Indiana HS Basketball Tourney running thread...

In Terre Haute, all the townie kids go to North and all the townie kids go to South. Some other townie kids go to West Vigo.

 

Crean, Matta, Izzo and Painter. The final one was about three rows behind me as I played nerdy, high school fanboi looser as I do each year...as long as I have no working duties.

On Thomas, you can live with two or three questionable shots, especially early, when, like I said, he gets himself to the basket when he knows the game is on the line. He did it last year in the regional at Tipton, in the state finals against Winchester and again Saturday against Brownstown. I've already heard, for the first time, that should Thomas break Bailey's record, there should be an asterisk because it happened in class basketball. I can't agree with that since Thomas' regular season competition is as good as it gets. Sure, the deep tournament runs (assuming another next year) might end up making the difference, but that's a rugged league he plays in and the non-conference schedule (i.e. Warsaw, Lawrence North) are legit, too.

 

Yeah ... because Bailey was racking up his points against the best of the best. :

For every win over a Pat Graham-led Floyd Central, there's two or three garbage-ass wins over the likes of Mitchell, Paoli or Salem, etc.

Damon Bailey is an undeniably great high school player (note: I said HIGH SCHOOL, not college), but a large percentage of his cult deserves to be punched in the face for their idiotic devotion to him, mostly based on the fact he's a white, rural kid who embodies some 1950s era dream player that was arcane when Bailey played.

And the class basketball diehards need to STFU too. It's over. It's been over for years. I don't like class basketball, but the fact remains that athletes/kids who are in school today don't know it to be any different. Crowds seem to be up from the late 90s when the wounds were still fresh, so who cares?

The asterisk thing pisses me off. Of all things that need asterisks in the IHSAA lore, that would be about 9 million on the list. Nos. 1-1 million are anything that happened before the segregation occurred, etc.

 

Dee Davis' original house was actually in South's district until he was in middle school. The redistricting stuff makes me laugh, since the latest "idea" is that they should combine the high schools again to make the town more competitive in football and dominant in basketball.
Neither school is diverse. The JV and varsity programs at South had a combined 2.5 black kids. Being from North Carolina, that is stunning to me.
South held its celebration pep rally yesterday, btw, and renamed the court after J.R. Holmes.

 

Don't disagree with much there...except for the fact that Bailey was a pretty damn good college player...third-team All-American, All-Big Ten, Conference Frosh of Year.

I do look forward to the day (2048?) when all the old guys are dead and I don't have to hear about how there used to be ticket draws for the tournament, 17 teams in each sectional and how 40,000 people once showed up to see Damon play. And now the whole damn sport is just ruled by 7 foot black guys that Keefer recruited and would have never seen the floor for Connersville.

 

Bailey also had every ref in his pocket. Way back when, at UPI, we were taking scores and the guy from Brownstown calls about a close loss to Bailey's BNL team. His first line after the score: "We got homered in our own gym!"

 

As has been covered here a thousand times, the refereeing in Bailey's playing days was fucking shameful.

 

Part of the cult of Damon those refs were.

 

Isn't WV the hick school? Or does it just have a higher percentage of them?

 

I remember WV as being the hick kids, myself, but it's been a while.

 

That's crap for a couple of reasons.

First, as you noted, Luers plays in a big-school conference and plays a strong non-conference schedule.

Second, class basketball has taken 2 games out of the tournament. When the revered one from Heltonville played, there were enough rounds in the tourney for 8-9 games. Given BNL made the State Finals in three of his four years (and the title game once in those four), he had the chance to play up to 25 tournament games in those three years. In his freshman year, they lost to Pat Graham's Floyd Central team in the first game of the regional, but that still would be 24-28 tournament games during his career ... essentially one and a half extra seasons.

Now, the max number of tourney games is 7 ... so Thomas would have to get the record with fewer postseason games. If they win it next year, they'll have 19-21 tourney games in the bank.

If Marion Pierce had played on a team that could've gotten out of the New Castle sectional and gone to state three times, he might have put that record beyond Damon's reach. Marion also did his in the era with no 3-point shot, but nobody ever thought about putting an asterisk next to Damon.

 

With Exhibit A being the title game at the Dome. 40,000 people didn't show up to watch Damon get beat (well, except the small part of the 40,000 that were from Concord, Anderson and Kokomo).