By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Like so many basketball coaches, Covington Catholic coach Jake Thelen has preached all season about how his Colonels, Kentucky’s unanimous No. 1 team this week, are getting ready to play in March.
And then he scheduled them at GCL champ Moeller Tuesday and at Kentucky No. 4 Madison Central Friday. The lesson for his streaking CovCath team could not be more clear: You want to be ready to play in March, well, you better be ready to play the third week in February.
That’s something the Colonels clearly understood on their trip to Cincinnati and a Moeller gym filled to capacity, even after falling behind, 17-9, in the first quarter to a powerful Crusader team with two 6-foot-7 starters and a defense that holds opponents to 42 points a game this season.
“Twenty-six and one,” Thelen said with a big smile as he perused the final stat sheet from CovCath’s 70-58 win, the Colonels’ 20th straight and Thelen’s 50th win in his second season at his alma mater as he became the quickest CovCath coach to reach that early milestone.
Thanks to a 15-0 run – not unlike the kinds of spurts his team is capable of – the Colonels were in nearly full control by halftime, having flipped the script completely to lead 40-29.
“To win in March, you’ve got to win big-time games like this against a really good team in front of a crowd like this,” Thelen said. “You gotta’ bring it every night.”
As for falling behind the GCL champs, now 16-4, and not getting rattled, Thelen said he wasn’t at all surprised.
“We practice so hard and they’re in such good shape, and our players are so mentally tough and so physically tough and such good basketball players, it’s not a surprise at all.”
Just as it wasn’t a surprise when 6-foot-4 junior sharp-shooting wing Braeden Myrick, after missing his only two field goal attempts the first quarter, poured in 25 points over the final three hitting all five two-point attempts on a variety of touch floaters while nailing five of his nine three-point attempts over a Moeller zone that could not get to him.
And no, he didn’t think about how he might finish with a game-high 28 points after his slow start. Here’s what he was thinking.
“Just keep shooting,” the cool shooter said speaking for shooters everywhere. “Just keep playing. I felt good. We all trust one another, and I trust them to get it to me.”
And they trust him, as did the CovCath fans relegated to the top four rows in the Moeller gym, as they stood and cheered often before Myrick’s threes rippled through the nets, knowing they were going to despite the ball still in the air.
Not that Myrick was the only big scorer. Donovan Bradshaw, the 6-6 senior, keeps improving his offensive game, scoring 16 on eight-of-12 shooting while senior Athens McGillis added 14 with four threes and an incredible 10 assists.
“How many assists did we have,” Thelen wondered as he checked the stat sheet. “Twenty-five! On 30 baskets. That’s crazy. That’s better than 80 percent.” It was better than that. They came on 29 baskets for 86 percent.
And a sign of “just how much these guys like one another.” As good basketball players as they are, they’re better friends, Thelen says. And they got big scoring from sophomore Dylan Courtney who ran the floor and beat the Crusaders for 10 points on five-of-six shooting in his 17:21.
But it’s not all scoring, Thelen noted. In a physical game at the fabled football school, senior guard Cash Harney, who will be playing football at UK next year, brought the physicality. “Look at his line,” Thelen said, “seven assists, two rebounds, a steal even though he didn’t score a point.”
And look at those 25 assists. Moeller had just five. If there was one place CovCath has to work on coming out of this, it’s eliminating some of the ill-advised cross-court passes against the zone, allowing Moeller to stay in contact the fourth quarter when this could have gone into blowout territory. For the game, the slow-starting Colonels finished with 58.0 percent shooting on 29-of-50 from the field, a bit better than their 57.4 – best in Kentucky – for the season.
That’s because every day’s practice has the same focus – on that day alone, Thelen says. “One day, one practice, one game at a time,” he says. Then after Wednesday, the Colonels will turn their attention to Richmond where a crowd of 4,000 will await Friday night for a battle between two of the state’s top four teams.
As the Colonels end the regular season with a bang. And on the road.
SCORING SUMMARY
CovCath 12 28 18 12–70
Moeller 17 12 17 12–58
CovCath (26-1): McGillis 5/13 1/4 4/9 0/0 14, Harney 0/2 0/1 0/1 0/0 0, Gaiser 1/1 1/1 0/0 0/0 2, Bradshaw 8/12 8/12 0/0 0/0 16, Myrick 10/16 5/5 5/11 3/3 28, Courtney 5/6 5/6 0/0 0/0 10, Stava 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0; Totals 29/50, 9/21, 3/3 70.
Moeller (16-4): Lang 4/8 1/3 3/5 0/0 11, Grubert 0/4 0/2 0/2 2/2 2, Donald 4/8 2/5 2/3 4/4 14, McQueen 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Abraham 5/5 5/5 0/0 0/0 10, Davis 6/12 5/10 1/2 3/5 16, Trenz 2/6 1/5 1/1 0/1 5; Totals 21/43 48 8% 7/13 53.8% 9/12 75.0%13 21 7 0 5 0 14 0 5 160 Totals: 21/43 3/4 9/12 58.