Lyon County’s opening win Thursday at the UK Healthcare Boys’ Basketball Sweet 16 was the team’s 17th straight and upped its season slate to 31-5.
Their last loss came at the worst time – a 74-64 setback to University Heights Academy in the first round of the All A Classic region tournament.
Perry said several lessons were learned from that loss to their All A region rival.
“That was a little bit of a scheduling snafu on my part and I think I probably learned my lesson this year,” he said.
Lyon County was coming off a game with UK-bound Reed Sheppard and North Laurel in Lexington three days prior which followed a win over Livingston Central the previous night.
“There was a lot of hype around that (North Laurel) ball game and we were fortunate enough to go up there and play well and win that game. I think our guys came back home and we quite honestly had a little bit of a letdown,” Perry said.
Lyon County shot just 31-percent from the field and hit three of 21 attempts behind the 3-point arc as the Blazers’ press bothered the usually unflappable Lyon offense.
“That was the most important game that we should have got up for, and we didn’t get up for the game that night. We got up for the game the previous Saturday night against North Laurel, and so that was on me. But that loss really hurt these guys,” Perry said.
Perry had led Lyon County to a pair of All A region titles with both ending in first-round losses at the state tournament in Richmond. This year was supposed to be different.
But UHA, playing on its home floor, shot 47-percent from the floor and was 10-of-12 from the charity stripe in notching the near wire-to-wire win.
“Many of the players on this team have that goal. They want to win an All A state championship,” he said. “They felt like we had a really good shot of doing it this year, and that performance we put on wasn’t great, but University Heights whipped us in every aspect of that game. They deserved to win that basketball game. They were the better team that night, but it hurt our guys.”
Perry said the loss also got the attention of the coaching staff.
Lyon County rolled through the remainder of the regular season and marched through the postseason with an average margin of victory of 29 points which included a 109-point performance against Hopkins County Central in the first round of the region tournament.
Ironically, Thursday’s Sweet 16 first-round game won by Lyon County over Newport 61-46 pitted a pair of teams who failed to make it out of their All A regions. Newport lost to Covington Holy Cross 74-72 in the 9th Region All A championship.
