Odds and ends, and that ain’t much right now. . .

Lighting it up for the seniors was appropriate

Watching and listening to reruns of classic games and matches has about taken its toll as we continue to suffer through this “Stay at Home” situation in relation to the COVID-19 situation.

I was impressed with Clinton County High School’s quick joining in with most of the rest of the state last week when they lit up the John Emmitt baseball field and the adjacent Lady Bat Dawgs softball field as a way to honor this year’s senior bat players who likely won’t see a game in this strange year. (See page 1)

Fittingly, most of the programs across Kentucky came together with similar gestures, the majority on the same Wednesday evening that the Clinton County lights came on for 20:20.

Clinton players show up on another “best of” list

This note is credited to the sharp eye of Lucas Thacker, who played basketball for the Bulldogs a few years ago, but has spent the past decade and a half or so sitting next to me at the official table as Clinton County’s Official Scorer for boys’ basketball.

Lucas gave me notice that one of the moderators for the popular web site Bluegrasspreps.com, had put together a couple of 4th Region Boys’ Basketball teams – the Best of the 2010’s.

DragonFire’s list included five best and five bench players who have taken the floor during the 2010s decade of action, with Jackson Harlan making the first team list, while Keifer Dalton made the second group, or what DragonFire (a site contest Moderator) called the “bench” list – the second best five players in the 4th Region for the decade.

The complete list included: Player of the Year – Bowling Green’s Chane Behanan (F), George Fant (F-Warren Central), Terry Taylor (F-Bowling Green), Tavin Lovan (G-Franklin-Simpson) and Jackson Harlan (G-Clinton County).

The Bench selections were: DeAndre “Pedro” Bradshaw (F-Russellville), Skyelar Potter (F-Warren Central), Tyler Robertson (G-Russell County) Dillon Geralds (G-Monroe County), and Keifer Dalton (G-Clinton County).

In his description of each player in the selection thread, DragonFire wrote about Harlan: Harlan finished his prep career with 2,128 points, good enough for second all-time at Clinton County. He averaged 23.9 PPG his senior season, and earned his way onto both the Courier-Journal and Herald-Leader’s all-state first teams for the 2018-19 season ,while taking home player of the year honors for the 4th Region. Harlan was also named to the Herald-Leader’s all-state third team for his junior season. Jackson was twice named to the all-region first team (in his junior and senior seasons), and was named to the third team in his sophomore year. He was also selected to the Kentucky All-Star team for 2019. The Bulldogs advanced to the region semifinals in two of his final three seasons, playing at Diddle Arena, where he is currently playing for WKU.

His observation about Keifer Dalton was: Dalton is the all-time leading scorer at Clinton County, with 2,158 points in his prep career. He also finished as the school’s career leader in assists and steals. Keifer was named the region’s player of the year in his junior season – a rare honor for a junior – and was twice an all-region first team selection, and once a second team selection.

All Star game is gone

In a couple of emails received this week from the Kentucky Lions, and the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches, it was announced that the Kentucky – Indiana All-Star game has been canceled altogether.

However, honorary team members for both the girls’ and boys’ Kentucky teams, in light that there will be no tryouts either, will be the respective Players of the Year for each region.

The 4th Region will be represented in the game that won’t be played by Dre Boyd (Warren Central) and Elizabeth Bertram (Barren County).

By the way, the KABC Coaches of the year for our region were Warren Cunningham (Barren County) and Bret Blankenship (Russell County).

The banquet to announce and honor the regional players and coaches, and to announce the Mr. and Miss Basketball winners, has been rescheduled to to June 28.

In the meantime – no sports at all stinks!