The Best Seat in the House

Danville was knocked out of the All “A” Classic on Friday night with an 80-56 loss to defending champion Shelby Valley in Richmond.

The Admirals led 18-14 after scoring the last 14 points of the first quarter, but Shelby Valley responded with a 10-2 run and outscored Danville 40-14 through the second quarter and the first 2:36 of the third.

Jacody Taylor led Danville for the second straight game with 21 points, and Duran Elmore added 14. Louisville recruit Elisha Justice scored 19 points to lead four Shelby Valley players in double figures. Click here to view the box score, and check Sunday’s Advocate or amnews.com for a full game story.

Danville now returns to 45th District play with games Tuesday against Garrard County and Friday at Boyle County.

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There were only about 75 Danville fans among the sparse crowd for Friday’s game, which started at 10:35 p.m. and ended at 11:53. I thought that seemed like a low number — Shelby Valley fans vastly outnumbered them — until I started heading home on Ky. 52. It only took a couple of miles for me to realize just how much of a die-hard fan you’d have to be to risk driving those roads under those conditions to watch basketball.

The trip home that normally takes me about 50 minutes was extended to 2 hours, 15 minutes. And that was after I got the postgame quotes and cleared the snow off the car, meaning I arrived back in Danville and peeled my fingers off the steering wheel at 2:55 a.m. And there was still the story to write before I could hit the hay.

It’s a glamorous life.

The girls-boys doubleheader scheduled for tonight between Boyle County and Lincoln County has been postponed due to a forecast of winter weather. The games have been rescheduled for Monday at Lincoln.

Don’t be surprised to see most of the Friday/Saturday schedule wiped out by the snowstorm.

The 12th Region champions will face teams from western Kentucky in the first round of the girls and boys Sweet 16 tournaments next month.

Pairings were drawn today for the two tournaments, which will be held March 10-13 in Bowling Green (girls) and March 17-20 in Lexington (boys).

The girls 12th Region winner will play the 1st Region champion at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 11, in the seventh of eight first-round games. Casey County is the defending 12th Region champion, while Marshall County won the 1st Region last year.

In the boys draw, the winner of the 12th Region was paired against the winner of the 3rd Region in a game to be played at noon Thursday, March 18. West Jessamine won the 12th last season, and Grayson County was the winner in the 3rd.

Follow these links to view the full girls bracket and boys bracket.

It was a successful return to the All “A” Classic for the Danville boys, who defeated Williamsburg 67-55 in their first-round game late Thursday night.

Danville broke a 26-all tie with a 16-2 run over the first 6:01 of the third quarter to take a 42-28 lead that Williamsburg couldn’t overcome. Jacody Taylor led the Admirals with 28 points, followed by Duran Elmore with 15 and Max Meckes with 11 in the last of the eight first-round games in Richmond, which started at 10:20 p.m. and ended at 11:38. Click here to view the box score, and see Friday’s Advocate or amnews.com for a full game story.

The Admirals will play the West Coast game again tonight, as they face defending champion and No. 7-ranked Shelby Valley in a scheduled 9:30 p.m. start. Shelby Valley advanced with a 73-34 cakewalk over Ballard Memorial.

Tonight’s game, along with every other game in the final three rounds of the boys and girls All “A” tourneys today through Sunday, will be broadcast live by the Wazoo Sports Network on television at digital channel 18.2 or Time Warner Cable channel 305 and online at www.wazoosports.com. WRNZ-FM (105.1) will also air the game locally on radio and through streaming audio at its Web site, www.hometownlive.net.

It’s just under six weeks until the first state basketball tournament tips off, and pairings for the boys and girls Sweet 16 tournaments will be drawn Friday.

The draws for each region’s position in the brackets can be viewed during a 30-minute telecast that will air live on WKYT-TV (Ch. 27) in Lexington and online at ihigh.com.

The Girls Sweet 16 is March 10-13 in Bowling Green; the Boys Sweet 16 is March 17-20 in Lexington. District tournament play begins Feb. 22.

The Danville boys are headed back to Richmond and the All “A” Classic for the second straight year, and they’re surely hoping things will go better for them this year than last.

The Admirals will face Williamsburg at 9:30 p.m. today in a first-round game, and coach Matthew Yates said they’ll take with them lessons learned from last year, when they played poorly in a 57-43 loss to Newport Central Catholic.

Williamsburg, which is making its first All “A” appearance from a region that frequently sends Barbourville to the statewide stage, has a similar record and a softer schedule than Danville has played. But the Yellow Jackets also have a senior-dominated team with a patient offense, so the Ads’ assignment may not be as easy as it appears at first blush.

Read more about the matchup in my preview story from Wednesday’s Advocate. Les Dixon of The Times Tribune of Corbin has a preview from the Williamsburg perspective, and click this link for a tournament bracket in .pdf format

If the Admirals win tonight, they’ll surely have their hands full in a second-round game Friday night against Shelby Valley, which is ranked No. 7 in the state in the latest Associated Press poll and No. 2 in the current Durden Ratings. Shelby Valley is the only boys team eligible for the All “A” that is receiving votes in the AP poll and is the overwhelming favorite to repeat as champion of the small-school tourney.

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WRNZ-FM (105.1) will broadcast the Danville-Williamsburg game tonight and will also carry games Friday and Sunday if Danville is playing then. A Saturday game would not be aired because of a conflict with Kentucky basketball.

On television, the Wazoo Sports Network (digital channel 18.2 over the air or Time Warner Cable channel 305 in Danville) will broadcast all of the All “A” boys and girls games from the final three rounds of the tournament Friday through Sunday. The broadcasts will also be available online at www.wazoosports.com.

The Danville girls will go on with their scheduled home game against Monticello tonight, but the starting time has been moved up to 6 p.m. (varsity only) so fans who want to watch the Danville girls and boys can make it to Richmond.

You can’t categorically say that Trinity is the best boys basketball team in Kentucky, but you can make a pretty good case for it. The Shamrocks are ranked No. 1 in the state by the Associated Press for the second straight week, and this week they’re a unanimous choice.

And they’re next for Boyle County.

Boyle plays at Trinity tonight in a game that certainly takes the concept of “playing a tough schedule” to another level. The Rebels have so far engineered an impressive turnaround after last year’s disappointing 8-19 campaign, as they are 13-5 this season and poised to earn the top seed for the 45th District Tournament. And they have played several quality opponents this season, including West Jessamine, John Hardin and Shelby County.

But Trinity is a different animal. The Shamrocks are 18-2, with their only losses coming to Shelby and Ballard in the first 16 days of the season. They have won 16 straight games since the Ballard loss, including four wins each in what are currently considered the three best invitational tournaments in the state: the King of the Bluegrass, Lexington Catholic’s Republic Bank Classic and the Louisville Invitational.

Trinity is the first team to win all three of those tournaments in the same season. It avenged its early loss to No. 2 Ballard in the LIT and has mowed down every other opponent it has faced from the powerful 7th Region, including No. 4 Eastern, No. 8 Jeffersontown and No. 9 Seneca, as well as Male and St. Xavier.

The Shamrocks have one of the top candidates for Mr. Basketball in senior guard Josh Sewell, who was named most valuable player in all three of the above tournaments and who needs just 28 points to become their all-time leading scorer.

Boyle has not played Trinity since the 1992-93 season, when the Rebels won 76-61. This game comes at a critical spot in the schedule for the Rebels, as it is game five of a seven-game stretch that includes six games against teams with winning records and four against district rivals, including a rematch of its win over Lincoln County on Friday in Stanford and a Feb. 5 game at Danville that will conclude its district schedule.

The Rebels have held their own within the 12th Region, where they are 6-2,
and ranked sixth in the latest edition of the Durden Ratings that will be published in the Advocate on Wednesday. With a rating of 84.6, they are exactly 13 points behind McCreary Central, the region’s top-ranked team. And they are roughly 20 points behind Trinity, which at 104.5 is strangely ranked only seventh in the state and fourth in the 7th Region behind Ballard (which is No. 1 in the state according to Durden), Eastern and Jeffersontown, all of which the Shamrocks have beaten.

The only thing we know for sure this afternoon is that the Burgin boys’ home game with Evangel Christian is off.

The Boyle County-Danville basketball doubleheader that was created when Thursday’s boys game was postponed will be played tonight at Danville,  athletic director Sam Harp said.

The twinbill begins with a boys game at 6 p.m., followed by the regularly scheduled girls game at about 8 p.m.

The Lincoln County-Garrard County doubleheader is also expected to be played as scheduled in Lancaster.

Tonight’s scheduled boys game between Boyle County and Danville is the most notable of the games that have been called off by today’s winter storm.

We’ve received word that that game has been postponed, as has the Model at Burgin girls game. And it’s a pretty good bet that the other three games scheduled for tonight will also be called off.

Weather permitting, the Boyle-Danville game will be made up Friday night as part of a doubleheader at Danville. The Boyle and Danville girls were already scheduled to play Friday, and now the boys game will be the first half and the girls game will be the second half of a 6 p.m. twinbill.

With two weeks of holiday tournaments behind us, the high school basketball season now settles in for a seven-week run to postseason that will include one big district game after another.

Only a handful of district games have been played in the first month of the season, but you won’t have to wait long to see the rest. Some of those games will be played today, and more will follow next week.

The district wars actually resumed this morning when Casey County and Rockcastle County tipped off a boys-girls 47th District doubleheader at 11 a.m. in Mount Vernon. And there’s a 45th District doubleheader between Danville and Garrard County tonight in Lancaster.

Here’s the list of local district games over the next eight days:

BOYS

• Today: Casey County at Rockcastle County, Danville at Garrard County, West Jessamine at Mercer County.
• Tuesday: Garrard County at Boyle County, Lincoln County at Danville.
• Thursday: Boyle County at Danville.
• Friday: Lincoln County at Garrard County, Casey County at Somerset.

GIRLS

• Today: Casey County at Rockcastle County, Danville at Garrard County, Mercer County at Burgin.
• Tuesday: Garrard County at Boyle County, Lincoln County at Danville, Burgin at East Jessamine, West Jessamine at Mercer County.
• Thursday: Boyle County at Danville.
• Friday: Boyle County at Danville, Lincoln County at Garrard County, Casey County at Somerset.
• Saturday, Jan. 9: Mercer County at Burgin.