By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
All Cooper coach Randy Borchers wanted after last week’s second straight loss to open the season for his defending Class 5A finalists was a little more time.
“Three weeks,” he said, looking to the start of district play.
But with a non-district game Friday against cross-town Union rival Ryle, the No. 2 overall team in the state according to one ranking, Cooper’s players knew they didn’t have three weeks.
What the 0-2 Jaguars had was a chance to redeem themselves this week against the rough-and-tough Class 6A Raiders in front of a standing-room-only crowd at Ryle.
What they did was exactly that in a 20-13 win by upping their physicality to meet the Raiders’ power ground game – and 230-pound Indiana commit Jacob Savage. Not that there was any other choice.
“We knew what we had to do,” said Ryle senior Ryker Campbell, who does just about everything from interceptions on defense, deep downfield catches on offense to holding for field goals that played a big part in this one.
“What have I been telling you all year, you’re not as bad as they’ve been telling you,” Borchers told his guys after this win that they didn’t secure until the game’s final 15.0 seconds on a patented Keegan Maher cutback from the 4-yard line as Keagan somehow escaped a pack of four Ryle tacklers who had him surrounded.
But that wasn’t the end of Borchers’ message to his team. “You’re not as good as they’re going to say you are either.” So “turn off the noise.”
Not that that was possible for two schools just five miles apart in the fast-growing suburbia that Union now represents. “It definitely comes around in town,” Campbell said.
Ryle was on a roll while Cooper was getting rolled, that was the talk.
Until the Jags proved they were good enough to take advantage of the chances Ryle gave them with turnovers and penalties. And at times with defender Colton Graham leading the way, could stand up toe-to-toe with the powerful Savage.
“We can blame nobody but ourselves,” Ryle coach Mike Engler told his 2-1 Raider team. “We gave them how many turnovers?”
Well, they gave them the two that mattered most. The first came on a 67-yard Ryker Campbell interception TD when Ryle threw in the direction of the 5-foot-9, 168-pound Cooper senior who led the state in interceptions a year ago and now has a Cooper record 15 for his career.
What Campbell did was break perfectly on the ball, as he almost always seems to do. “We’d worked a lot on that in practice,” he said, admitting “that I knew what was coming.” And in a flash, the two-way senior went from defense to offense. And knew he had a chance to take it all the way if he beat one man.
But then he realized there might be two as “Nathan (Verax),” the man who threw the pass, “was bearing down on him.” Campbell calls the Ryle quarterback “Nathan” because “we’re really close friends . . . I went to middle school with him.”
That closeness and those friendships were something that would play out after the game as Ryle players came over to check on injured Cooper players while wishing them well. And wishing they’d played better.
As much as Campbell and Maher stepped up to their accustomed starring roles for Cooper, so did senior kicker Eyler Tibbs, who nailed a pair of 24-yard field goals that had the game all tied-up at 13-13 late. And then just as it looked like Ryle was driving for the winning score, the Jags pounced on a Ryle fumble at the 27-yard line in their territory with 2:37 left.
After eight plays with 22.5 seconds left, here was Tibbs lining up again for a third field goal, this one from 29 yards out. And it was good.
And then it wasn’t. After a conference, the officials decided the offside penalty on Ryle was a dead-ball foul. No play. Play this one over. But the next flag on the next play on Ryle – with 18.4 seconds left – gave Cooper a first down. No need for a field goal right away. So they gave the 5-9, 156-pound Maher a chance for his 20th carry of the game (for 90 of the Jaguars’ 97 ground yards). And he took it.
But he also “took the shine off” potential hero Tibbs, Campbell said with a grin for the kicker he was holding those field goal attempts for. “I felt bad for him.”
As for Tibbs, “I knew we were going to win,” he said, although if they asked him how many field goals he kicked in this one, he said the answer would be “three.”
Maher deferred talk on his game-winner other than “I’ll cherish that moment.” But it was “Ryker who just kept making big plays,” he said including a 25-yard catch down the middle to the Ryle 15 with a minute left on a perfect pass from Cam O’Hara, who hit on 15 of 25 for 136 yards.
And a defense led by guys like Graham, who refused to back down against the bigger Ryle guys.
But in the end, it came down to one quick, tough little guy — Keagan Maher, who answered the question as to whether he ever is told he’s too small for this game.
“All the time,” Maher said. “I get that a lot.”
Only not this week. Not in Union.
SCORING SUMMARY
COOPER 3 7 3 7–20
RYLE 0 6 7 0—13
COOPER: Tibbs 24 FG
RYLE: Verax 7 run
COOPER: Campbell 67 INT return (Tibbs kick good)
RYLE: Savage 7 run (Moses kick good)
COOPER: Tibbs 24 FG
COOPER: Maher 4 run (Tibbs kick good)