The “March” to the Sweet 16 comes to an end

I’ve been to so many KHSAA boys’ Sweet 16 tourneys that I’ve nearly lost count, but I’m pretty sure that this past week made it 35 tournaments since my four senior classmates on the team that year and I loaded up in that old station wagon that Coach Lindle Castle drove and we headed up to Louisville for a week’s worth of basketball in Freedom Hall.

That’s a lot of basketball and peanuts in 35 trips and I’ve seen a lot of tournaments that were better overall than what we witnessed in Lexington this past week – game in and game out.

Then there was Saturday night.

The basketball gods certainly made up for the week when they pitted Christian County and Rowan County against each other to come up with an overall champion for this 2010-11 season.

Both teams had already come out on top of Saturday morning upset bids, with the Colonels of Christian doing what most everyone had said couldn’t be done – knocking off Louisville power Eastern High School in a down to the wire semi-final win. Then it was Rowan County’s turn to crank up the heat and take Bullitt East to a 51-49 win that was also more upset than prediction.

A good start to what had been a somewhat lackadaisical week as far as on the floor action had been concerned.

Comes Saturday night and an all-out war erupts between two schools that neither hail from Jefferson or Fayette, the arch villain counties of Kentucky High School basketball fans.

I know, neither Christian or Rowan can be considered “small schools” but the un-written rule in Kentucky is if you are from one of the “other” 118 Kentucky counties, you root for the “other guy” in this tournament. Christian lists an enrollment of 1,400 students while Rowan was considered the “little” school with 840.

So, with Christian and Rowan coming down the stretch in the final minute of play, I joined those other 14,643 fans in Rupp Arena when we all rose to our feet to watch those final seconds of regulation play. It wasn’t a chain reaction either – we’re in Kentucky watching the last game of the season for boys’ high school – it was an arena wide gut response.

We all stood up again a few minutes later, as the first OT came down to the closing seconds and the two teams were still deadlocked, this time in a 61-61 tie.

For the third time in just a few short minutes, the crowd of 14,643 stood again as the second OT clock hit the final minute mark and everyone in the gym seemed to know that tourney MVP Anthony Hickey would wow us once again with what would surely be a game-winning basket from somewhere on the floor.

He wowed us alright, but not by finding the basket for what would be his 92nd point of the tournament. Instead, Hickey found a path through the Rowan coverage that had him surrounded, and picked up his 19th assist when he put the ball into the hands of teammate Veontae Lewis for the game winning basket to cap the tourney run with a 65-63 victory.

Championship games just don’t get any better than that.

Notes

Most are still leaning toward an announcement that Bowling Green’s (and UL signee) Chane Behanan will be this year’s Kentucky Mr. Basketball. Common sense, after what I saw last week, would put Behanan clearly in third place, behind Christian’s Anthony Hickey and then Warren Central’s (and WKU signee) George Fant.

Behanan is certainly a nice player, but in the two years since he moved to Kentucky, he never was able to lead his Purples to the state championship. That’s got to be a deal-breaker.

Clinton/Christian tie

Of course Clinton County still has a tie to the Christian County Colonel squad, but that tie was absent last week on the state tournament bench.

Clinton County native and former Bulldog standout player Lee DeForest is an assistant coach with Christian County, and last year enjoyed his Rupp Arena duties on the bench for the two games the Colonels were on the floor.

This year DeForest, who is the son of Jim and Joan DeForest, was busy getting ready to take on a much more important role in the scheme of things – he’s reportedly about to be deployed overseas in relation to his National Guard duties and had to miss the Colonel’s Sweet 16 championship run.

Both of Lee’s brothers, David and Michael, are also in the armed forces. Thanks to them – and to all of our soldiers who are keeping our freedoms alive so the rest of us can do things like enjoy watching high school kids play in basketball tournaments.

High school roundball is over for a few months, so I guess I’ll spend the next couple of weeks winding down with some NCAA action. It was a good run, for Clinton County roundball fans, and after Saturday night, for fans across this basketball state

It’s (still) March in Kentucky – don’t call me until April