By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Newport’s Taylen Kinney could have easily packed it in, could have said this obviously isn’t my night and told himself that he’s just a sophomore and he’ll get it together for the next game.
After all, Kinney was going against the nation’s multi-million-dollar high school man, Huntington Prep’s Darryn Peterson, who in the last week has signed a pair of unprecedented seven-figure NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) deals for Adidas shoes and Fanatics trading cards.
As for Kinney, he’d just gone one for 10 shooting in the first half for a scrappy Newport bunch that didn’t look at all like the team that lost by 10 last week to Covington Catholic. The Wildcats trailed by just four, 30-26, at halftime in front of a capacity crowd in the Griffin Elite Basketball Classic Friday.
But from the get-go after intermission, the 6-1, 165-pound Kinney came out full-go and then some, guarding the 6-foot-6 Peterson, while leading an offense that Newport still chose to run through him.
Kinney led the break, drove the lane to draw double- and triple-teams, played through contact, grabbed nine rebounds (one fewer than Peterson for the game), finished things off with a humongous dunk over a defender in traffic while scoring 19 points after intermission for a total of 22 (same as Peterson), leading the Wildcats to a stunning 58-55 come-from-behind win over one of the nation’s top basketball prep programs.
“It’s just a little baby step,” Kinney said of the win that had Wildcat fans still on the court a half-hour after the game’s end, still enjoying the moment. But not making too much of it, said Coach Rod Snapp. After all Newport (6-1) had knocked off two-time defending Ohio State Class IV champs Richmond Heights, ending their 49-game win streak, the week before losing to CovCath.
“We learned something in that game,” Snapp said of the CovCath loss, and it showed in a game with high-level physicality not often seen in a high school contest. The Wildcats also did something else.
“We trusted Tay,” Snapp said, despite that first half. “We kept running things through him. I told him that big players step up in the big moments . . . and he did. But so did (James) Turner and (Griffin) Starks, Snapp said of the 6-7 sophomore and 6-8 freshman respectively. Each stepped up his game considerably against a Huntington Prep front line that featured players 6-7, 6-8 and 6-9 to go with the 6-6 Peterson but still was outrebounded, 37-33, by Newport.
But it all started with Kinney. “I just told myself to keep shooting,” Kinney said of his seven-of-11 second half accuracy, “keep confident.”
It helped that after giving up an 18-9 run late in the third period, point guard Jabari Covington hit a banked three-pointer with 0.1 second left from 30 feet to close it to 48-40. And then it happened as Kinney opened the final quarter with a quick eight points as Newport roared back for a 49-48 lead with 4:52 left.
DeShaun Jackson then scrambled for the last of his game-high 10 rebounds on a missed free throw, getting to the foul line where he tied the game at 54 before a Peterson free throw (his 22nd point to tie Kinney for game honors) gave Huntington Prep its last lead at 55-54 with 1:30 left.
Just enough time for Kinney to make his final score on a tough, physical drive to put Newport back on top by one, 56-55. And then after a Huntington miss, Newport went to Covington for an even tougher shot bouncing off bodies in the lane that dropped through for his 11th point and a 58-55 lead with 7.6 seconds left.
No mystery what was going to happen next. Peterson took it and launched a three over a air of defenders that dipped in and spun out as time expired. And the Newport kids danced around celebrating what they’d just done, especially that 18-7 final quarter run.
For the 14-year-old Starks, who finished with five points and four rebounds with two blocked shots in 14 minutes, this was a coming out of sorts. “I needed this for my confidence,” he said. As for Turner, with eight points, four rebounds and two blocks competing against all that size up front, “that’s how he’s been playing in practice,” Snapp said of the sophomore.
One thing the Wildcats had to practice was playing with a 30-second clock that Kentucky doesn’t use except for this event. “Our manager actually had it at 25 seconds for practice,” Snapp said. Just another moment the Wildcats were able to step up to.
“Everybody had to buy in,” said the senior Covington, on a team surrounded by underclassmen. “And everybody bought in.”
Peterson’s 22 points (on eight-of-23 shooting, two more shots than Kinney took) left him the lone Huntington player in double figures with 6-9 Kiir Kuany and 6-7 Dillon Tingler each scoring nine points. With his 200-pound frame and ball skills, Peterson plays through contact like a pro, which he soon will be. But Newport contested his shots with enough help everywhere on the court to make it tough for Peterson to get many good looks.
The end result for this back-and-forth battle? One of the courtside photographers’ in-game comment probably expressed this bodies-flying and players-making-plays contest best: “How fun is this?”
Indeed.
Just the kind of fun that Jordan Griffin and the folks at Griffin Elite had in mind when they started this basketball invitational to give Northern Kentucky kids a chance to go against the nation’s best and show what they can do.
Mission accomplished on this night.
SCORE BY QUARTERS
HUNTINGTON PREP 15 15 18 7—55
NEWPORT 8 18 14 18—58
HUNTINGTON PREP: Kuany 3-0-3-9, Hawthorne 2-1-0-5, Payne 0-0-0-0, Gilkes 2-2-0-6, Tengler 3-2-1-9, Tucker 2-0-0-4, Peterson 8-1-5-22, Green 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 20-52, 6-21, 9-11, 55.
NEWPORT: Kinney 8-0-6-22, Anderson 1-0-0-2, Covington 5-1-0-11, Jackson 3-0-1-7, Turner 2-1-3-8, Starks 2-1-0-5, Silverton 1-1-0-3, Lowe 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 22-55, 4-15, 10-16, 58.
LLOYD TO MEET IMG
After knocking off a tough Cincinnati Elder team that beat Cooper 60-28 earlier this season in the first game Friday night, Florida’s IMG Academy Varsity Gold team will return for a second game Saturday at 7:30 p.m. against Lloyd Memorial and 6-8 EJ Walker who has more Division I teams (22) offering him scholarships than anyone on an IMG team that had three players in double figures against Elder: 6-1 guard Cameron Mercadel with 18 points, 6-6 Jacob Hammond with 17 and 6-7 Timo George with 10.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
Tay Kinney would never pack it in. Thats a disservice to the kid and frankly lousy sports writing and you started the article with it. Obviously you haven’t seen the kid play enough. Its so ignorant of you to write that. Just write the facts and leave your opinion out of it.