First trip to Cooper High School. They have a nice setup there.

 

Congrats to Cooper on winning all three games Saturday. Birds struggling on all levels.

 

I like the make-up of the Cooper squad. Morgan is a quick point guard with a good ball handling skills. He doesn't look to shoot much (maybe by design). Collins is solid at the two guard. He looks to score - not afraid to put it up from distance or take it to the rack. McNeal is very solid at small forward. He plays very strong with the ball and can flat out shoot it. Shelton is a very physical power forward. Not impressed with his offensive game, but it is not needed with all the other options. I don't think we saw big Lou's best effort - HHS doubled him at every opportunity and sagged in the lane so dramatically that the 3 point line was wide open. The boys off the bench did a nice job giving the starters a rest.

 

Cooper does play very good team defense. I'm not sure you can judge how good it is off this game. HHS had no inside game. They didn't even try to get the ball inside. They drove the lane a couple of times, but for the most part settled for contested jump shots.

 

After the Dixie game - I stated maybe this HHS team is better than we think. Can I retract that statement? They haven't shown that level of competiviness since. The closest was the effort down in Pikeville versus the Middlesboro squad.

 

I am still holding out hope. The Birds have not played a game since the Brossart contest with their starting five intact. Eight consecutive games missing at least one starter. Finally both Turner and Houliston are healthy, and True has a football combine. It has been said many times by different posters - this team is not deep enough to be missing starters. Newport this Tuesday - and barring any unforeseen developments - all five projected starters should be in action. Come on boys, don't let me down. I'm running out of excuses.

 

Good assessment of Cooper, they did have a couple nice bench players that came in and stroked some nice shots.

 

The lack of competitiveness may be due to the inability to have everyone healthy or in the lineup at the same time along with the schedule. A little tough to get pumped up when you are playing in tournaments 4 hrs away and you have 5-10 fans in the stands. At one 9pm game at the Woodford Co tournament I counted 3 Highlands supporters.

 

Hopefully tomorrow night they get things going with their full compliment and head into a 6 game homestand with a 2 game winning streak. They can beat Newport and Ryle this week.

Well Cooper will find out just how good they are, or are not, this coming Friday at Holmes and on Feb. 5th at CovCath. Those two teams are playing much better and more importantly more consistent. The problem with the Jags is you just never know what team is going to show up. They better get it figured out because March will be here before they know it.