Ridger Sports

Lady ’Hawks climb in state rankings

— Pea Ridge Lady ‘Hawks got a bump in the CBS Freeman/Maxprep 4A State Poll, moving into the top 25 teams in the 24th position.

The girls are also in a tie for the fifth position in the district standings.

If the girls won at Gravette Tuesday night, they would have the inside position to qualify for No.

5 and get to play the No. 4 seed in the district tournament. The four semifinalists in the district tournament would all qualify for the regional tournament following. Fall lower than fifth place and the regional tournament bid would have to come at the expense of one of the three state powerhouses in the conference, namely Prairie Grove, Farmington or Shiloh.

From top to bottom, the 4A-1 is the toughest girls conference in the state.

Current conference standings:

4A-1 Girls Conference

  1. Prairie Grove 10-0

  2. Farmington 9-1

  3. Shiloh 6-3

  4. Ozark 5-4

  5. Pea Ridge 3-7

Gravette 3-7

  1. Gentry 2-8

  2. Berryville 1-9

4A GIRLS STATE POLL

  1. Prairie Grove

  2. Pulaski

  3. Farmington

  4. Malvern

  5. Star City

  6. Bauxite

  7. Shiloh

  8. Pottsville

  9. Nashville

  10. Batesville SS

  11. Ozark

  12. Pea Ridge

  13. Gravette

  14. Gentry

  15. Berryville

Boys hold steady in district/state

The steadily improving Blackhawk boys basketball team will need to keep that improvement going as they go into the last four regular season games with only a single home game in the schedule.

Last week’s log jam in second cleared out some with the ’Hawks now sitting in that position by themselves. The electrifying victory over the Prairie Grove team was a great confidence builder.

This week the ’Hawks will have played Gravette (Tuesday) and Berryville (Friday), the two teams that are closest to the home boys in the district chase. Should they win both games this week, they will have a great shot at the No. 2 seed in the district tournament.

At 8-1, Shiloh ought to be able to coast in to win, BUT they were taken down by Prairie Grove last week. A couple of more losses and the ’Hawks have a chance to catch them as far as to aconference championship. However, the only way to grab the No. 1 seed would be for Shiloh to lose three of their last four, a not very likely scenario.

Getting a No. 2 seed going into the district tournament would also have one great side benefit. It would avoid the ’Hawks playing the Clarksville Panthers in the first round.

All teams getting past the first round of regionals qualify for the state tournament. Whoever earns the No. 4 seed after the district tournament will have the honor of playing one of the 4As all-time great teams in the Panthers. Clarksville has been hanging hugely lopsided scores on teams in their classfication with all their losses coming against 7A schools.

Hopefully, the ’Hawks will eventually get to play Clarksville but only they have secured their ticket to move on.

4A-1 District standings

  1. Shiloh 8-1

  2. Pea Ridge 7-3

  3. Gravette 6-4 Berryville 6-4

  4. Prairie Grove 4-6

  5. Farmington 3-7

  6. Ozark 2-7

  7. Gentry 0-10

4A boys state poll

  1. Clarksville

  2. Pulaski

  3. Osceola

  4. Westside

  5. Heber Springs

  6. Pocohontas

  7. Valley View

  8. Dollarway

  9. Gravette

  10. Waldron

  11. Shiloh

  12. Berryville

  13. Pea Ridge

  14. Prairie Grove

  15. Farmington

  16. Ozark

  17. Gentry

The state poll, which is based on a lot of factors (so they say) seems to be in need of some severe tweaking.

Although Shiloh has to date shown itself to be the class of the 2011-12 season, they are still ranked behind Gravette, a team with four (and counting) conference losses. Pea Ridge is narrowly behind Berryville.

While the Bobcats trail the ’Hawks in the conference race, they did hand the ’Hawks one of their three league losses, so the order is legitimate. If the ’Hawks can win out this week, they could be on a rise toward the top 12.

Speaking of rising ’Hawks, I came away from last Friday’s win over Prairie Grove as impressed as I have been in a while. I had to check on my stats to make sure my observations were correct.

First of all, the ’Hawks went on a ferocious tear on defense in the second quarter as well as rallying for a bunch of points at the same time. The amazing thing is that they executed the first half as hard as they did but only drawing two fouls! Teams that press and grind the other team the way we did canexpect to be called for a fair amount of fouls but that didn’t happen Friday.

They played with precision along with speed and ferocity.

Checking over my shot chart, I noticed that scores were coming exclusively from two places: 3-point shots or points in the paint. Whenever the Tigers decided to pack it around the goal, the ’Hawks just shot (and made) 3-pointers. When the 3s started falling, the Tigers had to go out to cover, which left the big ’Hawks free to take passes to the goal. The insideoutside combination was enough to drive a visiting coach a little nuts. The Tigers coach went nuts enough to draw a technical foul, anyway.

When the ’Hawks are executing coach Charley Clarks’ offense the way he means them to, they are a force to reckon with. Of course, late in the game Friday when it looked like it was pretty much over, the ’Hawks did get a little sloppy with a succession of bad passes, etc.

When they bring their “A” game, the ’Hawks are going to be a tough draw in weeks ahead.

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Editor’s note: John Mc-Gee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].

Sports, Pages 10 on 02/01/2012