Girls State Tourney Notes

Galesburg had a connection in the Three Point Shooting Contest. Former resident, Bob Anderson's daughter, Katherine from Lake Zurich was in the state finals. She missed by 1 make of advancing to the final four. Having seen Bob shoot, I am confident the "shooting gene" must go down the mother's side. Bob is our Chloe's uncle.

Hillcrest had the most heart breaking loss. They were up 14 with 4 minutes to go but lost. Looking at their scores on the season, they were not experienced with many close games. This was only the 9th time they were in a game settled by 20 or fewer points. With the loss, they dropped to 5-4 in these games. On the other hand, they were 22-0 in the plus 20 point games.



Galesburg's Gary Giger made it to state as an official. He worked the first game which was Vernon Hills vs. Springfield. It is certainly an honor to be picked to work at State. Gary did not appear to be nervous, he made the first 7 calls of the game. As I write, I don't know which Saturday game he will be assigned.

Former Galesburg principal, Bill Scheffler was there to support son, Brad. Brad is the coach of the Springfield team. It is always good to catch up with Bill, he was certainly one of the better principals I have gotten to work for. And his son and his team are certainly a class act.

GHS grad Allison Schwartz made it to State as trainer for Bartlett. And unfortunately, she had to make an appearance on the floor to take care of an injured player.

For Friday games, coach John Maniatis set state record for most interaction with his fans. The Hillcrest fans sat right behind their bench. John left a huddle to go over to plead with them to yell louder. On a great play, he ran out of the box, clear down past the baseline to urge them to get up and yell more.

The top "box exemption rule" went to Jason Nichols, the Montini coach. He was 8-10 feet out of the box chewing the ref out for a call. It will be interesting to see if that crew doesn't get assigned a third place game.

How tough is Springfield? Not only did Springfield have 4 freshmen and sophomores in the regular rotation, but their best freshmen was sitting out with an ACL injury. Yes, they will be back tough next year.

Not only is the general attendance down, not many high school coaches still attend. The hospitality room used to be wall to wall with 200 coaches over the weekend. At its peak this weekend, there were only 17 coaches in the room, and the 17 represented a total of 7 schools. Not much networking going on anymore.

This coming week, the Peoria Journal Star will have story after story on the state tourney. The Pantagraph just doesn't have the same interest in promoting the girls State Tourney. Friday's paper had short capsules of the four games on page three of sports. Saturdays paper had "box score" reports on the four games on page 5. The total for the four games was about 5 column inches.