Dan Weber writes a sports column for The River City News. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com.
The plan seems to be working, Scott Ruthsatz said late Tuesday as his Covington Catholic Colonels returned from Louisville with four wins in five days and their first-ever King of the Bluegrass tournament title.
The plan: Play as many tough games as you can. Challenge yourself. Find tournament atmospheres where they introduce you with a smoke machine, where the crowd noise is so loud your players can’t hear you and you have to figure out how to get ready — physically and mentally — for back-to-back-to-back-to-back games away from Park Hills, just like at the Sweet 16 in March.
And most of all, you have to find opponents who can show you where you need to get better the way Indiana’s top team, Indianapolis Cathedral, featuring a pair of post players who were 6-foot-11 and 6-8 and made life look a whole lot different for CovCath’s bigs — 6-8 Mitchell Rylee and 6-6 Chandler Starks.
That 91-81 road loss, the only loss of the season for the 9-1 Colonels in a game where their guards played great, might have been the difference this week in Louisville, Ruthsatz says. The Colonels won four straight there finishing up with 12-point wins in both the semifinals against Louisville Male, 68-56, and Tuesday’s championship game against North Laurel, 79-67, and superstar prospect Reid Sheppard, the University of Kentucky commit everyone in the state wants to see.
Tourney-MVP Sheppard, a 6-3 scoring guard with slashing moves, did finish up with a triple double (25 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists) but he didn’t dominate enough for the win as CovCath’s defense made him give the ball up and then made it hard for him to get it back.
And in the end, was he better than fellow junior, CovCath point guard Evan Ipsaro, who fired in 34 points with five assists to lead the Colonels?
You decide. Ruthsatz won’t. “That’s a loaded question,” he says with a laugh. Sheppard got the award, Ipsaro got the championship. And if you want to see this matchup again, you’ll get the chance when CovCath hosts North Laurel in a return game from last year’s regular season game in London at NKU’s BB&T Arena Feb. 11.
But did the loss to Cathedral help the Colonels to their KOB title ten days later? “I think so,” Ruthsatz says of the matchup against bigger players. “That doesn’t happen often . . . Our post players were exposed . . . Chandler and Mitch realized they have to do better.”
And they did. The 230-pound Starks’ physicality against Male really mattered, Ruthsatz says. And against North Laurel, Rylee was “much more aggressive going to the basket and getting his hands on the ball with some big rebounds, especially his defensive rebounding,” while hitting on nine of 11 shots for 19 points while grabbing 10 rebounds.
“I told our guys I was really proud of them,” Ruthsatz said. That included sophomores like Brady Hussey, who keeps hitting big threes and scored 13 in the title game, and Noah Johnson “who is getting to understand what a big game is.”
But everything revolves around the 5-11 Ipsaro, whose confidence and control is equaled by his athletic explosiveness. “Having a good point guard is like having a good quarterback, he controls the game,” Ruthsatz says.
He has a good one. Ipsaro and this CovCath team will head to Florida the day after Christmas for three games at the Battle at the Villages opening against Florida’s Bartow High next Monday.
Here’s what North Laurel Coach Nate Valentine told the Courier-Journal after the game: “I’d play CovCath 30 times a year if I could to get ready for the (postseason),” Valentine said. “They’re one of the best in the state, if not the best. They’re a program where, that’s what we want to get to.”
But that didn’t work out so well for Louisville Male said Coach Tim Haworth in their 12-point loss to CovCath Monday. “I felt like we respected (Covington Catholic) too much,” he said. “Just wanted to get back to picking them up full-court and putting the pressure on whoever we’re playing and use all of our athletes.”
That sense of the rest of the state respecting a Northern Kentucky team “too much” is the reality, when you think about it. And Ruthsatz, a two-time state championship winner with the Colonels (2014, 2018) doesn’t disagree.
With Holmes having won in 2009 and Highlands the defending state champ and Cooper a 2017 championship game participant with Newport Central Catholic and CovCath semifinalists the last decade in addition to those two CovCath state titles, the Ninth Region is no longer the place that took 64 years to win its first state title when Simon Kenton did so 40 years ago in 1981.
“I agree,” Ruthsatz says. There’s a completely different appreciation of Northern Kentucky high school basketball around the state now.
“Playing in things like this (the KOB) helps,” he says. “This is my third King of the Bluegrass . . . You get a lot of praise for being willing to come here.”
And a lot of tourney experience. “For our guys this is their first tournament with games back to back since we got upset in the first game of the regional last year,” he says.
Spend much time with Ruthsatz — or his players — and you’ll hear about motivating factor that upset by St. Henry last year that eventually enabled Highlands to go downstate and win it all.
“We don’t want to lose that,” he says of the feeling of what might have been that pushes this team to be what it can be.
NORTH LAUREL 14 15 19 19 – 67
COVINGTON CATHOLIC 16 21 18 24 – 79
North Laurel (7-2) – Scorers: Reed Sheppard 25, Brody Brock 8, Ryan Davidson 24, Caden Harris 10.
Covington Catholic (9-1) – Scorers: Evan Ipsaro 34, Mekhi Wilson 3, Kascyl McGillis 3, Mitchell Rylee 19, Noah Johnson 3, Brady Hussey 13, Chandler Starks 4.
–Dan Weber