ANDREA LEIKER
Here’s a heartbreaker out of Canyon, Texas: the Emporia State women fell to West Texas A&M 86-83 at the NCAA Division II South Central Regional, and that was after coming from 10 points down with 1:47 left and without MIAA player of the year Ida Edwards for the last 14:21 after Edwards went down with a knee injury. Hope she’s ok. Andrea Leiker led the Hornets with 22 points in her final game for ESU. Also in the South Central Region, Washburn fell 72-63 to Central Oklahoma after the Bronchos rallied from a halftime deficit and sustained a game-opening 11-2 run by the Lady Blues. Tough exit for the MIAA, who I’m sure wanted to get one of their two teams out of the region. Here’s a link to the tourney bracket.
And as I’m sure you know by now, the NAIA Division II Tournament is going on, too, and we saw the Sterling men lose in the first round while the Ottawa men upset No. 4 Walsh (Ohio) before losing in the Sweet 16, and the Sterling women and Kansas Wesleyan women both bowed out in the Sweet 16, too.
Next week is the NJCAA national tournament, with the Hutch C.C. women headed to Salina and the Garden City men headed to Hutchinson. Should be fun and I’ll make sure to give you updates and as much behind-the-scenes stuff as possible, which leads me to …
DANIEL HOWARD
A DANIEL HOWARD SIGHTING
The Texas Tech defensive end/linebacker and Butler Community College product (he’s also a City Leaguer, hailing from Bishop Carroll) was out in Old Town last night. He’s on spring break from Lubbock, and I asked him why in the world he wasn’t in Acapulco, Lake Havasu, Cozumel or any number of off-the-chain spring break destinations he could wreck shop at and he laughed then gave me some lame excuse like spring ball or making sure he stayed in shape or something. We had a nice conversation over Christmas break, too, where he gave me some inside scoop on what it was like after they beat UT in Lubbock and he was nice enough to hit me with his number again (after I broke my phone and lost it the first time) for a possible feature this fall when football season starts. He was taking it pretty easy last night, but from what I can tell, here are a few benefits of being a Division I football player, even in the Air Capitol … or is that especially in the Air Capitol?
1. A lot of pretty, pretty blonde girls will come up and talk to you at random times (which means pretty much constantly) even if sometimes it’s just to ask you about Graham Harrell. And they like to talk really, really close to your face.
2. You travel with an entourage (including one guy, drunkenly, who thought he was Ari Gold and was trying to get DH to not talk to the press … come on, idiot, I’m not trying to do an interview in a bar) and they pretty much just follow you lockstep. Besides drunk handler guy the other guys seemed like they were pretty cool. Think Turtle, E and Johnny Drama style.
3. If you walk into a bar you don’t really pay too much … and there aren’t a whole lot of rules about where you can and can’t go. Dude walked behind the bar and grabbed his buddy a beer at one point. Nice. And everybody laughed. You try it and see what happens.
4. In Kansas, especially after you turn down offers from KU and KSU, expect to catch a little hell when you come home. But not too much, because you’re 6-foot-3 and about 230 pounds.
5. Did I mention the blondes?
I was impressed with DH — hopefully I can use my magic story-pitching powers to convince Kirk Seminoff to let me write an article about him this fall. Dude’s numbers have gotten better every year and he’s due for a breakout season. And he’s from Wichita.
Besides that … I’m out.
-TA
NO RICE FOR YOU!!!!