Winning basketball games nothing new to group of North seniors

When Columbus North fought from nine points down in the final 5 1/2 minutes to pull out a win against Columbus East in Friday’s sectional semifinals, it wasn’t the first time this group of Bull Dog seniors had done it.

From the time coach Paul Ferguson came to Columbus in 2015 and began coaching this group in the Columbus Revolution program, he’s seen the group fight and claw their way to plenty of victories.

“We always played a year up, maybe even two years up, but we were always super competitive because we were the young guys going out there and playing against older kids,” guard Tyler Blythe said. “So we always wanted to win, and I think that’s kind of stuck with us ever since. Now that we’re all seniors and actually going for a title, I think it’s transitioned.”

The Bull Dogs beat Whiteland on Saturday to capture their first sectional title since 2013. Columbus North now will shoot for its first regional crown since 1993 when it plays Bloomington North at 7 p.m. Saturday at Seymour.

The Columbus North seniors celebrate winning the sectional on Saturday at North. Pictured are, from left, Tyler Blythe, Luke Harmon, Damon Edwards, Cooper Horn, Zac Horn and Ty Ferguson.

Submitted photo

All five starters for the Bull Dogs are seniors — guards Cooper Horn, Luke Harmon, Ty Ferguson and Blythe and forward Damon Edwards. The sixth senior, Zac Horn (Cooper’s cousin), comes off the bench.

“We’ve just been playing together for so long that everyone here would do anything for each other just because we’ve been through every situation you can think of, from being blown out by 40 to beating teams by 40 to, like Tyler said, playing teams two years older than us,” Cooper Horn said. “We’ve been together, we’ve practiced I don’t know how many hours together. It’s just that bond that we have that not anybody is going to let another brother go down without giving a fight.”

Cooper Horn has been the group’s star from an early age. Ty Ferguson, the coach’s son, remembers playing with Horn shortly after moving to Columbus from Illinois.

“When I first got here, the first person I met was Ben Sylva, who plays at Columbus East,” Ty Ferguson said. “We ended up working out in this gym when we first got here a lot. Then, I started playing Revolution with these guys, and it clicked right away. I remember when we first got here, I had an FFY tournament, and I remember seeing Cooper Horn get a fast break and almost dunk one in fifth or sixth grade. I was like, ‘Ooh man. I’m glad I’m on that guy’s team now.’”

Cooper Horn, Harmon, Blythe and Zac Horn were on one of the Revolution teams before the Fergusons arrived. Shortly after that, the Revolution, which had served both the North and East boys basketball programs, split with East when the Olympians partnered with Indiana Elite AAU Basketball Association.

“We’ve grown such a bond over these past couple of years,” Ty Ferguson said. “All the hard work we put in this gym, not a lot of people realize. We did Friday night stuff with my dad, we did Elite training, Friday night clinics. Cooper’s dad, Will Horn, and Luke’s dad, coach (Mike) Harmon, put in a lot of time and invested a lot into us to help us become the players we are today.”

“That was another thing that was a real blessing — that Mike and Will are fantastic coaches — so these guys, no matter who was coaching them, they were getting really quality coaching from a young age,” Paul Ferguson added.

Edwards stopped playing travel basketball after third grade, but did play with Cooper Horn and Harmon on a Bartholomew County Little Little League team that won eight tournaments in a row. Edwards also played high school football with Cooper Horn, Zac Horn and Blythe.

Zac Horn remembers a basketball tournament where he, Cooper Horn, Harmon, Blythe and current East senior Julius Dailey won a tournament with no subs.

“We went to a lot of tournaments,” Zac Horn said. “Sometimes, it was just five guys, and we’d go in there and compete. We actually won a tournament with just five guys. One of us got in foul trouble, and we had to sit him a little bit. But we had a great time. We won quite a bit of tournaments everywhere.”

When the group was in seventh-grade, they finished second to they Indy Gym Rats in a tournament at Spiece Fieldhouse in Fort Wayne. They won the Kentuckiana Tournament at Floyd Central as eighth-graders.

The team isn’t incredibly tall for a Class 4A school, but it is rather balanced. Harmon and Blythe are 5-foot-11, Ty Ferguson is 6-0, Edwards is 6-2 and Cooper and Zac Horn both are 6-3. Cooper Horn put up 19 points in Saturday’s sectional final, but the other four starters scored between nine and 14.

“We don’t have any real size or real athleticism, no offense to Cooper and Damon,” Harmon joked. “We kind of just make up for it with our team chemistry and how we get along.”

Paul Ferguson noticed how competitive and unselfish this group of seniors were almost from the time he began coaching them eight years ago.

“Right away, you could tell this was a talented bunch,” Paul Ferguson said. “The most obvious thing was, we won a lot of games right away. But I think there were some other intangibles, and the first is that they’re an incredibly competitive group of kids. Sometimes when you play this club basketball circuit, you end up playing a lot of games in a day, and sometimes, there’s kids and teams that don’t care that much whether they win or lose. The thing about these kids, they absolutely hated to lose, and we noticed that early about them.

“The other thing was, we started seeing really early on was how well they shared the ball together, and I think that’s carried on until now, where they have this never-say-die attitude,” he added. “How many times this year did they come from behind and win a close game in overtime or the fourth quarter? Those are things that started happening at a very early age.”