over our heads either. We’ve just played really solid.”
Senior forward Sterling Hamilton, a three-year starter, has team-high averages or 15 points and eight rebounds per game. Senior guards Derrick Cipollone and Devin McClendon and junior guard Jamal Neal also had double-figure scoring averages after the team’s 5-0 start.
Cipollone transferred back to Lloyd after playing his junior season at Williamstown and filled a vacancy in the starting lineup at point guard.
“At Williamstown, I was primarily a score first kind of guy,” Cipollone said. “I came here and talked with coach Key and he said I was surrounded by other people who can score and I needed to get them involved (in the offense). At first, it was kind of difficult, but I’d been playing with some of these guys most of the my life so it was kind of easy to trust them and give them the ball.”
No one is happier to have Cipollone back on the team than Hamilton. They’ve been close friends since grade school and wanted to finish their high school careers as teammates. The fact that Lloyd is off to its best start in more than five years makes their reunion even better.
“It’s pretty exciting right now,” Hamilton said. “We’ve always been used to being the underdogs and we’re taking that mentality into every game saying, ‘We’ve got something to prove this year,’ and we’re out to do it in every game.”
That competitive attitude helped the Juggernauts win four games by five points or less. They came from behind in the fourth quarter to beat Holmes and NewCath, the defending 9th Region champion. They lost their first game of the season to Williamstown on Saturday, but they’ve definitely started out on the right track.
“I hope our best basketball is still to come,” coach Key said. “We’ve still got a lot of areas where we need to get better in before we’re where we need to be for tournament time.”
Lloyd has never won the 9th Region All “A” Classic small-school tournament that’s played in January and the last time the Juggernauts made it to the 9th Region post-season tournament was 2012. The players on this year’s team have both of those goals in mind.
“When we have good chemistry, we’re a hard team to beat,” Hamilton said. “It’s us against the world this season so we have to do it. We’re not here just to play games, we’re here to win.”