By Dan Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
They used to call them cagers, those early basketball players who competed on a court inside a cage to protect the crowd from flying basketballs.
Might not be a bad way to describe the Newport Wildcats’ Ninth Region battle against Cooper’s never-quit Jaguars in a championship rematch from a year ago.
But not because of the flying basketballs, but the flying bodies that made for a great cage match. “Not much basketball,” Cooper Coach Tim Sullivan agreed. “It was really physical.”
It was one of those games when you didn’t want to be the first guy diving on the floor for the ball because the next four or five who hit the pile didn’t seem to care where the ball was. They just wanted in on the action.
Not so, said Newport senior Jabari Covington: “We wanted to be the first guy on the floor,” he said of his Wildcats, the state’s No. 3 team, as they stepped up to Cooper’s aggressive physicality. This was not a game where anyone could afford to back down.
Neither did. “I loved it,” said Newport sophomore star Taylen Kinney, on crutches after having been knocked out of the game with a groin pull/hamstring that popped after 1:04 in the game as Cooper’s Shaun Pouncy hit the game’s first score. Kinney would have a good a seat as anyone in the near-capacity crowd in the 9,000-seat Truist Arena that was half-full 45 minutes before the game.
“Give it all you got,” he told his teammates, which they did.
“We had to step up, me and DJ (DeShaun Jackson)” Covington said of Newport’s two seniors with all-stater Kinney out. “For sure,” Jackson said. “We knew we had to.”
“Hat’s off to DJ and Jabari,” said Cooper’s Sullivan. “I told them in the handshake line what that says for their locker room,” after Newport’s 46-39 teeth-clenching survival in a game that seemed much closer than that final margin. And it would have been had Jackson and Covington not immediately stepped up to replace Kinney’s 18.6 points a game.
“We tried not to get rattled,” said Covington, whose 15 points led the Wildcats. Right behind with a double-double of 14 points and 10 rebounds, was Jackson, a 6-foot-3 transfer from Cincinnati Taft who talked about getting to play in front of one loud, excited crowd after another when next Thursday they’ll be in Rupp Arena against 10th Region champ Campbell County at 8:30 p.m.
“It’s gonna’ be crazy,” Jackson said. “But not the time to get nervous.”
If they didn’t get nervous against the relentless pressure of Cooper, they should be ready for Rupp this time around. “These are good kids, man,” said Newport Coach Rod Snapp, “they try to do things right.”
As for Jackson, who hit three field goals and a pair of free throws to get Newport out to a 12-7 first-quarter lead, “he’s one of the toughest kids ever,” on a team where “they get along so well,” Snapp says.
As for what he told himself, when Kinney went down, “Just keep going, don’t show any nervousness,” Snapp said. And why should he? “They know what to do . . . they’ve been here before.”
And they couldn’t let the Newport community down. “They’ve been with us all the way,” Covington said of the large, loud and early-arriving red-and-black-wearing Wildcat fans. They had to get there early to compete with the equally large and loud Cooper crowd.
“Everywhere I looked, there were fans,” said 6-8 Newport freshman Griffin Starks, who along with his 6-7 partner, James Turner, stood strong battling 6-6 Cooper senior Pouncy. “They did a really good job on Shaun,” Sullivan said, noting how Newport played him with two or three defenders to keep him away from dominating the boards.
Newport won the rebounding battle, 27-25, and limited Pouncy to 11 points. Andy Johnson got going late for Cooper with a pair of threes in the final period and 12 points after Newport led by 10, 31-21, at the end of the third quarter only to see a scrambling, trapping, pressing Cooper go out of character and almost catch up at 40-38, with 54.8 seconds left on a Tanner Murphy three-pointer.
But that’s when Starks, a lefthander, hit a flying right-handed layup In traffic – plus the free throw — for a five-point lead that Newport held on to for its second straight Sweet 16 trip.
“It sucks, it stings, it burns,” said Sullivan, “but that’s Ninth Region basketball. I grew up in the Ninth Region and played in the Ninth Region.” And he hopes he can get his kids back here next season when so many of the good players on the good teams will return.
“When you’re in the Ninth Region finals, you have to cherish every possession,” Sullivan said. “We did but a little too late.
“Region runner-up sucks,” Sullivan said. “But I just told them, it’s really tough to get here.”
It was tough even for the big guys, to just get a shot off at the basket. Twice, one of the big men would be flying in for a dunk or a layup only to get the ball blocked perfectly and watch it go to the other end – and get blocked the same way there.
“I didn’t let that bother me,” Starks said. You just keep playing. And hope you get back here next year.
“But if we get back here next year, we’re doing something right,” Sullivan said.
“I think our schedule prepared us for this,” Snapp said. “We played two games in one day and then in the All “A” Classic (with four games in Corbin) we were very businesslike.” And they played three games without Kinney when he sprained his ankle.
So the Wildcats were prepared. And now they head back to the Sweet 16 where they say last year’s first-round loss has prepared them for the next step.
NINTH NOTEBOOK: Named to the Ninth-Region All-Tournament team were: Beechwood’s Carson Blackburn, Ryle’s Anthony Coppola, Dixie Heights’ Hudson Blank, Highlands’ Nathan Vinson, Lloyd Memorial’s EJ Walker and Anthony Blaackar, Covington Catholic’s Cash Harney and Brady Hussey, Cooper’s Andy Johnson and Shaun Pouncy, Newport’s DeShaun Jackson and James Turner with Newport’s Jabari Covington the MVP . . . Winner of the $2,500 Ray Gabbard Scholarship was St. Henry’s Carson Shea.
SCORING SUMMARY
COOPER 7 12 2 18—39
NEWPORT 12 6 13 15—46
COOPER (24-9): Blackburn 1-3 1-3 0-0 3, Brown 2-3 1-2 0-2 5, J. Combs 1-7 0-0 0-0 2, Rodriguez 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Murphy 1-4 1-3 0-0 3, Hartman 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, I. Johnson 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, A. Johnson 3-12 2-6 4-6 12, Rondon 1-8 1-4 0-0 3, Alexander 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, S. Pouncy 5-7 0-0 1-3 11; TOTALS: 14-44 6-18 5-11 39.
NEWPORT (32-3): Kinney 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Anderson 1-1 0-0 0-0 2, Covington 5-12 1-4 4-5 15, Jackson 6-12 0-0 2-2 14, Turner 1-1 1-1 1-2 4, Starks 1-3 0-1 3-3 5, Silverton 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Lowe 2-3 0-0 2-4 6; TOTALS: 16-33 2-6 12-16 46.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
I was at the 9th Region final at NKU between Cooper and Newport High Schools. What a tough, hard fought game by both teams. At times it seemed like a football game. Both teams should be proud. Congrats to the Newport Wildcats. Go to Lexington and make the 9th Region proud. Heal quickly Mr Kinney and get the recognition you deserve young man.