Monday, February 20, 2012

Oh, Kentucky

One and done: The boys' and girls' rounds of 268 (I think) start tonight. Most of Kentucky's 64 boys' and 64 girls' high-school basketball districts have four teams. The sixth, 10th, 59th and 60th districts have three teams each; there are 17 districts with five teams apiece, but at least one of them, the fourth, puts only four teams into its tournament. So, anyway, that math (probably flawed) comes out to 268 teams that begin today in the hunt for each of the one boys' and one girls' state basketball championship that the KHSAA awards. Hooray! In the honor of all those teams' having at least a glimmer of title hopes this morning, the Kentucky desk today performs a reading from Dave Kindred's essential Basketball, The Dream Game in Kentucky (5 stars, highly recommended), printed by Louisville's Fetter Printing Company in December 1975:

KINGDOM COME, February, 1968--Driving down KY 463, you pass through Delphia, which isn't much more than the "Delphia U-Wash Laundry" on the right. Over a hill and you're in Letcher County in the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky, 225 miles from Louisville. At a sign that says "Cumberland 5 miles, Hot Spot 15 miles," you turn left and go down a narrow road four miles--past Dollie's Place, which is a cafe with good hamburgers and a six-foot pool table--and you have found Kingdom Come High School. ...

Kindom Come doesn't have a good team. It has lost all 12 of its games and is last in The Courier-Journal's Litkenhous Ratings of the state's 350 high school teams. It has an 0.1 rating.

Coach Coots, who is called 'Coots' by everyone in school, says Kingdom Come has problems it likely will never overcome. Only 30 percent of the fathers in the valley have jobs, he said. Boys leave school to join the Army. They go to Cincinnati or Detroit to work.

"These kids have been losing for so long, they're used to it," Coots said. "They joke it up just as big if they lose as if they'd just won a game."

Maybe.

When Red Bird moved ahead 70-68 and was holding the ball until the final seconds ticked off on an electric alarm clock (the scoreboard had shorted out), a Kingdom Come senior guard Sharon Gentry shouted at a Red Bird fan: "Don't you sound off about winning, or I'll come down and scratch your eyes out."

And when Junior Halcomb left the floor, after missing two late free throws that would have tied the game, the tears in his eyes were not from joking it up.



In other sports news: Franklin-Simpson and Lone Oak's Kenny Perry ... LexCath's Natalie Novosel ... awesome, baby.

It's windfall day in western Kentucky: $7,000 profit shares for the Corvette makers in Bowling Green from GM, free surgeries for cataracts sufferers in Paducah from HPKo10*.

Van Halen--voted a "favorite music group" by Heath High School's seniors in both Pirata 1984 and Pirata 1985--played in Louisville this weekend. With all of the tumult and uncertainty that these last 27 years have brought, it's good to see that we can still count on David Lee Roth and the Van Halen brothers to make beautiful music together.

Tommy Womack's rocking anew, too.

27 comments:

  1. Love, love "Basketball: The Dream Game in Kentucky." A few observations:

    1. Based on Kindred's article and your calculations, Kentucky has eliminated over 80 high schools since 1968.

    2. Given what happened in the U.S. economy from 1968 to 2011, an 18-year-old kid born in 1950 would have been better off moving to Atlanta or Nashville than to Cincinnati or Detroit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good points, both--and a good reminder that next year we will presumably be talking about a "round of 266" or so as the 1929 boys' state champs and two schools who have not won titles turn into the McCracken County Mustangs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. By the way, this whole "McCracken County High School" concept is not going to last. That county is too big to be served by a single high school, and it will continue to grow. Someday they will have to build another high school in the western part of the county, and when they do, that school should be named "Heath." I don't want any of this "North Laurel" and "South Laurel" stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My guess is they'll put the directions after the county name, a la the former "Muhlenberg North" and "Muhlenberg South." Or, they could end up with something crazy like we've got here in Hopkins County: "McCracken County Central" and "Melber-South McCracken."

    But, hey, hold the phone ... McCracken County High is not opening before fall 2013. I must've gotten that wrong all this last year; it doesn't appear they delayed any time recently.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Or they could end up with the ludicrous Shelby County situation, where they built a new Shelbyville High School and named it after Martha Layne Collins. Or the absurd mess in Oldham County, which now has an "Oldham County," a "North Oldham," and a "South Oldham."

    No, no, a thousand times no.

    Someday they will want to build a new high school in the eastern part of the county -- that high school should be called Reidland.

    Someday they will want to build a new high school in the southern part of the county -- that high school should be called Lone Oak.

    And someday they will want to build a new high school in the western part of the county -- that high school should be called Heath.

    We need to start pushing for all this right now. If gas prices continue to soar, the new high school will become obsolete even quicker than anticipated.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The boys' state-championship trophy will not be paraded through Marion. Crittenden County has fallen to Smithland Livingston Central, 56-49, per WKDZ's telecast of the Fifth District tournament.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Livingston boys have won 20 games for the second season in a row. The Cardinals are the defending district champions.

    Up next on WKDZ: Trigg County vs. Caldwell County.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Girls' rivalry final in the 15th District: Glasgow 52, Barren County 42 at Allen County-Scottsville.

    ReplyDelete
  9. These Fifth District boys' games are at Lyon County. Trigg County swept the regular-season series with Lyon, but their visit to Eddyville tonight comes on the heels of two straight losses for the Wildcats to end the regular season.

    ReplyDelete
  10. WKDZ reports that Trigg County is just 4-7 since 1979 at Lyon County's Jason White Gym.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Indeed, Lyon leads Trigg, 65-59, in Eddyville with less than two minutes to play in the third quarter. The Wildcats could use "Big Ricky Radford" and "Little Ricky Radford" about now.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Final from the Eighth District at Christian County: Hoptown 112, Fort Campbell 54. That's a point every 17.1 seconds for the Tigers.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Halfcourt shot by Trigg County at the third-quarter buzzer, and that pulls the Wildcats to within 68-66 of home-standing Lyon County with eight minutes to play in this Fifth District semi.

    ReplyDelete
  14. HEARTBREAK FROM THE SECOND-DISTRICT GIRLS TOURNAMENT!

    Paducah Tilghman 69, Heath 42. Well, there's always next year, Lady Pirates (as we were corrected earlier this afternoon).

    ReplyDelete
  15. Seventh-district girls' rivalry game at Caldwell County: Madisonville-North Hopkins 55, Mortons Gap Hopkins County Central 41.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Yes, it's a final from the 11th District girls' tournament: Meade County 64, Cloverport Frederick Fraize 6.

    ReplyDelete
  17. 35 seconds to go in Eddyville ... Lyon County boys up on Trigg County, 83-81 ... Trigg County ball ...

    ReplyDelete
  18. Wildcats miss ... Lyon County returns to free-throw line ... misses first, still 83-81 ... Trigg County calls penultimate timeout ... 20 seconds to play ...

    ReplyDelete
  19. Cadiz Record advertisement on WKDZ ...

    ReplyDelete
  20. "Trigg County has missed point-blank shot after point-blank shot tonight," says WKDZ ...

    ReplyDelete
  21. Free-throw miss by Lyon ... three-pointer miss by Trigg County ... Trigg fouls Lyon with 9.7 seconds to play ... missed free throw ... Lyon calls their next-to-last timeout ... still 83-81, Lyon ...

    ReplyDelete
  22. 84-81 after made free throw ... missed three-pointer by Trigg ...

    ReplyDelete
  23. That'll do it. Trigg County boys are eliminated from the Fifth District first round for the third straight season. The Lyons roll on to the district championship (and the Second Region tournament).

    ReplyDelete
  24. First District boys from Hickman County: Fulton City 62, Fulton County 42.

    ReplyDelete