The mighty Shiloh girls basketball team came to Pea Ridge expecting to add to their long winning streak over the Lady ’Hawks.
While they did escape with another win, it was by the narrowest of margins as the ’Hawks lost by a single point, 33-32.
The narrow win over the locals dropped Shiloh from the No. 5 ranked team in the state to the No. 7 position. So while the Lady ’Hawks, as did the football ’Hawks before them, still lost a game, they put the fear into Shiloh in the last time they invade Pea Ridge territory.
Recovering from my back surgery has prevented me from attending any games this year so far, but I sure would have liked to see that game. Jordan Winn scored 18 to lead the team and lead the game as well as she outscored all the individual visitors.
Playing in the toughest 4A conference in Arkansas has been hard on the ’Hawks’ won-loss record but they have been steadily improving.
4A-1 Conference standings
Prairie Grove 8-0
Farmington 7-1
Shiloh 5-2
Ozark 4-3
Gravette 3-5
Pea Ridge 2-6
Gentry 1-7
Berryville 0-8 4A State rankings
Prairie Grove
Pulaski
Farmington
Star City
Waldron
Bauxite
Shiloh
Pottsville
Batesville SS
Pocohontas
Ozark
Gravette
Pea Ridge
Gentry
Berryville ’Hawks climb into 2nd place in the 4A-1
While Shiloh has been cruising, for the most part, through district match ups, the rest of the conference race has gotten jumbled.
The ’Hawks have lost three games in district, with two of those going to Shiloh.
Berryville was the only other team to beat the roundball boys. Coach Charley Clark’s boys have battled their way into a second place tie with Gravette and Berryville with matching 5-3 records.
The MaxPreps/CBS State 4A Poll still has the strange ranking of Gravette in the states top 10 with Shiloh back at No. 14. At least the poll corrected their earlier ranking of Clarksville in the second position among 4A teams to where it ought top have been all year, that is the No. 1 position. The Clarksville five have been hammering schools of their classification by 30 to 40 points regularly. If there has ever been a team that could almost be considereda lock on a state title, it would be Clarksville.
Last year, Jonesboro Westside was considered a prohibitive favorite to repeat as the state champ with their great size and experience. Their center, Hunter Mikkelson, has gone on to star for the Razorbacks this year in a big way. However, as I have always believed, speed trumps size and Clarksville had loads of it to knock off Westside last year. This year they are getting even faster. One of their players already has an offer from the Hogs to play in Fayetteville two years hence.
4A-1 District standings
Shiloh 7-0
Pea Ridge 5-3
Gravette 5-3
Berryville 5-3
Prairie Grove 4-4
Ozark 3-4
Farmington 2-7
Berryville 0-8 4A State poll rankings
Clarksville
Pulaski
Westside
Valley View
Osceola
Heber Springs
Pocohontas
Dollarway
Waldron
Gravette
Shiloh
Berryville
Pea Ridge
Prairie Grove
Ozark
Farmington
Gentry Hawg ball is back
Though it was slow in coming, the old kind of Hawg ball that we all grewto love in the 1980s and ’90s is back in 2012. Under first-year head coach Mike Anderson, the basketball boys are quickly starting to resemble the teams of the glory days when they were coached by head coach Nolan Richardson and assistant coach Mike Anderson!
Last Saturday’s game with 20th-ranked Michigan was the first sell out crowd in Bud Walton Arena in a very long time. While the Hawgs jumped out to a huge lead from the games’ outset (the Razorbacks made their first 11 shots on their way to a 34-14 lead midway in the first half) the formidable Michigan Wolverines kept whittling away at the lead until tying it late in the game.
However, while they came back from way down, the visitors never led in the contest. Of course, had the Wolverines final shot gone in rather than bouncing out, the Hogs would have lost at the buzzer. But in still another, “of course” if a Razorback had not been in his face to force the shot higher than the shooter would have liked, the shot would have probably gone in.
The Michigan coach remarked that he had never seen, nor will he likely see, any team in the United States with that kind of quickness. There is a team with that kind of quickness, and its our neighbor to the north, the Missouri Tigers. Those same Tigers were coached for the last few years and built into a juggernaut by the new Hog coach, Mike Anderson.
When Anderson resigned to take the Arkansas job, he had lots of angst leaving the Tigers as he had built them to peak this year and peak they have, currently ranked second in the nation. Anderson might well have given up his first national championship as a head coach by coming to Arkansas but as he has often said “he felt like he needed to come home.”
When an average Arkansas team from last year lost their leading scorer who bailed out due to his aversion to excess running, and lost their best player on the boards with a season ending injury, most folks pretty much assigned Arkansas to the basement this year.
But, as the Michigan coach found out, speed can kill.
Richardson always said that you had to have luck to win, and the harder youworked, you luckier you got.
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Editor’s note: John McGee 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 prtnews@ nwaonline.com.
Sports, Pages 10 on 01/25/2012