Thanks to the winter storm impacting the region, the Lyon County Lyons get a week to get ready for their All A Classic semifinal game against Newport, instead of what would have been less than 24 hours.
With the Lyons win over Raceland Friday night, Lyon County and Newport will tipoff Sunday, February 1, at 12:30pm in the second boyd semifinal game at the Owensboro. After never having played up to 2023, the Lyons and the Wildcats will be playing for the third time in three years.
The first meeting between the two teams came in the opening round of the 2023 Boys Sweet 16 at Rupp Arena. That season, the Lyons were making their second of three consecutive trips to the state tournament. That day, on the day Travis Perry became the state’s all-time leading scorer, Lyon County advanced to the state tournament quarterfinals for the second year in a row with a 61-46 win over Newport.
Lyon County took control of the game in that Sweet 16 matchup with a 13-0 run over the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half. Current Lyon Bray Kirk scored 5 points in the game. Carson and Cooper Collins saw limited action in the contest.
The Wildcats would get their measure of revenge in January 2024 in the Corbin Arena. After watching Lyon County battle back from a six-point deficit in the final four minutes of the game, Newport’s Deshaun Jackson’s hit a floater in the lane over the extended arms of Bray Kirk with 2.6 seconds left in the game to give the Wildcats a 50-48 win in the semifinals of the tournament. Of course, that was the Lyon County team that would ultimately go on to win the KHSAA state championship.
Bray Kirk scored 8 points in that game and Carson Collins added two.
Lyon County currently stands at 15-5 and is on a 9-game winning streak.
Newport is 13-4 and the Wildcats have won six in a row.
Both teams have games on the schedule this week, but with the winter storm and its aftermath, whether or not those games get played is very much up in the air.
Lyon County is currently in the Top 25 in scoring, averaging 73.5 points per game. Newport is the 13th best team defensively in the state, giving up just 49.1 points per game. Those numbers are very similar to the differences in styles between the two teams in the two previous meetings.
However, Lyon County is giving up just 51.6 points per game, which means the Lyons have a scoring differential of 21.9 points per game which is the 6th best in the state.
The winner of the Lyon County-Newport game will play the winner of the game between Caverna and Walton-Verona that same afternoon at 4:30.
