PEA RIDGE — A narrow loss to Farmington last week along with an even more narrow win over Shiloh conspired to drop the ’Hawks one spot in the MaxPreps High School boys basketball poll.
The Blackhawks went through an eight-day period playing three top 10 ranked teams in succession. The first two battles had to be fought without the ’Hawks’ top outside shooting threat Kasey Cooper, who sprained an ankle in the warm-ups prior to the Huntsville game. Getting Cooper back for the Shiloh game was pivotal as he drained three 3s in what turned out to be a 2-point win for Pea Ridge.
The ’Hawks will get both Huntsville and Farmington one more time this season, but those games will be played on the road.
Although not having home field advantage will make the task harder, coach Charley Clarke likes his chances anyway.
“We were much more competitive against Farmington than we were against Huntsville,” Clarke explained, “as we had a few days to prepare a game planthat didn’t include Cooper.
Against Huntsville we had about 30 seconds of time to prepare for doing without Kasey.”
Meanwhile Huntsville ascended to the top spot in the poll moving past Dumas and Subiaco. Subiaco is involved in a tough conference battle with West Fork and Clarksville. Subiaco has beaten Clarksville who has beaten West Fork who has beaten Subiaco.
All three teams are in the 4A State Top 10 and it is anyone’s guess who will end up the first, second and third seed from the 4A-4 District.
The 4A-4 and 4A-1 (our district) makes up the field for the Region Tournament which will be played at Farmington this season. There is a very high probability of the ’Hawks meeting one of those three teams in the first round of the Regionals with a statetournament berth on the line.
At this moment, the top four seeds in the 4A-1 are very solid in their positions, though upsets between now and the end of the regular season could skew all that. In the past few years, the 4A-1 has won the bulk of the games against the 4A-4 and hopefully the trend will continue in 2010.
MaxPreps state top 10
1. Huntsville
2. Dumas
3. Subiaco
4. Farmington
5. West Fork
6. Westside (Jonesboro)
7. Clarksville
8. Pea Ridge
9. McGehee
10. Shiloh 4A-1 4A State Overall Huntsville 1st 1st 13th Farmington 2nd 4th 16th Pea Ridge 3rd 8th 26th Shiloh 4th 10th 50th Berryville 5th 16th 87th Prairie Grove 6th 25th 125th Gentry 7th 29th 154th Gravette 8th 42nd 213th
There are 285 teams in the overall state rankings, with 48 of them placed in the 4A classification.
My theory was right!
Recently I commented on the differences between large and small schools and it seemed, to me at least, that the bigger the school, the less that those particular athletes received support.
The figures are in from the Arkansas Activities Association concerning the attendance at the recent state football championships. Games were played for the 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, 6A and 7A championships. Attendance was considered good at all the venues but it was interesting that the 7A championship game sold the least number of tickets.
When my old high school (Monett, Mo.) played for the state football championship in 1971, the few people who were in town that afternoon talked about how quiet things were around the community. That was, until everybody got home after we won, and the town was rocking for several days after we beat South Shelby 39-6. The number of folks who made the trek to Missouri State’s field for that particular game numbered in the thousands.
Springdale Har-Ber whipped Fort Smith Southside for the 7A title and I doubt all that much notice was made of it in Springdale outside the sports sections and the players’ immediate families and supporters. Not that its a necessarily a bad thing, but it seems to me that attending a large school has more drawbacks than positive things.
States and Regionals
After the district basketball tournament Feb. 16-20, the 4A Regional will be held in Farmington Feb. 24-27. The top four finishers at the regional will advance to the state tournament to be hosted by Highland High School. If you want to know how to get there,just go to Springdale hang a left on U.S. Highway 412 and just drive east until you begin to wonder if your are still in Arkansas. Of course, should we be attending the state tournament, we won’t have near the drive schools like Dumas will have. Highland is on the Missouri border past Mt. Home.
State track
The 4A state track and field indoor championships will be held Feb. 19 in Fayetteville on the U of A indoor track. The meet is for all track athletes ninth grade and up as there are no indoor meets for junior high schools. The indoor meet has been a pretty good barometer for how the outdoor season will turn later this spring.
Sports, Pages 14 on 01/27/2010