Lady Gryphons clinch a Tie

Whenever Southwest Edgecombe plays Rocky Mount you can expect a full house and tonight was another.

Sandra Langley had her girls ready to avenge an earlier lost to the Lady Gryphons in Pinetops but a hard fought high scoring game ended with Pam Gainey's team winning 63-60.

The victory clinches a tie for first place for the Lady Gryphons who now are 8-0 in conference play. All Rocky Mount needs to do it win one of two games next week, either at home Tuesday against Fike or Friday at Nash Central to clinch the first round bye in the conference tournament.

I see nothing wrong winning both games next week and finishing the conference schedule undefeated.

Between the games Boys coach Michael Gainey was given a basketball celebrating his 200th career win Tuesday at Southern Nash.

Tonight coach Gainey started on the road to 300 as the Gryphons used a strong fourth quarter by Tashawn Mabry to power past Southwest boys 73-60.

Mabry finished the game with 31 but scored almost half of his points for the evening in the fourth quarter. Philip Wilkins had a double double as he garnered 13 points and 12 rebounds.

The Gryphons are now 3-0 the second time through the conference swing and with tonights win get even at 4-4 in conference play. It has been a while since the Gryphons have won more than they have lost but tonights victory puts them at 11-10 on the season.

The lady's victory puts them at 16-4 on the season.

Tonight is the last regular season meeting between Southwest and Rocky Mount in conference play as the Cougars will drop back to the 2-A ranks next year.

As highly competitive and as large as the crowds have been I am sure Southwest will be on both the football and basketball teams schedule next year and into future years.

ACC Basketball Looks like Football

Most teams in the ACC basketball race are at the eight-game mark in the conference season. That would be equal to the football season when no one wanted to take charge. Let's look at where this thing seems to be going.

Carolina, 6-2 - You may have already forgotten they started 0-2. They seem to be the best in the league but I don't hear to any Tar Heel fans jumping for joy right now.

Duke, 6-2 - Last night they fell to 3-3 on the season on the road. That's not a good sign since I don't see any NCAA games scheduled for Cameron Indoor Stadium come March.

Clemson, 5-2 - This is probably the best Clemson team since Eldon Campbell and the Tigers were robbed by Connecticut in 1991.

Boston College, 6-3 - When the Tournament starts guard play is important. BC might make Sweet 16.

Wake Forest, 4-3 - Lack of outside shooting is telling on the Deacs. They must get back to playing good defense.

Virginia Tech, 4-3 - If they make NCAA tournament the Hokies are another team that can cause trouble.

Florida State, 4-3 - They have really good athletes but always seem to let lesser teams beat them.

Miami, 4-5 - The Hurricanes are another team that seem to be better than their record.

Maryland, 3-5 - Not that long ago were National Champions. Looks like this year is a throw away season with all the Gary Williams firing talk.

N C State, 2-5 - Point guard, point guard, are you listening John Wall?

Virginia, 1-6 - I think by year's end they will finish last.

Georgia Tech, 1-7 - Well somebody has to be last.

After only getting four NCAA bids last year the ACC could get as many as eight but I think six is about right. It would not surprise me to see four in sweet 16.

Pat Summitt has won No. 1,000 as a women's basketball coach. The scary part is Pat Summitt is only 56 years old. She could win another 500 if she sticks around that long.

Signing Day

If you believe all the hype, then the Big Four schools, plus ECU, had a banner day yesterday on National Signing Day.

In my younger days when I had to know the BIOS of every player, I believed all that guff about who the best players in the country were.

Yesterday, ESPNU had nine hours of coverage of signing day across the country. The so-called headline players, the ones who will get all the press during the next four years, aren't the real stars of signing day. It's the fringe player who fills in at tackle after another player is hurt that no body cares about on signing day.

The team that can come up with those type players are the real winners on signing day. No one will know who the winners are for two to three years.

Notre Dame, under Charlie Weis, up until yesterday had been a Top 10 every year in recruiting. On the field, they have barely been Top 50.

The reality is a recruiting class is only 25 percent of any team. If like Wake Forest, you like to red shirt your freshman class ,then only 20 percent as those players will be with you five years.

Coaches go after holes they need to fill over sometimes signing the best overall player. But recruiting is still the perception that we are on the way up not treading water or heading backwards.
The 24-hour news service and 24-hour-a-day sports has produced a hype into our world that everything is much better than it is, or in the case of the news, worse than it is.

Sorry, but I don't need to see on network TV a child kidnapping live all day in Des Moines. Ia. The networks need to fill the day with something.

Unfortunately, ESPN has not been able to get teams to play games live at 7:30 in the morning so they can have show them. Heavens knows they have probably tried.

Yesterday, WITN-TV7 featured three Gryphon signees. Bravo to them. They didn't make them out to be the next coming of Wake Forest football, but three local kids who have an idea what they will be doing for the next four or five years.

For a family, signing day is a joyous time. A culmination of a dream come true. In our world today, do you know how much a football scholarship means to a family?

I wish instead of telling me how great LSU is going to be next year with all the recruits they have. Networks would show how important signing day really is.

Our economy is such that a higher education is further from main stream America because most families can't afford to pay a house payment much less a college education.

The real winners on signing day is Mom and Pop. Everyone of them regardless of how good their kids are in football, yesterday they were the No. 1 signing in the country.

Congratulation to all of them!

Pushing Forward

The lady Gryphon basketball team continues its undefeated way in conferecnce play last night downing Souuthern Nash 53-36. This make the Lady Gryphons 7-0 in conference play and 15-4 overall.

Rocky Mount had three scorers who hit double figures in Lakia Bynum, Dyonna Battle and Arkenesia Melton. They try to continue their undefeated play in conference Friday night as they host SouthWest Edgecombe and what will essentially be the championship game.

If the Lady's beat SWE that would be SWE second loss and would give the Lady Gryphons a two game lead with two games to play.

The boys got the job done and now have a two game win streak which is the first such streak of the 2009. Tashawn Mabry scored 25 and Philip Wilkins added 10 points and nine rebounds. Ten players scored for RM as they beat Southern Nash 65-43.

The win get RM back to 500 on the season at 10-10. Now at 3-4 in conference play the boys are right in the playoff picture.

Today is signing day for football players. The first four signed this morning with Whit Barnes who is recovering nicely from his shoulder surgery in January, signed with Wake Forest. Nick Harrison signed with UNC-Pembroke who last year went 9-1. Kieth Strickland will call Elizabeth City State University home for the next four years. Nick Hahula signed a letter of intent to play for North Carolina Central.

Congratulations to those four but hang on there will be more over the next few weeks. That's part of winning football as the reward is playing football at the next level.

It is now official after this weeks Board of Education meeting. Northern Nash has a new football coach. Michael "Mickey" Crouch is the new whistle blower in "Death Valley". They say that imitation is a form of flattery. The Knights have gone after a B W Holt look alike. A veteran coach who has won every where he has been.

I hope he has as much success for them as B W has had for Rocky Mount.

Four-time Conference Champ

This past Saturday the individual NEW 6 wrestling championships were held at Southern Nash High School.

Francisco Alfaro won the 130-pound weight class for the Gryphons. In winning this, the Rocky Mount senior became the first Gryphon wrestler to ever win an individual championship four straight years.

The boys basketball team, fresh off their 10-point win over Northern on Friday night, hits the road Tuesday as it will meet Southern Nash with the opportunity to even its record. The Gryphons (9-10) are still hopeful for a good seeding in the basketball playoffs and Tuesday's game is a must game the Gryphons that they can't afford to lose.

The girls (14-4), on the other hand, still can go undefeated in conference play (6-0) and are looking at least one home game to start the playoffs if they can finish in first.

Tuesday's game at Southern will be part of the Coaches vs. Cancer series and a dollar per ticket will be donated just as ticket sales Friday night were against Northern.

Super Bowl reflections:

Regardless of which team you pulled for in the Super Bowl, both quarterbacks played well.

To me, Ben Roethlisberger elevated himself to that Brett Farve plateau being the winning quarterback for the second time in his career.

The Steelers are a really good fit for Big Ben. I think if he had to throw 40 times a game he wouldn't be so good. But, the Steeler defense keeps them in the game where one score is about all that's needed to come back in a game.

Big Ben has shown to be quite capable in his five years. This offseason he needs to stay away from motorcycles.

Kurt Warner is 50-50 for the Hall of Fame. He could probably use three more good years. His problem is he is not mobile at all and if he plays on a team without much blocking he will find the bench again where he has been buried the last three or four years.

The Dallas Cowboys get all the exposure, but the Pittsburgh Steelers just keep on winning. It hasn't always been that way, however. When the NFL merged with the AFL teams, the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns and the Steelers left the NFC to join the AFC to balance the leagues out.

Pittsburgh, which had been a laughing stock over the years in the NFL, started winning and have had very few losing seasons since the merger.

Now its leads in Super Bowl victories with six.

Super Bowl was Super!

When it's all said and done, this Super Bowl may be the best of all time. There is no doubt it will be in the top five.

The half ended on the longest play in Super Bowl history. A 100-yard interception return by James Harrison to give the Steelers a 17-7 halftime lead - when it looked like the Cardinals were going to lead 14-10.

Then the final two minutes both teams scored touchdowns, so the lead changed twice.

The last play of the third quarter the Cardinals ran a play and had 17 seconds to go, but let the clock run out. I'm thinking down by 10, I would have tried to run one more play before the quarter ended. They needed those 17 seconds after the Steelers took the lead late.

How much does luck play in a game? Harrison would have been down short of the goal line on the interception just before the half, but the ball landed on the leg of the tackler sliding into the end zone before it hit the ground.

That touchdown is the difference in victory and defeat.

Northern Nash's J.J. Arrington was used only on kickoffs in the first half. He was nursing a knee injury. I think Ken Whisenhunt, the coach of the Cardinals, did a smart thing. Knowing that Arrington is banged up, he save him until the fourth quarter, where Arrington had two catches for 35 yards one rush for no gain. He finished up with four kick returns for 82 yards. J.J. had over 100 all-purpose yards in the grandest game of all.

I am glad that James Harrison didn't need to run 102 yards on the last play of the half. He would have not made it. He was out of gas.

Everyone who watches the Super Bowl just for the commercials saw a poor show. Boy, there were some really dumb ones. A good waste of 2.4 million every 30 seconds. I thought the best of the night was the Budweiser commercial featuring the Clydesdale talking about his great-grandfather coming to America.

If you look back at the 43 Super Bowls that have been played, there aren't many great games.

However, this one was!

Northern Nash's Big Day

Northern Nash has been on a downer in football for the past several years. There's not much to cheer about after games where victories have been concerned.

Tonight Northern Nash will watch the Super Bowl with intense pride as one of its own takes the field for the Arizona Cardinals.

J.J. Arrington, a 2001 graduate, possibly could be the first person to touch the ball in the Super Bowl if the Cardinals received the opening kickoff.

Arrington, a third down specialist and kick returner, is nursing a knee injury which happened in the NFC Championship game. It will be a game-time decision whether he plays or not. Tonight's
stage in front of the world is one of those games that if you can manage to put your pants on, you play.

Arrington will be the first Nash County player since Julius Peppers, who played in the Super Bowl for the Carolina Panthers earlier this decade.

You have to go all the way back to Jim Clack in the 70's for a Nash County player winning the Super Bowl.

I'll be pulling hard for J.J. and the Cardinals.

Yesterday's Carolina-State men's basketball game ended on a sour note with a Carolina player being tossed out of the game. The subs were mopping up for Carolina when Michael Copeland went to the basket for a fast break layup with less than five seconds to play. Ben McCauley tried to strip the ball from Copeland in a rather forceful way.

Copeland charged at McCauley and the good reaction of one of the game officials rather forcefully pushed Copeland away from any possible fisticuffs.

Copeland was tossed out of the game.

I thought it was rather odd that a player gets tossed out of a game and no technical was called.

Yesterday's announcers had preached the whole game that Carolina led the country in scoring with still 32 seconds on the time clock. In other words, fast break scoring. MCCauley took exception of Carolina trying to continue that pace ahead by 15 with less than 10 seconds to play.

There is a real fine line in sports when do you call off the dogs on both side. Carolina had just emptied the bench with less than a minute to play and State still had most of their starters in the game.

Back when I was doing football play-by-play in Ahoskie, they may have been called Hertford County by then, we were playing Beddingfield and midway through the fourth quarter HC had the subs in and on one series, Beddingfield had blitzed and HC punted on a fourth-and10. The next series on third and 10, HC threw a screen pass which got a first down to help run the clock and HC keep the ball.

Alton Britt, the legendary announcer of Wilson County football who was sitting only a couple of seats from where I was doing the game, made the comment that with the big lead, HC was trying to run up the score.

I fired back that if Beddingfield would quit blitzing then there would be no need to run plays that beat blitzes.

There comes a time in every game that all sides have to realize the game is over.

Yesterday's ending looks different depending on which color you wear.