Mojocat

What is an ABA coach?

Interesting. I won’t ask you to name that assistant, will see if I can figure it out! Thx.

Are those Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots?

Good questions, don’t know the answers. Honestly, until you just reminded me of how long it’s been since Ballard won the title (1999?) I had forgotten. My “perception” that Ballard and Male are the two basketball powers and best coaching jobs in the 7th Region, and the presumption that by extension that makes them two of the best in the state, no doubt has some Louisville bias - as I sit here in the Louisville suburbs. Would someone in, say, the 13th or 3rd Region have that view? Maybe not, I don’t know. I do have to say, when it’s going on 50 years (Male) and 25 years (Ballard) since they’ve won titles, you have to wonder just how powerful those programs are….

Well, according to the coach I was talking to, it’s Oldham County.

Mildly surprising I guess. Just read yesterday that Male hasn’t won a state title since 1975, which is pretty hard to believe. Was talking to a Louisville high school coach yesterday, he said the Ballard job is the best job in the 7th region (which makes it probably the best job in the state). I tend to think of Ballard and Male as 1 and 1A, but I guess that’s not the common perception - there’s more distance than that between the two in terms of pecking order. Eastern is a mystery - it’s in some ways a mirror of Ballard, but for whatever reason isn’t in the same stratosphere. The coach’s point was it’s ironic the best job in the 7th Region and the best job in the 8th Region are open at the same time.

I wonder if he was asked to leave or simply wanted to move on. After the way the season ended, I thought he might be let go.

Yep, he does look young. Played at UofL from 2014-2017, looks like he'll be 28 this year.....Which of course means he doesn't just look young, he is young!

I thought it was a county by county decision. And that Oldham County voted against it. Or maybe I'm thinking of something else related to Covid.......

Just noticed that the guy who covers High School Basketball for KSR ranked the teams in the Sweet 16, and North Oldham and Muhlenberg County were 15th and 16th, respectively. So it should be close. As I've said before, North Oldham seems to have turned a corner of sorts, and is now playing much better than they did for most of the season, and more in line with expectations coming into the year. Of course, that's a viewpoint biased towards the 8th Region - for all I know Muhlenberg is also playing really well right now......

Yes, that's him - Ryan Davidson. After their 8th grade season (I think?), Sheppard, Davidson, Kaleb Glenn and Dallas Roberts played for the same AAU team that my son played for (he was a grade younger, so I only saw the older team occasionally). I knew they were good, but it's interesting to see just how celebrated Glenn and Sheppard are now, especially. They have all changed physically, of course - but Glenn and Davidson are really different now. I think Glenn simply matured. He was kind of lanky at the time, but now - upper body at least - looks like he could be an H back. Davidson, I read a newspaper account sometime in the last few months which quoted him as saying his physical transformation was very intentional. That team didn't have much size, and so he set about to change his body and get bigger. Mission accomplished, I'd say.....

After seeing him twice, Sheppard is deceptively good. An odd thing to say probably about a kid that is top 25 or top 50 in the country I know. People are enamored with the highlight reel stuff, dunks and threes. I was amazed at his ability to control a game. All little things that won’t show in the box score. His team honestly, outside of himself and perhaps his cousin, just isn’t very talented and really doesn’t have much right to play evenly with the best teams. But they do, and it’s not because he personally goes 1 on 5 to keep them in it. He orchestrates is the way I’d say it. The point to all that blathering is I agree with the above post, North Laurel is a team that can go further than maybe they ought to. So GRC and Male would be my top 2. Would include Covington Catholic and North Laurel in a next tier. Ashland would also be in the group, but I wonder if they are so beat up I wonder if we’re seeing the real version of that team.

I have thought CAL to the 29th makes the most obvious sense. South Oldham is closer to CAL than it is to North Oldham. And CAL’s middle school team is in the same conference as the Oldham and Shelby schools (unless that’s changed recently). The 29th is a pretty tough district - but you’d have to assume CAL would prefer the 8th to battling with Male and Ballard every year….,

No, sorry - I meant the dad was the number 1 rated high school player in the country back in the 90s (if that’s true, even). I understand Jasper is supposedly the best freshman in the state, but that’s really hard for me to believe based on what I saw in the 8th Region final (which was a poor game for WC for sure and likely not a game to make a judgment)….

Not good - thx

My sense is Ballard is probably by consensus view the best job in the state. Certainly towards the top if not #1. By that standard Renner has perhaps underachieved, if even a little. This year maybe is a microcosm: I think most people would say, top to bottom, Ballard has more talent than Male, yet Male is 3-0 against them. If all of that is true, it would argue against staying in-house. You stay in-house and take a chance on a (presumably) unproven assistant if you’ve been wildly successful. If not, would seem to argue for going outside…..

Hate to hear that - didn’t Will miss a lot of last year with injuries, too? And how tall did he end up?

Saw Ashland for the first time in the King of the Bluegrass back in December. Really impressed with them. Don’t remember who they were playing - maybe Male - but I recall them being undersized, with their bigs being maybe 6’2. Now, being small isn’t necessarily an impediment on the offensive end, especially in high school. If you shoot well and/or are well coached - being short isn’t a big problem. But on defense, most undersized teams are pretty helpless when facing size. It was on that end that Ashland made an impression. Just smart, tough, did the little things a well coached team does. Villers looked to be dragging that leg, I do remember that. So I wouldn’t bet against them. (But, like someone said above, I wonder if the loser of a game between two good, pretty evenly matched teams might have an advantage in a rematch.)

Names I’ve heard (which means very little, trust me) are Willis and Josh Leslie from Seneca, with Gaither the dark horse.

Was easy to understand from Trimble County’s perspective. I’ve wondered about this, so I just looked: from 2003, when North Oldham opened, until 2020, when Trimble moved out of the 29th District, it was 3-65 vs the 3 Oldham schools. Oddly, it beat each of them one time. But the move has kind of made a mess, lot of imbalance in the Region. Fully support the idea of realignment, just not sure how you’d do that and get even a majority to agree….

Ah, could be - half of what you see and none of what you hear, etc. heh. Only recently heard that Woodford County’s head coach is Jaron Brown - a name that felt familiar. Turns out he is the guy from Lexington who played a big role at Pittsburgh (probably late Ben Howland or early Jamie Dixon) about 20 years ago. Tough, gritty, started over 100 games and scored over 1200 points. He had a little bit of a bad night vs North Oldham. On one hand, North couldn’t miss in the first half, was up 45-19 at intermission, and unless North just melted down the game was likely over at that point. So, not much blame to assess. But, as I said in the game thread, it was hard to watch a team 12-15 points behind in the 4th quarter content to play defense and let the other team milk the clock for 30 or 45 seconds each possession before attempting a shot. Foul, put them at the line, so something - as it was, that was just waiving a white towel. On offense too they were pretty deliberate, no sense of urgency anywhere. Probably not used to playing from 25 down……

My kid’s team played two of the four, and at the time we played them, J-town was quite a bit better than North Oldham. But North seems to have turned a corner of late, and is finally looking like what many expected the whole season. Don’t know much about the other 2 teams (although Will Bishop of Lincoln County was on our AAU team for a while)……

Someone told me that Jasper Johnson, the Woodford freshman, is the son of Dennis Johnson, former defensive end at UK (and if I recall right, maybe the number 1 rated high school player in the country his senior year?). Suffice to say, Jasper isn’t built like a defensive end!

I thought Will Bishop transferred Rockcastle County?

Don’t understand Woodford’s strategy here. They’re down 13, not 2. You can’t let North run 30 or 45 seconds off the clock then hope to rebound.