HORIZON LEAGUE DOING IT AGAIN TO NKU
You can’t blame NKU basketball coach Darrin Horn for wondering what the heck’s going on with the Norse’s Horizon League schedule – again. After playing a league schedule that had his NKU team on the road for seven of its eight conference games in February a year ago, the Horizon is at it again.
Horn said he was told the league had a new computer scheduling program that would fix last year’s streakiness. But apparently not. And not only does NKU hit the road for three away games in six days from Jan. 7-13, Sunday through next Saturday, “but they all play so differently,” he says of the multiple preparations on the road for the likes of Xavier-beating Oakland to an unbeaten-at-home 10-6 Cleveland State.
Here’s a tip for the Horizon folks: Get a better computer. A streak of five of six road games isn’t a whole lot better than the seven of eight last season. We checked the rest of the conference schedules. No one else has a similar challenge with only one having to play four of five on the road in any one stretch. As Horn was wondering after Thursday’s win over Youngstown State: Why is it always NKU?
This week’s first Kentucky High School Basketball Media Poll looks to have gotten it right as far as Northern Kentucky is concerned. In the boys’ poll, Covington Catholic, with a 9-4 record against a tough schedule, was No. 5 in the state. Newport, also having played a challenging schedule, is No. 7 with a 12-3 record. The lone other local team mentioned is Cooper (8-6), coming back from a couple of tough injuries, with a single vote that has it in a tie for 24th.
Topping the boys poll, as they should, are No. 1 Great Crossing (13-1) out of Georgetown, which has beaten both CovCath and Newport, and No. 2 Lyon County (14-1), the team that knocked Newport out of last year’s Sweet 16 after losing to CovCath there the year before. Lexington Catholic (14-1) and Louisville Trinity (10-3) are Nos. 3 and 4. Newport lost in overtime to Trinity at the King of the Bluegrass.
With Harlan County (13-2) at No. 9 and Louisville DeSales (13-5) at No. 12, it should be noted that the Griffin Elite Basketball Classic featured four of Kentucky’s top 12 in its December field.
In regional rankings, the poll has Walton-Verona No. 3 in the Eighth Region. In Ninth Region rankings, behind CovCath and Newport, the poll has Lloyd Memorial at No. 3, then Cooper No. 4 and Boone County at No. 5.
For the girls, a 13-3 Cooper team is No. 3 in the state behind Louisville Sacred Heart (8-4) and George Rogers Clark (13-1). Also in the Top 10 are Ryle (9-4) at No. 7 and Notre Dame (11-2) at No. 9. Holy Cross (9-4) completes the ranked teams at No. 15. Also getting votes at No. 27 is Simon Kenton (10-2).
In the region-specific voting, Simon Kenton is second in the Eighth Region to Anderson County (12-1) with Campbell County (10-2), Scott (10-3) and Bishop Brossart (11-2) Nos. 3-4-5 in the 10th Region. In the Ninth, behind the three Top 15 teams are Notre Dame at No. 4 and Newport Central Catholic (8-3) at No. 5.
COVCATH ALUM MAYER SIDELINED
It hasn’t been all that easy a rookie season for Michael Mayer, CovCath’s contribution to the NFL (via Notre Dame) as the 35th pick in last year’s NFL Draft who may finish the season sidelined by a toe injury these last couple of weeks. On a quarterback-needy Raiders team with little ability to throw the ball, Mayer is the top tight end receiver with 27 receptions for 304 yards and two TDs. One of those was the lone drop-back TD pass for the 7-9 Raiders in the first 10 games, as hard as that may be to believe, and the lone TD in a Week 10 16-12 win over the Jets.
“That dude is good, bro,” Raiders All-Pro running back Josh Jacobs said of the 6-4, 265-pound Mayer. “I think people sleep on how good he’s going to be. I really watch him. I tell him all the time, ‘Man, I appreciate you.’ ” Jacobs continued to ESPN: “I don’t think it’s going unnoticed at practice every week, just because the way he works, how professional he is as a rookie, the way he wants to be in the game and he wants that moment.”
That TD catch, with Mayer barely separated from and required to outjump his defender, had the lowest chance (27.4 percent) of completion of all passes thrown to tight ends that week.
“Confidence for me is going out there trying to play my best, trying to play my hardest, trying to help the team win,” Mayer told ESPN. “It’s not something that’s just very up and down, up and down, up and down. I know what I can do. They know what I can do. That’s why they drafted me.”
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.