North Oldham outlasts Muhlenberg County in Sweet 16 with clutch plays late
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2022 Boys’ Sweet 16 coverage
Click below to read all of the coverage from Kentucky.com and the Lexington Herald-Leader during the Boys’ Sweet 16 State Basketball Tournament in Rupp Arena.
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In a game played at the pace Muhlenberg County wanted, North Oldham got the defensive stops and clutch baskets at the end to grind out a 36-32 victory in the first round of the UK Healthcare Boys’ Sweet 16 at Rupp Arena on Wednesday afternoon.
As Muhlenberg looked to tie the game in the closing seconds, North Oldham 6-foot-7 junior Luke Anderson swooped in from off the ball to get his fingertips to the driving shot of Muhlenberg’s Trey Lovell, causing it to hit the rim short and fall into the hands of teammate Ian Higdon. North Oldham called timeout with the lead and eight seconds left.
“Yeah, it was big,” said Anderson, who was credited with seven blocks in the game and had three in the fourth quarter. “I did get my hand on the ball. Ian came in and got the rebound and that was pretty much the game.”
North Oldham’s Grant Neal got fouled and made the clinching free throws to set the final score. Muhlenberg County led 26-22 at the end of the third quarter, but got outscored 14-6 over the final period.
North Oldham (19-12) averages 61 points per game and had scored 45 in one half of their region championship game.
“It was a very, obviously, slow-paced game,” North Oldham Coach David Levitch said. “It wasn’t pretty to watch or coach in but at the end of the day we got it done. We only allowed 10 points in the second half, and I thought we really got good stops when it mattered.”
North Oldham made a number of big plays in the fourth quarter on offense and defense. With the game tied 26-26, Ian Higdon, who typically averages 12.6 points per game, got his first basket and a foul shot to put his team up 29-26 early in the fourth quarter. North Oldham had only scored two points in the entire third quarter, falling behind 26-22.
“Our game plan the whole time was just to throw the ball inside, because we had a massive size advantage,” Levitch said.
That plan was thwarted by North Oldham making only 34.9 percent of its shots from the field.
Neither team made it to the free throw line much, either. There were a total of seven foul shots taken between the two teams.
One of Muhlenberg’s free throws came after a Donovan McCoy layup and foul put his team up 32-31 with 1:28 left in the game.
But North Oldham’s inside focus in the fourth quarter paid off by getting Muhlenberg to switch to a zone defense late, opening the door for Jack Scales’ three-pointer that put North Oldham ahead 34-32 to answer McCoy’s bucket a few seconds earlier. Scales also averages better than 12 points per game, and that was also his first make of the contest on six attempts.
“He’s a phenomenal shooter — I mean, all year he’s been killing it from the three-point line,” North Oldham’s Dallas Roberts said. “Even if his shots aren’t falling, we’ve still got faith in him.”
Muhlenberg milked nearly a minute off the clock before Lovell’s shot was rejected by Anderson.
Anderson led North Oldham with 12 points and 11 rebounds. Roberts added 10.
Muhlenberg County’s McCoy and Cole Vincent scored nine and eight points, respectively.
“I thought we did a really good job today establishing the tempo that we wanted,” said Muhlenberg County Coach Kyle Eades, who had his Mustangs (18-12) back in Rupp Arena for a second year in a row. “We made it a half-court game. We knew that we were going to have to be really good defensively. … I’m very proud of how our team competed in the game, and, you know, we just came up a couple of possessions short there at the end.”
Good crowds for first session
Both games in Wednesday’s first session had sizable crowds for each team with the full-session attendance counted at 10,065. That is just under 800 shy of the pre-pandemic attendance for the same session set in 2019.
There are no COVID-19 restrictions on attendance this year. Last year’s first two games drew a total of 4,067 fans for both games under restrictions.
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 5:21 PM.
