Breathitt County community needed basketball team’s return to Rupp Arena

Breathitt County players battled flooding last summer and the death of their coach in December but still won the 14th Region. (Twitter Photo)

Martin County coach Jason Hale is not sure how Breathitt County coach Kyle Moore could have done a better job than what he did this season.

Breathitt (18-9) plays Male this morning in the state tournament after winning the 14th Region championship.

Moore is also Breathitt’s head football coach who led that team to a 9-3 mark this season. He was a former 10,000-yard passer himself at Breathitt in high school.

He stepped in to coach the basketball team after the death of first-year coach BB King in December that followed the historic flooding last summering eastern Kentucky,

“Coach Moore just did a tremendous job for the situation he was put in,” Hale said. “I knew they had talent. A lot of those kids played football and that slowed their progress some too. I knew once they played together that they were the most talented team in the 14th.”

Breathitt will be making its first state appearance since 1996 when Roscoe Denney was the head coach.

“This is something we really  needed,”  Moore admitted. “We have had some rough battles the last eight months. The flooding devastated our community. It was hard on the county, hard on the community. We had a lot of help from outside Breathitt County.

“We had also got flooded 18 months before that. As a community we still are not back where we were. Our kids have really been a rock for our community with football and basketball.”

The football team went 9-3 and Moore said players would come to practice covered with mud from helping clean up after the flood. They were thankful for just having a football season.

“Now we have won the 14th Region. It is kind of surreal,” Moore said. “I have been around the game of basketball a pretty good while. I knew we had the talent to do it. It was just getting guys to play for one goal and they did it.

“Losing coach King and then doing this was a great testament to our kids. I feel fortunate just to be a part of it. We are so happy to be there (at the state). We would play at 6 o’clock in the morning if we had, too.”

Austin Sperry averages 18 points and 6.1 rebounds per game to lead Breathitt and Christian Collins adds 14.6 points and a team-high 9.4 rebounds. Luke Bellamy has a team-high 44 3-pointers and averages 9.3 points per game.