Regional Up For Grabs

Tonight is the sectional finals in 3-A basketball as Mike Gainey will try to get his Gryphon team to the regional for the 3rd time in his coaching career. No final is easy and tonight will be no different as C B Aycock will bring a 24-3 record to town. Wednesday nights win was #20 for the Gryphons this season and they have also lost three times. This for sure is the last home game of the season for after tonight there is only the Eastern Regional and the State championships left

If you want to see what the baseball team has, they have a home practice game today at 4.00pm. Returning the top two pitchers from last year Hobbs Johnson who has signed to play with Carolina in 2011 and rising Junior Benton Moss who has verbally committed to Carolina high hopes abound on the Gryphon diamond.

The Rocky Mount Junior Legion team last summer finished 3rd in the state tournament. There is hope that the holes created with the graduation of the big three of Brian Goodwin, Ben Fish and Dillon Cockrell can be made without much drop off in the offense. We will see. Brand new coach Kent Cox will have big shoes to fill in replacing Pat Smith who brought a baseball state title to Rocky Mount in 08.

Wes Bradshaw gave me a heads up on this and Tuesday when I got home from work I saw it on TV myself. Former Northern Nash basketball player Michael Deloatch and now a senior guard for Norfolk State Spartans made the ESPN plays of the day. In fact it was #3. Deloatch stole a pass near his foul line and streaked to the goal where when he reached the other foul line bounced the ball hard off the floor to make it fly up in the air where he picked it off for a slam dunk. It could have easily been the play of the day.

You know in the last ten years Nash County has become a hot bed for baseball and we now have many college players from this area. Former Northern catcher Bryan Braswell who is the starting behind the plate for Campbell got two hits and drove in two runs in helping the Fighting Camels of Buies Creek take the Wolfpack to extra innings on Tuesday. There are so many players from this area playing college baseball it is hard to keep up with all of them.

I don't know whether you saw this on WRAL-TV last night but the CIAA basketball tournament is underway in Charlotte. Ken Smith of Channel five did a sports report on Chowan College from Murfreesboro who having Joined the CIAA this year is taking part in their first tournament. They have come a long way since 1994 when they first started playing division 3 basketball over being a junior college. My last year as play by play voice of Chowan was 1993 their last year playing as a junior college.

I actually did one game for Chowan in 1994 when they came to Methodest college in Fayetteville. Pat had been transferred by Carolina Telephone back then and we were living there. Bob Burke coach at Chowan brought the radio equipment on the vans with the team and I did the game. Afterwards loaded the equipment back on the van for the trip back while I stayed in Fayetteville.