DO NOT GO SEE THIS MOVIE
Back from my mid-week vaca … went and saw Friday the 13th at the Old Town Warren. It was terrible, and also my choice. So my bad, AT, I guess I owe you one. As long as Jennifer Aniston’s not in it. I guess I was trying to recapture some of the great memories I had from waiting in line for 2-3 hours at some Halloween Hayride when I was a kid — they showed the movies in a loop on big screen TVs while you waited to get scared.
Anyways…
The KCAC is already in the heart of its conference tournament … while the Jayhawk and the MIAA aren’t far behind, with league titles and playoff spots still on the line. Got to say I’m looking forward to the Region VI tourney this year … there are always fireworks and hey, it’s always neat to see the big-name coaches come out. It was pretty cool to see Gregg Marshall sit through four straight games at Koch Arena … even if the only thing he got out of it was Reggie Chamberlain. Hopefully RC wasn’t the only reason he was there, and he’s kept in contact with some of last year’s best freshman. Ryan Martin, anybody?
RYAN MARTIN (COFFEYILLE CC TO WSU)
THE KCAC
The women’s quarterfinals are tonight, with both the men’s and women’s semifinals Saturday. Don’t be surprised if No. 5 seed Ottawa pulls off the upset of No. 1 Sterling on Saturday at Stelring. Ottawa hit a real lull (I have no idea why) late in the season after being the team to beat in the preseason. But Sterling looks tough, and watch out for Chad Friess. If you want to see a battle, there’s no place better than Sterling at 2 p.m. Saturday. On the women’s side, I think Sterling is going to cruise into the finals, leaving KWU and Southwestern to battle for the other spot, making their presumptive semifinal matchup, basically, a play-in game for the NAIA DII Tourney. So there’s that.
THE JAYHAWK
Saturday’s the last day of the regular season — which means the only team that has officially clinched a title is the Barton men, who have won the West.
In the men’s race for the East, it’s down to Coffeyville and Cowley, who have identical 14-3 records in league play. Cowley’s got the tougher matchup of the two teams, going to Allen County, while the Red Ravens head to KCK.
For the women in the East, Labette is actually done already, so unless Coffeyville drops a gimme at next-to-last place Allen on Saturday, the title’s theirs. In the West, the Barton women are in first by one game over Hutch and travel to Pratt … and the Blue Dragons travel to fellow second-place team Cloud. So my money’s on Barton pulling this title out.
And then there’s this, from the KJCCC Web site:
Reminder: By Bylaw, stats are due by each Monday by 5:00 PM for the previous weeks games or the head coach can be suspended for one game.
What? Really? Who says? They can get suspended for not sending their stats into a Web site? That seems pretty lame. It would seem like, yes, the practical thing to do if you’re a coach (especially with juco kids who need to get their names and stats out there for further recruitment) would be to turn the stats in. But if you don’t, I don’t understand it, but I don’t think you should get suspended. But I do know they had problems this year with the site … just don’t think the Big Brother treatment is going to inspire anyone to send in their stats. May have the opposite effect, actually.
NEWMAN
The Newman men are trying for the final playoff spot in the Heartland Conference tourney, which would be, I think, a pretty incredible accomplishment in the first year as a full-fledged member of the league. They need to win tonight against at St. Mary’s and Saturday at St. Edward’s to guarantee a spot. Not gonna be easy.
THE MIAA
Here’s what you need to know, for now: ESU has clinched a share of the women’s title and Southwest Baptist has the men’s locked up. There’s an eight-team tournament in KC coming up and when the seeds come out we’ll get into all that. Until then …
-TA
