JimThorpe

They are hardly an elite team but their scores do indicate that Washington is pretty good. Check out their record on Maxpreps. They beat Wheatley, Scarborough, North Forest, everybody they've faced in the district except Yates. Often by comfortable margins. They've scored over 100 three times and routinely post scores in the 90's. They beat No 18 Needville by more than we beat No.17 HF. Looks like they will come in second in District 23. 23 is not as strong as 22, but based on their record I would project Washington would come in third behind Hardin Jefferson in our district, beating everybody except the big 2. The fact that Yates handled them so easily is significant in my opinion.

Okay, that makes sense. If the coaches poll is infallible, which I will assume for now, it will be Decatur from R1, Hutchins from R2, Silsbee from R3 and Needville (yes Needville) from the monstrously powerful R4. Assuming all these win out their regular seasons here's what the winning percentages will look like at the end of the Regional tournaments. Decatur .925 Hutchins .914 Silsbee .813 Needville .794 R2 is very competitive but seeding stays the same even if it's Faith Family instead of Hutchins because they will be at .846 going in. I didn't even look at Yates because that is a contingency, irrespective of its likelihood, that is too horrible to contemplate. Silsbee may drop to No. 4 behind Yates based on the result of the Hardin Jefferson game and the fact that Yates just put it on Washington 131 - 76. Washington is a decent team, a little better than WOS probably, occasionally scores over the century mark. I wonder if anyone else has heard what I heard about two new recrui.... excuse me...... transfers that recently became eligible for Yates. One is 6'-7 and the other is 6'-9. Remember the discussion about Yates? How they weren't as tall this year? Right.

Is it based purely on winning percentage? I assume then that 1 plays 4 and 2 plays 3?

Wilmer Hutchins is 1 and Faith Family is 2. Both are in Region 2, south side of Dallas, and both are very very good. They are not overrated. Fortunately the Region 3 winner (Silsbee I hope) will only have to play one of them. But R3 can't look past R1 who we play in the semi-final, if I read the brackets right. The R1 winner will likely be either No.6 Decatur or No. 9 Argyle. Either of those will give us all we want, trust me. The closest game Silsbee has played in playoffs in the last 2 years was the semi game against Argyle which we won by 1 point. (and as I've said, it was closer than that)

Well at least I'm not a fool anymore. I'm sure you aren't okay with calling a kid trash or even implying it. And that's what I was referring to mainly. The word heckling means different things to different people. You can scream your lungs out for your team. But there needs to be an assistant principle who is respected by the kids monitoring their behavior. This is school property and visitors should be treated with respect.

You called me a fool. Really? You just up and call people fools when you disagree with them? A kid is holding a sign that says TRASH and chanting while Jordan Adams is at the free throw line. That is what happened. I saw it. In effect it singled one kid out calling him trash. So at least one of the signs was completely inappropriate and any AP there should have removed it and admonished the kid. This is a school setting, an educational facility. There are many things that are inappropriate in addition to the two things you list. Students in a public school should not be permitted to demean student athletes from another school. And frankly they shouldn't heckle. Not everything that is fun can be permitted. End of story.

One of the signs was inappropriate. And I don't understand the logic of calling your arch rival "overrated". If they are overrated and you beat them, so what. But if they are not overrated and you beat them then it is a big deal. But I get it, knucklehead teenagers are instinctively illogical in such situations. I was a knucklehead teen myself but not an illogical one. For my part I'm a little disturbed that the Tigers had such trouble with the 17th ranked team. Does that bode well for the future? Especially since Yates has soft-recruited two new big men just recently. If I'm holding up a sign about the Hawks it will say "Underrated". But anyway. What did McCain's absence mean? Even the most conservative guess would be a 10 point swing. And a 15 point swing is not unreasonable. After all, he was MVP of the 4A Tourny. I think we could have done better at denying Persohn the ball. Plus we might have been able to clean up better on both ends. Persohn was impressive. We didn't really have an answer for him. He's really not that tall but he can sure find his way to the basket.

I don’t think they are overrated. I’d like to think they are underrated. Cause if we can beat No. 17 by only 3 then what happens when we face No. 4?

There was a point in the third where the Tigers were ahead by 14 or even 16 and it could have gone the other way and been the 25 point win. It really was just the bounce of the ball. Hawks didn’t go quietly into the night as I thought they were about to.

Great game. The Hawks showed up! Tigers 38 - 32 at the half. Devon isn’t playing?

Never mind about the rumor. All is right with the world

I’m fishing for corroboration first

Heard a rather startling eligibility rumor.

Yes it has. But it's always lurking beneath the surface. For one thing, unless some of the kids have growth spurts over the summer the Tigers are going to be somewhat vertically challenged next year.

I remember 2016 was a bittersweet year. Beating HJ twice was huge of course. A couple of things stand out. One was the Regional semi-final game with Hudson. They had a scrawny white kid who looked like the very definition of a scrub - about 5'11", maybe 150 pounds soaking wet. Obviously a JV kid brought up for the playoffs. Couldn't make a shot from the 3 point line in warmup to save his life. Actually we were wondering why Hudson had made it that far. Teams come out for the tip - low and behold he's starting - then we find out why Hudson was there. This poster child from Diary of a Wimpy Kid proceeds to completely chop us up. On both ends. He steals the ball from our guards, he scores in the paint and from the 3 point line. Where ever the ball is, he's there. He never makes a mistake. Never. He's like this blessed basketball child. Tiny Tim who left his crutch in the corner. Far and away the best player on the court that night. We're down by 2 at the half. We were forced to pretty much double him even when he didn't have the ball and keep it out of his hands. The rest of the Hornets couldn't take up the slack so Hudson faded in the second half and we won by 18. We were able to chuckle about it as the game ended with Silsbee pulling out to an 18 point win. I can tell you we sure weren't laughing about it half time. Appearances can be deceiving. That's a pretty cool name isn't it? Hudson Hornets. And then there was the injury to Devon in the championship game. It was the most frightening moment I've ever experienced in sports. The Alamodome was so deathly quiet as they attended to him. Just quiet prayers. Lincoln fans were praying. You could hear the pigeons cooing in the rafters. They hovered over him for a long time and he never regained consciousness on the floor. You couldn't help but think about a catastrophic neck injury or a crippling brain injury. And today you see him playing with such abandon. The three point loss was a hard thing, but that wound was buffered by the McCains eventual complete recovery which was far more important than even a championship game.

Been watching the clips on MaxPreps. If the Hawks try to play the way they've been playing then you've got it exactly right. Ho hum. They can't beat Silsbee playing that way and more importantly they can't beat Yates that way. And that means they have next to no chance of making it to the regional tourney.

Don't misunderstand, I'm a diehard Tiger fan. (of course we haven't had to deal with dying lately have we?) In fact I'm pretty confident that the Tigers lost for the last time this season over in New Orleans last week. I wouldn't mind a bit if the Tigers win by 50 on Friday. But a competitive game wouldn't do the Tigers any harm either would it? And if the Hawks can find something that works against Silsbee then it will probably also work against Yates. Wouldn't it be sweet to see the 22 runner up beat the 4th ranked 23 winner. In gaming out a scenario it seems to me that modelling what Argyle did two years ago in San Antonio might be something to look at. That was a 1 point game and frankly it was closer than that, if you know what I mean.

It doesn't have to be that way. If the Hawks will pretend they are Argyle they can keep it fairly close. 10 points maybe. I mean it. I think they have it in them if they will just let it out.

They have one, No. 15, who we had real difficulty with. He scored some points and missed several more that had a chance to go in. We couldn't stop him once he made his move. He was the best player on the court and it looked to me like he should have been playing JV. Actually, at this point, I might even be starting him on varsity just for the experience, because if the Horns have a future, looks like he's it.

You can look at the results in Maxpreps. Scores are about what you'd expect. They are ranked No. 4 right behind Silsbee. So I assume they are a normal Yates team. They beat Bmt United by 2 so that's about the same as the Tigers. District 23 looks like it's a little weaker than 22. It shapes up to be another rematch and a another barn burner. Unless of course there is an upset.

And why not? It's something anyway. Seemed that one or more Horns was always in the way down in the paint. One thing that was a little problematic was that the Horns wouldn't take a long three even when it was available. If you are within 27 - 28 feet and open then jack it up. You're not going to get a better opportunity inside. That's just not going to happen. The extra pass can be a bad thing against that swarming defense. Plus the careen could bounce back to you. True it's usually what we would call a "bad shot", 4 feet behind the line. But when good shots are not presenting themselves, ever, then take what you can get. A couple of them would have gone in and that would have been fun.

Okay then, this makes sense. The Mustangs are good. The Silsbee score makes more sense now.

Faith is a publicly funded, open enrollment charter school that draws from districts all over the Dallas area encompassing thousands and thousands of kids. Perhaps more kids than total population of most 4A districts. And obviously this one is a bit of a basketball magnet. Carter is a good team but they were simply outmanned. I don't think we'll se a rematch.

The Tigers start to get antsy if they haven’t put up a shot within 6 or 7 seconds of crossing half court.

A win is a win. I've got to stop this fretting. But I keeping thinking about how much these 80 points scored by shorthanded unranked and unheralded WOS might translate into X number of points by Yates. But it's foolish to make such comparisons, especially in December. And I'm stealing my own joy. And it's patently unfair to the brave WOS players. They scored quite a few points against the number 2 team in the state. Good for them!