Rainbows and buckets: Louisville boys basketball dazzles vs. Hoban, Nigro hits milestone

LOUISVILLE — Work-in-progress mode is in full effect for the Hoban boys basketball team thanks mainly to injuries and a shortened preseason.

For Louisville, life is much different, and that contrast played out in clear detail as the Leopards made their home debut Friday night.

Senior Hayden Nigro scored 31 points and surpassed 1,000 for his career, highlighting a dominant 79-51 win for Louisville in a matchup of Northeast Ohio heavyweights.

The Leopards scored 21 points or more in three quarters and shot a sizzling 59.3% from the floor in improving to 4-1.

Meanwhile, Hoban (1-2), the defending Division I state champion, lost its second game in four days after falling to Warren JFK on Tuesday. Kent State recruit Jonas Nichols led the Knights with 24 points and six rebounds.

"It's like a puzzle we haven't put together yet. It falls apart really fast," Hoban head coach TK Griffith said about his club, before turning his attention to the Leopards. "They have a cohesive group. Their puzzle is glued together and it's beautiful. It's a freaking wonderful-looking rainbow or something."

Indeed, there is an artistry to the Leopards, who mixed great ball movement, deadly shooting and a couple of highlight-reel plays to keep the big home crowd entertained.

Nigro added four rebounds and four assists while making an array of shots in going 14-of-20 from the floor. Junior point guard Beau Siegfried, displaying the typical smarts of a coach's son, totaled 17 points, eight assists and seven rebounds. Louisville made 10 of 21 3-pointers, led by Siegfried's 5-for-10 performance.

Both Nigro and Siegfried threw alley-oops to junior big man Brayden Gross, with Siegfried's offering being the off-the-backboard type that had the gym rocking late in the first half.

The 6-6 Gross finished with 12 points and 12 rebounds.

Nigro needed 19 points to reach 1,000 entering the night. He had 20 by halftime, at which point Louisville led 46-25.

"I knew I was a couple of points away, it was 19 or something (coming into the game)," said the 6-5 lefty. "But that wasn't my main focus. My main focus was just to win with my team and have a great game."

Nigro is the sixth Louisville player in the 1,000-point club, joining Will Aljancic, Chris Libertore, Drew Noble, Bob Gladieux and Jon Aljancic.

It was Will Aljancic, Louisville's all-time leading scorer, who led the Leopards the last two seasons with Nigro playing the role of talented sidekick.

Now Aljancic has moved on to the University of Findlay and Nigro is the man. Louisville head coach Tom Siegfried loves the way Nigro is handling it.

"You had Batman and Robin, and to be quite honest with you, it's hard going from Robin to Batman," Siegfried said with a laugh. "We've had that before in our program. But he's done a really good job of not necessarily needing to be that guy vocally. He's doing it through the way he plays. I think the rest of the guys see it. His effort defensively and in transition is out of this world, and I've never seen that from him before. He's found a new gear and he communicates well, and it's just nice to see it all pay off after all these years."

The big three of Nigro, Gross and Beau Siegfried certainly leads the way for Louisville. But the Leopards received nice contributions up and down the roster Friday, including 6-4 junior Tate Aljancic with seven points.

Keep in mind, Louisville is missing sixth man Kolton Loy because of injury. He hopes to return in January.

"I think the big thing I come back to tonight is just, 'Trust,'" Tom Siegfried said. "I really trust this team. Hoban had a 10-2 start and my assistants are asking, 'Do you want a timeout?' I just didn't feel like I needed one."

He was right.

The Leopards responded with a 15-0 run over the next 2:13.

After a Nichols 3-point play briefly stopped the bleeding, Louisville scored another eight straight in the final minute. That made it a 23-3 run overall to close the quarter.

Hoban made a little push in the third quarter thanks to Nichols and its pressure defense, cutting the deficit to 13 entering the final eight minutes.

But Nigro hit a short jumper and Aljancic got a put-back bucket to start the quarter. Hoban seemed to run out of gas and never threatened again.

"Normally, I would've gone into some kind of delay game, but the kids were like, 'No, we're fine. We'll take good shots,'" Siegfried said. "And they took a lot of good shots."

Senior Joey Hardman added 12 points on four 3-pointers for Hoban, which was playing the first of five games in eight days.

Sam Greer, Hoban's massive sophomore center, is playing through injury and scored four points Friday. Junior guard Kenny Scott, a transfer from GlenOak, is out with a wrist injury.

The health problems mixed with a lack of practice time because of the Hoban football team's run to the state final has the Knights trying to gain some traction on the fly.

"This is coaching," Griffith said with a shrug. "You have to figure stuff out."

Louisville heads to Florida next week for the KSA Pre-Holiday Tournament, starting Wednesday.

Siegfried is happy with the Leopards' start, but he doesn't want this to be the peak of the season.

"I think we're in a really good place," he said. "This is December. We want to be there in February."

Reach Josh at josh.weir@cantonrep.com 

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This article originally appeared on The Repository: Ohio boys high school basketball: Louisville vs. Akron Hoban, OHSAA