Mojocat

Yes. Not sure I've seen a team dominate like that on the boards. South's point guard led them with either 5 (khsaa) or 10 (hudl) rebounds (someone was bad wrong in their counting, heh), and no one else had more than 3. You probably don't want someone in your secondary leading the team in tackles, you probably don't want your point guard leading the team in rebounds. By that margin, anyway. At times, OC seemed to be playing volleyball over the rim. Back and forth. Back and forth. Burnside, at 6'5, would have helped some, but really that was just a matter of OC strength vs a South weakness; South counters that not by rebounding significantly better, but by making 3s. Which didn't happen.

6-31. That's the only stat you need to see. South Oldham's 3 point shooting. In their 6 game winning streak leading into the district tournament, South had made double digit threes in each game. And while there were some bad opponents in that list of 6, it also includes Desales, which is a top-20ish team, and Iroquois, a decent 6th region team. You can't get obliterated on the glass and have any chance of winning if you're 6-31 from three. Doesn't require much more thinking than that.......

Any guesses or observations as to why they have that history of coming up short in the post-season?

That's my instinct, too - but then, that's what I said would happen the first time, and it was an overtime game. My thinking was that Higdon and Anderson, at 6'7 and 6'8, would overwhelm the 6'4 Amburgey and likely get him in foul trouble. And the exact opposite happened - he had a great game, and the two North bigs were largely non-factors. Was that all a fluke, or rather does it tell us something basic about the matchup? I suspect North wins, but will offer no further detailed predictions this time. heh.

Veirs, Stinebruner, Neal and Fisher all play together on the same AAU team. Good kids all.

I guess so! It's not a surprise that they lost, I would have predicted something like a 20 point loss give or take. But a 60 point loss? I see House, their best player, played, but maybe they had others out.....

As per usual, really interesting thinking here ColonelMike. Good research. To play devil's advocate.......I think one of those 2 factors is far more important than the other. Or rather let me say it this way: a team will almost always have close games in the post-season, so free throw percentage is likely a good predictor of success. If you shoot poorly from the line, that's likely going to bite you at some point. Conversely, 'getting off to a good start' most probably means you are just reducing the list of teams to the 'best teams'. Which is obviously important as you try to separate the teams that could win the thing from those that probably cannot......but as we all know, the best team doesn't always win! That's point 1 about good starts. Point 2 is we all have also seen teams get hot at the right time, get on a run and go further in tournament play than one would have predicted. If you eliminate teams that got off to bad starts, you're taking some of those off the table.......

Agree with this. As I watched South Oldham and Carroll play last week, this was my principal thought - how demoralizing for the Carroll County kids, and how does he keep them engaged and coming to practice every day?

I'm still trying to understand Christian Evangel 81 Seneca 22 from last week.

Maybe, but I’m skeptical. He looks 6’1 to me, in his shoes. And not really athletic. Not at all a typical Calipari guard - but I agree with Falcon Pride, Cal retires in 2024 anyway.

Good deal, thx to both of you.

@ColonelMike @Adrian Woj Burner I’ve not been to a 29th District Tournament when all 3 Oldham schools are represented in the same night. The girls’ game at 6 features OC and North, and of course OC and South are playing the boys game afterwards. Last year, both boys and girls games had the same 2 schools, and 2 years ago was the weird Covid year so seating wasn’t an issue. In fact, looks like 2018 was the last time this happened. Anyway, will the majority of North girls’ fans exit after the early game? Or is it risky to assume that? I plan on getting there early enough that it shouldn’t matter - but I have a couple of buddies who plan to come, and I’m trying to figure out what to tell them….Adding to the intrigue is that North has a smaller gym, of course.

I see what you are saying, but it's not really in contravention with what I was saying earlier. When I said, basically, scoring is the only stat that matters, I wasn't suggesting that the coaches simply listed the top 16 scorers from the Region and picked them. I was saying, they basically decided which player or players from a given team by looking at points per game. If a team was only good enough to warrant 1 player selected, then they took that team's leading scorer. If a team was good enough to get 2 players, they took the two leading scorers. And in North Oldham's case, which I agree deserved 3 players, they took the top 3 scorers on that team. I like Amburgey a lot, but at 15-14, I suspect the voters just didn't think OC should have 2 players.

That's it in a nutshell. And not just "stats" - it's basically a leading scorer list. 7 teams had one person named, and in each case it was the leading scorer of each team. 4 teams had 2 players named, and in each case, it was the top 2 scorers on those teams. And one team (North) had 3 players named, and in that case it was the top 3 scorers. None of that is surprising, of course, it's just the way it is and always has been. There's really no way to do this and make everyone happy, or even a clear majority.

Bit of a surprise. CAL has been all over the place lately. Loses to DeSales by 32, beats Eastern by 24, loses to Male by 31, now beats a top 15 Collins. Up and down, but you could say that about a lot of teams this year….

The 5th Region choice is interesting. I only remembered LaRue County from the KOTB in December, they upset someone (can't recall now) and had a kid who really played well. I just looked, his name is Daniel Allen. Averaged 22 a game. Childress is the 3rd leading scorer. Now, I applaud looking beyond mere points to make these kinds of selections - so many times, it's only that and nothing more. And presumably this kid is really good all the way around. But I believe he is also the coach's kid, which adds some intrigue.

Seems like it would be unusual to have that many ties - Regions 9, 10 and 11. Maybe not, I don't recall.

Right. Wasn't really intending to draw the comparison between those two teams, just that E-town was definitely the kind of team that wouldn't want to play twice in a day. I don't think I saw either E-town or Highlands that season, so my observation is a bit remote, we'll say. heh.

Agree, and that's the more compelling point to me (although the less practical one, admittedly. Dollar$, after all). Two games in one day doesn't, arguably, get you the best team as winner in that it effects different teams differently. A couple of years ago, one obvious example, E-town had a small, quick team that played 94 feet. Naturally, that kind of team will fare worse in a 2 games in a day deal than, for example, a team that plays games in the 40s.

I understand the advantages of that - you lay them out in an earlier post. But think about what that requires: it requires the presumption of above average athletic ability when a kid is 5 or 6 years old, and holding them back on that basis. You're just not going to see that much in Jefferson or, especially, Oldham County. Just not the culture. If a kid is an athletics standout, then you some repeating a grade, but you won't know that until the kid is close to or even in middle school. All of this reminds me of stories I've heard about counties down I-75 close to the Tennessee border. When my oldest kid was in middle school and we played in the "state tournament" at the old KBA in Lexington, we got the final four one year and played a team from Pulaski County. Now, I know some parents just insist that bigger stronger opposing kids are automatically older, it's a built in excuse for losing. And I know some kids just develop early, and look like they are 15 when they are 12. Check. But you'll have to trust me when I say the entire team appeared to be much older than 6th grade. At the half, my wife overheard one dad telling his son to settle down, and to "go out and have a smoke if you need to" to calm down. heh. Later, one of my younger son's coaches had taught in that area of the state and confirmed that it was common practice for boys to be held back, long before you could tell whether they were athletic or not. I asked him what the principal of the school thought of that - his kid was a holdback, too! he said........

Yes, would be interesting to have that data. My kid has played AAU basketball and baseball on some really good (nationally ranked) teams, and a lot of his teammates' names are ones well recognized on these boards. A surprising number (to me, anyway) of them have repeated grades, and almost always it was late middle school or even early high school. One kid on his basketball team was held back from the beginning - but the others, it was like it didn't occur to the parents to do that until much later. The two kids in the list above that I'm aware of repeating grades, one did it his freshman year of high school, the other I believe was sometime in middle school (before I was even aware of the kid).

Curious. I don't remember a game where the boys tipped first. I wonder if there's a specific reason for that. What immediately comes to mind is this might be a way to result in more attendance for the girls game. Ordinarily, the stands are filling during the first game, and full well before the second game starts. Which might seem a little dispiriting, I guess, if you are playing in the first game. Still, there is a buzz, a sense of anticipation going on. My worry would be if you reverse things, there could be a big exodus after the first game ends. And that would be more dispiriting!

Gotta be Moore, I'd say. Kids like Hammond and Roberts just picked a bad year to be a senior (and some other kids perhaps wisely decided to repeat a grade. heh)......

I've only seen Morton once, and haven't seen Hamilton at all, so grain of salt. Looking at the records of the two teams, statistics and head to head results - and especially given GRC just won a state title (and Morton was tournament MVP) and has been ranked top 5 all season - it's a little surprising. On the one hand, I always applaud when folks dig a little deeper and think about these things and don't just go with the obvious. On the other hand, I wonder if there's some blowback going on over something......

I think North is clearly better, but that may be because Collins didn’t look great the one time I’ve seen them. North has won ten in a row - maybe a loss before tournaments play wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for them. To win, Collins needs the score to be in the 50s (and 40s would be even better), but that would mean minimal contributions from the 2 North bigs and as others have said that might be a bit much to expect. Massey says North 58-56, but - despite my instincts! - I’m going to pick the upset here. I’ll say Collins by 3. Heh - changed my mind by the time I got to the end……