GrantNKY

:down::down::down:

Brandon is truly one of the best guys involved with Northern Kentucky sports. Hands down the best hitting coach in the area, and anyone who has seen him at ATY knows this to be true. I don't know what offers he had to play football, but he was a heck of an athlete and I'm sure he would have succeeded wherever he went if he chose football.

Owen County should be higher. Not a team in the state has a player who can shut down Carson Williams. Their guards rely on the 3 a lot so they may lose 1 or 2 games if they have an off night, but they are as good as just about anyone.

1st Region: Paducah Tilghman 2nd Region: Hopkinsville 3rd Region: Meade County 4th Region: Bowling Green 5th Region: Taylor County 6th Region: Bullitt East 7th Region: Trinity 8th Region: Owen County 9th Region: Covington Catholic 10th Region:Campbell County 11th Region: Dunbar 12th Region: Boyle County 13th Region: Clay County 14th Region: Perry County Central 15th Region: Johnson Central 16th Region: Morgan County Championship Game:Cov Cath vs. Taylor County 2016 Sweet 16 State Champion: Covington Catholic

Anything other than an All-A State Championship and an 8th region title would be surely a disappointment.

Again, I asked this earlier, why would a coach willingly cut players just to go play lesser competition. That doesn't sound logical to me. That to me is like a varsity team basketball team getting their confidence built up by scrimmaging the JV team in practice. If coaches are truly willing to do that, then yes I agree participation rate would not be the best determinant for classes, but I just find it hard to believe someone could justify that to themselves.

I'm not doubting that other sports besides football need depth. Excuse me if I'm wrong because I'm not super familiar with the rules of soccer at the High School level, but in the pros once you come out, you cannot come back in once you are taken out so a coach will leave their best players in for more of the time unlike football where you can sub play by play. But with baseball, I don't think depth matters as much as you would think it does. You have to fill the 8 positions besides pitcher and barring injury, those 8 can play every out of every game the whole season. Then if you have 1 dominant pitcher, you can win state in Kentucky. I know Simon Kenton isn't the best example because they are a big school, but they went all the way to the state finals 2 years ago basically riding the back of 1 pitcher.

Like I said to each his own. Neither way is perfect, but I just feel participation rate for classes would be more effective.

re- evaluate every 4 years or whatever number you want. I think a participation rate system would be easier too with 4 classes because there would be little fluctuation.

I don't fault you for feeling that way, but what would it hurt by going to participation rate? It would negatively affect 0 schools, and have the opportunity to uplift a few. What would be the harm?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Kentucky produces the best basketball players, I'm just saying the system in place for high school basketball in this state is what makes it so great.

To each his own, but what if the problem is there is simply not enough athletes in a county or a school district? How would a coach fix that problem. Urban Meyer could come to those high schools and couldn't turn it around because none of the kids would even know who he is because football doesn't matter to those who don't play it. I don't believe doing it based on participation rate would have any affect on any of the perennial contenders i.e Highlands. But where it would have an affect would be the big schools like Grant County. Who has almost as many kids in their whole program as Highlands has on their Freshman team. So wouldn't it be the best for a program to play based on their participation rate, so they are playing teams on their own level? Maybe if they play teams on their own level they would have a chance to establish a winning culture and then maybe kids would start to want to play football. Then if more kids play they can move back up a class. I think a change like this would affect only a few schools, but would affect them in a big way. As to your claim about big schools keeping numbers down, I don't know what to say to that honestly. I don't understand what kind of coach would want to cut a bunch of kids just to be able to beat up on smaller teams. I highly doubt there would be an issue with that.

To me bigger schools have an advantage in football not because they have better athletes, but because they have more depth. Whereas the smaller schools might have players playing both sides of the ball and the big schools can sub players in and out. Thats why I think only football should have classes. In basketball I think depth is less important. Yeah it helps a little to have a better talent pool to choose from, but really its about having 5 guys that are better that are better than your 5 guys. But as far as football classes go, I think the KHSSA should really look at reform. I believe the classes should be divided based not on school size, but rather sports participation rate. I know in my area Grant Co. is a 5A school for football and Owen Co. is 2A I believe. Grant Co. and Owen Co. have roughly the same amount of kids playing football, but yet Grant Co is in a district with Cov-Cath, Dixie and Highlands. I'm sure there are issues like this elsewhere in the state too.

To me, football should be the only sport in any state broken up into classes. Kentucky High School Basketball is the greatest thing about this state. We simply do it better than everyone else and there is literally nothing better than crowning ONE champion every year.

Owen has the best team in the 8th and the best player and neither of them are really close in my opinion. If you haven't seen Carson Williams play, you NEED to. The 32nd district is probably the most wide open in the state. I think all 4 teams in the 32nd are top 10 teams and you could make a case for any of the 4 teams even Williamstown to win the district. Grant Co. will be interesting to watch though, 0 experience outside of Rose and Saylor but they will be very quick and should play good enough defense to win games.

No both kicks were missed. After the first one, Grant sent their team back out there to go for 2 instead and the refs came over and told the coaches that it must be enforced on the kickoff. The second time it was almost as if Dixie roughed the kicker on purpose so Grant wouldn't have tied it up in the 4th. Both times the officials were ignorant of the rules and told Grant that it had to be enforced on the kickoff.

Jason Goe (Grant Co.) - Morehead State

Obviously Grant County loses a lot from this years team. But if I had to guess the lineup will probably look like this: Jordan Rose, PG 6'1 Senior Joey Saylor, Guard 6'1 Senior Bo Hammonds Guard 6'2 Senior/ Zach Tuggle Guard 6'0 Junior Cole O'Nan, Forward 6'2 Senior Luke Adkins Forward 6'3 Junior Pretty inexperienced team outside of Rose and Saylor. 32nd District will probably be down with Grant and SK losing a lot but with Walton bringing back a lot and Williamstown maturing it, could be anyones district next year.

Thought Lincoln would be able to pull this one out. Its amazing how evenly matched these two teams were. Congrats to both on a great season.

Anyone remember the thread about a week or so ago that was adamant about redesigning the regional tournament to only allow district champions in. Its for rematches like this that make Kentucky high school basketball the greatest sport in the world. Why would anyone want to change a system that gives us games like this?

I believe Grant captured the momentum going into halftime down 3. But just were not able to put anything together offensively in the third quarter and they were simply unable to recover. Game was definitely closer than the score indicated. I wish in the first half we could have seen Hawes and Johnson go after it a little more instead of Grant sliding into a 2-3. Great matchup there between in my opinion 2 of the top 3 PG's in the region (the other being Kidwell from Collins). Also I believe the officiating crew tonight was from the 10th region, but they were collectively the worst officiating crew I have seen all year. One official in general didn't even know the right protocol for calling a foul. Did the officiating change the outcome, no, but I do believe that it would have been a much closer game. I think Grant County no doubt had the kids to win this region. Great ballplayers as well as some of the most respectful young kids off the court you'll ever meet. Sad to watch this senior class go with all they have gone through together.

I just don't understand starting the games at 10. It gives Shelby a huge advantage over Grant. Its close to an hour and a half drive for Grant and probably only around 20 minutes for Shelby. Love playing the Region at Henry every year just for the atmosphere that the gym provides. But I have to say the Grant County faithful will not be very happy about this.

Who plays which days?

Am I being a prisoner of the current moment? Probably. But winning back to back district titles for the first time since the 80's is a big deal for Grant County. Are they a perfect team. No. Do they show up every game? No. But it's tournament time and anything can happen.

So you're saying you would lose a game in order to avoid a 1 in 3 chance of playing one team over winning a game and having a 2 in 3 chance of playing a presumably lesser team. Please explain why that makes sense.