WHITE HEAT - Run the point for a Henlopen Conference boys basketball team, make mistakes which happens handling the ball on most possessions and be a “white boy” and if you don’t hear it you will sense that certain fans believe your place is “on the bench” or out on the wing taking wide-open three-pointers or being the designated “technical foul” shooter.
This has always been the case and is one of the last vestiges linking position and race in the wide world of sports. Keith Donavan heard it when he played for Cape in 1984, later Pat Woods, David Mesquita had the Steve Nash haircut and game so caught it less and now it’s Andrew Merlo’s turn.
Basketball reflects culture; flip the coin and you have lacrosse, very similar games but culturally quite different. Mostly we have moved beyond the race of quarterbacks, running backs, punters and kickers or counting homegrown non-European white players in the NBA. But high school should be all about the name and color of the uniform - end of story!
CLASSICAL JAZZ - Basketball is all about “putting the band” together, taking the talent and meshing it into a system that works and does not stifle creativity.
Sometimes a team is caught between two worlds: street ball which can be insanely selfish, and control the chaos ball, a system of rules where there exists rhyme to reason.
Amazingly, the best high school programs are under control - there is little coast-to-coast barrel down court dribbling through multiple defenders to get a shot.
Street is by its nature selfish like not giving up the ball to a person with a better shot. I admire coaches who can harness the insanity but sometimes “let them play” gives a team the best chance of winning.
PROVOKE A JOKE - I have been asking mostly young men who played football and now watch it if they were given the head coach position at a high school what offense they would choose to run?
”There have never been so many different approaches to offensive football,” I’d say. “The spread, shotgun, triple option, multiple formations with lots of motion, Wing-T, belly read, I formation and now the Pistol with a tailback behind the shotgun quarterback.”
The answer is mostly the same: “I don’t know and can I go now?”
WOMEN ARE WEAK - Women are mentally tougher than men and less likely to go “big baby” in the face of a physical, emotional or family crisis. And I believe the pain threshold of women is higher than that of men so if a woman on a team says she is hurt it’s probably a good idea to take her out of the game where you can be pretty safe telling a guy, ”Everybody is hurt - get used to it!”
But these two months of winter for spring athletes should be used by women who play sports to get stronger, just make sure if you start a program to have it designed by someone who actually understands how to construct sports-specific programs for the female athlete.
SNIPPETS - Sports stadiums and bowl games are for sale so we consumers just absorb dumb names and work them into our everyday language and broadcasts on radio sell spots for the hit, catch and game-changing fumble and, quite frankly, I find it all just a bit annoying.
Armanti Edwards, the classy and flashy quarterback from Appalachian State and winner of the Walter Payton Award, should be drafted by the Eagles this April and Vick shipped to the land of lap dogs on the West Coast. Edwards is younger, quicker and more accurate with a solid academic background and of high character and he is left-handed.
By the way, Temple will play UCLA at RFK at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 29, in the Eagle Bank Bowl. Plenty of tickets are still available.
Showers and temps in the 40s predicted for the polar bear jump New Year’s Day. The worst is the waiting and rocking the wet dog smell on the way back home.
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Sports Editor Emeritus
Email Fredman at fredman@capegazette.com
