{"id":80950,"date":"2018-04-02T19:38:24","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T19:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"\/rcntv\/?p=80950"},"modified":"2023-02-14T21:07:05","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T21:07:05","slug":"basketball-bye-bye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astound.com\/atvn\/basketball-bye-bye\/","title":{"rendered":"Basketball Bye-Bye"},"content":{"rendered":"

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RCN or any other agency, organization, employer or company.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong>With the state championship titles decided in mid-week because of the weather, and with the VIA All-Star basketball games <\/a>being played this past weekend, the high school basketball season of 2017-18 officially came to an end. \u00a0Outstanding seniors donned their school\u2019s uniforms for the last time and Lehigh Valley basketball was officially over.\u00a0 There is no better time to reminisce\u2026\u00a0 Here are my top ten memories (in no particular order, like my mind) of this past season:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The RCN TV team \u2013 I have spent almost 50 years with this group and they never cease to amaze me with their work ethic, their dedication and their skills. Imagine over 100 winter productions laying wire, setting up cameras at the top of arenas, preparing the announcers\u2019 booth, working the game and reversing the whole process when the game ends. Now imagine doing that over and over and over again from the last week of August, when football season starts, to the third week of March.\u00a0 Great job everyone!<\/li>\n
  2. Congratulations to Justin Paz (Beca<\/a>), Greg Eck (ES South<\/a>), Alex Serrano (Liberty<\/a>), Aiden Ellwood (Northampton<\/a>), Kion Andrews (Allen<\/a>), Hope Brown (Beca), Hailey Silfies (Freedom<\/a>), and Victoria Keenan (Northampton) for going over the 1000-point mark this past season. Paz and Keenan are juniors and will continue to add to their impressive offensive numbers.<\/li>\n
  3. More kudos \u2013 this time to coaches who set some milestones of their own \u2013 Jose Medina (Beca Girls), Dave Lutz (Easton<\/a> Girls), and Dennis Csensits (Central Catholic<\/a>\u00a0Boys) all won their 100th<\/sup> game this season. Joe Stellato (Freedom) deserves special mention for winning his 200th<\/sup> game.\u00a0 The four have combined for 520 wins!<\/li>\n
  4. Lafayette<\/a> hired a new women\u2019s basketball coach \u2013 Kia Damon. She led the Leopards to 11 wins, the most since 2015. Lafayette was led in scoring and rebounding by Natalie Kucowski, who is just a freshman.\u00a0 Three seniors will graduate, but the future looks much brighter.\u00a0 Go Leopards!<\/li>\n
  5. The Lafayette men struggled through a 10-21 year and they do lose their leading scorer, Matt Klinewski, to graduation. BUT<\/strong> they showcased four outstanding freshmen \u2013 Alex Petrie, Justin Jaworski, E J Stephens, and Dylan Hastings. With a 6\u2019-9\u201d recruit coming on board, along with two point guards, Fran O\u2019Hanlon seems to be building for a return to the glory days.\u00a0 They last won the Patriot League <\/a>championship in 2015.<\/li>\n
  6. Tom and John (and Mike and Beet) \u2013 Don\u2019t tell anybody, but the job is really fun, especially with this group. All the respect and praise I feel for the RCN staff carries over to my color analysts for high school and college basketball, Tom Stoudt and John Leone.\u00a0 They have such a passion for the game.\u00a0 And then there are Mike Joseph and John Bowman (Beet).\u00a0 What a crew \u2013 more laughs than you can imagine.\u00a0 Obviously, the five of us spend a great deal of time together and it is full of conversation, joking, ribbing, and good times.\u00a0 The winter goes very quickly when you are around these guys!<\/li>\n
  7. My complete ignorance in not covering more Northampton games this year. Coy Stampone\u2019s team won 18 games and many in dramatic fashion. His match defense baffled opponents, including almost upsetting\u00a0 Philadelphia powerhouse, St. Joe\u2019s Prep<\/a>, in the first round of the PIAA<\/a> playoffs.\u00a0 Aiden Ellwood is a special player and Cory Weisenberger had a great season.\u00a0 I regret that you and I didn\u2019t get to see them more often on RCN.<\/li>\n
  8. Even though the Bethlehem Catholic girls could not repeat their state championship run this year, Jose Medina and his team won 25 games and the \u00a0EPC and District XI championships.\u00a0 They were beaten after two questionable calls by Bonner-Prendergast <\/a>at the buzzer 40-38 to end their season.\u00a0 The following Sunday, Jose was portraying Jesus reenacting the Lord\u2019s walk on Palm Sunday.\u00a0 From being the Becahi coach to portraying Jesus \u2013 sounds like a nice promotion for a great role model.<\/li>\n
  9. The Bethlehem Catholic vs Imhotep Charter game in Reading stands out as the best of the year. Imhotep was the defending state champion, ranked #7 in the nation by USA Today<\/a>, and considered to be the best team in Pennsylvania.\u00a0 They won their state games by a 28.7 point average.\u00a0 But Beca, with their star player, Ryan Young, saddled with foul trouble throughout the game, still took the game down to the final two possessions before losing 65-60.\u00a0 Imhotep won their state championship game 71-35.<\/li>\n
  10. Finally,\u00a0there are plenty of people I want to thank. Basketball preparation is a numbers game \u2013 stats are critical. I rely heavily on EPC stat guru, Bob Whirl, for almost every game.\u00a0 There are no better sources for Liberty and Freedom information than Greg DeStasio and Karl Gilbert.\u00a0 They not only supply stats but plenty of historical information as well.\u00a0 Ara Hoderewski (Emmaus<\/a>), Jeremy Coxe (Nazareth<\/a>), and Matt Fritz (Parkland<\/a>) are others that I can always count on.\u00a0 Brian Ludrof and Steve Kline supplied me with all the game notes for Lafayette basketball.\u00a0 Thanks to them, too.\u00a0 And to anyone I may have missed.\u00a0 I do want to send out a big \u201cthumbs down\u201d to the Dallas<\/a> head coach, who sent only his roster and supplied nothing else for the Central Catholic game played in Hazleton.\u00a0 He was the only coach who did not cooperate. We had to find everything on our own and it made me appreciate all the ADs, coaches, and stat people who went out of the way to help during the season.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR ANOTHER GREAT SEASON!<\/strong><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    ABOVE THE EARS (SOME MUSINGS)\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. I know the NCAA<\/a> basketball bigwigs and the CBS<\/a> sports people want high ratings for their National Championship basketball game, so that means the West Coast viewers are very important, but a 9:20pm tip-off in the East sure wrecks a good night\u2019s sleep. A post-midnight finish just seems wrong.<\/li>\n
    2. In case you missed the amazing finishes to the Notre Dame <\/a>women\u2019s last two games that won them a National Championship, take a look:http:\/\/www.espn.com\/video\/clip?id=22996063<\/a> (over Mississippi State<\/a>)\u00a0 Amazing finishes!!<\/li>\n
    3. http:\/\/www.espn.com\/video\/clip?id=22972765<\/a> (over Connecticut<\/a>)<\/li>\n
    4. To say that Phillies<\/a> manager Gabe Kapler is off to a rough start would be a HUGE understatement. He used 13 different pitchers in the 3-game series opener against the Braves<\/a>; he made 18 pitching changes in the same three games; he used outfielder Pedro Floriman to pitch an inning; and he used a record-setting 21 pitchers in the 3-game series. Add to that he removed Aaron Nola from the season opener in the sixth inning leading 5-0. The Phils ended up losing that game 8-5. Thank goodness the Phils won game two 5-4 in 11 innings (Kapler used 8 pitchers in that one). Up is the only direction the rookie manager can go (Phils fans hope).<\/li>\n
    5. About a year ago, 60 Minutes<\/a> did a feature on Shohel Ohtani, the Japanese baseball sensation who was being compared to Babe Ruth because of both his pitching and hitting skills. Fast forward to Oakland where Ohtani is hitting and pitching for the Los Angeles Angels<\/a>. He was 1-5 on Thursday as the DH and won his first pitching outing on Sunday 7-4. In doing so, he became the first player since 1920 to start a game as a hitter and a pitcher in the first 10 games of the season. Manager Mike Sciosa is not sure how he will use Ohtani as a batter as the year progresses, but he will be in the pitching rotation.<\/li>\n
    6. Herschel Walker spoke at the VIA All-Star Basketball Banquet this past Wednesday night. In case you don\u2019t know who he is, he set the NCAA freshmen rushing record at Georgia<\/a>, was a 3-year All-American, and won the Heisman trophy <\/a>in his junior year. He skipped his senior year to enter professional football and led the NFL<\/a> in rushing for the Dallas Cowboys<\/a>. He told great stories throughout the speech, never wavered in his presentation, and was very, very entertaining. And\u2026 he only played football in high school to avoid doing the dishes at home; only played college football when a toss of the coin told him NOT to go into the military, which was his dream; and was voted the second greatest college football player behind the legendary Red Grange.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RCN or any other agency, organization, employer or company. With the state championship titles decided in mid-week because of the weather, and with the VIA All-Star basketball games being played this past weekend,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"Yoast SEO Relevanssi index exclude","inline_featured_image":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behind-the-mic"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBasketball Bye-Bye - ATVN<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Basketball Bye-Bye - ATVN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RCN or any other agency, organization, employer or company. 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