What a fun-filled, action-packed weekend.
I might, for starters, just sound like I’m the town crier for local sports’ scheduled events at first, but I’ll find an unsolicited opinion to share before I exceed my word limit.
You might already know when and where some of the events I’m noting are, but if you happen to be reading this column, and your days is still a blank canvas, have a look at these slates.
Girls’ basketball semistate early games await Whitko and Warsaw. A win places each of them in a 7:30 p.m. Final Four fray to see if they earn another week of practice.
The Whitko Wildcats will rise and shine for a 10 a.m. tip-off today in Logansport against the 26-1 Eastside Blazers, who’s defense has stifled opponents throughout the season.
38 miles and 49 minutes almost due South in Frankfort, the Warsaw Lady Tigers will tip off at noon to face the 24-3 McCutcheon Mavericks. The round arena can seat nearly 5,500 fans, and its claim to fame is the filming site for the movie Blue Chips. You’ll get a kick out of the giant dachshund/wiener dog at center court.
Safe travels to each school’s fans, friends, and families.
Closer to home, in the Warsaw Tiger Natatorium in fact, two rounds of boys’ swimming and diving sectional action launch at 9 a.m. with swimming finals starting at 1 p.m. Area schools in the tournament include Manchester, Northern Lakes Conference (NLC) member Plymouth, Tippecanoe Valley, and host Warsaw.
The Wawasee Warriors are joining NLC schools Concord, Northridge (sectional host), and NorthWood today in Middlebury.
Best wishes to each area individual swimmer and diver in the fight today, as well as each team.
Boys’ basketball will be in action in the Tiger Den a long indoor walk away from the swimming and diving sectionals. The state-ranked Tigers host the Hammond Morton Governors for a 1 p.m. junior varsity tipoff, followed by a varsity clash at approximately 2:30 p.m.
Tiger cage fans will be spread thin today, but there will still be sufficient time to head (roughly) one hour and 45 minutes to Frankfort.
If you know a thing or two about cloning, I probably should have reached out last week, because I can only be in one place between he options of Lady Tigers basketball and regular season boys’ Tiger basketball.
I’ll be on the mic spelling the Voice of The Tiger Den, Keaton Anderson, this afternoon doing what I enjoy so much. Keaton has relieved me in numerous Tiger sports events while I was traveling for business, so I was glad to return the favor.
The only other area boys’ hoops squad on the hardcourt will be Indiana Northern State Conference champion Tippecanoe Valley (15-4) who hosts a solid Kokomo squad, who at 15-5 will play a vital role in getting the Vikings tournament ready.
The Three Rivers Conference (TRC) area teams are still – unlike many other area leagues – finishing their conference schedule through boys’ high school basketball’s final week. If Manchester can stay atop the TRC, the area readership will be celebrating four conference titles.
The aforementioned schools are already joined by Triton, the Hoosier North Athletic Conference champion. The Trojans, like the Tigers and the Vikings, ran the table in conference round robin play.
Speaking of round robin play, there are some differences between Indiana and Ohio I like in terms of how Indiana manages high school sports versus how most Ohio schools oversee them.
The Hoosier State prep basketball conferences are almost entirely single round robin. This is brilliant.
Ohio prep basketball teams among mostly eight-team conferences around the Buckeye State are stuck with 14 conference basketball games in a 20- to 24-game schedule.
For those of you who watched Warsaw’s NLC girls’ basketball round robin this season, that would have added six more boring games to the Lady Tigers’ schedule. I strongly believe this would have adversely affected the deep playoff run we’re enjoying this very day.
My conference in my senior year of high school returned the boys’ big school state runner-up, who finished second on the conference to my alma mater.
The third-place team was graduating Scott Roth (Wisconsin, Utah Jazz), and Brian Behmer (Notre Dame football), but still featured current USC men’s basketball head coach and former NBA player Eric Musselman, and NFL punter/back-up quarterback Tom Tupa.
The four other conference teams lost to the three aforementioned teams consistently, and convincingly.
My high school alma mater (smack dab in the middle of Akron and Cleveland), however, refused to play any of the Catholic school powerhouses because they perceived they recruited their talent. The other two schools, on the other hand, used their six non-conference games to play Akron’s and Cleveland’s best inner city and suburban schools.
My alma mater, instead, played rural rivals we’d outgrown in three of those games, one county rival (Medina – Drew Allard of Penn State’s alma mater) who was the state runner-up the year after I graduated and two other stronger rural schools I’d compare in talent to any strong TRC program.
We lost in the second round of sectionals in my junior and my senior year to programs with weaker records from equally strong conferences who used those six non-conference games to take on area titans.
Tiger boys’ and girls’ programs, on the other hand, have used most of their non-conference schedules to sharpen their postseason swords.
The boys’ and the girls since the 2020-2021 season are practically honorary Duneland Athletic Conference (DAC – in The Region) and Summit Athletic Conference (SAC – Fort Wayne) members.
The girls, year in and year out, make sure Northeast Eight Conference (NE8) heavies Norwell and Columbia City are on their slate along with Huntington North who is – at the very least – competitive and dangerous if you’re looking ahead.
The boys also schedule the latter two NE8 opponents each season.
Not every non-conference opponent can be elite, but the single round robin conference slate Indiana prep basketball puts to practice certainly makes high school basketball more interesting and more fun to watch in our area.
No matter what venue you’re headed to so you can root for your favorite team, remember, even among the remaining regular winter sports seasons still going, in the blink of an eye, there will only be games for those sports, shortly, only on Saturdays.
Make the most of your Saturday, sports fans.