By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
They’re just a couple of miles apart down the Dixie Highway from Park Hills to Fort Mitchell. You can drive it in five minutes, easy.
And if the packed parking lot at Covington Catholic Friday and the near standing room crowd in the Colonels’ gym is any indication, the basketball rivalry between these teams is catching up to the well-established ones in baseball and football.
Even if this game may not have played out that way. Beechwood’s limited Tigers, down two starters after the first minute, just could not stay with an aggressive, in-your-face CovCath defense that benefited from maybe the best game all season from its best player – “the best player in the Ninth Region,” Colonel coach Jake Thelen said of senior guard Athens McGillis – in a 74-45 romp that was actually much more competitive than those final numbers might suggest.
All McGillis did was fire in 30 points in three quarters, nailing three pointers from near the logo – once after getting fouled and laid flat on a stop-start-step back three. “The ‘and-one’,” McGillis said of his favorite shot on a night when he was six for eight from three-point range.
But as much as this was the night for McGillis, a 6-foot point guard headed to Nova Southeastern University in Florida, the defending NCAA Division II champ, CovCath’s bruising defense made the bigger impression. The Colonels’ contest literally every pass, dribble, rebound and shot for every second of the game and on every square inch of the court, end line to end line.
Which is why they had 11 steals to Beechwood’s one and forced 17 turnovers to just three of their own and finished with a 30-2 scoring edge in points off turnovers.
Tiger Owen McCormack, Beechwood’s second-leading scorer at 12.9 points a game, was out after tripping over his dog and injuring his elbow and Ryan Smith broke his nose just seconds into the game and was out the rest of the way.
But in building up this rivalry, the Tigers had a couple of things going for them. Senior Quentin Knasel, a transfer from CovCath averaging 6.2 points a game this year, went off for 16, many on whirling drives through the lane against overplaying Colonel defenders.
Then there’s Beechwood’s leading scorer, Dylan Topmiller, a 15-year-old 6-foot-2 sophomore who can handle it and shoot it, averaging 19.9 points a game, who came into this gym where his grandfather, Bill Topmiller, was one of the great athletes in CovCath history. A first-team All-State player in both football and basketball and if there were one then in baseball, he’d have been a first-teamer there as well, before heading to Vanderbilt and helping the Commodores to their first bowl game in decades.
Dylan’s 16-point night wasn’t bad, said Beechwood coach Ross Hart, considering “they were holding his jersey on every play.” That opinion, vocalized to an official, is what earned him the game’s lone technical, Hart said. One Beechwood observer compared CovCath’s defense to the physically aggressive philosophy of former Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins, who famously said of potential fouls: “They can’t call ‘em all.”
“They’re a good team, but I think we’re right there, Hart said, and “no longer a football school or a baseball school but a multi-sport school.” After winning the All “A” regional a year ago and opening the season with 10 straight wins, Hart has a case.
“You can tell by the crowd,” McGillis said of the way this rivalry has been building. “Everybody’s looking forward to a Beechwood-CovCath game. “They’re a really good team,” CovCath’s Thelen said, “really good players, really good coach.”
But down those two starters. “We don’t care who’s playing,” Thelen said, “we just attack.” As for McGillis, he’s the perfect example of what the second-year coach is trying to build at CovCath. “When I get here early in the morning, he’s already here working. We work at it every day. There’s no secret why he’s the best player in Northern Kentucky.”
Although about that defense that produced those positive numbers? “Just OK,” Thelen said, although there was that 32-3 run before and after halftime that produced a 59-22 lead and a running clock when the defense looked more than OK.
“I’m glad we’re not there yet,” Thelen says. It’s a long season. He wants his Colonels — ranked as high as No. 2 in Kentucky — to be there when it counts –at tournament time in late February and March.
In this Dixie Highway back and forth between these programs, CovCath has senior guard Cash Harney, a football guy heading to UK, who spent his freshman season at Beechwood. He scored 11 points with a game-high seven assists, two blocked shots and a steal. Also in double figures for CovCath was 6-7 Donovan Bradshaw, another football player, with 12 points and a game-high six rebounds, and slim, smooth-shooting 6-4 sophomore Braeden Myrick, a transfer from Mason County, who added a pair of threes to McGillis’ six, also scoring a dozen.
SCORING SUMMARY
Beechwood Tigers 13 9 11 12—45
Covington Catholic Colonels 19 29 18 8–74
Beechwood (10-4): Brockett 0/2 0/1 0/1 0/0 0, Knasel 9/14 6/9 3/5 3/5 24, Coppage 1/7 1/4 0/3 0/0 2 0, Yeager 1/1 1/1 0/0 1/2 2, Stiles 0/4 0/4 0/0 1/2 1, Wilson 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Smith 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Topmiller 3/7 3/5 0/2 2/3 8, Moore 3/7 2/3 1/4 0/0 7; Totals 17/42 13/27 4/15 7/12 45.
Covington Catholic (13-1): McGillis 10/14 4/6 6/8 4/7 30, Harney 5/9 5/7 0/2 1/1 11, Gaiser 1/1 1/1 0/0 1/2 3, Bradshaw 4/6 3/5 1/1 3/4 12, Bode 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0, Myrick 4/8 2/4 2/4 2/2 12, Courtney 1/1 1/1 0/0 0/0 2, Myers 0/3 0/3 0/0 0/0 0, Stava 2/2 2/2 0/0 0/0 4, Hoyt 0/1 0/1 0/0 0/0 0, Brecount 0/1 0/1 0/0 0/0 0; Totals 27/46 18/31 9/15 11/16 74.