By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
The NKU Norse, after winning last year’s Horizon League tournament on their way to a competitive 63-52 loss in the NCAA Tournament to top-seeded Houston should do it again, say the league’s coaches, sports information directors and media. NKU received 18 of 34 first-place votes. For the Norse, lst year marked their fourth NCAA trip in seven seasons.
The lineup of top picks are a familiar cast with Milwaukee No. 2, Wright State No. 3, Cleveland State No. 4 and Youngstown State no. 5.
NKU’s Marques Warrick and Sam Vinson were picked as preseason all-league from an NKU team that was 22-13 last season with a strong finishing run. With starter Tre Robinson also returning NKU will have a solid core of three starters and a talented group of transfer portal players at all positions.
First-team selection Warrick, a 6-foot-2 guard from Lexington Henry Clay named for the third season as an all-league player, averaged 18.8 points a game and gives NKU a serious three-point shooting threat. Vinson, a 6-5 junior named to the all-defense team a year ago, averaged 11.3 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.4 steals.
Horizon League Men’s Basketball Poll
(First-place votes in parentheses, then total points)
1. Northern Kentucky (18) – 435
2. Milwaukee (10) – 397
3. Wright State (12) – 392
4. Cleveland State (1) – 362
5. Youngstown State (3) – 342
6. Oakland – 280
7. Robert Morris – 186
8. Purdue Fort Wayne – 166
9. Detroit Mercy – 132
10. IUPUI – 116
11. Green Bay – 96
Preseason all-league first team: Marques Warrick (NKU), Tristan Enaruna (Cleveland State), B.J. Freeman (Milwaukee), Trey Townsend (Oakland), Trey Calvin (Wright State). Calvin was preseason player of the year.
Preseason all-league second team: Sam Vinson (NKU), JLynn Counter (IUPUI), Tanner Holden (Wright State), Brandon Noel (Wright State), Brandon Rush (Youngstown State).
NORTHERN KENTUCKIAN MAILE TO STAY HOME WITH THE REDS
Really good news for Northern Kentucky Reds fans – and Reds fans in general. The team has signed Luke Maile, the Covington Catholic and UK alum, to a one-year, $3.5 million deal with an option for 2025, MLB.com reports, after his strong 2023 season with his hometown team.
Maile, 32, and a Major League veteran, had a number of stops on the way back home, where he became a leader in the clubhouse and a mentor for many of the Reds young pitchers.
“He was great with all of our guys,” Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall told MLB.com. “Staff loved him, players loved him. He was a really good fit. He’s a tremendous guy.” In 78 games, with 58 starts, Maile batted .235 with a career-high six home runs and 25 RBI.
“He’s a guy our pitchers were comfortable with, our coaches were comfortable with,” Krall told MLB.com, of a player the Reds signed originally last Nov. 28. “We loved having him this year. It was a pretty easy decision.”
HEARD AT THE NKSHOF INDUCTIONS
• Pendleton County softball great Rodney Hamilton admitted that along the way to his many all-world’s and all-state selections and team championships, “I missed a lot of weddings . . . I loved it.” And he was “two hours late for his first date with his wife of 26 years and covered in dirt and she went out with me anyway . . . and married me. I wouldn’t have made it except for her. She said play as long as you can.”
For power-hitting Rodney, that included a stint with the WUBE All-Stars, raising money for charity. “One of the greatest things I ever did in my life,” he said.
• Former Dixie Heights basketball great Pam Kordenbrock Hart said she “didn’t need this thing (the microphone), I’ve been in education for 40 years.” Which puts Kordenbrock at the dawn of the Title IX opportunities for female athletes and she made the most of it, earning the first-ever selection for a female to the Kentucky Basketball All-Star Hall of Fame and the Western Kentucky University Hall of Fame after a four-year career averaging 16.5 points a game.
She thanked her “selfless” parents, 93-year old Mary Lou Kordenbrock, and late father, Afton, for creating “a home where work ethic, confidence and toughness” were her watchwords. “This is not an individual award,” she said, “but a family award.” And continuing in that vein, she hoped that her “award would make an indelible impression on her eight-year-old granddaughter, Maggie, and “that with the barriers we broke down, she knows she can go as far as her talent takes her.”
• Boone County football and track star Dennis Kelly said “that to be recognized after 50 years is quite humbling but it’s nothing compared to raising my two children.”
• Wayne Shipley is another we’re still remembering after more than 50 years as a coach and mentor for young people all over Northern Kentucky in multiple sports. He talked of how many great athletes he was blessed with at his first stop at Newport Junior High, from Donna Murphy, Kentucky’s first Miss Basketball, to the likes of Leonard Slaughter.” It was pretty easy for me, I just had to write their names in the scorebook.” Said he didn’t know anything about track and field and still won the Summer Junior Olympics thanks to his kids.
As Beechwood’s all-time winner in baseball and basketball, he had to contend with an old court so small, it “had double over-and-back lines.” After assisting St, Henry to its lone Ninth Region title, he’s moved on to Conner with St. Henry alum, Matt Otte, where he quipped with a grin, “I’m a mascot . . . I give him suggestions and he ignores them.”
• Jim Brown had more people to recognize and thank than everybody else here, too many to name now, although it approached the four-dozen mark. “I’ve been a lot of places,” he said of a career that started at Newport and worked its way through Holmes and Campbell County High Schools. His cousin, legendary Newport baseball coach Ray Brown, liked to say of him that “every week is a homecoming for Jim.”
The son of longtime major league baseball scout Red Brown said after all his years in sports, he realizes it’s not all “about winning games but about all the associates you make . . . and I’ve had a lot of them.”
• Guest speaker Perry Thacker of the Reds’ Baseball Hall of Fame offered all sorts of interesting trivia about baseball’s first-ever professional franchise that started with a 57-0 record in 1869 and once had a switch-throwing Randy “Macho Man” Savage as a minor league outfielder.
But his trivia question was a stumper: Who is the only man who played at Crosley Field (closed in 1970), Riverfront Stadium (closed in 2002) and Great American Ball Park (opened in 2003)? How could a player who would have had to play as late as 1970 in Crosley, then in the 32 years that Riverfront was open and then after 2003 at GABP, still be able do that?
ANSWER: Paul McCartney, who played with the Beatles at Crosley and then as a solo act at Riverfront and GABP.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him @dweber3440 on X (formerly Twitter).