It’s been a pretty good week here at the Victoria Enterprise offices. Personally, I got a new job which will pay me more than this place does. (Don’t worry, the Times will be kept up). I finalized the details for a trip to Chicago on April 6th and 7th in order to watch the Twins play the White Sox, which will assuredly be exciting. Then, thanks to my other site, (www.victoria-weather.com!) I amy have arranged a radio interview for myself. OK, so that one may not be such good news. For anyoe. But this past week, it’s been nothing but good news in the sports world as well. Let’s take a look.
ITEM ONE: I promised from the outset of this blog to cover sports and a little bit of the Victoria scene. Well, this weekend, we had the perfect confluence of the two items, as Holy Family Catholic High School of Victoria won the State 2A basketball tournament. The Fire were assuredly an underdog, as they were seeded #4 in their section so making the tournament, let alone winning it, was quite an accomplishment. Holy Family beat Maple River, a conglomerate school district centered in Mapleton. The game couldn’t have been a better matchup. Both teams had lanky forwards dominating the team, but Holy Family did a good job of finding backdoor cutters to get around the stingy Eagle defense. The overtime thriller was eventually won on a great defensive play as Matt Quammen tipped a Maple River pass to Cameron Cain, who took it in for the game winning lay up. The exciting part for me was that they had a fire engine escort through town back to the school. Exciting because I like flashing lights and trucks. I should note that this may be the only coverage of the team you get from a Victoria news source, as our friend Celine doesn’t typically like to cover actual news.
ITEM TWO: In related but not quite as joyous news, my high school, Benilde-St. Margaret’s, lost in the 3A state championship game to St. Thomas Academy. It was Benilde’s first ever state tournament since being allowed to play with the public schools.
The other two section champions were Ellsworth in 1A in one of the best basketball games I have ever seen, and Buffalo in 4A. Ellsworth and their opponents, Cass Lake-Bena hit almost everything from the floor, including a game winning three with no time left. Buffalo beat Robbinsdale Armstrong, a battle of teams that have never really been good at anything at any point in my memory, so congratulations to both of them.
ITEM THREE: OK, one more basketball related item. The tournament continued, whittling down to the Final 4, the same 4 I told you it would be, if you’ll remember, not that I’m bragging or anything. I’m not in any cash pools, so it doesn’t matter. Real quickly though, Florida looks beatable, and ugly as ever with Joakim Noah still on the team. UCLA has improved their defense since last season, but their offense isn’t quite as good as last year. Georgetown, a defensive team all season, developed an offensive touch when it truly mattered yesterday, and I expect them to be dangerous now, and Ohio State can’t keep falling behind and coming back. Good thing they wiped the floor with Memphis. Nonetheless, I like Florida to beat UCLA, just like last year, and Georgetown’s big bodies to wear down Greg Oden and get him into foul trouble. Same against Florida.
One nice thing as well about the tournament being at this stage is that I can flip from the commercials without fear of missing a live look in. I know now that a pink haired lady can defeat a team of giant robots simply by quoting buying and printing, or so says her coach/pimp. Also, I long for the type of friendship Kevin Bacon and Michael Jordan clearly share.
Best line of the weekend, James Brown while describing Al Horford: “He has a great package down low.” It’s what I’ve been saying, really. You can’t let studio guys do play by play.
ITEM FOUR: I haven’t been neglecting hockey. Definitely not. It’s just that when you have the premier basketball tournament of the year, you kind of want to focus on that. At least I do. In any case, the Wild are undefeated in their last nine, suggesting I should keep my prying eyes away from them. The only hockey I did see this weekend was at Buffalo Wild Wings when the Wild played the Coyotes. I was actually there with Coyote Keith Ballard’s cousin, strangely enough. I did later catch some of the Michigan State – Notre Dame F game in the Frozen Four tournament, which is left with Boston College versus North Warhawks and Michigan State versus Maine. Should be good games.
ITEM FIVE: The last bit of good news comes from the Twins, where the pitchers have been getting lit up for the past week. The good news, of course, is that its still Spring Training. One more week!
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