By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Thursday’s Sweet 16 meeting between the Ninth and 10th Region champs will not be the first time it’s happened that Northern Kentucky neighbors matched up in the state tournament.
But as interesting and exciting as the Newport-Campbell County matchup will surely be, there will only be one of these all-time for me. It was the first – and last – time I ever covered this Northern Kentucky Ninth-10th battle.
It was 43 years ago. And down to almost the very last detail, one I’ll never forget. Well, almost. For more reasons than I can probably recount here.
First of all, it was for a state championship. Saturday night at Rupp with all that meant. For those of us from the Ninth Region, it meant everything.
For 64 years, Ninth Region teams had been coming down to Lexington and Louisville – even once, in the first tourney in 1916 to Centre College in Danville — and no matter how good our champs were, or how much promise they had or how much hope we had, we’d seen them fall, maybe with a buzzer-beater or a missed call.
From Fort Thomas High under Russell Bridges in 1924 to Newport in 1935 (Blue Foster) and 1954 (Stan Arnzen), to Dayton (Willard Bass) in 1944 to Holy Cross (George Schneider) in 1965, then CovCath (Mote Hils) in 1967 and Holmes (Reynolds Flynn) in 1978, every Ninth Region team in the championship game had come up short. CovCath lost on a buzzer-beating tip-in to Earlington, Holmes by two in overtime to Shelby County after the most-photographed non-goaltending call in high school basketball history.
Covington Catholic Coach Mote Hils (File photo)
Maybe we really didn’t belong in the Commonwealth as some of our downstate brethren have always contended. And then on that one magical night in March of 1981, all that changed.
Even before the championship game that year, we knew it had. The story of Simon Kenton that year had been more the explosion that the Independence school worked through. But it didn’t stop the Pioneers, who were lucky to survive a district game with Walton-Verona, as we recall.
Survival is what Larry Miller’s team specialized in. They survived the Ninth Region although southern Kenton County had hardly been a basketball hotbed here. Until that March.
Not that the Pioneers’ future looked all that bright, starting with their “draw” into the last game on Thursday guaranteeing them the least rest and preparation time should they keep winning. Hmmm? Where have we seen that “draw” before?
But somehow, survive they did in a bracket that had them facing the likes of the state’s two most powerful scoring stars – both 6-foot-7 – in Virgie’s Todd May and Louisville Moore’s Manuel Forrest.
Although “survive” probably doesn’t really describe what that Simon Kenton team did, winning the opener against Knott County Central, 64-62, in their only “lopsided” win on the way to the finals. In the second game, Simon Kenton beat Virgie, 84-83, and moved on to the semis where Simon Kenton stuck to the plot, edging Moore, 71-70, despite Forrest’s 47 points, the fourth-most ever in a Sweet 16 game.
Simon Kenton’s Troy McKinley with his MVP Trophy. (Photo provided)
With Mason County, under former Boone County High star (and UK two-sport athlete) Allen Feldhaus also winning three straight games, this all-Northern Kentucky final was set up. In my first year as a newspaper guy at The Kentucky Post, I was beyond stunned – two of our Kentucky Post Country teams were in the championship.
Must have gotten to Rupp more than two hours before tipoff. We’d heard the word that tons of fans were heading down from Northern Kentucky for the game although we also knew that the KHSAA folks were worried about what two teams from up north would do to the crowd.
I remember standing on press row when the gates opened and watching the crowd filing in and having this discussion with KHSAA Assistant Commissioner Louis Stout that, as I saw the first ticketholders going to their seats in the absolute highest rows at the top of Rupp, that this thing might sell out.
“No way,” Louis said, “we’ve never had a sellout.” He was right. The largest previous Sweet 16 crowd was the 18,000 in 1957 in Louisville’s brand-new Freedom Hall for the then double-session finals (also a consolation game). But nothing like that since the tournament moved to Rupp.
Kenny Price (Photo provided)
The fans kept coming. I recall someone running up to me and breathlessly reporting that Florence’s own Kenny Price, singer and comedian from the TV show Hee Haw fame, was just spotted going through the gates. Kenny was hardly alone.
By the time the turnstiles finished spinning, a world-record high school crowd of 19,776 had been recorded although in its 100 Years of Kentucky Basketball display, the Kentucky Historical Society lists the crowd at 21,287. Whatever. For a Northern Kentucky game.
That a Ninth Region team would finally win, 70-63, in what for the Pioneers was a walkover. After all, they’d won their first three games by a total of four points. And their four-game winning margin of 11 points was the second tightest ever.
No matter, we’ll take it. Tourney MVP Troy McKinley, a 6-foot-5 sharpshooter in a front line of David Dixon and Billy Meier, both 6-6, led the way with 117 points in the four games, ninth-most in Sweet 16 history, and that was before the three-point shot, which Troy made in bunches.
That’s a 29.3 points-a-game average. Troy would go on to UK, play in a Final Four in 1984, and become a Lexington police officer and still does youth basketball clinics in Northern Kentucky. McKinley is also in the Sweet 16 record books for field goals in a tournament where his 47 field goals are sixth-best all-time.
Simon Kenton’s Troy McKinley and Billy Meier high-five in the finals win over Mason County (Photo by Jim Osborn/The Kentucky Post)
Along with Meier, Troy would be named to the 1981 All-Tourney team. Allen Feldhaus Jr. and Kelly Middleton led Mason County.
As I look back, I can recall how much time I spent that game checking out the crowd and its reaction and how it just seemed Simon Kenton, finally, was going to win this thing from the tip.
What I don’t remember much is the postgame. It was something of a blur. After going 0-64, Northern Kentucky had finally won one. But after the first three games in 1981, the championship was almost an afterthought. It was going to happen.
And then it did. And then the celebration began. And that’s where it all gets a little blurry for all of Northern Kentucky’s basketball fans. But the celebration for those Pioneers should still be going on. They proved it was possible to win this thing. It really was.
Here’s the box score from that title game:
SIMON KENTON (70): McKinley 17, Meier 16, Dixon 18, Ponzer 13, Mullins 6.
MASON COUNTY: (63) – Jackson 13, Middleton 20, Orme 12, Jackson 6, Feldhaus 11, Crawford 1
Attendance: 19,776.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
