By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
So here’s our question of the night: Who has the edge when a Lloyd Memorial team with two Division I players faces a Conner team with seven seniors finishing up an exceptional high school run?
The evidence is in now. Go with Lloyd, but barely. And not in regulation. It took overtime again, just like 10 days ago, when four quarters were not enough to resolve this matchup.
But only go with Lloyd if those two Division I guys – senior Jeremiah Israel and sophomore EJ Walker – bring their “A” game. And they get plenty of help from the rest of the crew.
“It’s good to have those two guys,” Lloyd Coach Mike Walker said outside his locker room celebrating Monday’s Ninth Region quarterfinal win, “but we have seven guys.”
Same as a Conner team that did almost everything it could but shoot the ball the way it would need to in order to take out the Juggernauts.
“Some of that is Lloyd,” Conner Coach Matt Otte said of the length and athleticism — not to mention Lloyd’s determination to defend — that his shooters faced in hitting on 19 of 49 from the field (38.8 percent).
There were times the Cougars would get a steal, head down the court with an advantage but by the time they got to the basket, there was no lane, no opening.
But in the end, the difference was the way Lloyd’s Anthony Blaackar off the bench and Isaiah Sebastian added 14 points and nine rebounds between them to the stat sheet. And 6-foot-4, 250-pound football tackle Joe Cooley got Lloyd six badly needed points in the first half by being active under the basket.
Although we shouldn’t get carried away with the talk that it wasn’t the two Division I players who made the difference. The 6-foot-8 Walker’s 11 first-half points on his way to 15 with six rebounds kept the Juggs in it, down just 26-24 at intermission.
Then the 6-3 Sebastian, playing on the Truist Arena court where he’ll be playing his college ball for NKU next year, brought it home with his 18 points after intermission, hitting three deep threes and driving for a dunk. And then knocking down 0 of 11 free throws.
And still, with all that firepower, it came down to, as Otte called it, “just a few possessions.”
Which is exactly where Israel and Walker made you realize why they are “Division I” players, with almost everybody in the Big Ten already recruiting sophomore Walker.
The two combined on a tie-breaking play under the basket when Israel shuffled a near-loose ball to Walker for a dunk to give Lloyd a 50-48 lead with 1:28 left.
But it took five free throws – two from Sebastian, two from Blaackar and one from Israel – in the final minute to get to the 56-53 final margin. Same margin as the 48-45 Lloyd overtime win 10 days ago.
For the game, both teams shot lights-out from the line with Lloyd hitting on 16 of 19, Conner 13 of 14.
“This was just a tough, hard-fought regional game that goes down to the wire . . . the way they battled, the leadership of our seven seniors,” Otte said as he tried to imagine what practice will be like next year when the seven aren’t there.
Like 5-11 Dalton Kramer, who managed to score 18 points against the Lloyd defenders by being at the right place at the right time and not backing down. Or Daniel Campbell, who scored 16 points with five rebounds. Or Landen Hamilton, who battled for his nine points with four rebounds, five assists, a block and three steals before fouling out.
Junior Ayden Lohr, whose three-pointer brought Conner within one, 52-51 with 30.1 left, added 10.
But it’s Walker who will also lose senior leadership that mattered in Israel, who was calmed down at halftime after a three-point first half playing in front of his NKU coaches and future teammates.
“Pretty much,” they did calm him down, he said. “I started to let the game come to me. I got some defensive stops, I hit some free throws, that’s how it’s been.”
Playing on the Truist Arena floor, Israel said, “It feels amazing, playing here in front of the coaches.”
As for playing in the 2 p.m. Sunday semifinal game against a Newport team with players he knows and plays against in the summer, “It’ll be a revenge game,” Israel says. Way back in December, Newport beat Lloyd, 55-38, when the Juggs were still trying to figure things out and hoping they’d get a couple more to step up – as they did Monday.
BOX SCORE
CONNER 17 9 8 10 9—53
LLOYD MEMORIAL 10 14 12 8 12—56
CONNER (19-9): Campbell 16, Reece 0, Hamilton 9, Kramer 18, Lohr 10, Fay 0, Henson 0, TOTAL: 53
LLOYD MEMORIAL: Walker 15, Cooley 6, Collins 0, Sebastian 8, Israel 21, Blaackar 6, Riley 0, Sims 0, TOTAL: 56.