By Dan Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
There was pretty much just one plot line in Saturday’s Lloyd Memorial-IMG Academy game at the Griffin Elite Basketball Classic.
Not how would the hometown Juggernauts do against the national basketball prep program. IMG, with the way IMG dismantled a tough Cincinnati Elder team Friday made that pretty clear. The result wasn’t exactly in doubt.
No, the story for most observers was how would Lloyd’s EJ Walker, with scholarship offers from 22 major programs and half the Big Ten it seems, do against a big and bulky IMG front line.
IMG’s Jackson Roberts, from Tampa Catholic, stood 6-foot-11, and 245 pounds. Timo George, from the Netherlands and the European National team, is 6-7 and 250. And from Whitby, Canada, is Jacob Hammond at 6-6, 210. And all three, despite playing for the famed IMG program, could only wish they had the list of offers EJ has that include Ohio State and Minnesota and Arizona State and California and Wisconsin and Purdue and Missouri, Xavier, Dayon and West Virginia even though they play for the Varsity Gold program, the No. 2 team, at IMG, where they have hundreds of alums playing college basketball.
Unlike the theme the Griffins have established in these basketball events featuring national teams against Northern Kentucky teams with a chance to showcase local talent, this was the opposite scenario. National guys were getting the chance to go against a big-time Northern Kentucky prospect to show what they could do.
They’re coming at you, EJ. Trying to put something on video to send out to coaches. EJ agreed.
“I feel like they wanted to prove themselves,” EJ said. “I knew they were going to be physical.”
His dad, Lloyd Coach Mike Walker, said no doubt about that. “For sure, they did.”
And since there aren’t players like the IMG guys weighing 705 pounds sharing the same frontline on a Northern Kentucky team, this would be interesting. How would 6-8, 220-pound EJ, who sometimes seems a bit too unselfish, too willing to give the ball up to teammates who will not be playing basketball in college, how would he play this?
It didn’t take long to see how that would play out. EJ drove with a spin move into the big guys to tie the game at 2 with a minute gone on Lloyd’s first possession. Then another strong move followed by a three-pointer he made look easy. Lloyd led 7-6 – or EJ led – and we were off.
IMG re-took the lead on a Laymen McGrady three, which explains why NBA all-time great Tracy McGrady was sitting at courtside — to see his son play.
As the game moved on, EJ was getting help from Lloyd guards Isaiah Sebastian, Elijah Collins and Anthony Blaackar, who weren’t supposed to be able to compete in this company. But compete they did.
Maybe it was EJ’s early example. “I think being aggressive early on offense,” was the thing he was proudest of with a game-high 20 points for his Lloyd team that led and competed well, on top 27-26 at the half before falling victim to IMG’s depth – and three-point shooters. Much the way Elder did.
“I didn’t want to force anything, and I like to pass,” EJ said, “even though sometimes maybe I should shoot it.”
Shoot it he did, going with reverse layups using the basket for protection against the big IMG guys with spin moves and lefty layups. And then driving the length of the court after rebounding and scoring in traffic.
EJ had blocks against each of the IMG big guys who totaled 21 points for the three of them. When they pushed, EJ pushed back, even though he was giving up weight against two of them.
“He battled, he showed he can score on the bigger guys,” Mike Walker said, although IMG went to a collapsing zone that had multiple players dropping on to EJ when he was in the post.
The final score: IMG 59, Lloyd 46 in a game that was 47-42 to start the final quarter before the smaller, younger Juggs just ran out of gas.
“We played hard,” Mike Walker said. “Absolutely this is a game we can take with us. You don’t win anything in December.”
And then there’s this, from EJ. “We’re not going to see any teams this big.”
“That’s why we play teams like this,” Mike Walker said. “That’s why we opened with Sycamore (and 6-10 Purdue signee Raleigh Burgess) . . . that’s why you play these games.”
For most of the fans here, watching EJ go against the kinds of players he’ll be going against in college was why they came to see this game. And for the second straight day – after Newport’s upset of Huntington Prep Friday – the local guys gave them something to see.
HARLAN COUNTY 92, LOUISVILLE DESALES 83 (OT): Harlan County stayed unbeaten (7-0) in a game they led by 16, then fell behind by six only to come back and tie it to send Saturday’s first game into overtime. DeSales fell to 6-2. Trent Noah, a 6-6, 200-pound guard who has signed with South Carolina and is averaging more than 32 points a game and ranked by some as Kentucky’s No. 2 player behind Lyon County’s Travis Perry, led the Black Bears.
LLOYD-IMG SCORE BY QUARTERS
LLOYD MEMORIAL 15 12 15 4—46
IMG ACADEMY 13 13 21 12–59
LLOYD: Collins 2 2 0 6, Blaackar 2 0 0 4, Sebastian 2 1 2 7, Walker 7 1 5 20, Humphrey 0 0 0 0, Bresser 3 3 0 9, Sims 0 0 0 0, Griffin 0 0 0 0, Golsby 0 0 0 0, Crenshaw 0 0 0 0, TOTALS: 16-7-7-46.
IMG ACADEMY: Wesley 1 0 0 2, McGrady 3 3 0 9, Baldasarre 4 4 0 12, Zimmerman 3 1 0 7, Roberts 2 0 0 4, Murrmann 0 0 1 1, Mercadel 1 0 2 4, Hammond 5 0 1 11, Masad 1 1 0 3, George 3 0 0 6, TOTALS: 23-9-4-59.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.