By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Take the under, that was the play in the bottom half of the Ninth Region first-round quarterfinal games Saturday at NKU’s Truist Arena.
Neither of the two losers could score more than 50 points. And while the two winners managed to do so, it was just barely.
And now after a pair of slugfests, district winners Lloyd Memorial and Ryle advance to Sunday night’s semifinals after holding off underdog Holy Cross and Newport respectively.
LLOYD MEMORIAL 63, HOLY CROSS 50
The amazing thing in Saturday night’s opener is how Lloyd’s Anthony Blaackar, one of the state’s leading scorers at 24.5 points a game, did not score for nearly 11 minutes and it didn’t matter at all as his first field goal, a three-pointer with 5:01 left in the second quarter, merely lengthened Lloyd’s lead to 21-8.
The Juggernauts (23-4) were doing fine without Anthony having to do his thing. His teammates were doing it for him. “Without them, we wouldn’t have won this game,” the 6-foot-2 athletic senior said after firing in a game-high 26 points in the final 20 minutes he played.
At first, Anthony talked about how the Indians had decided to “face-guard” him but then he admitted, it was far more than that before he got loose.
“They hugged me, they bit me, they scratched me, whatever it took,” he said with a big grin. It wasn’t enough.
What it would have taken was for another Indian to step up on offense to join 6-7 senior Brady Gabbard’s 24 points with a trio of highlight breakaway two-hand dunks after turnovers. But the Juggs’ defense wouldn’t allow that.
“That’s what this is all about,” Lloyd coach Mike Walker said of his team’s clamp-down defenders as he giggled at all the talk of the death of the Juggs’ program after his son, 6-8 EJ Walker, departed for South Carolina. Just a tad premature, Walker said for his 23-4 bunch.
There’s no mystery here, Walker said. “I’ve got a good team.” And even more – a good program. “One of the programs to talk about year-in, year-out,” Walker said was his goal, Although that wasn’t the case when Walker arrived in Erlanger. “A lot of people told me not to take this job.” And not a lot of people thought the Juggs would be in the regional semifinals this year.
“It’s amazing,” Walker said of how this team has responded. “They’ve been in a lot of tough games.” And come out with lots of tough wins playing, as they did on this night waiting for their big scorer Blaackar to get untracked, with “poise,” the word Walker used to describe what they do.
Sophomore guard Jason Kabeaya and junior power forward Isaiah Coleman, with 12 and 10 points respectively, were the early offensive step-up guys. But this game was won on defense. And that’s where all the Juggs stepped up.
That was especially true the way they held Indian seniors Luke Arlinghaus and Nate Rominger, dependable career scorers, to just five-of-18 shooting. “The head of the snake,” Walker said, “you’ve got to cut it off.”
Now it’s on to a team they’re familiar with, Ryle’s Raiders in less than 24 hours Sunday night. The teams split this season with Lloyd losing early, 59-45, at Ryle, then coming back to win, 59-51, at a Christmas tourney at Lexington Christian.
SCORING SUMMARY
HOLY CROSS 6 9 16 19–50
LLOYD MEMORIAL 14 19 17 13—63
Holy Cross 21-10): Henderson 2-7 1-3 4-4 9, Urlage 1-4 0-1 0-0 2, L. Arlinghaus 3-7 1=5 2-2 9, Rominger 2-11 0-1 2-2 6, Thornberry 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Gabbard 7-14 2-5 8-9 24, Adams 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Hunt 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 15-45 4-16 16-17 50.
Lloyd Memorial (23-4): I. Goalsby 2-6 1-2 1-1 6, Kabeya 4-9 2-3 2-2 12, Blaackar 8-16 3-3 7-8 26, Coleman 5-8 0-2 0-0 10, Jasper 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, N. Goalsby 0-4 0-0 0-0 0, Criner 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Barger 1-2 0-0 6-7 8, Landers 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Mello 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Walker 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Lewis 0-3 0-0 1-2 1, Thomas 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; Totals: 20-49 6-10 17-20 63.
RYLE 56, NEWPORT 46
By the time that Ryle got its first lead at 9-8 to close out the first quarter, it looked like the Raiders knew there wasn’t much Newport could do to them . . .if they kept junior Amontae Lowe, with his 20.5-points-a-game scoring average, go off on then.
So they didn’t. “We were keeping track of him, knowing where he was, giving him different looks,” senior point guard Anthony Coppola said of the game plan that limited Lowe to 11 points on 13 shots.
The Raiders also had the senior Coppola, who will be heading off to George Washington on a baseball scholarship, in his third straight regional game and the second time in a first-round game against Newport.
“He almost beat us two years ago,” said Newport coach Rod Snapp, when we had the ‘dream team’.’’
This time the 22-8 Raiders got it done, got their first regional tournament win since 2011 and with their best record now in school history, said coach Nick Dorning, a former Snapp assistant.
“Coach Dorning’s my guy,” Snapp said, praising the Raiders’ defense. “They bumped him off his cuts, off his drives . . . they’re strong.”
And on a night when Ryle got just four assists on 19 field goals, doing it with defense was the way to go. And rebounding – in the second half after being outrebounded,18-9, in the first half by a smaller Newport team. A much more determined Ryle had a 22-12 edge on the boards that second half.
But the issue now is a Lloyd team the Raiders split with in the regular season. “We’re going to have to bring our ‘A’ game,” Dorning said of the 8 p.m. Sunday tipoff
“The scheduling is very tough,” Dorning said of coming back so quickly. And then there’s playing on the college floor, 10-feet longer (94 to 84) than the high school regulation floor, and the higher ceilings and the deeper backgrounds and that college three-point arc that the players see first before the shorter high school one.
“Absolutely,” it does affect the shooting and the four teams Saturday night hit on just 14 of 48 (29.2 percent) of their three-point attempts.
As for this Newport team, having lost its best three players to national basketball academies the last two years, all who could have played this season for the Wildcats, to have finished with 21 wins, to have won the Ninth Region All “A” Classic and beaten the likes of Holy Cross, Conner and Beechwood, “No chance,” Snapp said. “It’s been a fun group to coach.”
But not a team that could win 21 games. “Maybe 12-14 games,” Snapp said, not 21.
And here they were, scrapping their way to the regional and making Ryle play this one all the way.
SCORING SUMMARY
NEWPORT 8 11 10 17—46
RYLE 9 13 15 19—56
Newport (21-10): Holder 1-1 0-0 0-0 2, Andrews-Glover 4-9 1-3 1-2 10, Jackson 0-1 0-1 1-2 1, L. Petty 3-10 0-0 0-0 6, A. Petty 1-3 0-0 0-0 2, Nichols 6-11 0-1 0-0 12, Hurry 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Lowe 4-13 1-7 2-4 11, Farrell 1-6 0-0 0-0 2; Totals: 20-55 2-12 4-8 46.
Ryle (22-8): Colemire 1-3 0-1 2-2 4, Broz 2-3 1-2 00 5, Coppola 4-7 1-2 7-8 16, Davis 5-9 0-1 2-2 12, Smith 4-12 0-3 4-4 12, Verax 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Haley 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Nsuti 3-8 0-0 1-4 7; Totals 19-43 2-12 15-20 56.