Lyon County junior Travis Perry is already the second all-time leading scorer in Kentucky. He will play against UK signee Reed Sheppard on Saturday in Lexington. (Les Nicholson Photo)
When it was first announced that Lyon County and star junior guard Travis Perry would face North Laurel and Kentucky signee Reed Sheppard would match up on Jan. 7 at Lexington Catholic, it created a huge statewide buzz.
This seems like a huge opportunity for Lyon, which won the school’s 2nd Region championship in 71 years last season. However, the Lyons have already faced a high-level schedule.
Lyon (12-4) has lost to North Oldham, Mason County, Lexington Catholic, and Great Crossing. It avenged the loss to Mason in the White, Greer & Maggard Holiday Classic at Lexington Catholic where it also beat Covington Holy Cross and Ballard.
“It’s not that we scheduled differently but it turned out we played against better teams in the King of Bluegrass and at Lexington Catholic,” Perry said. “I think we have played seven or eight of the top 20 teams in the state, which is not normally what Lyon does.
“But Saturday is still a big game. We are driving 3 1/2 hours for one game. I think we will have a great crowd. We have played a lot of good teams and lost some games, but we will be ready for this game and it should be a great crowd because this game will be fun to watch. North Laurel likes to play fast like we do. It’s going to be fun basketball to watch.”
Perry is averaging 30 points per game and shooting 50.4 percent overall from the field, including 45.6 percent (73 of 160) from 3-point range, and 90.3 percent (65 of 72) at the foul line. He’s even pulling off 6.6 rebounds per game. Perry has college scholarship offers from Michigan, Ole Miss, Purdue, Cincinnati, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Bradley, Creighton, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, New Orleans, Ohio State, Stanford, and Wake Forest.
Junior teammate Brady Shoulders is averaging 19.2 points and 11. rebounds per game while Jack Reddick, another junior, is averaging 18.3 points per game and has made 39 3’s.
North Laurel (8-6) is coming off losses to North Oldham and Ballard in the Holiday Classic at Lexington Catholic and has also lost to three out-of-state teams. Sheppard is averaging 24 points and 9.2 rebounds per game while shooting 45 percent overall and 33 percent (33 of 99) from 3-point range.
North Laurel has been slowed by injuries to Ryan Davidson — 17.7 points per game — and Gavin Chadwell — 15.7 points per game.
“Nobody wants to go to a game where you have 35 or 40 or even 50 points scored. You want to watch scoring and good passing like this game will have,” Perry said.
“I know our team has been better than some people expected. We lost a lot of seniors off last year’s team but we’ve had a lot of guys step up at big times this year. We start three juniors with two freshmen and the freshmen have had to do more and play a tougher schedule than normal for freshmen. But our goal remains the same and that is to win the region again. Playing a game like this (against North Laurel) helps get us ready for that.”
Perry has scored 3,669 career points — second only to Wayland’s Kelly “King” Coleman who scored 4,337 from 1953-56. No other Kentucky high school basketball player had scored over 3,647 until Perry passed that mark in his previous game. He now needs 669 points to move ahead of Coleman and has two more months this season and his entire senior year to do that.
“I have not looked at the point total forever. I see it pop up on my Twitter feed and I appreciate all the kind words and how people keep up with it,” Perry said. “I don’t get caught up in the points. I am going out to win games. If I get 50 and we win, fine. If I get 5 and we win, even better. It’s about winning, not my points.”
