Here’s to a Northern Kentucky-powered Miami of Ohio
They were 30-0 n the regular season, the only team in the nation to accomplish that, and bounced back from a lone loss in the Mid-American Conference Tournament with a thrilling 89-79 win over SMU to open the NCAA tournament in a First Four play-in game Wednesday in Dayton. And the Redhawks did it with a pair of local guys in the lead. Eian Elmer, a 6-foot-6 Covington native has gone under the radar a bit since he played his high school basketball at Cincinnati Taft where he led the Senators to an Ohio State championship.
But with his 23 points leading the way to the win — including six three-pointers and his 1,000th career point — Elmer was the focus here. Especially after his pregame showing on national TV of the encouraging video he received from pro wrestling superstar John Cena, who learned Elmer was a big fan of his.
And for the first 12 games of the season, Elmer was joined by point guard Evan Ipsaro from Covington Catholic, whose 12.8 points a game and floor generalship got Miami off to a great start before Evan tore his ACL requiring knee surgery. Now you’ll see junior Ipsaro as a student coach in the middle of the Redhawk bench, still helping to run the team that faced Tennessee Friday afternoon in Philadelphia.
But playing the late game Wednesday and then an early game Friday after traveling from Dayton against a Tennessee team resting all week with plenty of preparation time was too much for Miami in a 78-58 loss that ended the RedHawks’ season at 32-2.
More Colonels in NCAA play
The season may have ended for this year’s CovCath Colonels, but not for all the former Colonels along the way going into Friday. CJ Fredrick, who led CovCath to a state title before playing at Iowa, UK and Cincinnati, is now a grad assistant coach at the other Miami – the one in Florida, as the Hurricanes head off to the NCAA tournament.
Also alive after winning an exciting first-round game against Wisconsin, 83-82, in one of the bigger upsets in the NCAA”s first round is 6-9 High Point freshman Caden Miller, who played at a prep school a year ago after graduating from CovCath. He’s the grandson of Cincinnati restauranteur Jeff Ruby and his father, Caleb Miller, played for the Bengals. Miller is averaging 7.1 minutes and 2.8 points a game for a High Point team that plays Arkansas Saturday.
Also playing for UK is senior walk-on guard Walker Horn, son of NKU coach Darrin Horn, who also played as an undergrad for two seasons at CovCath before finishing high school at Austin (Tex.) Westlake.
Matchups matter
Looking back at Covington Catholic’s 75-61 loss to Louisville St. Xavier, and then St. X barely surviving North Laurel in a 46-44 slowdown Friday, were the Colonels really 1-2 in the state with St. X?
And all we could think about was a national championship game we covered way back in 1997 when a No.1-seeded Rick Pitino UK team lost the NCAA championship in overtime, 84-79, to an Arizona team that came in with a No. 4 seed. That loss separated UK NCAA titles in 1996 and 1998 and ruined a three-peat.
Was that 35-win UK team better than a 27-win Arizona team? Not on that day. Not when Arizona guard Miles Simon went off for 30 points. Now if they played 10 times, I’d say UK wins eight. But Arizona is the NCAA champ from that year. They handled UK’s pressure with their big athletic guards and shot it from deep and slowed UK down just enough.
Just the way St. X. did to CovCath. Imagine if St. X had shot its season average of 37.3 percent from three-point range instead of 66.7 the way they did against CovCath. Instead of 12 three’s, they’d have made seven. That’s a-15-point difference in a game decided by 14. But even more, had St. X missed five more threes, that would be five more potential runout fast breaks for CovCath. And the upper hand in how this game would be played.
As for St. X, Brice Johnson, who won the CovCath game with his four straight second-quarter threes off the bench, was scoreless Friday and didn’t even shoot a three against North Laurel’s slow-it-down game. But that’s not a game CovCath can play. The Colonels tried to speed up St. X but the Tigers’ outside shooting negated that. But by going two of 11 against North Laurel from behind the arc (instead of the 12 of 18 against CovCath), St. X kept North Laurel in the game.
Is North Laurel better than CovCath? Probably not. Didn’t have the athleticism or strength of. St. X. Might not have held up against the CovCath pressure. But North Laurel didn’t have to. That’s how tournament basketball works.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.