Great Crossing cruises in Boys’ Sweet 16 opener as Kentucky signee grabs double-double
Behind Kentucky signee Malachi Moreno’s 21 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and four blocks, No. 2 Great Crossing overwhelmed Daviess County for a 69-37 first-round win Thursday in the 2025 UK Healthcare Boys’ Basketball Sweet 16 at Rupp Arena.
Losers in last season’s state tournament semifinals and observers of Wednesday’s upset of No. 1 St. Xavier to Jeffersontown, Great Crossing executed its game plan and got Job 1 done.
“Last year we came out and we lost. So, I think this year we knew what we were coming for,” said Moreno, the recently crowned Mr. Kentucky Basketball who had a double-double by halftime with 11 points and 11 rebounds against the 3rd Region champs. “And I think just having that second go around, I think it kind of took away a lot of the pressure.”
The Warhawks piled pressure onto Daviess County after allowing senior point guard Jaxon Brown to score eight points in the first half. He scored two the rest of the way and was the only Panther in double figures. Daviess County leading scorer Jonathan Moss was held to eight points, 11 below his average. Second-leading scorer DeAaron Watkins had six, all in the second half.
“I thought we did a tremendous job defensively. I thought our defense was smothering,” Great Crossing coach Steve Page said. “(We) did a good job switching and making things hard on Moss and we did a phenomenal job on Watkins throughout the game.”
Great Crossing outscored Daviess 15-8 in the first period and 19-7 in the second for a 34-15 halftime lead. Then, the Warhawks opened the third on an 11-0 run that included a pair of Vince “Trey” Dawson III 3-pointers and two Moreno dunks that helped balloon the lead to 46-15 barely three minutes into the second half.
“We’ve seen what they’ve done all year, and they came out and were really good,” Daviess County coach Neil Hayden said. “I thought their length bothered us. We never really got in the flow in the first half.”
However, Daviess County (25-7) responded to Great Crossing’s second-half run with a 14-2 spurt of its own by extending a trap defense upcourt and forcing five turnovers in quick succession. The Panthers trimmed their deficit to 48-29 on a Watkins 3-pointer with 49 seconds to go in the third.
“We were really, really passive during that stretch. We were catching the ball and inviting the trap,” Page said. “We’re not concerned, per se. They know how to (break a trap). It’s a mindset. They’ve got to be a little stronger with the basketball, move for each other and when we pass out of that first trap, we’ve got to attack.”
Great Crossing (32-4) steadied itself in the fourth with Gage Richardson nailing back-to-back 3-pointers to extend the lead to 56-32 two minutes into the final frame. Dawson finished with 16 points. Richardson had 13.
With three wins still needed to claim the state crown, Page dismissed any thought that No. 1 St. X’s loss on Wednesday had an impact on his team. The Tigers and Warhawks were thought by media observers to be the favorites to reach Saturday’s finals. St. X was the only Kentucky team to beat the Warhawks this season.
“We were a long way away from worrying about St. X and whether we were going to be there or they were going to be there,” Page said. “I told everybody for the last two weeks, I don’t care who’s there Saturday night, as long as we are.”
