By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
He’s only 7-feet-1, you can tell yourself. And sure, that’s as tall as or taller than every starting center in the NBA.
And yeah, he’s quick and athletic now as a senior. Oh, and he’s 7-1, did we mention that?
Not that any of the Cooper kids could forget it. No matter how well they ran their offense, how patient and on the money their motion passing game might have been going from one side of the court to the other, there would come that moment on a drive or a mid-range jumper where a Jaguar player would come face-to-face with Great Crossing’s monster in the middle, Malachi Moreno, the UK signee playing on the Rupp Arena floor that will be his home in just a few months.
For the most part, while this was going on, Cooper’s top scorer – Andy Johnson – was playing with a defender hanging on him, usually with both arms extended but always with contact. He’d have been better off as a receiver on Cooper’s state finals football team in the fall. Those would have been called holds or pass interference.
But not in this game so Johnson, who would earn All-Tournament honors after the game, was forced to become mostly a passer, meaning this quarterfinal Sweet 16 game would come down to — no matter how well the Cooper defense limited the Warhawks — Johnson’s teammates hitting shots.
Just as Cooper coach Tim Sullivan said it would after his team’s opening win over Henderson County.
And as it did, with Cooper knocking down just 14 of 48 shots (29.2 percent) around and over Moreno in a 49-36 season-ending loss. Although Great Crossing coach Steve Page had this take after his 33-4 team’s 25th straight win. “Take the blocked shots out of it and it’s 21 of 48 and we may not win the game.”
With most of those blocks coming on shots in the paint and not counting the ones Moreno pinned to the board – before the shot got there or even after, with high school officials not seeing that kind of split-second goaltending enough to call it – Moreno was a game-changer.
“Our kids are fearless,” Sullivan said, “but you can’t mimic that. Even if you had a week to prepare. He’s so long and with his timing . . . .”
Which is just how Great Crossing plays it. “That’s our goal, funnel it to him,” Page says of the other team’s offense, “we always do that.”
But this result is not what the Jaguars will take away from this game, Sullivan said. “They learned how to be men,” he said of a team certainly not expected to go undefeated in the Ninth Region. They learned “how to make decisions for themselves,” Sullivan said, “they stood up for themselves. They made themselves a family.”
One decision they’ve made for their under-fire coach (from Cooper principal Mike Wilson, who has demanded Sullivan’s resignation in a controversial decision in the Cooper community) was expressed by Johnson after the game.
“Everywhere he goes, we’re going to follow,” Johnson said of his coach who sent him off with a long embrace as he left the game. Right now, according to Sullivan who didn’t talk at length about his situation, he’s not going anywhere.
“Tomorrow I’m going to wake up and I’m still going to be the coach at Cooper High School,” he said, “and the sun will rise.”
And the folks at Cooper will still be wearing those shirts with SULLY across the front and some combination of FAMILY and TOUGHNESS on the back.
“It looks like we lost tonight,” said senior guard Isaac Brown, who led Cooper scorers with 14 points, but he and his teammates won the big game, he said. “We defied what people thought we could do.”
One other thing Cooper did, as you might guess in limiting Great Crossing to 49 points, was hold the Warhawks to their second-lowest point total in 37 games this season.
And the Jaguars brought their fans together, as that one final call from a fan in the Cooper section as the teams left the floor.
“Fire Mr. Wilson,” was the plea.
From a member of the FAMILY.
SCORING SUMMARY
COOPER 12 4 12 8–36
GREAT CROSSING 14 8 14 13–49
Cooper (24-6): R. Combs 1-6 0-0 0-0 2, Brown 6-17 2-8 0-0 14, J. Combs 1-5 1-2 0-0 3, Rodriguez 0-4 0-3 0-0 0, Johnson 4-12 2-5 2-4 12, Hampton 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Knuckles 1-2 0-0 0-0 2, Sullivan 1-1 0-0 1-1 3, Lutz 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Hartman 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Barbour 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Philpot 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Stanton 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Campbell 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Czirr 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 14-48 5-18 3-5 36.
Great Crossing (33-4): Holman 1-4 0-2 0-0 2, Dawson 7-17 0-1 6-9 20, Mason 1-3 0-2 0-0 2, Richardson 2-5 1-4 1-2 6, Moreno 5-10 0-0 3-6 13, Orem 1-3 0-0 2-2 4, Cooper 1-1 0-0 0-0 2, Payne 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Swartz 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Ismail 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Dean 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Delimpo 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 18-44 1-10 12-19 49.