Boys’ Sweet 16: Great Crossing creates new legacy alongside storied Scott County basketball
Great Crossing coach Steve Page couldn’t help himself when junior guard Vince “Tre” Dawson III nailed his dramatic, buzzer-beating 3-pointer to defeat Lexington Catholic 56-53 in the 11th Region Tournament championship game last week.
As the sold-out crowd erupted and students streamed onto the floor, Page took two big steps and a celebratory hop onto the court as well.
“Honestly, it took me five minutes to even realize how it happened. I don’t want to be that coach that goes running on the floor and I was that coach that goes running on the floor — because you can’t believe that that shot happened,” Page said in the wake of Great Crossing’s first basketball region crown last Tuesday. “I mean, we went from 53-50 down and in the blink of an eye we’re celebrating a region title.”
Page and his players’ journey to this week’s UK HealthCare Boys’ Sweet 16 might also seem like it has passed in the blink of an eye.
It’s taken only five years for Georgetown’s newest boys’ basketball program to peek out of the shadow of neighboring Scott County High School, which has won two state championships and 18 region titles over its storied history.
A bustling community fostered by a thriving Toyota plant, Scott County simply could not contain its youth in a single high school any longer.
So, in 2019 its school board split the Cardinals’ red, blue and white nest and ushered in the Kelly green and navy Warhawks at a sparkling new high school and athletics complex off the bypass west of town.
Great Crossing looked to a longtime middle school coach to lead its new school’s boys basketball program. That past season, the coach’s sixth-grade team went 32-5 with four of the players who have become part of what they’ve built today.
One of them has grown more than a foot since then.
Becoming Great Crossing
Starting lineup introductions at Great Crossing pay tribute to the community’s middle schools as the players are announced … “a 7-foot-1 center from Scott County Middle School — Malachi Moreno.”
One player on the Warhawks’ roster, LJ Holman, moved to Georgetown before his freshman year, but the rest of their players grew up in the community, Page notes. “That means a whole heck of a lot to me, because you don’t see that anymore.”
On Monday and Tuesday, the team was scheduled to barnstorm their middle and elementary feeder schools with pep rallies to celebrate their trip to the state tournament.
In the first few years of Great Crossing’s existence, any of Scott County’s high school students could pick which school they wanted to attend. Many of the older ones stayed at Scott County High and the Cardinals won the 11th Region boys basketball tournament the first year of the split in 2019-2020.
But many younger students, like the core of today’s Great Crossing team, current juniors Moreno, Dawson, Junius Burrell, Gage Richardson and Christian Martin and seniors Jeremiah Godfrey and Jaylen Warren, opted for the new school. Dawson, Burrell, Godfrey and Warren came out of Georgetown Middle School. Even so, they became friends with some of the Scott County Middle players.
“We all talked. It really wasn’t that hard of a decision,” Dawson said of choosing Great Crossing. His father, Vince Jr., is a Page assistant. “This is where all my brothers went. So this is where we all ended up.”
Moreno, who has become one of the nation’s most highly recruited centers, had another consideration. His older brother, Michael Moreno, helped lead Scott County to three of its four straight 11th Region titles and back-to-back state finals appearances a few years earlier as one of the top players in the state.
“It was hard, but at the same time it was easy,” Moreno said. “I knew I wanted to go create my own legacy at Great Crossing while my brother had his own legacy at Scott County.”
Choosing the right coach
Great Crossing is Steve Page’s first high school head coaching job after several years as a middle school coach and a couple of seasons as an assistant coach at Frankfort.
Great Crossing athletic director Austin Haywood acknowledged that hiring Page as the school’s first coach might have seemed like a risk.
“It always made sense for us to make him our hire at that point. When you think back to that process, we had promoted a number of people from within the district,” Haywood said. “We were trying to figure out our own identity there. Scott County’s brand of basketball was so big, and (Page) kind of brought his own flavor with that.”
Page impressed the hiring committee with his basketball knowledge, Haywood said, and it helped that Page had coached a number of the players who would be coming up.
“His basketball IQ when it came to situational basketball was off the charts,” Haywood said. “That was the one thing that really stuck out to us in the interview process.”
The early seasons were rough, however. The Warhawks went 14-17 the first year and 11-12 in the COVID-plagued second year, getting knocked out early in the 41st District Tournament each time.
Then, with Moreno and his teammates emerging as the core of a young and promising team, Great Crossing won back-to-back district championships only to be knocked out of the region semifinals the next week.
As this season wore on and the Warhawks continued to go unbeaten inside the state, Page admitted he felt the pressure of sky-high expectations “every day.”
“Yeah, there was a lot of pressure to get those kids to take the next step,” Page said. “But our mindset all year was so good and so much better than previous years, I’m not surprised we accomplished it. … As we kept winning games, every day we came back to practice the next day and worked harder than we did before.”
Dawson’s shot to get Great Crossing to 34-1 and Rupp Arena owed a little to Page’s basketball IQ, as well. He could have called timeout when Moreno rebounded the ball with less than 10 seconds left. With the game tied, he could afford to trust his players.
“I hate to call a timeout in that situation, especially when you have (Lexington Catholic) trying to run back,” Page said. “We had Malachi with the ball … when he got it into Tre’s hands, I’ll be honest with you, I was not a bit surprised when it went in.”
A community divided and united
The new school has nearly doubled the number of students participating in sports activities from 1,026 in the last year of having one school to 920 at Great Crossing and 801 at Scott County, now, according to the district.
Great Crossing has won back-to-back wrestling region championships and claimed region titles in both softball and volleyball over the past few years. Meanwhile, Scott County football has remained one of the state’s best in Class 5A and its softball and volleyball teams have won district crowns.
For many in Scott County, however, the new school will always be an unwanted rival for attention, athletes and students. There will be some who cry Scott County “Red Heat” forever no matter the success of any team, even a basketball team.
“There are certainly some people who rooted against the new school,” said Georgetown News-Graphic sports editor Kal Oakes, who covers both schools with equal enthusiasm. “But others knew and coached these kids growing up and seem happy for their success.”
This fall, there will be a brand new Scott County High School opening on the north side of the bypass to replace the old one. How that affects the rivalry is uncertain as is any KHSAA move to put the schools in the same sports districts, which could be considered in the next few years.
“The schools being in different districts has been a factor. It feels like the rivalry is not as intense as it otherwise could be,” Oakes said. “Is there love lost? No. But some other schools are actually bigger or at least more meaningful rivals.”
It’s those bigger rivals that really unite the Cardinals and the Warhawks, according to Oakes.
“I saw and heard many more sincere congratulations from Scott County people after (Great Crossing) beat Catholic than anything else they had done in five years,” Oakes said.
Wednesday
Boys’ Sweet 16 at Rupp Arena
8:30 p.m.: Spencer County (25-9) vs. Great Crossing (34-1)
Tickets: KHSAAtickets.org
Livestream: KHSAA.tv (subscription required)
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