By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
That greatest of all American sportswriters, Grantland Rice, got his all-time most memorable sports quote, written as poetry a century ago, right:

“For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost –
But how you played the game.”
Had Grantland been in Union Wednesday night for the matchup of Northern Kentucky’s top two boys’ high school basketball teams, he would not have been wrong: It was all about how they played the game.
You had the challenger, host Cooper, just now getting up to speed for all sorts of reasons including a number of players from the state finals football team rounding into form, and visiting Covington Catholic, No. 1 in the Ninth Region and riding a nine-game win streak with their fast-starting football guys.
But summing up Cooper’s scintillating 69-65 overtime win – and how this game was played — are these two numbers: 40-11.
That’s how many free throws each team shot. Cooper’s Jaguars, taller at four of the five starting positions, hit on 28 of their 40 attempts. CovCath, starting four guards barely 6-feet tall, knocked down nine of their 11.

And despite that 40-11 edge from the line, the game still went into overtime. How was that possible? Well, CovCath did make six more field goals – 26 to 20 – than the Jaguars. And had the game’s outstanding player – Cash Harney, whose 29 points came on 11 field goals – mixing explosive drives through Cooper’s tall trees up front and soft jumpers with five of five from the line.
Opposite Harney was the region’s top scorer, 6-foot-5 play-anywhere Andy Johnson, whose 26 points came on nine field goals, many on swooping drives to the basket, and eight of 12 from the line.
All according to plan, said Cooper coach Tim Sullivan with a smile, just the way they game-planned it. “But 40-11?” he was asked. How do you plan for that?
“That’s a really telling stat,” Sullivan said, “it says we were really aggressive going to the rim.” So if anyone screams “40-11,” Sullivan is taking that as a compliment. The game plan worked.

First-year CovCath coach Jake Thelen, after his first-ever loss to a Ninth Region team, took the high road about an officiating crew that — after calling seven fouls on CovCath and six on Cooper the first half — flipped the script after intermission, whistling CovCath for 22 more to just nine for Cooper.
“The officials do a nice job,” Thelen said, noting how his relationship with the officials is important to him and how open “they are to talking to you.” Let’s just say there was a ton of talking going on at Thelen’s end of the floor in this one.
CovCath players would drive it to the rim and get leveled and no call, as you might expect in a rivalry as physical as this one can be. But then at the other end, there would more often be a whistle on a similar drive.

Just as they practiced it, Johnson said. “All week we went straight up,” Johnson said, demonstrating how they’d been coached to defend the tough drives from the Colonel guards – straight up, no contact if possible. And still, Cash Harney finished great through contact.”
“Cash is a special player,” Sullivan said. Even if he didn’t get to the line the way the Jaguars did.
Thelen’s answer was that “we’ve got to work on getting to the spot first” on defense with the unsaid part — not let the game be decided by the officials’ whistles.
As to Johnson, “he’s a tough matchup for anybody in the region,” Thelen said of the UIC (University of Illinois-Chicago) signee averaging 24.6 points a game who incredibly wasn’t recruited hard locally. Now that he has the ballhandling skills of a guard, he’s awfully tough to defend against.

“He’s so fun to coach,” Sullivan said of Johnson’s defending CovCath’s leading scorer, Athens McGillis, whose 16 points were under his 21.2 ppg average as the Jaguars’ size mismatch in this physical game saw McGillis often on the floor although he shot just four free throws.
“He’s beating himself up,” Sullivan said of Johnson. “He didn’t shoot it great (nine of 17 from the field but 0-6 from three-point range) and still he had 26.”
CovCath jumped out early, 17-6 in the first six minutes, and 21-12 at the end of one.
But Cooper, with 6-3 senior Isaac Brown, who finished with 15 points, and 6-6 sophomore Roman Combs, who had 12, joining in, roared back on a 25-14 run to tie it before going ahead, 42-39, at halftime.
Both teams had chances to put this one away before going into overtime at 54-54 after Harney’s jumper rolled off at the buzzer. In a high-scoring overtime, regulation form prevailed as Cooper hit on 11 of 16 free throws to CovCath’s four of five but still the Colonels had a final shot to tie – or even win.
But on McGillis’ last-second drive vs. Johnson, there was no call. Just as Cooper practiced. And the final two free throws gave the Jaguars the four-point win.
Didn’t want to venture out in the cold and so you missed this one? No problem. Both coaches are sure they’ll do this again in March. As they seem to do every year now.
“We’ll see them again,” Thelen said. “That was a big-time game . . . We get everyone’s best shot. . . Coach Sullivan is a really good basketball coach.”
“It’ll be another dogfight,” Sullivan said, “when Cooper and CovCath play, it’ll always be special.”
SCORING SUMMARY
COVCATH 21 8 10 15 11—65
COOPER 12 15 15 12 15–69
COVCATH (14-3): McGillis 6/16 5/11 1/5 3/4 16, Gaiser 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Harney 11/24 9/18 2/6 5/5 29, Stewart F 0/1 0/1 0/0 0/0 0, Carroll 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Bradshaw 4/14 4/13 0/1 0/0 8, Stava 1/1 0/0 1/1 1/2 4, Kruer 0/0 0/0 0/0/0 0, Ruthsatz G 4/5 4/4 0/1 0/0 8; Totals 26/61 22/47 4/14 9/11 65.
COOPER (8-4): R. Combs 2/6 2/6 0/0 8/10 12, Brown 4/7 3/4 1/3 6/6 15, J. Combs 2/5 2/4 0/1 2/3 6, Rodriguez 2/4 2/4 0/0 3/6 7, Johnson 9/17 9/11 0/6 8/12 26, Knuckles 1/2 1/2 0/0 1/3 3; TOTALS: 20/41 19/31 1/10 28/40 69.