With the UIL girls basketball tournaments now concluded and the boys gathering in Austin this week to settle the final coronation of state champions, now is a good time to look at some of the stories and plotlines of intrigue and interest that have surrounded the 2008-09 postseason.
It is difficult to argue against the communities in the southern part of Dallas County when it comes to top-flight boys basketball. Cedar Hill got the measure of neighborhood and district rival Duncanville in the team’s fourth meeting of the year, 60-59, but this time the stakes involved meant a trip to Austin, which the Longhorns secured.
Cedar Hill celebrates its regional final victory over Duncanville.
Photo By Keith Owens
There, they will be joined by fellow neighbor DeSoto, which this year was moved from Region I to Region II and beat its new district rival, Mesquite, 47-42, to also punch a ticket to Austin.
Move just inside I-20 and from Class 4A you have Dallas Kimball making its first trip to Austin in seven years after winning it region final against another team on the I-20 corridor in Lancaster, 66-54. The talent (and recruiters) flows aplenty from this pipeline.
There was one spectator of note to watch Class 4A Hewitt Midway win the girls state championship over Mansfield Timberview, 50-27. That would be Baylor women’s coach Kim Mulkey, whose daughter Makenzie Robertson plays for Midway. Mulkey watched the championship game in Austin and then dashed back 100 miles to Waco to coach her team to a big win over Texas A&M..
In addition to Midway, Waco-area school Robinson won the Class 3A title over Argyle, 49-33. Interestingly, Midway and Robinson were last in state championship games the same year in 1977, when they lost the Class 3A and 2A titles, respectively.
We have already mentioned Mansfield Timberview, and Mansfield Summit took the Class 5A girls crown over Brittney Griner and Aldine Nimitz, 52-43. Playing her final game before going to Baylor, Griner had 22 points, 12 boards and 9 blocks.
Sudan’s Hornettes won their fourth state title on the 50th anniversary of their first trip to the tournament by beating Roscoe’s Plowgirls, 71-38. It was the largest margin of victory in the history of Class A championship games.
In Class A Division II, Roby upended Neches, 44-34. Roby is coached by Amy Huseman, who until this year had guided the ultra-successful Nazareth program.
Brock trounced Woodville in Class 2A’s final, 61-32. Brock is another perennial girls power with a championship pedigree. Kamy Cole is a freshman on the team, and her older sisters won titles in 2002, 2003 and 2005. She became the fourth person in her family to play for a state winner.
With all the flair, excitement, action and drama of the state playoffs, there is probably no game that has been more scrutinized than the boys Class 2A Region III final where New Waverly edged past Gladewater Sabine, 27-26.
Coming out of halftime with a three-point lead, New Waverly played stall ball for 7:35 of the 8-minute third quarter. The idea was to draw Sabine out of its zone defense and into a man defense, where New Waverly looked to take the Cardinals off the dribble. Instead, reports surfaced and photos verified that the Sabine defenders merely folded their arms and toyed with their jerseys while minutes dripped off the clock. Both coaches were okay with their respective tactics and saw the methods as the best way for their teams to win the game.
In a Class 4A Region I final, Mansfield Timberview’s boys squeaked past Amarillo Palo Duro, 64-62, in overtime. For the Dons it was the second consecutive year in which they lost in overtime in the region final, having dropped a 104-100 race last year against Fort Worth Southwest.
Houston Yates is going to its first state tournament since 1983, and the Lions are doing it on a roll after beating fellow HISD rivals and fellow state top 10ers in Jones and Wheatley. A 96-79 win over Wheatley in the regional quarterfinals atoned for a regional title loss last year to Wheatley. This year’s win was witnessed by some 8,100 on the campus of Texas Southern University.
Some Rio Grande Valley teams have been heard from this postseason. On the boys side, Santa Rosa in Class 2A is making its first state tournament since 1964-65, while the Hidalgo girls in Class 3A went further in the playoffs than any RGV team in the modern era of girls basketball. The Mercedes boys in Class 4A made school history by reaching the playoffs for the first time in 36 years.
The North Crowley boys were beaten in the Class 5A region semifinals by Cedar Hill and thus will not defend their state title. Earlier though, the Panthers beat El Paso Montwood for the fourth consecutive year in the playoffs.
If New Waverly-Gladewater Sabine did not offer much in the way of scoring, how about a Class 2A regional quarterfinal when Clyde beat Brady, 60-56, in overtime, with Clyde outscoring Brady 21-17 in overtime alone. Clyde went 17-20 from the free throw line in the extra period.
And finally … after poring through voluminous playoff notes, recording dozens of playoff scores and browsing article after article, we end by telling you the favorite name we have come across in these playoffs happens to be that of Knippa’s Kessler Shimp, "Three Stooges" references notwithstanding.
R.V. Baugus is the Publisher of Tex Preps Basketball magazine and www.texprepsbasketball.com.
