By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
They just wear you down, grind you up.
Sure, they may take “three to five bad shots,” as Rod Snapp noted, but the Newport coach will take that.
Three of those were flying dunks over defenders that weren’t quite there as Newport quashed a strong St. Henry effort in the second half of the Ninth Region All “A” Classic basketball tournament Friday at Beechwood.
The final score was 53-37 but Newport led just 24-22 at halftime as both teams made it tough to score before intermission — Newport with their man-to-man, St. Henry with their zone.
After halftime, it was a different story as St. Henry kept up the pressure on defense but against Newport’s man, could not keep scoring in a 29-15 half.
“Twenty-eight percent,” St. Henry Coach Dave Faust said looking at the stat sheet that showed the Crusaders (6-9) hitting just seven of 25 against Newport’s disciplined defenders.
“We did a good job in the zone until we had to come out of it,” Faust said, as pointed out how well Newport “spreads you out” with a lead.
And then either freshman point guard Taylen Kinney or senior inside strong man Marquez Miller make you pay.
Hitting on eight for 10 from the field including four of five from three-point range, the 6-foot Kinney also dished out three assists and played like no Ninth Region freshman guard anyone could remember when we asked the coaches.
“You’ve got to work really hard,” said the son of former Lloyd standout Charles Kinney in order to be able to lead a team as a ninth-grader. Which in his case means “you work out every day, two or three times a day,” Kinney said.
And take “500 shots,” estimates Kinney, who is already hearing from the likes of Louisville and Texas A&M.
“He’s beyond his years, he makes good choices, he wants to win as much as his coach,” Snapp said. “You don’t get that often. He doesn’t just like basketball, he loves basketball.”
But he’s not alone. At the other end of the experience/leadership spectrum is 6-4 ½, 215-pound senior Miller. And as much as we talk about Newport’s youth (the 14-3 Wildcats start a pair of freshmen, a sophomore and a junior), they do have a senior who is their solid foundation.
“Absolutely he’s the guy,” Snapp says of Miller as the man Newport looks to when the Wildcats hit a flat spot and they look to the player considering the likes of Georgetown, Cumberland and Pikeville for college.
“We’re very disciplined, we listen to our coach,” Miller said. But when they don’t, they listen to Marquez.
“That’s my job, to keep everyone in his role and not take any bad shots.”
They can listen to Marquez, or as they did so often against St. Henry, throw it to him for that basket that takes a four-point lead to six.
“He’s got a really good mid-range game,” Snapp said of Miller’s ability to find the occasional holes in the St. Henry zone as he hit on seven of 11 shots for his 17 points.
For the game, Newport hit 50 percent from the field (19 of 38), a number they barely exceeded from the free throw line (11 of 19), missing six of eight in one stretch except for two from Miller.
St. Henry, meanwhile, finished shooting just 34.1 percent (15 of 44) while going to the line a mere six times (hitting on five) against a Newport team that just doesn’t foul.
And now Newport will face the same Holy Cross program the Wildcats faced the last time they made it to the finals in 2019 — and only the second time they won it 30 appearances.
But before St. Henry left, and 10 minutes after he’d been asked, Faust came back with an answer as to whether he’d seen a freshman with the talent and impact of Kinney: “Scott Draud,” he said of the all-state player who set the Ninth Region scoring record while at Highlands before an outstanding career at Vanderbilt.
BOX SCORE
NEWPORT 15 9 15 14—53
ST. HENRY 11 11 8 7–37
NEWPORT (14-3): Kinney 8-4-2-22, Anderson 0-0-2-2, Covington 2-0-0-4, Turner 1-0-2-4, Miller 7-0-3-17, Ad. Lowe 0-0-0-0, Silverton 1-0-2-4, Thompson 0-0-0-0, Am. Lowe 0-0-0-0, Lee 0-0-0-0, Farrell 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 19-4-11-53.
ST. HENRY (6-9): Shea 1-0-0-2, Kaiser 1-1-0-3, Grayson 4-0-2-10, Resing 3-0-0-6, Fedders 5-0-3-13, Ravenscraft 0-0-0-0, Noble 0-0-0-0, Lubert 0-0-0-0, Hammond 0-0-0-0, Flanagan 1-1-0-3, Reis 0-0-0-0, Lemmond 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 15-2-5-37.
Photos by Dale Dawn