KY Buckeye

It may be only just across the river from KY but I watched North Laurel win the Pepsi Classic in Ripley, OH with Ashland Fairview taking 3rd.

Let's take a step back and look at this for what it is. UK is an above average football team that couldn't have gone less than 6-6 with the regular season laid out for them. They then beat a Georgia team that was in shambles at the time and and a Clemson team that could have cared less about the Music City Bowl. Seriously, I moved down here with nothing against the football team (fans had turned me against the basketball team years ago) and would like to continue to root for them. Let's accept them as a decent football team that could potentially have a bright future with a full complement of scholarships. By all means, enjoy the win, pound some brews and have a good time but Heisman/SEC Championship talk is pure insanity at this point. Sorry, I really hate to be that guy but listening to everybody and their brother who haven't paid attention to a college football game in years tell me about how UK is the greatest thing since sliced bread kind of wears me down.

I can predict that the Mason County fans who have complained about the Ledger's coverage thus far this year (even though it's been no different than any other year) won't call the comment line to say "Hey, thanks for tracking down sombody in Lexington to cover the 5/3 games and send them in every night." Sorry, I couldn't resist.

FWIW, here's a box score. SP: Owens 10 7-13 28, Anderson 8 0-0 19, Englert 3 1-2 7, Klee 3 0-1 6, Newton 2 0-0 5, Cunningham 1 0-0 2, Mason 1 0-0 2, Thompson 0 0-2 0. D: Massey 9 7-10 27, Graves 5 2-4 13, L.King 2 6-8 10, White 3 0-0 8, L.King 3 0-1 7, Grause 2 0-0 4, Hendrix 2 0-0 4, Curtis 1 0-0 2, Schalch 1 0-0 2.

Well done. Heck of a player.

Massey lit it up for Deming with 43 but they didn't get much else. Hall had 25 for Bracken followed by Hamilton with 18 and Cooper with a big 16 after a quiet couple games. Game Story

Bracken 67 Deming 56 I should be able to come up with more details here in a few minutes.

Augusta looked pretty good today and didn't show any effects of the tough game from last night. You had to be a little concerned when Bellevue cut the lead from 23 to 10 there in the 4th quarter but to the kids' credit, instead of saying "here we go again" they settled down and closed it out.

Portsmouth Trojans

I've been lurking and debating on joining BGP for a while but the chance to sound off on this topic made it well worth the $15. I'm looking forward to posting quite a bit here so hopefully this one doesn't come off the wrong way, it just gave me an outlet to say something I've wanted to for a while. It's really convenient to take shots at the local paper (or whatever media outlet) because their coverage isn't exactly what you'd like, but rarely does anybody ever stop to think about the logistics of it all. The Ledger has been getting killed about "not covering Mason County and St. Pat" but if you pay attention, absolutely nothing about the coverage has changed from last year or any other year. I'm not sure where all this new found hatred comes from, but judging by most of the comments and posts, it seems that everybody thinks the Deming/Bracken/Augusta/Lewis/Fleming/insertOhioschoolhere coverage is coming at the expense of Mason when it's not. The fact is, the Ledger sports department, due to different circumstances, was severly understaffed for the better part of last basketball season and many times the coverage was ONLY Mason and St. Pat. This year, there's not any less coverage of MC and SP, just more of everybody. If anyone has a legitimate complaint it's the other schools who got the short end of the stick in 05-06, especially the Ohio schools who got completely left out. At the time all those comments about not covering MC/SP were showing up in the comment line, the Ledger had been to and done a full writeup of every single Mason County or St. Pat boys or girls game within an hour of Maysville. In addition, all 13 of the schools in the coverage area had at least one game covered with a full story by 2 weeks into the season, something that didn't happen over the whole season last year. That's where the logistics come in. The Ledger hasn't had a full writeup for away games, but it's not like there's one in the past either. Everyone acts like the writers have some kind of agenda against Mason County instead of thinking about what would go into covering a game at Bourbon County (let alone Perry County Central) with a full story before deadline. And not to get too far off topic, but if they did ignore deadlines, budgets and everything else to drive all over the state to cover these games, the same people would be the first to complain when the price went up or their paper doesn't show up on time in the morning. Still, ignoring all of this, people will complain about having a box score and quick recap for away games. This despite the fact that this info is usually something a coach has to call in but the staff goes to great lengths to track down ONLY FOR MASON COUNTY. I apologize for the longwinded first post and hope I don't step on any toes with it. If anything, it just happened to give me an outlet to get started with something I've wanted to say for awhile. While everything I've said has been specific to Maysville since I'm pretty close to the situation (I won't go into great detail but you can probably figure it out), I wouldn't think things are much different in Ashland either. I guess my message is to think about things before you randomly take shots at someone. The writers want to have the best coverage they can but there are time, budgetary and any number of other limitations. Let's face it, we all love high school basketball, but we're not exactly dealing with a UK or NBA game where a story and stats are immediately available at your fingertips. Nobody is out here with a vendetta against a certain program. Do you honestly think that the writers sit there saying "Hey, I want to go watch West Union girls tonight instead of our hometown team which also happens to be one of the best in the state?" Constructive criticism can be a good thing and if there's really something you still can't understand about the coverage, call up one of the writers and talk to them about why it's that way. Heck, shoot me a PM if you want to. It's better than taking blind shots in the comment line.

Also, not listed are: Wednesday: Bracken vs. Nicholas, 8:15 Thursday: Bracken vs. Betsy Layne, 8:15 Friday: Betsy Layne vs. Nicholas, 4:45 After pool play wraps up, there will be 7th, 5th, 3rd and championship games at the same times Saturday.