By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
As Covington Catholic found out the week before Christmas and Holy Cross found out Tuesday, playing a tough-defending, physical Louisville team in a holiday tournament can be dangerous to your unbeaten record.
And just as it was for CovCath against Louisville Male in the King of the Bluegrass, so it was for the Indians at the Swauger Classic in Bellevue. The Latonia team, after opening the season with 10 straight wins, fell back at the finish of this 56-50 thriller against a seriously young but fundamentally sound Evangel Christian team that’s back in business after a year off.
Back in business where the 9-2 Eagles, champions of Louisville’s Sixth Region and All-A Classic finalists in 2023 and 2024 and a 2024 state semifinalist after winning 60 games those two seasons, had the one thing that mattered in their win over Holy Cross.
“A 6-foot-6 athletic big,” Holy Cross Coach Ricardo Johnson said in isolating his team’s first loss to its prime ingredient. Holy Cross will need some work on handling a guy like Evangel’s junior low-post star Aristophane Molima. Although you can call him Pablo, as all the Eagles’ coaches and players do.
Player of the Game winner Molima, averaging 14.9 points a game, nearly doubled that with his 28 points, the only Eagle in double figures, as he patrolled the lane on both ends of the floor, leading to seven blocked Holy Cross layups.
So how did his breakout performance come about? “My manager and my coach tell me if I want to go to the next level, I have to dominate out there.”
And dominate the Kinshasha, Congo, native, did, just as his manager told him to. He’s been in Louisville a year now, and likes his new home, Molima says, especially the horse racing. He made it to the Kentucky Derby last May and loved it.
As for Holy Cross, maybe there’s some good advice in this serious and war-related quote from the original Aristophanes, the greatest of classical Greek playwrights. “Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war, and this lesson saves their children.”
Modernize that quote and make it about sports, not war, and we could be talking basketball here. “He’s strong and physical and hard to guard without fouling,’ said the Indian often charged with that task, slim 6-5 senior Brady Gabbard, of Molima. “It’s a wakeup call.”
The lesson learned, Gabbard said: “Stop (No.) 25, don’t foul so much.”
On offense, Holy Cross had the game’s next two stars with senior Luke Arlinghaus beating the pressure at times, inside and out with three three-pointers and a pair of death-defying drives through traffic. Competing on the boards with Molima and Co. was Nate Rominger with 17 points thanks to his scrappy rebounding work.
But with a lineup that started three eighth-graders including both guards, Evangel made the plays early and late. A 21-7 run got them off to a 26-14 lead with 2:45 left in a first half marked by turnovers, shots hitting the basket supports and the first several of seven blocked layups by Evangel.
As for the eighth graders, they neither look nor play like they’re in grade school so watch out for these guys next year — or maybe this March. Their inclusion may just make sense on an Evangel campus that had a mere 25 boys listed in its KHSAA high school enrollment for 2025 and lists only four faculty members for the high school.
Holy Cross answered with their own 12-2 run early in the third quarter and led a couple of times in the third and twice more in the game — the latest at 46-43 with 6:05 left on a Rominger and then a final tie at 48 on a Max Hunt basket before the Eagles scored eight of the game’s final 10 points.
“We had our chances,” Johnson said. “We just didn’t make enough plays . . . we’ve just got to continue to get better.”
Which is what games like this, and the next two — at home against the 1,650-student Middletown (Ohio) High School Middies and on the road at Purcell-Marian — are designed to do.
Just the way Aristophanes called it in 400 BC.
SCORING SUMMARY
Evangel Christian 9 19 13 15—56
Holy Cross 7 14 18 11—50
EVANGEL CHRISTIAN (9-2): Darko 4 0 0 8, Quattara 1 0 0 2, Johnson 2 0 2 6, Norris 3 3 0 9, Ramos 1 1 0 3, Molima 13 0 2—28; TOTALS: 24 4 4—56.
HOLY CROSS (10-1): Henderson 1 0 1 3, Urlage 1 0 0 2, Arlinghaus 6 3 4 19, Rominger 6 0 5 17, B. Thornberry 0 0 2 2, Gabbard 1 0 2 4, Adams 0 0 1 1, Hunt 1 0 0 2; TOTALS: 16 4 14—50.