The Starting Five

Nate Sowers was one of the best high school football players I have seen play in this area. I remember my former colleague Dan Spears coming back from a Martinsburg game in 2001 and saying this freshman named Sowers is going to be really good.

That was an understatement. Sowers was outstanding, both as a quarterback and a defensive back. Teaming him with wide receiver Brandon Barrett – another of the best ever from this area – for Barrett’s final two seasons led to a near total rewrite of the Martinsburg record book.

Even with out Barrett, Sowers led Martinsburg all the way to the state championship game. The Bulldogs are still seeking that first state crown, but much like Dan Marino in the NFL, the lack of a title should not minimize everything that Sowers accomplished in high school.

Sowers, now in his fifth and final year at West Virginia University, is at long last getting his chance to start on the college level.

Sowers went to WVU as a quarterback, but the door closed on that opportunity when Pat White became Pat White. He had an opportunity to switch to defense in his freshman year, but he held out hope that he would get a chance to run the offense. (continue reading…)

Two of the Tri-State area’s all-time greats qualified for the NCAA Division I Track & Field Championships, which currently are under way in Arkansas.

Louisville’s Tone Belt — who set the Tri-State record in the boys long jump  at 24 feet as a senior at Berkeley Springs in 2005 — competed in the preliminary rounds of the long jump and high jump on Wednesday. He qualified for Friday’s finals in the high jump with his leap of 6 feet, 10 3/4 inches — the exact same mark of all 14 finalists. But he failed to make the finals in the long jump, finishing 18th at 25 feet, 1 1/4 inches. Only the top 12 advanced. Belt won an  NCAA indoor title in the long jump in 2007.

Villanova’s Sarah Morrison — a 2007 Chambersburg grad who set Tri-State records in the girls 800 (2:14.10) and 1,600 (4:52.44) — finished 22nd Wednesday in the preliminaries of the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase in 10:37.14. Only the top 14 advanced to Friday’s finals.

Complete results can be found here.

Can the Hagerstown Community College Hawks do a repeat of getting to the NJCAA Division I World Series as it did last year?

Right now the Hawks are 32-12 after Tuesday’s 4-1 win over Chesapeake and are in the top spot in the region with a 6-1 record. HCC currently is in the top-seeded position in Region XX and they can stay there for good if they can take care of business on Thursday with a critical game at Garrett.

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I should have trusted my first instincts.

The guys in the office were talking back in mid-January about the impending NCAA tournament. I made the statement that I thought there weren’t going to be any really big upsets. I said I thought there were a lot of good teams playing college basketball right now, but very few – probably only the top seeds – would only have a good chance to win the title.

Then, like most everyone else, I got swept up in the madness.

The college tournaments cropped up and the heavy hitters were going down in the early rounds of the conference quilting bees.

Maybe I was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

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  It is part of a great debate.

 Which college basketball league should be rated the best for the 2008-09 season. … The Atlantic Coast Conference or The Big East?

When it comes to the NCAA tournament, we will find out when the brackets are announced on Sunday. The prognosticators believe three Big East teams will earn No. 1 seeds compared to only one ACC team.

That might be fair. It sure makes it sound like the Big East is the tougher league.

Maybe that was proven on Saturday.

I found it interesting during the ACC semifinal between Maryland and Duke. The Terps were challenging to take down Duke well into the second half, but started to fall off the pace.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In this new techno world of basketball – where speed, flow and movement are the most important facets – it’s amazing how a throwback philosophy has been popping up.

It’s called zone defense.

Teams nowadays run motion offenses and play man defense as regular-season games continue to evolve into a streetball mentality. Now that we have reached the part of the season when games have become more live and death with tournament play, zones are showing up again.

Examples?

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Chad Bricker, a former prep golf star at Waynesboro High School, had plenty of success at the first annual Big Ten Match Play championship this past weekend in Coral Springs, Fla.

A senior at Penn State University, Bricker went through his bracket 3-0 to lead the Nittany Lions.

… the college football season will begin.

The ACC released its 2009 schedules on Thursday. Here is Maryland’s.

Only one idle week for the Terps (Oct. 31) and no Thursday nights this year.

No, I’m not talking about the economy here … I’m talking about Maryland basketball.

OK, I realize that over the last few years I’ve come across as a real pessimist when it comes to the Terps, but let’s face it … they’re certainly not giving fans much to be OPTIMISTIC about, are they?

There’s been very little to get excited about with the Terps since they won the national title in 2002. The improbable run to the ACC Tournament championship in 2004 was one thing, but nothing else has sustained the excitement. For every win over a North Carolina or Duke, there’s a loss to a Morgan State or American.

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Let’s look at two words by definition.

*Throw – To propel something through the air by movement of an arm or hand. Example: “I threw a brick through the window (or backboard, for our purposes).

*Shoot – To take aim at a target while kicking, launching or hitting a ball in an attempt to score a goal or point.

Now with that in mind, which of these best defined Saturday’s Georgia Tech-Maryland basketball game, especially as it pertained to the Terrapins.

Need help? Well, Maryland shot (threw?) 31 percent for the game, including a 10-for-40 performance (25 percent) in the first half.

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