It's Fike's Big East Tournament

Those in attendance Friday night saw why both the Nash Central girls and boys made the tournament championship finals. Terry Cash's Lady Bulldogs lead for much of the game only to succumb late in the third quarter to the Lady Golden Demons. Once Fike got the lead they had all they could do to hold on to the lead and victory as Fike girls beat The Lady Bulldogs 56-51.

In the night cap Nash central stayed in the game with strong board play from Brandon Thomas and Terrell Copeland. Trailing by nine at one point Dominque Holloway found the range in the fourth quarter but the Bulldogs could never quite catch up and fall to Fike 64-60.

Nash Central despite their good tournament only will finish as a #4 seed from the Big East and start the playoffs at C B Aycock. The Bulldog girls think they will start at either Eastern Wayne or Southern Wayne. They will know for sure when the brackets are released Saturday afternoon.

The Monday night double header for Rocky Mount will find West Craven taking on the Lady Gryphons and Jacksonville providing the boys their first round match.

Friday was the opening of the college baseball season and former Gryphon Brian Goodwin started in right field for Mike Fox at UNC. Carolina won 6-5 in ten innings and Goodwin was 0-4 but did have and RBI. He also caught two fly balls in right. Regardless of how Brian's career goes from here on he will always be able to say that he started his first game as a freshman at Carolina and Fox had him hitting fifth in the lineup.

Rumors are hot that freshman Tyler Joyner at ECU will be the starting pitcher for the Pirates on Tuesday. The former Knight of Northern Nash is part of the Babe Ruth dynasty that Nash county had going when Joyner, Goodwin and Ben Fish and many others went to the Babe Ruth World Series twice as 13 and 14 year olds.

Speaking of Ben Fish, Campbell open their baseball season Friday but looks like Ben may find the pine a lot this year as former Knight Bryan Braswell a senior for Campbell is the starting catcher and he opened the season going four for five and had four rbi's.

If you watched Nash County's American legion team last summer you saw former Nash Central Bulldog Xavier Macklin hit a home run about every other game. Friday North Carolina A&T opened their baseball season, you know the X man knocked one out for the Aggies. Also former Bulldog Alex Pearce got a rbi in action at UNC Pembroke this week.

Former Gryphon Jim Leggett after sitting out last season after his shoulder injury his senior season for the Gryphons is pitching for Pitt CC this spring. He is joined by Northern Nash Knights Zack Woodley and Mike Williams.

Boy all of this baseball and we have not said one word about all the locals playing for Wesleyan. We will do that next time we talk baseball which could be everyday between now and end of July.

Boy I'm tire as when I got home from Joining Wes Bradshaw in covering the games of the Big East Tournament basketball for the "Stretchlon Sports Show" I have been surfing the net looking at all these scores from our guys.

Not Again

I don't know whether it is because it was being played at Hunt high school or it was their opponent Nash Central. The Big East basketball tournament continued to be a horror story for the Rocky Mount Gryphons last night as the Nash Central girls knocked off the #1 seeded Lady Gryphons 53-52. This completes a couple of nights of horror for Rocky Mount high school as both the boys and girls team the regular season champions fall in the semi's against Nash Central.

Tonight Wes Bradshaw and myself will be on site at Hunt to cover both championship games which can be seen later on WHIG-TV and "The Stretchlon Sports Show".

Today is regional wrestling day for ten grapplers at Rocky Mount High. The site is South Central High school. Last week was team week where each wrestler's score was added to his team score to advance the team. This weekends regional is if you win your match you advance.

Wrestling is a sport where you are face to face with an opponent Those there to watch will be focused directly on you. There is no taking a play off because if you do you will lose in an instant. If your match goes the distance it is six minutes of complete strain. The successful wrestlers will have six to eight matches in order to qualify for the State championships.

I am having a hard time getting into the Winter Olympics this year. Last night they had men's figure skating on. I hate to say this but men dancing on ice just doesn't do it for men. Now if they had a barrell for them to jump over that would be different.

Today at 11.00am Tiger speaks. I could care less about what he says. just two years ago there was no doubt that he would past Jack Nicklaus and win more than 18 major golf tournaments. Tiger's knee injury and now a eight iron to his skull has taken almost two years of Tiger"s prime golf life away from him. It is no longer a for sure thing that Tiger will pass Nicklaus's 18 majors.

Gryphons And The Big East Tournament: Short

The #1 seeded Gryphons of Rocky Mount High School vision of a regular season and tournament sweep in basketball lasted until they took the court last night at Hunt. Nash Central tired of losing three times this season to the Gryphons would not become a four time loser as the Bulldogs upset Rocky Mount 73-67.

The Bulldogs will play for the conference tournament championship at 7.30 Friday night at Hunt High. The Gryphon girls put their #1 seed on the line tonight as they meet Nash Centrals girls in the 6.00pm game tonight.

I found out for sure yesterday from Mike Gainey that sectional play for the boys and girls begins Monday night at home. Get there early because Morgan Doughtie sings the National Anthem right about 6.00pm.

Morgan is spending the spring as manager/scorekeeper for softball and practice is well under way for spring sports. It is hard to practice with a winter coat on whether it soccer or baseball.

Duke down by 12 at the half at Miami last night charged back to win. I think Duke's biggest problem is their team speed is slow. During the NCAA they will run into some one quick and they will also probably not shoot well on three pointers and exit NCAA's.

N C State lead by nine with ten minutes to go only to make one three pointer with a minute to go and missed 14 other shots. Only two of those 14 missed shots were inside.

Tiger Woods will speak on Friday. I truly believe Tiger doesn't have to apologize to me. Yes he at some point must face the world but the only people he needs to apologize to is his wife and family.

I figure Tiger will tell us he is truly sorry for his actions and mistakes. You know a mistake is something you do one time and didn't mean to do it. Like a bank robber who has robbed twenty banks, cheating on your wife is a habit and the mistake is getting caught. I am sure he is truly sorry for getting caught.

Big East Tournament Begins

The Big East tournament begins tonight at least from the Rocky Mount perspective. It is of course the semi finals before the Gryphons step into action and they have drawn cross town rival Nash Central who won by ten Monday over Sourthern Nash. The Gryphon have already beaten the Bulldogs three times this year and there is an old saying about being able to beat a team three times in a season. I wonder what the saying is about beating a team four times. Regardless, the Gryphons had better be ready to play.

The Lady Gryphons know who they draw on Thursday as the Nash Central girls handled Northern Nash last night in the opening round of girls action. The girls are faced with the same problem as the boys in sweeping Nash Central three times during the regular season. I would suspect that the Lady Gryphons understand about the need to be ready to play after losing at Northern Friday night in a game that they did not need to win to be conference regular season champs.

I hear through the grapevine that there is a good chance that both the boys and girls will open sectional play next Monday night at home in a double header. Both as #1 seeds. Who they would play is up in the air but as soon as we know more we will pass it along.

Our world today we live in is a cut cost world. Can you imagine what the heating bill is at any high school and it surely does make sense to play both teams on the same night and get a larger crowd to both than the boys play a single game Monday and the girls play a single game on Tuesday.

Those of you Carolina fans that were hoping for a season ending rally and a bid to the NCAA can just about forget the NIT after last night. Carolina has looked awful asgainst everybody but N C State.

I don't know how to judge the basketball world we live in. I thought Wake Forest was the best team in the ACC and they blew a 11 point lead in the last ten minutes at Virginia Tech Last night.

I am not one of these fans that will not pull for your team if you are the last team on earth. When the playoffs are on going I will pull for any ACC team to win to make the conference look good and of course any Big Four team. Growing up I use to shoot free throws just like Larry Miller who use to put one foot at the foul line and the other about six inches behind the line.

Former Carolina player George Karl yesterday found out that he has throat cancer. A couple of years ago he had Prostate cancer. In making his announcement yesterday that he was going to step aside from coaching the Denver Nuggetts until he had finished his treatments, you could hear in his voice the trauma that people go through any time the word cancer enters their life. I'll be praying for George Karl to win his battle and hope you do too. You can also join the battle and sign up for a Relay for Life team if you haven't already. This years Relay is April 23rd and 24th at the Rocky Mount Athletic Complex. To join a team go to Nash County's Relay for Life website. Just goggle Nash County relay and it will pop up.

Year Round School

Wake County is going through a mess right now with the controversy over year round schools. If you have ever had a child in it, you probably like it. Like most government projects it is very hard to make a good decision on it when most people have more than one child. Then that means you have a child in traditional and one in year round and totally chaos ensues.

We found in our house when Morgan went to year round at Winstead Elementary you could hardly tell any difference in time in and out of school. They had three weeks out in March and September and all of June. We enjoyed our year round experience.

Looking at high school sports year round would be perfect for athletics. Normally the year starts the week after Fourth of July. Fall sports could start practice and begin their games the first week in August. Football state championships would be over by about Thanksgiving just in time for basketball to begin playing on December first.

Football and basketball step all over each other now especially if you have a football team that survives the playoff to the third, fourth or finals. Does anybody remember the day when the first football game didn't occur until September or basketball until December first?

Times change for it use to be that schools didn't open until September to let the farmers have the workers to pick cotton or finish tobacco. Today farmers have macchinery that picks twelve rows at a time so laborers are not needed during school times.

I think year round is coming whether you are for it or not. The only way to find out for sure whether it works or not is all students within the system to go year round. You can't have first through fourth grade on year round and every one else doing traditional. That is of course the way our government works so it seems the right way to them.

Second Season Begins

The Big East Basketball tournament gets underway tonight and Rocky Mount will be in scout mode. The Gryphons as the top seed sits tonight waiting for the semi finals on Wednesday. Mike Gainey's game of interest will be Nash Central and Southern Nash as the winner gets the Gryphons Wednesday.

Pam Gainey's girls basketball team sits during Tuesdays first round for the girls tournament. She will intently be focusing on Nash Central and Northern Nash as the Lady Gryphons draw the winner Thursday night.

If all goes as planned this week the Stretchlon Sports Show will cover both final games Friday night. I will do play by play of the girls game and Wes Bradshaw will colorize the game while when the boys play we will switch.

Spring sports can officially hit the practice field this week. Just about all high school teams play their first games March first. College baseball begins Friday. ECU will find out right off the bat what they have this year playing Virginia this weekend in Greenville and next weekend South Carolina. Both Virginia and South carolina are preseason top twenty teams. Either weekend will be outstanding to watch if you can stand the frostbite.

Pot holes are every where. Yesterday the Daytonia 500 stopped twice to repair a pot hole between turns one and two. it took about two hours for just one. How long will it take to repair the pot holes in front of McDonalds on Sunset Avenue? There is about fifty yards of pot holes one after the other.

108,000 people went to Dallas to watch the NBA all star game. About 70,000 of them had to watch it on the big screen to see it. Kobe and LeBron get all the attention in the NBA but Dwayne Wade is a darn good player.

One And Done Time

If you are not first or second in your conference standings heading into every conference high school basketball tournament this week then you season is on the line. One more loss and your season is over.

This week is not one of those weeks for either Rocky Mount team as the boys and girls are #1 seeds. They will head into the sectionals regardless of what happens this week. They would like however to get on a roll that they can carry into sectional play. There is nothing like adding another trophy to the showcase.

Boys play begins Monday at Hunt and the girls start Tuesday. RM boys don't see action until Wednesday and the Girls wait for their semi's Thursday.

The Winter Olympics are under way and I have not watched any of it as of yet. I still would like to know why basketball is played in the Summer Olympics instead of the winter.

The Carolina Hurricanes head into the Olympic break one of the hottest teams in hockey. The last time I mentioned them they were 11 points out of the playoffs with 27 games to play. There are now 20 games left and they have shrunk the points back to only nine. It is very hard in hockey to gain ground when every team that gets a game into overtime wins a point.

The Bobcats are sixth in the NBA East. If this continues it will be their first playoffs ever. But the NBA regular season still has to mid April to end the regular season.

If you are a Carolina fan there is at least one team that you are better than. That's N C State. I think the Pack has packed it in for this season and played miserable yesterday in Chapel Hill. Finally towards the end Carolina pulled away.

In sports every week there is a new conclusion who is the best and Duke is near the top, but if there is one team in the ACC capable of making the final four to me it looks like Wake Forest. The Deacs have some ball players.