Northern Kentucky Sports Chronicle

(This story was originally published on Jan. 7, 2022) A calendar is barely noticeable for most of the year. They hang on a wall in the house. They linger on computers and smart phones. With the exception of holidays, who really pays attention to a calendar? One local family definitely has an important date circled on the calendar each year. It’s the Schloemer family, one of the most iconic names in Northern Kentucky prep basketball history. That date is Jan. 7. For brothers Doug and Mark Schloemer, what happened exactly 47 years ago tonight is more than a date on the calendar. That’s the night Doug, then a freshman at Holmes, made his first career start for the Bulldogs. Here is what happened on Jan. 7, 1975. https://online.fliphtml5.com/hfocp/apjs/#p=1

(This column was originally published on March 21, 2020) National television beckoned for the first time in school history. An NCAA championship would be at stake in less than 48 hours. It was March 21, 1996, and Northern Kentucky had just knocked off powerful Virginia Union in the NCAA Division II Final Four. NKU head coach Ken Shields was wrapping up a surreal evening at the Commonwealth Convention Center in Louisville with a final one-on-one interview with a newspaper reporter. The makeshift basketball site had just provided one of the classic games in Division II history, as LaRon Moore hit a 12-foot turnaround jumper in the closing seconds to give NKU a 68-66 win over Virginia Union. The NKU players — Moore, Andre McClendon and Paul Cluxton — had already done their mandatory interviews at the NCAA postgame press conference. The media, though, wanted plenty of one-on-one interviews with Shields. So did some officials from CBS, which would be televising NKU’s national championship g...