With the injury bug rearing its ugly head, the Grayson County Cougar basketball team continued summer play on Monday afternoon at Ohio County High School.
The Cougars entered the day without multiple players due to injury and saw two more go down early in the first game, forcing them to go much deeper to the bench.
Behind an excellent shooting performance from rising senior Jagger Mardis, they took down Ohio County 63-59 in the first game of the day before dropping a contest to Muhlenberg County.
Ohio County
Like many of the Cougar games this month, it was a back-and-forth affair.
Jagger Mardis stole the show offensively by scoring a game-high 34 points to go along with six boards, but it was Kyle Higdon who made multiple huge plays, including pulling a rebound that was his 10th of the game.
With the Cougars up one and 30 seconds left, Higdon rebounded a missed free throw by the Eagles before being fouled on his own.
In summer games, to keep the game moving, one free throw counts as two points, so he was sent to the line with a chance to ice the game. The rest of the team dropped back on defense, which would have guaranteed that Ohio County would have gotten the rebound on a miss.
Or so you would think.
Higdon’s free throw rimmed out, and he went diving towards his missed shot, grabbing it before jumping into the air and flinging it off an Eagle player. The Cougars would keep the ball with the one-point advantage and 14.8 seconds left.
An illegal screen was called on the Cougar inbound pass, giving the Eagles a chance to win, but Mardis would steal the ball in the backcourt for a run-out layup to give the Cougars a 63-59 victory.
Muhlenberg County
It doesn’t matter if it is sports, work, or life; there are some days when the odds are stacked against you, and it plays out that way.
That is the epitome of how the second game against the Mustangs went.
The Cougars had only three players available who had any real varsity experience, and one of those was Mardis, who has only been wearing Cougar orange for less than a month.
To compound that, the Mustangs lit up the three-point line en route to hitting well over double-digit trays.
Muhlenberg County would go on to win in a rout, 85-60.
The Cougars will close the summer portion of the schedule on Friday and Saturday in the KABC Summer Shootout in Lexington.
Friday, they will play Marion County and Rockcastle County before returning on Saturday against state quarterfinalist Jeffersontown and Indian Hill (OH).
By Sam Gormley, Play-By-Play Announcer/Local Sports
Reach Sam at sam@k105.com
