Whatever happens in Houston this weekend, 2011 should go down as a great year in Kentucky basketball!
Not just UK b’ball, but roundball in Kentucky.
Cal’s Cats thrilling wins over top-ranked Ohio State Friday and over North Carolina in Sunday’s regional finals solidified this season as one of the most memorable in the Big Blue’s glorious, unmatched history. Winning an eighth national championship in the Final Four at Houston would add to the lore.
Last year’s squad was marvelously talented and a consistent winner, but the loss to West Virginia left a bad taste that couldn’t be rinseed out by having five first-round draft picks a few months later.
This year, Kentucky is a team of young men who work together for the collective good without having a single character issue to deal with. The development of Josh Harrellson as the dominant center in the nation (having out-shone the other two contenders for that honor, the Buckeyes’ Jared Sullinger and the Tar Heels’ Tyler Zeller in less than 48 hours) is one of the greatest testimonies to hard work and determination a youngster could ever witness and hope to emulate.
The remarkable stories of another ball club in blue, team-above-self-oriented Butler University, matched against the phenomenal come-from-nowhere run of Virginia Commonwealth, make this Final Four one for the books.
Consider these other milestones of the Basketball Year That Is/Was in the Commonwealth:
*Bellarmine won the NCAAA Division II national championship and Pikeville the NAIA Division I national title. More about that below.
*Louisville finished second in the mind-boggling Big East Tournament and has three wins over Final Four qualifiers Connecticut and Butler.
*Coach John Calipari of UK joins Louisville’s Rick Pitino as the only coaches to take three different colleges to a Final Four.
*Morehead State had a record-setting rebounder and pulled off the first shocker of the tournament. Unfortunately the victim was U of L.
*Shelvin Mack, a Lexington native, is arguably the most valuable player for Duke, although it is difficult to say who is most important to that team with center Matt Howard and Coach Brad Stevens in the mix. Neither Mack nor Tennessee’s Scottie Hopson was named Mr. Kentucky in 2008. Instead that honor went to current UK forward Darius Miller.
*This boys’ state tournament was considered one of the most exciting ever. More about that later, too.
*The top girls player in the state, champion Rockcastle County’s Sara Hammond, has elected to play collegiately for Louisville, turning down an offer from the women’s basketball equivalent of the Yankees, Connecticut. Coach Jeff Walz’ Lady Cardinals made to it to the Sweet Sixteen this year and bring back every key player except one, senior Keisha Hines, the senior center with all of those Russellville ties..
Sportscasters in the news
Popular WRUS radio personality Lon Sosh has been very ill lately with a number of complications from a variety of ailments. Many of us have been deeply concerned, but were encouraged this week when doctors were able to remove some of the fluids plaguing him. He was transferred to the SKY rehab facility in Bowling Green Thursday.
Not only is Lon the greatest sports broadcaster in local history, but he’s been one of the best in this region over the years. In addition to the Russellville Panthers and Logan County Cougars, he called Western Kentucky University and Austin Peay State University games on a regular basis at different times.
So many sportscasters forget to tell the score and/or the time. Lon did such a good job reporting all the information, including downs and yard line, that I always could keep stats on a game when he called it.
Besides that he is both fun and funny.
We’re all pulling for Big Daddy to get better soon.
SPORTSCASTERS, Part II
Another of WRUS’ outstanding former sportscasters is feeling good these days. Terry McKenzie is happy that his son, Will McKenzie, has signed to play collegiate golf for Brescia University in Owensboro. Will’s future coach praised him as a golfer and as a student athlete.
My life has been intertwined with the McKenzies. Older brother Kevin McKenzie covered a lot of RHS football for me while I was doubling as editor/publisher of an Al Smith-owned newspaper in Brentwood, Tenn. Kevin and I had season tickets together for UK football for a few years. The late Tim McKenzie became a sportswriter working with me when he finished high school. And I helped get Terry started as a sportscaster and public address announcer.
Will’s mother, Candi Woodall Hardinan, has been the answer to two of my favorite trivia questions: 1) Which woman holding the highest management position at Logan Aluminum? 2) Who is the top-ranked native Logan Countian at Logan County?
Will has overcome a number of childhood health issues to become a good athlete, a good student, a good speaker and a good guy.
SPORTSCASTERS, Part III
Former WKU women’s play-by-play guy Todd Hamilton, a Glasgow native who helped Lon and the late Pat O’Brien call some of Logan County’s games in its state championship season and now is sports director of legendary Hopkinsville radio station WHOP, wrote on his Facebook page Sunday, “Just back and getting settled in after a wonderful few days in Lexington. Congrats to the Christian County Colonels for winning the Boys Sweet 16. I've called a number of the state championship games in my 30 year career, but this one ranks as the best! It's been a pleasure and honor to be the broadcaster of the "Band of Brothers" for the last three seasons. They will never be forgotten!”
This year’s state tournament was a special one with Christian County knocking off upstart Rowan County in double overtime in the finals. The Colonels won over a Louisville Eastern team which had as much talent and moved the ball as smoothly as any team I’ve seen in the state in three decades or so. That Eastern team edged Fourth Region champion Warren Central by three points in the opening session at Rupp Arena.
Riley honors his uncle
Tim Riley , who I think is the best coach in the state, added more credentials to his Hall of Fame resume this year by winning his eighth regional championship in 10 seasons. He’s averaging about 25 wins a year during that span, which includes a state championship, a state runner-up trophy and another berth in the Final Four. He’s 27-3 in regional tournament games.
When his Dragons came from behind in the regional finals to beat perennial underachiever Bowling Green High and end McDonald’s All-American Chane Behanan’s high school career, a Logan Countian was on his mind. He told a Daily News sportswriter that his uncle, James Drake, had predicted the Dragons would win the region when he first saw a young George Fant in action. Riley spoke at James’ funeral during the season.
That’s one reason this championship seemed to mean more than some of the others to Tim. Another milestone came from his son,Drake Riley, being a member of the team.
Riley will be the coach of one of the teams in the Derby Festival Basketball Clasic presented by papajohns.com on Saturday, April 22, at the new YUM! Center. Two of his team members will be Behanan, who will play for Louisville, and Fant, who has signed with WKU.
Connections
A couple of young women from the Land of Logan were pictured sending a message to a Florida star recently. KentuckySportsRadio.com showed Kendra Coe Cole and her sister-in-law, Jessica Cole, in the face of the Gators’ Chandler Parsons as the big guy was walking toward the dressing room at the SEC Tournament in Atlanta.

They warned Parsons that Kentucky was going to beat him and his team. And indeed the Cats did dispose of the Gators handily in the tournament finals.

One local connection to the North Carolina team that’s headed home: When Tyler Zeller’s high school team won the Class 3 A Indiana state championship, a fellow starter and key player was Cody Lee, who played freshman basketball and varsity baseball for Logan County High School before returning to Indiana with his family. His dad, Tom Lee, was the boys basketball coach at Lewisburg Middle School.

Rogers and Graham again?
Jeff Rogers’ second team at Thomas More College finished 13-14. In his first season at the helm, Rogers' 2009-2010 Thomas More team won the most games in a single season ever at Thomas More, posting a 21-7 mark and winning a share of the Presidents Athletic Conference (PAC) regular season title. Implementing a fast paced brand of basketball, the 2009-2010 team also led the NCAA (at any division) in steals per game with 14.
Now Rogers has invited Logan County senior Troy Graham to the Northern Kentucky school for a recruiting visit. In Rogers’ second and final season as the LCHS coach, he called up Auburn eighth graders Graham and John Logan Dockins and seventh grader Twin Lancaster to the Cougar varsity. Troy and Twin have been integral parts of the team the last four years. Dockins never went out for basketball in high school, deciding to concentrate on football and baseball. He is being recruited to play football for Campbellsville, the University of the Cumberlands and Lindsey Wilson College and appears to be leaning toward Campbellsville.
When he moved up to head coach a couple of years ago, Rogers invited former Cougar big man Adam Haley to be a part of the team. Haley first said he would attend Thomas More but later decided against it. Adam told me the other day he still wonders if he made the right decision.
Graham also has been offered a visit by perennial NAIA contender Georgetown College of Kentucky, and he has received an inquiry from East Tennessee State University of the Atlantic Sun Conference.
Getting a kick off
The decision by NFL owners to move kickoffs up five yards for safety’s sake is coming 35 years to late for Russellville and WKU graduate Brad Watson. He was a member of the first team in Tampa Bay Bucs history but severely injured his knee in the final preseason scrimmage. Ironcially, a wedge formed by his teammates on a kickoff return was the source of his injury.
Brad spent the year rehabbing as a member of the Bucs, but he was never able to return to the field. A professional pilot, he still has problems with that knee when he flies several hours at a time to international cities.
Collegiate basketball successes
The state of Kentucky already has fielded two national championship basketball teams, which should be a good omen for the University of Kentucky. Bellarmine became the second Saturday when the Knights won by three points over BYU-Hawaii in Springfield, Mass., home of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Unseeded Pikeville College shocked NAIA basketball by winning its Division I national championship in Kansas City last week. After eliminating fifth-seeded Martin Methodist of Tennessee in the semifinals, Coach Kelly Wells’ team beat Mountain State of West Virginia 83-76 in the overtime finals.
Wells, who coached Chris Lofton-led Mason County to the 2003 state championship and then lost to Warren Central in the finals the next year, has built Pikeville into a power.
Hitting a shot to put Pikeville ahead for good in overtime was Justin Hicks of Hazard. He was one of Trey Turner’s teammates on Eddie Ford’s Kentucky Nike HoopStars four years ago. So was Hicks’ teammate on the national champions, Kane Belcher of Pendleton County. One of the Bears is Landon Slone, who was popular as a walk-on at UK in Billy Gillispe’s final year but wasn’t in Coach Calipari’s plans.
One of the Bellarmine players was also a HoopStar in Trey’s first year on the team. Ironically, Forrest Smallwood of Louisville Male started his career at Butler University and would have been on last year’s national finalist team had he stayed there. If he had been redshirted, he would have been on this year’s Butler team, which is in the Final Four again. Instead he came home to Louisville where Bellarmine is located.
Forrest, Justin and Kane had a much happier conclusion to this season than did most of Trey’s old HoopStar teammates. We’ve watched the ends of the college careers in NCAA Tournament action of former HoopStars Preston Knowles at Louisville, Dante Jackson at Xavier and Aaron Carter at Indiana State along with Steffphon Pettigrew at Western Kentucky University. Another one, Matt Walls, who led Scott County to the 2007 state title, was a senior on the Georgetown team which made it to the NAIA national Final Four.
Some deaths of people associated with sports:
Boochie Griffith was one of the most unassuming key figures in RHS sports history. During the 40 years or so that I knew him, he was always humble and gracious. He took the time to send me a hand-written note of thanks for the effort I had made in researching Russellville football history for “Football City” in 1975. He was an important part of that history.
Panther football started in 1935 and was expected to have its best team ever in 1943. Those plans changed, though, when the starting backfield of seniors William Owen Chapman, Stooley Davis and Robert Hughes were all drafted into World War II. Coach El Donaldson was so disappointed that he left RHS and became football coach at Bowling Green High School. The football field at BGH is now named for him. His son, Mac Donaldson, and I have been discussing that turn of events recently. Mac is the father-in-law of Franklin-Simpson football coach/athletic director Tim Schlosser.
Anyway with the seniors gone to war, the offense at Russellville’s Rhea Stadium revolved around a small but tough sophomore back named Barclay ‘Boochie’ Griffith. We’ll never know how many points he scored or yards he gained, since News-Democrat Editor Bryne Evans stopped publishing game results, partly because the Panthers were so depleted and partly in honor of the war effort.
The other man who saved Russellville football besides Boochie was Ben Parker, a businessman on Russellville’s Park Square who became the volunteer coach of the team. He built the Panthers into a contender and then turned it over to Jimmy Haynes, who coached the Panthers to a combined record of 19-1 in 1949 and ’50.
Boochie’s son Charlie Griffith later played football for the Panthers while his daughter Sharon (now Stein) was one of my top speakers and actresses before her graduation in 1973.
I usually only saw Betty McReynolds one weekend a year. That was when she was at LCHS helping her son, Athletic DirectorHugh McReynods, prepare for the Cougar Party, the annual fund raiser for Logan sports. She was dedicated to her son and as a result to Cougar and Lady Cougar sports.
Nat Love , who died as winter was turning into spring, was a fun person to be around during his days at RHS, and the former Panther fullback kept that sense of humor as one of Bowling Green’s leading business. His Nat’s Outdoor Sports carried top-of-the-line outdoor sports clothing and equipment. It’s the In Place for the In Crowd, formerly known as yuppies. His merchandise was expensive but high quality.
He came from a business background. His dad, Nat Love Jr., and his uncle, Joe Hicks Sr., operated the fertilizer company on the Morgantown Road during the football-playing days of their sons. Nat steered the store which bore his name into such a success that many Bowling Green residents thought it was part of a national franchise. “I heard some teens in here the other day,” Nat told me the last time we talked. “They said, ‘This is such a big sale that Nat himself came to Bowling Green to be here for it.’” Nat chuckled and flashed that winning grin of his. He’s going to be missed.
Russellville businessman Jim Thomason, who died much too young, was a high-scoring guard for the Chandlers Bears in the late sixties. He transferred to Russellville and hoped to play his senior season for the Panthers, but his transfer was ruled not to meet eligibility standards and his career was over.
Also among 2011 deaths have been Donnie Burton, who enjoyed watching his daughter Christy play a key role for Logan County’s 1989 regional basketball champions and whose grandsons, Ryan and Matt Harper, have enjoyed baseball success very young; Mildred Angel Davis, mother of former Adairville coach Bill Davis and the grandmother of former RHS athletes Jamie and Jon Paul Davis; Guy Neal, one of the patriarchs of Auburn who was the father of Alan Neal, a key play on Russellville’s 1966 state football finalists; Jerry Gibson¸ who was the scorekeeper for the Logan County Cougars in their early years; and Deanna Hanley and Clifford Basham, grandparents of Russellville girls basketball coaches Todd and Dedra Basham Adler.
Stirring memories
One of the most bizarre incidents of this college season came when a University of Louisville male cheerleader drew a technical foul when he went on to the YUM! Center floor and threw the ball into the air, thinking the game was over. It put the Cardinals’ upset win over top-ranked Pittsburgh in jeopardy. After Louisville won, Coach Rick Pitino called yell leader Jordan Alvarez and told him not to worry about what he had done.
It reminded me of a situation I found myself in long ago. I was 15 years old and Principal R.D. Reynolds had installed me as the official scorer for the Panthers. We were playing old College High at what became the Russellville Middle School gym before it was torn down two years ago. A shot by the visitors at the buzzer went in. The officials (one of them was the well-known Dan King but I don’t remember the other) said they didn’t hear the horn. They told official timer Jack Whipple and me that we had to decide whether the goal was good or not. While College High coach Al Allman was yelling at us, Jack said he couldn’t make the decision.
So somehow it fell on me, a sophomore in high school, to decide whether a Russellville team that included Jack Lyne, Raymond Davis, Larry Johnson, Alan Miles, Ronnie Simpson, Jim Nealy, Bob Koester and Garry Todd had won or lost. I went with lost, calling the basket good.
Two hours later on a sleepless night at home, I got a phone call from Russellville coach Howard Owens, telling me that I had made the right decision and not to worry about it. Almost a half century later, I still appreciate it.
Rick Pitino did one of his best coaching jobs this season, but you have to wonder if Coach Pitino would have been as gracious as Coach Owens if Alvarez’s antics had cost The Ville the game.
I’ll give da coach the benefit of the doubt.