Mojocat

Pet peeve of mine. Definitely see kids that make up their mind, maybe not 90 feet from the basket, but when they catch it around the 3 point line, that they are going to the goal come hell or high water. And will only pass if they just absolutely cannot get a shot off - which rarely happens, usually it just results in a bad attempt. I hadn't made that particular observation with Roberts, but it wouldn't surprise me, given the teams/teammates he's had previously......

He’s 6’4 (at most I’d say) and the times I’ve seen him he was almost exclusively an interior player. When I saw him, he was shooting I think 17% from 3 on very few attempts. Granted, that was early in the season, may have changed (although I’d be surprised). So, a wonderful high school player. Talented in ways that usually don’t get much attention (beyond the counting stats that is). Real competitive instincts, a nose for both the ball and the basket that is rare (and probably easy to miss). But the handful of guys who can make a living playing almost solely inside at 6’4 are very few and far between, and tend to be built much differently than is Hammonds (think Charles Barkley, or more locally Carson Williams). You can be tremendous and still not have what it specifically takes at the next level (oddly Steve Alford from IU comes to mind, although for different reasons). Seems like a good kid, hope I’m forced to eat some words down the road……

I remembered it was the 83-84 team, but not much more. Cats won 24-11. Was 11-7 at the half….

All of this is true, but the observation is by now decades old. We all could have said the same things in 2003, I think. The culture has changed drastically (it tends to work that way!). There used to be one college game on television per week. Now there are games every night. Schools didn't have soccer teams and lacrosse teams and field hockey and swimming/diving teams back in the day. You have a lot more sports competing for participants and spectators. And that's true, generally - there are just a lot more things folks can do now than watch high school basketball and football than used to be the case. It's not going to go back in my opinion, any more than we'll go back to horse and carriage as a primary means of transport or outdoor plumbing.....

Could be, but I don't want to speculate on that - because that's all it would be, speculation, and it's not really fair for me to guess about it on a public forum. For all I know, he intends to coach another decade!

Hard to say. I don't know how much longer Coach Simpson plans to stick around, and I don't know what Coach Burns thinks of Crestwood/Oldham County - 10 years in a place is a long time, it could be that he has roots there and has no desire to leave. But yours is a good question.

How long has Burns been there now, and do you expect him to stay (I believe he is still pretty young)? They've been pretty good the last few years - was that true before he got there?

I've gone through this exercise before, but just for the Oldham County schools. It's not promising. There are a lot of very good high school basketball players, and there are really very few good enough to play D1. Griffin and Levitch, for example, were walk-ons, not scholarship players. You really have to find the right kid with the right skills and the right situation (both high school and college) for it to work, typically. Someone like Donta Smith, the equation is different. But there aren't many of those. In contrast, when I looked at the best baseball players in Oldham County, they were scholarship athletes at places like Kentucky, Louisville, Mississippi State - some really good programs. So that's a different deal. That said, I recall hearing about a kid who got a "scholarship" from Louisville, and then didn't make the team. Which was a foreign concept to me (I'm used to basketball and football) - what do you mean he didn't make the team, they gave him a scholarship!? That's when it was explained to me, in baseball schools might offer say 17 kids when they know they'll only keep 10. Plus each kid only gets 1/4 scholarship, anyway. So, it's not apples to oranges......

(I'm wondering if you realize just how countercultural this is, to not only meet criticism with respect, but to admit that perhaps, just perhaps, your own words were not the very epitome of truth? I think there are laws against doing this on the internet. But I applaud you nonetheless.)

Project is right. I watched Eastern play E-town in the ‘86 state tournament, and pretty vividly remember Felton missing a dunk. At 7’1! After watching him I said that kid will never play at Louisville. He of course did, then was the #6 overall pick in the 1990 NBA Draft, played 12 years at that level and made $18.7 million, if the Internet is true. I’m not predicting anything like that for Dynes (given my Spencer prediction, he should be pleased!), but that kind of height is obviously rare, and he can’t be that far behind where Spencer was at that age. How much weight can he put on and carry, how hungry is he, etc.

That wasn’t really a 12 point game. SK sustained a lead the entire second half, but it was say a 5 point game, give or take. I believe it was 55-50 with 2 minutes to go. But you miss a couple, are forced to foul to stop the clock, they hit free throws, repeat repeat. I know Dynes takes some grief here, but the kid very much impacts the game on the defensive end. I don’t care that he only scores 12 a game, he’s far and away their most valuable player. (Aside: once, they posted Dynes, threw him the ball, he turns and dunks. Why don’t they do that 20 times a game, I said to the guy next to me.)

Interesting. As I said the other day, I’ve seen a lot of 8th Region basketball the last 10 years, but somehow I’ve never seen Moore. But I have talked to several folks who say he’s a wonderful high school player, but they doubt he’s got the athleticism to play at Western. Saw Noah at the King of the Bluegrass. Not a great athlete - not unathletic, just not great. Good player, obviously.

I say Oldham comes out ready to make up for that Collins loss and wins by 2 (although the thought of Amburgey trying to score inside on Dynes makes me a little anxious). I thought North was really good. Then they played OC much closer than I expected, and I thought, maybe they aren't as good as I thought. Then they steamrolled South, and I thought maybe they are better than I thought to begin with. North by 12. Collins by 21.

For anyone that has seen both of them, how would you compare Trent Noah and Teagan Moore?

I was trying to remember who it was that’s not a big fan of Nickell.

I probably should just give up making predictions about Oldham County. Really hard to get a handle on them, very up and down (like a lot of teams in the 8th region, I guess). A huge loss (32 points) to a sort-of rival in Collins may present a turning point in the season - depending on how the kids respond to it, they might bounce back and come out strong. Or they could go the other way. I have a feeling they might pull this out, playing at home.

So I'm seeing these 8 - who am I missing? (And there's some guesswork here - I'm just assuming these coaches were at these schools when they were in the 8th region.....) Carl Wenderoth (Grant County) Craynor Slone (Henry County) Bobby Barlow (Scott County) Bob Hoggard (Oldham County) Evan Settle (Shelbyville) Curtis Turley (Shelby County) Steve Wright (Walton Verona) Billy Hicks (Scott County)

I don't really understand the emphasis on head to head results. That's a data point, but a fairly unimportant one, more about team than individual. Google is telling me that Sheppard had scholarship offers from SEC, ACC, Big 10 and Pac 12 schools, and that Ipsaro had offers from Miami, Bellarmine, Cleveland State, Furman, Radford, Robert Morris, Stetson and Youngstown State. College potential is a different thing than high school performance, but I don't get the sense that's what this conversation is about - it's about 'who is better?". I've seen them both several times. Ipsara is really good. Sheppard is better than that. Just one opinion, of course.

Not too hard to believe, it’s a top 5 team in the state vs a .500 8th Region team. The way South Oldham wins a game like that - the only way - is to hit a bunch of 3s. South made 55% of its 3s vs Oldham. Tonight, they were 3 for 25. And what you get is what you got.

I don't think it's any more complicated than a new school opened and the talent base for the school was eroded. And often when this happens, it seems it's not as simple as half of the county now goes to a new school so you're losing half of what you might have had - rather, kids who are still districted to the old school want to be part of the new, so in the end you lose even more than what's expected. See Shelby County when Collins opened, North Hardin when John Hardin opened. I'm sure there are a bunch of others. Oldham County seems to have for the most part avoided this scenario, but I think that's because the new schools opened (South Oldham in '89, North Oldham in 2003) during a period of intense growth in the county, so the talent drain was offset by new folks moving in........

I'll be more careful then, cause that ain't cool. (And no, nothing personal at all, just repeating what I've heard - but as you say, that's a dangerous slope.)

All true. And the things in the first part of your post have caused issues with teammates. How big? Not sure. Max takes a ton of shots, and that includes some bad shots. You might look at that and say, well, he needs to be doing that on this particular team. And you might say, well, could they be better if he were a more constructive teammate and shared the ball more?

Regarding Dynes and whether he belongs on that list of best players in the 8th Region.....on one hand, I like the idea of not simply looking at points per game (which we all do to an extent, understandably), and acknowledging that you can impact the game in a big way doing other things besides scoring. And he definitely impacts the game. On the other hand, that said, I wouldn't rank him on that list, or at least not above Green and Roberts (I can't comment on Johnson, haven't seen him yet this year).

That’s hard to believe, honestly.

Pretty cool. I can’t find a listing by state. Just eyeballing rosters through the years, the last guy listed from a Kentucky high school was Chane Behanen from Bowling Green. That was in 2011 (Hobson was in 2008)….