By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
LEXINGTON – Cam O’Hara didn’t have to be there. The post-game press conference for Cooper’s Jaguars after the Class 5A championship game Saturday night could have gone on without him. His coach, Randy Borchers, made that clear.
When last seen, O’Hara was limping off the field with 3:23 left after emerging from under a pile of Purples — athletic, aggressive Bowling Green defenders who had sacked him for the umpteenth time – seven to be exact — for a minus 59 yards. And this time, Cam wasn’t getting up. Not right away.
Like his Cooper teammates.
The Union team’s hopes had been so high after a 14-0 season to get back here to UK’s Kroger Field. Which they did. Unbeaten and top-ranked this year. The favorites with a chance to avenge the team that had beaten the Jags both times they made it here.
But it was not to be. Cooper couldn’t run the ball – leading ball-carrier Keagan Maher had been out a couple of weeks with a broken index finger and the Purples’ front seven were just too quick, too athletic for the Jags.
Just like last year. With the score a bit worse than last year’s 14-point loss. This time it was 17 – 37-20 – and while the stats weren’t one-sided at all, the game was.
“Our D-line got after them in last year’s game,” Bowling Green coach Mark Spader said, “and we watched that film . . . we have some really athletic guys up front.”
Like super-quick linebacker Jaxen Smith, whose 5.5 tackles and 1.5 sacks led the defense and whose 79 yards on 18 carries led the Purples on both sides of the ball as the lone two-way player for Bowling Green. Cooper, meanwhile, had four players going both ways.
“We were out-athleted,” Borchers said of the Purples athleticism edge. Cooper was hoping the Jags could negate that edge, but they could not. It would have taken a perfect game. But when you put the ball on the ground on back-to-back plays and lose one, when you kick off to their 30 while they kick it into the end zone, when you miss your first two extra points while they make all three of their field goals, you’re not getting that game.
Or a first-ever state championship.
Just don’t blame his Jags, Borchers said. “This was more about what they (Bowling Green) did than what we didn’t do.”
Cooper did plenty of good things. O’Hara, despite all the pressure in his face play after play after play, threw for three touchdowns and 262 yards on 18 of 29 with two of those TD passes as he was being crushed by the pass rush and he stood in there.
His top two targets all season, Isaiah Johnson and Jaiden Combs, made tough catch after tough catch – Johnson with five for 89 yards and a TD with a long one of 34 yards. Combs caught seven for 72 yards and a TD with a long one of 32 yards. Johnson even stepped in at quarterback after O’Hara’s injury and on just four carries for 28 yards, became Cooper’s leading ground-gainer.
Which tells you the problem right there. With all the yards lost on O’Hara’s sacks, Cooper finished with just 38 yards on 22 carries. Bowling Green’s numbers were exactly 200 yards higher – 238 on 45 carries.
“We knew we had to be able to run the ball,” Spader said. And they did, with attitude.” While saying he doesn’t pay much attention to the media, his defending state champion players did, Spader said. “They felt like they were being ignored, that the media assumed that juggernaut Cooper would roll over us.”
Which is what was making this one so tough for Borchers in his 29th year of coaching, 19 as a head coach with 17 at Cooper, where he started the program. The first two times the Jags made it to the state championship game (in 2012 and 2023), the kind of came out of nowhere with few expectations.
Not so this year, he said. “They expected to win,” Borchers said, which is why “This one hurts.”
But then, almost everyone expected them to win. Except a Bowling Green team that obviously played its best game of a 13-2 season. Quarterback Deuce Bailey was brilliant, hitting on 13 of 18 for 133 yards while running it 11 times for 74 yards and most importantly – three touchdowns, two when barely a Cooper hand touched him.
“It means everything,” Bailey, a four-year starter, said, “we’ve been talking about this since middle school when we lost the state championship.”
That’s not the way Borchers is going to send his guys off. He’ll talk to them about all they’ve accomplished “over four years,” and how they’ve “become winners everywhere but on the scoreboard” on this one day.
And yet, Cooper grabbed the lead to start, re-took it at 13-12, had 20 first downs to Bowling Green’s 19, had 300 yards of offense to Bowling Green’s 371, averaged 5.9 yards a play, same as Bowling Green. But the two lost fumbles to Bowling Green’s none and the 59 sack yards to just six they got against the Purples were game-breakers.
And finally, there was the kicking game where Bowling Green had those three field goals and four extra points – 13 in all – to Cooper’s minus two on the missed extra points. That’s 15 points right there.
But it wasn’t about points to Cooper senior Austin Alexander. “It’s meant the world to play for a program that instills respect and discipline,” said Alexander, who will be playing at the University of North Carolina next season. “It’s been amazing. It’s turned me into a better man.”
And yet, it’s ultimately about football. Which is why Borchers said “When we walked off this field last year, our goal was to get back here this year. It’s no different this year.”
SCORING SUMMARY
Attendance: 6343
BOWLING GREEN 7 6 14 10—37
COOPER 6 6 0 8—20
COOPER: Johnson 13 pass from O’Hara (PAT) kick failed)
BOWLING GREEN: Bailey 2 run (PAT) Widener kick good)
BOWLING GREEN: Widener 41 field goal
COOPER: Combs 32 pass from O’Hara (PAT) kick failed
BOWLING GREEN: Widener 31 field goal
BOWLING GREEN: BAILEY 14 run (PAT) Widener kick good
BOWLING GREEN: J. SMITH 3 run (PAT) Widener kick good
BOWLING GREEN: BAILEY 6 run (PAT) Widener kick good
COOPER – Alexander 12 pass from O’Hara (2-pt. PAT) ALEXANDER pass from O’HARA)
BOWLING GREEN: Widener 26 field goal
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dweber3440.