UKato91

Hmm the plot thickens.

Agreed! I think there was a team in 4A last year that went to the State Finals that didn't win a 7 on 7 game at all.

I really like the new team practice t-shirt! A lot of guys on the team have a dad who wore this emblem. That's a pretty cool gesture!

Covington Catholic (7-1-2) 35th District I don't see Cov Cath having any problems in the 35th. They return Auggie Eilerman who allowed 0.8 goals per game. The Colonels will also have their 3 year starter in Andrew Roland back. Jack Fleck returns to pace the offense with his 11 goals from last year. Cov Cath will be looking to return to the mountain top in the 9th Region. Hearing rumors that Cov. Cath. has added a significant new player to the squad. Hearing it's a student who has been enrolled at the school for three years but has never played on the high school team. I think he played on FC Cincinnati's Academy team. Can anyone confirm?

Covington Catholic played Conner today. Does anyone have updates or results?

I am cautiously optimistic about the 24-25 team. They will be a young team that runs deep in young talent. Unfortunately, this year’s senior class has been hit hard with attrition. They have lost several kids who decided to focus on baseball, basketball and several others to unforeseen circumstances, but the guys remaining are rock solid and I look for their leadership to hopefully bring this team back to Kroger Field in December. Obviously, there are some questions about several key positions that need to be filled. The most glaring being QB1. I believe there are 3 or maybe four viable candidates for the job. Having multiple viable candidates is indeed a good problem. Harney, Queen, and Geiser all bring unique strengths, and their competition will likely elevate the team’s performance. Whoever is named QB1 this year will most likely have a two or maybe three-year reign depending on who is named. That bodes well for the Colonels over the next several years. The next position with question marks is at two of the linebacker positions. The Colonels graduated two of the four starters from last year’s state runner-up team. The Willie Rodriguez and Josh Flood combination of speed and size will be hard to replace, but I see several viable options for both positions. Junior Tucker Evans filled in quite well for Flood last year after he went down with a broken collar bone at middle linebacker, but I could also see sophomore Owen Pitzer competing for that spot too. The other outside linebacker position I see four potential candidates in Juniors Brady Guard, Eli Fesmire and Henry Atkins with sophomore Spencer Clukey a strong candidate to potentially leapfrog the juniors. The next question is who will replace Ben Reeves at D-end? Ben was quite easily our best pass rusher last year. It seems he would be hard to replace but, senior Nick Krallman will fill his shoes as good as or possibly better than Ben. Nick has a huge frame at 6’5’’ and has real downhill speed and the odd strength of an old school mason brick layer. I look for Nick to have an absolute monster year this year and expect him to take a lot of teams by surprise. Dead period ends tonight. I see a team with a lot of question marks but fortunately, I also see a team with a lot of answers to those questions, just who it will be. It will be interesting to see who steps up to fill these positions over the next several weeks as the clock ticks closer to opening day. Go Colonels!

He looks bigger than 165lbs! I'm thinking you're right. That's got to be old numbers.

Great question and seems like it's been like that for a long time. When I played 30+ years ago it was like that too. Solid freshman team but when we played them senior year, we blew them out. Same goes for my oldest and youngest sons'. My oldest played with Caleb Jacob, and Campbell Co was the only team to beat them. By the time he was a senior Campbell was off of the schedule, but They didn't become the power that they could have been. My youngest is a senior now and Campbell beat them freshman year pretty handily. I guess we see where they stack up this year. Seems like a lot of missed opportunities there.

I don't know Jake, but I know his dad and his aunts and uncles. I think this would be a great hire from all aspects as a fan, player or anyone affiliated with the school, but I just don't see this happening. Jake is a young guy with a very promising career path and think this would be a step back for him. His upward mobility is far greater where he is then coming to coach a high school basketball team. I honestly think Sullivan would be a much more likely hire than Thelen and even that is not likely.

Agree!

I'm very familiar with that 1990 team and that is actually a great comparison. While I think Cash has similar athleticism to Dave Wilson, I think Cash is a better QB than Dave was, but Dave was significantly more physical as he played a hard-hitting safety at Miami of OH. I haven't seen Emmet play yet but have heard plenty about him and understand his arm strength is very good and accuracy is very good, but lacks "touch" and mobility. That will come with more experience which seems eerily similar to Adam McCormack. If I were to call a starter now it would have to be Cash. But would not be surprised to see Emmet either because starting Cash at QB leaves a big hole in the defense. I think who steps up to fill his spot on defense will play a big factor on the QB position. "Optional" practice started this morning, so I suspect more will be known over the next several days until dead period.

I think he's a WR.

Unfortunately, for unknown reasons Isaac has left school. He's been gone for nearly a month. Krallman could be anywhere from MLB, OLB to defensive end. He started out last season at MLB then got moved to OLB and finished at DE. Could see Bessler at OLB, DE or Nose as well , but Bessler is the only senior that can play both the WIL and SAM positions so, not sure where that leaves him.

"So need to figure out which coaches like to drink, and we then will know who our guy would be." Bob Huggins is our guy!??

We agree on a lot of things, but you keep trying to put words into my mouth. Player retention is obviously an issue and suspect it could be again next year. It could be a school culture problem, administrative problem, financial problems, parent problems, mental health problem or some other problem that I'm not able to think of. But you keep coming back to Kez and act like I'm accusing him of some sort of treachery. I have not accused him of anything. I just said it should be looked into. I would hope you would agree. And once the problem is identified it is dealt with.

We can all agree on that. But I write no checks to NDA nor have kids there. Just an outside observer who knows a lot of basketball families and that basketball program has a glaring flaw with player retention and my points show it. It is an issue that should be looked into. I never brought Kez's name up but when it was, I addressed it and for that matter complemented him on being better than the prior coach. Obviously, you like Kez and that's great. You don't see or don't want to see the things I do and that's okay too. I have no skin in this game, and it doesn't affect me in the least if he stays or goes nor will it. Have no worries, I'm not from the "wrong" family so this conversation will fall on deaf ears.

What is my narrative? I'm not sure what you think that is. AGAIN, the prior coach was a train wreck. They do not belong in the same category when comparing the two. If that's the bar you want to hold Kez to that's an insult to Kez. Now to address your other statement. How many kids has Kez cut over the last 6 years? I'm pretty sure the answer is 0. It's not a matter of younger kids being better than the older ones and Kez being a great judge in talent. It's not always that they are leaving for soccer or volleyball as seems to be the standard answer here. It's not unreasonable to expect to have 3-4 girls stay all 4 years for each class at a school the size and caliber as NDA. The other sports seem to be able to do that. Why not basketball? And for the record I have no kids at NDA.

Like I said above If you want to put Coach Murphy in the same category as the prior coach and compare the two then go ahead. In my opinion they are not even close. That was a train reck. You're missing my point. I'm not worried about getting "those" players. I'm more worried about keeping the players we already have. You mention they lost 2 seniors one to soccer and one to volleyball. That's fine and it happens everywhere but what happened to the other 13-16 players year in and year out. It should not be an unreasonable expectation to keep at least 3-4 players all 4 years. I'm not worried about titles. Titles will come if you build your team top to bottom.

If you want to put Coach Murphy in the same category as the prior coach and compare the two then go ahead. In my opinion they are not even close. They are extreme opposites. To my point, 5 out of 6 classes with one class having more than one senior on the team says something is wrong. Winning and losing is not the end all be all at NDA and I'm fine with that. Look at the soccer coach they fired after winning the state championship 2 years prior and was very well liked by the majority of the families on the team. Something must have been wrong, or he ticked off the wrong family. The multisport athlete deciding to focus on one sport aspect may hold true to some, but they are in the minority. To me this is a glaring issue with the program. When you have 15-18 girls on your freshman team every single year, you should have no problem keeping 3-4 girls for all 4 years. You keep referencing Ryle and Cooper. They are excellent programs. Why? They have multiple seniors on their team every year while building up their underclassman to take over the following years. When you have the volume of talent that goes through Notre Dame year after year this should be an easy task. You may not have the Julia Hunts, Quin Eubanks, Whitney Linds, Maddie Scherr or Lauren Schwartz's in your line up, but you will have significant depth to help overcome the players of their caliber. Develop your players for 4 years and the titles will eventually come. Continue down the path they are going and be content with district titles.

I said nothing about Coach Murphy, you did. I was wondering why there are hardly any seniors on the team. But since you automatically assumed I was I'll say this. I am quite familiar with that 2022 team. They were loaded with talent and is the anomaly in the last 6 years. How many seniors were on the team his first year and the year after that and the year after that? There was one senior in 2023 and one senior this year. Where are they going and why, when year after year, they have really good freshman teams?

Another first round regional exit by Notre Dame. What's going on there? There is plenty of talent there year after year, yet it seems that they hardly ever have any seniors on the team. Why do so many quit the team. Maybe a topic for another thread.

The wide receiving core just picked up a nice addition to the squad. Junior Jake Stewart will be back on the team for his senior season. Jake was the leading receiver on the freshman team his freshman year. He gave it up for basketball but is deciding to return for his senior year. If they can get him up to speed during spring ball, he could be a big asset to the receiving core. His return could potentially make whoever might be QB1’s (my opinion is it will be Harney) life a lot easier. If you have Link 6’3” ish that has serious leaping ability, Stewart 6’3” ish with serious leaping abilities, TE Nick Krallman at 6’4’’ with speed size and strength and then add Geiser/Sanning at slot and Bessler at RB who has serious strength speed and physicality. Throw in Kruer at any of those positions and you have the makings for a nightmarish situation for the defenses.

I like your assessment! My only correction is that Krallman will be a senior this coming season and will surprise a lot of people.

I'm pretty sure they will be there.

The Jags have been underrated all year. Hoping that feeds their fire for one more game. Go Jags!