Highlands destroys 3-point record en route to first Boys’ Sweet 16 title
A season unlike any other ended unlike any other: with Bluebirds nesting in the throne.
Highlands High School defeated Elizabethtown 79-60 to win the 2021 KHSAA Boys’ Sweet 16 presented by UK Healthcare Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine.
It gave Highlands, one of Kentucky’s winningest football programs and the owner of 23 championships in that sport, its first title on the hardwood.
BOX SCORE: Highlands 79, Elizabethtown 60
Complete bracket for the 2021 KHSAA Boys’ Sweet 16
Sam Vinson, who has signed with Northern Kentucky University, finished with 20 points, eight rebounds, four assists and three blocks in the finals, locking up Sweet 16 MVP honors. He averaged 23.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 2.5 blocks over the tournament’s four games.
Highlands missed its first four shots but found a rhythm after Elizabethtown’s Camden Williams put the Panthers on the board first. Vinson, a Mr. Basketball finalist, answered with a jumper, Oliver Harris hit a layup and Luke Muller knocked down a triple — all in about a minute — to build a 7-2 lead for the Bluebirds. It swelled to 19-8 before a 5-0 run by the Panthers got them within six; Highlands scored the final four points of the period to lead 23-13.
The Bluebirds scored 11 of their first-quarter points off six E-town turnovers. The Panthers turned it over just once in the second, and stayed within earshot through most of the period — a couple of layups by Kam Sherrard cut Highlands’ lead to 38-26 with 1:27 to play in the half — but a flurry of three-pointers ballooned Highlands’ lead to 47-26 in a blink before the horn sounded, and it buried the Panthers for good.
Highlands in that span also obliterated the record for made three-pointers by any team at the state tournament. The previous mark of 33, set by Louisville Trinity during its state-title run in 2012, fell on a Muller make with 1:47 to play in the second quarter; the Bluebirds added Nos. 34-37 before the half ended and finished the game with 10, their third time in four games ending with double-digit treys on the Rupp Arena floor.
Will Herald led the blistering effort from long distance. After scoring 17 points through Highlands’ first three games, he had that many against Elizabethtown after going 5-for-12 from the beyond the arc.
Highlands became the third current 9th Region school to win a state championship. Simon Kenton, now a member of the 8th Region, won its only championship in 1981 as a member of the 9th Region, and Lexington High School (now known as Henry Clay) was a 9th Region member when it won its first of six total championships in 1922.
No 9th Region school had won a boys’ basketball championship since Simon Kenton until Holmes did so in 2009. Covington Catholic won its first title in 2014 and followed with another in 2018.
All-tournament team
Jerone Morton, Clark County; Jacobi Huddleston, Bowling Green; Luke Sheperson, Boyle County; Noah Dumas, McCracken County; Chaunte Marrero and Maker Bar, Ballard; Cole Villers and Colin Porter, Ashland Blazer; Alandre Murphy, Kam Sherrard and Jaquais Franklin, Elizabethtown; Zachary Barth, Luke Muller and Sam Vinson (MVP), Highlands.
Highlights
This story was originally published April 3, 2021 at 9:31 PM.
