Aviator

I believe I got all the game schedules updated correctly. -HERE-

Anyone got info on times/locations?

NKY High School Baseball Tournaments - (Florence, KY) - powered by LeagueLineup.com Updated

Ryle defeats Holy Cross 5-0. Plays Boone Co. tomorrow at 5pm....weather permitting!

So is he in Cooper’s or Conner’s district? I’ve seen him play a few times with ATY and the kid is really good. Whether he’s playing his position, at the plate, or on the mound, the kid excels at them all. He would definitely be a factor in either Cooper’s or Conner’s already strong 2018 class. Does anyone know if there’s a chance of him going to a public school for his junior and senior year?

You're welcome. I enjoy doing it. Hard to believe it's already that time again! To all the BGPers out there, once things get started, I'll need some help keeping the brackets updated. Please submit scores at the website or post here. Both tournaments should be good ones and I'm looking forward to hearing the results.

Sorry...misspelled link. NKY High School Baseball Tournaments - (Florence, KY) - powered by LeagueLineup.com

Website updated with bracket for the upcoming Freshman tournament at http://www.leageulineup.com/nkyhstourney

Website updated with bracket for the upcoming JV tournament at NKY High School Baseball Tournaments - (Florence, KY) - powered by LeagueLineup.com.

Ryle is definitely the hot team right now as winners of 14 straight. I really like all three teams mentioned, but don't overlook Conner. They're 17-4 with losses only to Ryle and CovCath. They finally figured out how to beat CovCath in their most recent match-up and have a tendency to find ways to win games.

Cooper varsity, unlike the schools I've previously mentioned, had to call up many sophomores because of the lack of returning juniors and seniors. Brayden Runion has had a solid season thus far at the plate. IMO, Brendan Reid is one of the top sophomore pitchers in NKY. He’s got to be throwing around mid 80’s, though that’s just a guess. Justin Schlarman, Tyler Ollier, Nathan Sowder, and Jyogi Maruishi are also sophomores getting playing time at varsity. This team will be good in the coming years if they can retain players.

Ryle is another school, like Conner and CovCath, that has strong jr and sr classes. This leaves many talented sophomores down at JV. Their JV team is 15-8 according to their website. 3 losses to CovCath, with 2 of those losses by 1 run. Also a 1 run loss to Conner. Some of their players to keep an eye on are Conner Ryle, Ben Lloyd and Jacob Tarvin.

Conner JV is also strong, currently 16-5 according to their twitter site, with many talented sophomores. 4 of their 5 losses were to CovCath. They did beat them once 5-1, the one time they pitched Manny Henschen against them. He’s a very talented sophomore pitcher, who would likely be playing varsity at many other schools. Conner JV also has Ben North. He has a very good bat and is very quick on the bases.

Regardless of whether any of them played varsity or not, the CovCath JV team is stacked with talented sophomores. AJ Mayer, Jack Maille (heard was out for rest of HS season), Logan Beagle, Thomas Cody, Casey Nowak, Adam Schneider, Patrick Burke all belong in any mention of top sophomore players in NKY. Their website has them 16-2.

Sean Casteel

Why? IMO, NKY baseball is as good if not better than most other KY areas. If it's so bad, how could we've been only one game away of having a NKY vs. NKY state championsip last year. A NKY team has been in the state championship game the last two years. By my count, there are only 24 NKY HS baseball teams. KHSAA lists 267 teams in the state. According to the above list, 6 NKY teams are either in the top 25 or on the bubble (that's 25 % of NKY teams in this list). According to the USA Today rankings, there's 4 NKY teams in the top 25. NKY baseball isn't so bad.

Brayden Trattles pitched a no-hitter in this one. Congrats to the sophomore for that and on his 2nd win of this early season.

Colton Hartig throws a complete game, no-hitter for the Camels.

I'm sure you're referring to Manny Henschen. Seen him pitch a couple times last year. Throws hard and has good command of his off-speed pitches. Saw on the PBR website he had a good showing at one of their recent showcases. He had a KY Colonel hat on for his profile picture.

I could see how a case could be made for the top four of this list. Beyond that, move Scott down at least 3, Conner up at least 3, completely remove Cooper and add NCC.

True. But, that’s Freshman and JV baseball. That’s a far cry from varsity, and really not the best indicator of how a program’s varsity program will be. Take Conner and Cooper JV teams this year. Conner has a lot of returning juniors and seniors that make up their varsity squad, so no room for sophomores. This means their JV team will be made up of almost entirely sophomores, and some good ones at that. Then you have Cooper who I heard had very few returning seniors and juniors. I’ve been told around 5 of their better sophomores will be on varsity. This means they will likely have weaker JV and Freshman teams as younger players will be pulled up. So, it’s likely Conner’s JV team will easily beat a younger, less experienced Cooper JV team when they face each other this year. Does this mean Conner’s varsity team will be better than Coopers next year when those players move up to varsity? Probably not. It's possible the opposite will occur, since the Cooper players have had experience at the varsity level that the Conner players didn't. I’m not saying a great JV team won’t translate into a great varsity team, but I can definitely see situations where it doesn’t.

My thoughts on the top 5. 1. Beechwood – High expectations for this team. Anything other than a 9th Region Championship and a deep run in the State tournament would be a disappointing year. 2. Covington Catholic – Return a lot of seniors who have had plenty of varsity experience while going 25-8-1 last year. Some solid juniors and also have a very strong sophomore class with at least 3 likely to get significant varsity time (Kennedy, Mayer, Maille). 3. Ryle/Boone – Both teams return a decent amount of experienced players and have some A+ pitching. Hope to see a Purnell vs. Ziegelmeyer game this year. 5. Conner – Heard they had around 15 returning players who were on the varsity team last year with a couple being cut after being in the program for years. So plenty of experience, but will they have the pitching to compete with the teams above? Notes: *Highlands – Don’t know enough about the returning players to place them in my top 5. Didn’t they practically lose their entire starting lineup from last year? I know they should have some solid pitching this year, but how does their defense and hitting stack up to other teams in the 9th? *Heard Cooper had only 4 or 5 seniors return for tryouts this year (KHSAA lists 11 juniors on last year’s team). What’s going on there?

For this year, Beechwood also gets my vote for "Cream of the Crop". My sleeper team would be Conner. They return a lot of seniors and I think they will surprise some teams this year. To answer this question, I think you need to look at this year's sophomore class. IMO, CovCath is absolutely loaded with high quality baseball players in their sophomore class. I really think no one else comes close to matching their talent and depth at this age. There are some other schools that have a few standouts, but not nearly as many. So, though 2016 looks like the year for Beechwood, my vote for "Cream of the Crop" for 2017 & 2018 goes to CovCath.

Although Highlands is in the same Region 9 as Conner, they're actually closer to Scott. Two teams, 15 minutes apart in NKY in the finals would definitely be a boost to NKY baseball. Good luck to both teams tonight! P.S. Conner is also often misspelled as Connor. See it all the time.

Game moved to CovCath and is now at 1:00.