I am going to change my position on this issue and say that the Harlan team with Charles Thomas, Michael Jones, and Todd Cox would have beaten this Huntington Highlanders team.

....and Casey Lester!

I appreciate all of the information that Basketballjones has given out. Looks like Bill Mike Runyon loved those "out of state" tournaments.

I think that if everyone would really look at what HHS has then they would not be so impressed. Yes, they have two of the top players in the country but they do not use Patterson to the best of his ability. OJ average a shot a minute versus Scott County, that is nuts. I totally believe that the state champion team that Painstville had would beat HHS, they had a good shooting team, handled the ball well and had several good rebounders. And here is another local team that nobody mentioned that more than matched up physically with HHS. The 1979-80 Ashland Tomcats were huge across the frontline; Dirk Anders a physical player at 6"7 or 6"8, Jeff Tipton was a very mobile 6"10 and had 41 points and 19 rebounds in the double overtime loss to Covington Holmes in the quarter finals of the state tournament, Doug Smith was a great shooting forward and was about 6"4 and they had 7 footer Jerry Daniels off the bench and good sized players like Greg Penny and leaping machine Tim Haller as well. Greg McCauley was a big shooting guard at about 6"2 or 6"3 and Anderson and Crank were very good point guards. This team was not as athletic as HHS is but very, very physical and a good shooting team. HHS is not well coached, they are prone to rushing things and as illustrated by the Scott County game a team that forces the issue if behind. Let's not make HHS into some kind of NBA level team, they are a very good team, one of the best in this areas history, but to say that legit teams from Kentucky could not match up with HHS is showing a low level of basketball knowledge.