Haylee says Hello!
It’s not easy to find since the KHSAA doesn’t do Girls’ Sweet 16 records for points-per-game in a tournament but in going back over the high scorer totals over the years, it looks like Cooper sophomore Haylee Noel’s 58 points in two games last week, a 29.0 average, could be among the top half-dozen or so averages for a single tournament. With 24 points against Louisville schools Mercy Academy and 34 against five-time state champ Sacred Heart, Haylee, a 6-footer who plays with terrific athleticism, has announced herself to the rest of the state as a leader for Kentucky’s top girls’ player next season with almost all of the big stars departing seniors this year.
Evan Ipsaro one shot away from NCAA
When it came down to it Friday night, with the score tied and an NCAA bid on the line for Miami of Ohio, tied at 74 with the league’s regular season winner Akron, the 25-9 Redhawks put the ball in the hands of 6-foot sophomore point guard from Covington Catholic, Evan Ipsaro. Averaging 10.1 points a game and four assists in 21 minutes a game in the Mid-American Conference Tournament, Ipsaro was called on to “get downhill and put up a shot in the final seconds,” he said, with the idea that “there wouldn’t be enough time for them . . . but it didn’t go down” and the Zips, true to their name, had just enough time to get down the floor, hit a buzzer-beater and move on to the NCAA Tournament this week.
Nice job by KHSAA in Girls’ Sweet 16 but what if . . .
Not sure why it’s the case but as hard as the KHSAA tries and as good a job as Lexington does with traffic and parking at Rupp Arena, and as big a deal as girls’ high school basketball has become around the state, Sweet 16 attendance just hasn’t kept up with the growth of the game.
Not sure if people realize it but the largest single crowd for a Girls’ Sweet 16 game was 6,858 in 2011 at Western Kentucky University’s E.A. Diddle Arena and the third-largest was at NKU’s BB&T Arena (as it was then called) in 2016 when the number was 6,056. Rupp had the second-largest crowd in 2022 at 6,790.
Maybe it would work better if the KHSAA could go to UK’s legendary Memorial Coliseum and its 10,000 or so capacity on the UK campus, one of the best basketball viewing venues ever. But a Friday night Sacred Heart-Cooper game should have drawn more than the 3,136 that attended a matchup of Nos. 1 and 3 in the state.
Cats go away for the NCAA but it’s homecoming for some
With Rupp Arena hosting the NCAA first-round regionals this week, the NCAA Division I Basketball Committee seems to be having some fun with UK, according to rule, not allowed to play at home, but sending others with Kentucky connections to Lexington.
First, for all-time NCAA winningest champion UCLA, head coach Mick Cronin is the son of former CovCath coach Hep Cronin, himself a recent inductee into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame. Mick is a former head coach at Murray State as well as — of course — at Cincinnati.
Then for the University of Louisville, one of two UK archrivals the NCAA has coming to Lexington to play at Rupp along with Tennessee, is Braden Connor. special assistant to Louisville head coach Pat Kelsey. Braden is the son of Thomas More AD Terry Connor and a two-time basketball captain at TMU.
Kelsey, a former point guard at Xavier, is the older brother of NKU Hall of Fame athlete Mike “Walt” Kelsey, a high-scoring, hot-shooting Norse guard who scored 27 points in an exhibition game against UK at Rupp in 2004.
Wednesday NKSHOF reminder
Six new inductees will be brought into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame Wednesday (1 p.m.) at The Arbors in Park Hills. They are the late Bob Rankin, outdoors columnist and UK athlete, Ft. Thomas; Highlands’ baseball and track and field athlete Bill Hitch; Bobby Young, Owen County and Thomas More multi-sport athlete; Carl Heck, all-state football player and longtime coach at Newport Central Catholic; Kevin Wolfe, Dixie Heights and NKU soccer star; and Paula Crail, state champion diver for Notre Dame Academy and All-American at South Carolina.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.