By Dan Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
You should have been there, all you folks from Union. The rainy drive to Park Hills would have been well worth your time.
Your Cooper Jaguars’ best game of the year produced a tough, aggressive defense that sped up the state’s No 5 team, Covington Catholic, in front of a packed house featuring the Colonel Crazies cheering section, in their best performance of the year, gave the Boone County team that’s been battling back from injuries all year a signature win.
Cooper 65, Covington Catholic 55.
“I’m hoping everybody gets to see these two teams play (maybe next time at Truist in the regional,” Cooper Coach Tim Sullivan said. “What a great environment this was.”
The single word on the Jags’ warmups is FAMILY. And that’s not off the mark, senior center Shaun Pouncy said, calling this Cooper team a “brotherhood” that has just kept on keeping on.
But if it were up to the 6-foot-6 senior in his 13th game back from a knee injury, the one word that described what Cooper did here, Pouncy said, would be “energy.”
That’s how they were able to hound CovCath’s normally sharpshooting perimeter people into a two-for-16 (12.5 percent) night from three-point range and zero for eight the first half. The Jags (12-7) crowded the Colonels (15-4) wherever they went, pushed them out of their comfort zone, made life just a little bit more uncomfortable than they’re used to.
In fact, Cooper did to CovCath what the Colonels usually do to their opponents. They sped them up.
When told this was his team’s first win at CovCath since 2013, Sullivan said the word he’d go with for his team is “toughness.” But there was something else “we’ve been drilling into our kids – to be connected. Play every possession like it’s your last.”
Both teams played that way, as did the CovCath students, as they became part of the game almost, especially when 6-9 center Caden Miller went on a tear, blocking three shots from the same shooter on the same play. And right in front of them as the Crazies went even crazier.
But it didn’t matter. Neither did Miller’s triple double – 13 points, 10 rebounds and a not-to-be-believed 11 blocked shots that could be a CovCath record but they’re not saying for sure before doing more checking.
Pouncy could not get enough of how this went. “I love CovCath’s student section,” he said. “I wish more of them were like that. It’s a fun environment.”
It certainly was for Cooper, and a decent number of loud Jaguar fans.
And yes, the player who got those shots knocked back into his face, Jaiden Combs, wasn’t fazed a bit. He just kept playing on, finishing with nine points and eight rebounds. “That’s Jaiden,” Sullivan said, “he’s our guy. He just keeps playing.”
Although there was one Jaguar made for this night with bodies flying all over the floor in a packed gym where they’d had the air conditioning on high through the freshman and JV games knowing how you wouldn’t be able to tell who or what was perspiring more – the players, the fans or the floor.
Hello Yamil Rondon, who played for the Puerto Rican Under-16 National Team this summer and plays with a reckless abandon he’s just starting to gear down a bit in situations like this.
“Meel loves the bright lights,” Sullivan said of his junior who tied Pouncy with 17 points. “It’s more about Meel controlling what he can control.” And despite a game-long dialogue with the Crazies, he did just that with his dribble penetrations, his passing, his scoring through contact and giving up his body at both ends of the floor.
“It was really fun,” Rondon said of the raucous atmosphere. “Coach told us to act like we’d been here before.” Even though it was back when they were in kindergarten the last time the Jags made it out of CovCath with a win.
As to how many folks he’ll hear from Wednesday at school telling him they wish they were here, Sullivan admitted with a grin that “there’ll be a few.”
One Jag who was here in spirit and will be back with the team soon is 6-4 junior Andy Johnson who was averaging 25.0 points and 10.0 rebounds a game in his first two outings before fracturing a bone in his left wrist.
“A week,” Johnson said showing the Velcro cast that will come off then. “We’ll be scary when I come back.”
Tuesday night in Park Hills, the Jags were plenty scary as it was.
Give him a week to work his way back, Sullivan says. Then they’ll have to find how to do that as will Johnson now that the Jags – by necessity – have developed more depth than they thought they had.
“We’re nine-deep,” Rondon said on a night when seven Jags scored.
Stats wise, the teams weren’t as far apart as the final 10-point margin.
“I think we did get most of the 50-50 balls,” Rondon said. No stat in the box score for that.
CovCath guards Cash Harney, with 14 points, and Athens McGillis, with 12, joined Miller in double figures, as did Brady Hussey with 10.
CovCath’s 13-1 edge in blocked shots was negated by Cooper’s 36-29 edge in rebounding while the Jags had just six turnovers to CovCath’s nine, good numbers for the kind of defense played. Cooper hit four threes to CovCath’s two.
SCORING SUMMARY
COOPER 14 18 13 20—65
COVCATH 13 16 13 13—55
COOPER (13-7): Blackburn 3/5 2/4 1/2 9, Brown 0/2 0/1 0/0 0, Combs 4/12 0/2 1/2 9, Rodriguez 0/1 0/1 0/2 0, Murphy 2/3 1/2 0/0 5, Ja. Pouncy 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Johnson 0/1 0/1 2/2 2, Rondon 5/14 1/3 6/9 17, Alexander 3/5 0/0 0/0 6, S. Pouncy 7/11 0/0 3/3 17; TOTALS: 24/55 4/15 13/20 65.
COVCATH (15-5): McGillis 4/12 1/4 3/4 12, Harney 6/8 1/1 1/4 14, Miller 6/7 0/0 1/1 1, Stewart 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Johnson 0/1 0/1 0/0 0, Wermuth 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Bradshaw 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Hussey 3/10 0/5 4/4 10, Ruthsatz 1/6 0/4 2/2 4, Kruer ½ 0/1 0/0 2; TOTALS: 21/46 2/16 11/16 55.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.