Varsity Kansas - The Blog

I had a parent e-mail me regarding my comments on Carl Taylor in a previous post and wanted to know what my thoughts were on boys coach Eric Hofer-Holdeman.

He’s one of the coaches I truly like and I’ve always been impressed with his ability to not freak out. At least on the outside. I’ve been around waaaay too many coaches in my lifetime to not be fully aware that they all freak out about games, players, strategies. Some let the world know, some internalize, some are a mixture of both.

I once wrote a story on Hofer-Holdeman and talked about his quiet nature, yet in the past few years, he has become more vocal. Now, he’s nowhere near as vocal as the majority of coaches, but more vocal for him. And he does own the loudest clap in the area.

On a personal level, what I’ve always liked about Hofer-Holdeman is he’s just as quick to talk basketball with me as he is to ask after my husband and kids.

How about Southeast coach Carl Taylor hitting this milestone? What a truly amazing feat, considering the City League has long been thought of as the state’s top basketball league. It’s a league that frustrates many of its coaches, though, because the teams all tend to beat up on each other. No game is a guaranteed win. Yet Taylor has found unbelievable success year in and year out.

Taylor is a favorite of mine — although, I have to admit, there’s few coaches I don’t like. But he does scare me a bit. If you’ve ever seen him coach, you know this man has a fire in him that runs deep and strong. If you’ve ever seen him chew out one of his players — always deservedly so — you almost feel a twinge for the kid, glad that you’re not on the other end of it.
Well, after a Southeast loss, Taylor’s at his best quote-wise. When he wins, you get “That’s how we should play. We did what we are supposed to do.” But when the Buffaloes lose, oooh, he has no problem breaking down specifically what happened. Approaching him, though, isn’t the easiest, and I’ve been dealing with him for 12 seasons now and we have a solid relationship. But he’s still got that fire in his eyes and it’s tough to not feel a little bit concerned that you might bear the brunt of his anger.

Yet only once has Taylor gotten angry at me. One time after a loss at Northwest, I grabbed one of his players for an interview as he was walking out of the locker room. Taylor saw that and barked at me that I was never to talk to one of his players without talking to him. I was mortified because there were about 30 people standing there waiting for the players. I told him that, too. I said that he never had a problem with me grabbing a player when they won, so why did it change when they lost?

The next moment, with his response, solidified my respect for Taylor. He apologized. Now, if there’s any women reading this, you know men suck at apologies. And for all sports fans, we know coaches aren’t the most likely to admit they were wrong. But Taylor did.

So congrats Coach Taylor.

Jeff Lutz has one-upped me already. He’s fainted at the Dodge City tournament. And he blogged about it. He’s a gutsy guy. Me, all I ever did at the Dodge tournament was marvel at their championship game ceremonies — nothing better than the national anthem played by the excellent trumpeters in the corners while the huge American flag is unfurled. It just gives you goosebumps.

It’s girls tournament week but tonight we have a full slate of boys City League games. I’m heading to Northwest at Southeast. You just can’t beat this matchup because it always seems to be played close. I’ve been to this game plenty of times at Southeast, sitting right next to the Northwest student crowd (this seems to be the only game they come out in full force for — or maybe it’s just that the gymnasium is so small) — and feeling my own adrenaline rush because of the exciting atmosphere.

Carroll and South should be a good game. South is definitely an intriguing team this year. Heights and North might not be a bad game, either. I’m guessing North has improved since the first time they played when Heights won big.

Got a game you can’t miss tonight? Let’s hear why.

I’m back and fully recovered (in many ways) after an eventful weekend (in many ways) in Dodge City, covering the tournament of champions. Any time you can faint in your hotel room and call it the high point of the weekend, you know things weren’t always running smoothly. But we’re moving forward now…

…sort of

Let me first go back, and talk about the tournament. It was funny to me to see the out-of-town reporters (Hutchinson, Dodge City) raving about how good East was. I’m not saying East isn’t good, but as someone who has gotten to see them play regularly over the past few years, I’ve just gotten used to it. The Aces clearly dominated that tournament, and Ron Allen’s bunch appears to have put the debacle against Southeast behind them. Look for East in the new rankings out in Tuesday’s paper.

Speaking of rankings, it’s time for my daily WWE reference. On the WWE website, one of the main features in the Power 25, which is like an “AP” style poll of the top wrestlers in the company. Sometimes I feel like the rankings I compile every week for boys basketball has the same amount of legitimacy. I’m not saying I don’t try hard and take it seriously, but I’m the only person who has a “vote” and I write about rankings in my stories like they’re official and perfect. Don’t get me wrong — doing the rankings every week is one of my favorite parts of the job, I just wonder sometimes if people take it seriously. And I know there are those of you out there who take it too seriously.

Haven’t written about this yet, but I did see the Perry Ellis kid play on Wednesday at Heights. Hate to be hard on a middle school kid who’s gotten attention he didn’t ask for, but I was expecting better. When you tell me an 8th grade kid is a potential future first-round NBA pick, he better be an absolutely dominating force at his level, like a man among boys. Ellis wasn’t that. He has a nice mid-range shot, but needs to work on creating a presence in the post, getting tougher and wanting the ball on every play. He seems like a guard trapped in a big-man’s body to me. From what I hear, he’s a JV player at Heights next year. I still look forward to seeing how good he can be.

We have girls tournaments this week, and I’ve got my eye on the potential matchup between Andover Central and Bishop Carroll. I know Central coach Stana Jefferson pretty well, and she’ll think I jinxed her team by putting them as a lock to reach the finals. But I think they are. So is Bishop Carroll, so we’ll likely get the best gauge on how good Central is since the Jaguars haven’t played anybody from a higher class yet. Derby and Goddard also might meet in Lawrence, a rematch of Goddard’s win earlier this season

Time now for my off-the-sports-beat recommendation of the blog entry. First of all, we have to come up with a much catchier name than that. No one comments on my blog anymore, so I guess I can’t look to the readers for help. I’ll just have to hole myself in a dark room somewhere and not come out until a better name is picked.

But I’ll give you a good book, called “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty” by Buster Olney. It’s good for Yankee haters because it centers around a game they lost, Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. But it mixes incredible anecdotal writing with great reporting. Plus, it’s about baseball and that never hurts. It’s probably available in paperback somewhere in Wichita, so if you haven’t read it and you like baseball, you should check it out. Or just read any book — they’re good.

That’s all for today. Look for more activity on this blog now that Joanna is back in the mix. She’s a strong blogger like myself, so skip Bruce Haertl’s never-updated blog and come to us instead. If you’re reading this, you’ve already decided to do that. Good for you.

Well, it’s been 11 weeks since I’ve posted on this blog — hasn’t Jeff Lutz been doing a nice job? Give him a big hand.

I’ve missed blogging and getting all your comments, but the time off was worth it as I now have a super-cute baby boy at home, who already is a Minnesota Vikings fan, a Missouri Tigers fan and a Minnesota Twins fan. Seriously, he knows how to say Adrian Peterson and Chase Daniel in near-perfect fashion. I’ve already got him on a healthy diet — no HGH supplements, thank you very much — and he’s bench pressing his weight as we speak.

But I’m back at the office, ready to cover games and see all that I have missed. Feel free to fill me in on everything.

I did catch some basketball games, seeing every City League boys team except Northwest and Kapaun.  Boys tournament week was awfully successful for the league, with South, East and Southeast all winning tourney titles. Throw in Heights girls winning the SM South tournament and it was a great weekend.

I hope to be back to my almost-daily posts, but this blog is nothing without your comments, so let’s go.

I’m a person who takes bad weather a little more seriously than most people, especially when it relates to driving conditions. Right now, I’m not looking forward to driving to Dodge City tomorrow on potentially slick roads. But I’m sure that once I get on the road everything will be just fine.

Speaking of Dodge City, and particularly the boys basketball tournament I’ll be covering there from Thurs.-Sat., I wrote a story on the Heights-South Gray matchup for Thursday’s Eagle. It’s one of those big school vs. small school matchups that make the Dodge City tournament so unique and, from what I hear, fun to cover. South Gray is the defending 1A champion and apparently has some good athletes. The Rebels beat Derby and Wichita South in the tournament last year, so they’re plenty dangerous.

In Valley Center tomorrow, Southeast coach Carl Taylor probably will break the City League record for coaching wins. He stands at 250 now, tied with longtime Heights coach Goose Doughty. As a brief side note, I find it amazing that Heights has only had four boys basketball coaches since 1969. Let’s cherry pick a random school to compare that with, say North. Since 1969, the Redskins have had seven boys basketball coaches. Still not many. The most in the City League since 1969 is Kapaun, which has had 13 boys basketball coaches. Amazing, don’t you think?

Anyway, you’ve got to be happy for Taylor, who built up the program at Southeast in the midst of some pretty lean years. There’ll be a ceremony tomorrow night after the game, if Southeast beats Valley Center, featuring Doughty and other former City League coaches with at least 100 wins. I know Taylor, and he’ll deflect attention from himself, but I’m sure seeing so many of his former colleagues and predecessors will make him happy. So good for him.

Planning to go see the 8th grade kid from Brooks, Perry Ellis, play later today at Heights. Ellis is a 6-foot-6 beast who will make an immediate impact in the City League next season, as he’s expected to play at Heights. I don’t know what kind of gauge I’ll get on his ability today, since he’ll be facing overmatched middle schoolers, but I’m sure I’ll get an idea of his potential. Looking forward to it, and I’ll blog about the kid in the near future.

Now for my non-sports recommendation of the day. Check out the band Angels & Airwaves if you haven’t already. The lead singer is Tom DeLonge, one of the former vocalists for blink 182. blink, by the way (and the lowercase ‘b’ is accurate), is my second-favorite band of all-time (behind the Eagles), and A&A sound a lot like them. I put a lot of their stuff on my iPod, and my favorite song by them is called “Everything’s Magic.” I’m always way behind on music since I mostly listen to talk radio, but I have broad tastes, and I think A&A is worth checking out. So there you go.

Have a good Wednesday. I’ll be back with more two-point conversions soon.

As a writer, mid-season tournament week is one of my favorite times of the year. I imagine it’s that way for many fans, too.

We’ll be at five or so boys tournament sites starting Monday, when the 38th (I think that’s correct) Adolph Rupp tournament in Halstead kicks off. I’m going to Dodge City, where East and Heights have a chance to meet in the championship game. Anyone know a good hotel or a good place to eat in Dodge City? Is there a Jason’s Deli there, by any chance? I’m on a health kick lately, and I need to be.

I saw something pretty strange when going through tournament brackets yesterday and today. The Chaparral and Valley Center tournaments both have seven teams instead of eight, so the formats are a little different, to say the least. Four teams are involved in bracket play, while three meet in round-robin action. The team that emerges with the best round-robin record meets the bracket-play winner. But in the seventh place game, the two seventh-place teams in each tournament play one another in Valley Center. For the winner of that game, they’ll be able to say they finished seventh. But in which tournament.

As a brief side note, let me mention another great blog I read — the Gilbert Arenas one. I wish I could blog like Gilbert, because the dude is absolutely hilarious. He’s pretty much the standard of excellence for me, so I’m setting his blog as my own personal bar. Gotta aim high.
In fact, that’s what I’m going to do from now on — just take a paragraph or so in every blog I write to recommend or discuss something from outside the world of high school sports. It will be brief, and probably not all that interesting. But it will make me feel better, and that’s the important thing.

Back to tournaments: The City League teams are pretty spread out, with Heights and East in Dodge City as previously discussed. Bishop Carroll is at St. Thomas Aquinas, Kapaun at El Dorado, North at McPherson, Northwest and West at Topeka, South at Colby and Southeast at Valley Center. And obviously the area teams are spread out all over the state, with lots of competitive games scheduled for round one and some potentially attractive matchups down the road.

You can read my dad’s blog over at blogs.kansas.com/bob. He calls his blog entries “extra points,” so I’m going for two-point conversions in an attempt to one-up him. Because that’s what we do in the Lutz family.

I’m actually a little bit envious of my dad, because on his blog he gets to write about whatever he wants. I definitely don’t mind sticking to high school sports on this blog, but I wish I could spruce it up by mixing in the sports with some of my outside interests, like music, the Cleveland Indians, professional wrestling, movies and TV shows. I’m a nerd, and I wish I could let my true nerd-ism shine in this blog. As if some of you commenters don’t make enough fun of me already. That’s not nice, by the way.

Speaking of which, someone asked me in a not-so-nice comment about good sports blogs, noting that he doesn’t appreciate reading mine. But that guy left like 10 comments in a row, so I guess I’m doing something right. Anyway, the two blogs I check most frequently are firejoemorgan.com and minorleagueball.com.

They’re not for everybody — firejoemorgan makes fun of bad sports journalism. As a journalist, you’d think I wouldn’t appreciate that much, but the blog is well-written and hilarious. One of the writers, “Ken Tremendous,” got to write something for Sports Illustrated recently.

Minorleagueball.com is pretty self-explanatory, but it focuses mainly on prospects rather than results of minor league games or particular teams or leagues. It’s run by John Sickels, who lives in Lawrence.

So those are two of the many blogs I read, and by far the best. And since we’re on non-high school sports subjects, I must recommend a movie that I saw over the holidays — The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. I haven’t seen a movie in a long time that grabbed me the way this one did. Good movies, to me, are about being able to invest in the characters; plot is wonderful, but it’s not the most important thing to me. In The Bucket List, I found myself hanging on every word of the two main characters, and I didn’t want the movie to end. So go see it — it was a Top 5′er all time for me.

Now on to high school sports. In my weekly Game of the Week section, which I’m starting this week, I’m writing about the Heights-Bishop Carroll girls game at Heights on Friday. I don’t want to delve too deeply into this game, however, since I’m touching on it in Friday’s basketball notes column.

The game pits the No. 1 team (Heights) against No. 3, though No. 2 Derby lost on Tuesday. So technically we may be looking at the top two teams in the state. Heights won both meetings last season, but the Falcons lost Division I post players Shekeira Copeland and Savannah Ellis, while Carroll returns pretty much everybody. Both teams are off to undefeated starts.

The key for Carroll will be taking care of the ball against Heights’ tough fullcourt press. I think the Eagles are capable of doing that, with plenty of good ball handlers and a solid point guard in Julia Marshall. Conversely, the Falcons have to play smart against Carroll’s defense, not rushing shots and getting the ball in the hands of their three backcourt playmakers, Amanda Orloske, Jennifer Lane and Mary Sims.

I see this as a back-and-forth game, and the team that wins will likely be the one that can sustain a run and pick up momentum, however briefly. I’m going to go all Kirk Herbstreit on you and refrain from making a prediction on this game since I’m covering it, but no outcome will surprise me, except a blowout by either team.

Those are my conversions for today. Look for a diverse Prep Friday section in The Eagle on Friday, with bowling, swimming, wrestling and boys and girls basketball all covered. I’ll be in touch.

My old high school baseball coach at North, Kyle Sanders, turns 50 this week. It’s been suggested that I write a blog about him and my experiences playing baseball for the Redskins, so here goes.

The story that gets told most often is the one where, after a loss (I can’t remember who we lost to, but it was probably Bishop Carroll — Coach always hated those guys. Have I said too much?) coach Sanders started ripping every player individually (except for my best friend, Randy, the coach’s and everybody else’s golden boy), pointing out their shortcomings during the previous night’s game and the season in general. We’re just counting the minutes until we have to run, and Coach is set off even more by the fact that one of the players, Eric, is missing from practice without an explanation.

About five minutes into Coach’s tirade, we see Eric running up to join our huddle. He tries to explain that he thought practice had been scheduled for a different time. But Coach wants nothing of it. He tells Eric to take a knee and, with perfect comedic timing (though it wasn’t funny then…OK maybe a little bit) tells Eric…”By the way, you sucked last night.”

But Coach wasn’t always quick to tell us we sucked. In fact, he was the most laid back coach I’ve ever played for. That fact spoiled me, and when I went to play my junior year in Ohio and had a coach who almost kicked me off the team for losing a ball in the sun, I wasn’t very quick to adapt.

I got in Coach’s good graces with my signature moment on the baseball field. It came in my sophomore year, in my second varsity start ever, against Bishop Carroll. On a line drive into left center, I sprinted from center field and caught the ball right as I ran full speed into the wooden wall at West Urban. Coach still talks about it to this day, but I lost all that good mojo two years later when I didn’t go after a similar ball because I thought it was a home run. So I got suspended one game for that, and for a couple transgressions with umpires during my career.

Coach also likes to talk about the time, as I was coming up to the plate, I tossed the previous batter’s bat about 80 feet into the air back to the dugout. I swear, Coach, if you’re reading this…I didn’t mean to do that. But I did mean to call my shot against that guy from West who was throwing about 40 mph. I flied out to the warning track. Not enough juice.

A lot of memories are coming back as I write this, but I’ll wrap it up by saying that I had a ton of enjoyable experiences playing baseball for 14 years, but my time at North ranks up there with any of them. Getting to play for coach Sanders was a big part of that. He figured me out pretty quickly, let me do my thing (which most often was trash talking the other team and hot-dogging it to first base) and actually ended up squeezing an All-City year out of me in 2001. So thanks, Coach Sanders, and happy 50 years.

I think that Southeast-East boys game on Saturday will be one of those games where, in about 20 years, the attendance of 5,000 will increase to 25,000 because so many people will claim to have been there and witnessed one of the most incredible finishes to any game on any level.

If you missed it, Adonis Gantt rattled in a three-pointer off the glass at the buzzer with Southeast trailing 72-68. After making two free throws to put East ahead by that score, Leon Flowers tried to chase down Gantt as he was streaking down the left sideline. Contact was made on the shot, and a foul was called. Gantt hit the free throw to send it to overtime, then hit a pair from the line at the end of OT to win it.

A lot of this was covered in the story in Sunday’s paper, but the obvious question about the final play in regulation was — why was Flowers defending the play with a four-point lead and just four seconds to go? The absolute worst-case scenario you can think of in a situation like that is to get out of there with a one-point win.

I can understand it, at least from a high school kid who was caught up in the moment and probably didn’t recognize the situation. There is a ton on the line when East plays Southeast, especially in an environment where all your friends are watching and you’re looking to make a spectacular play every time down the floor. So even though there’s no way Flowers should have been near Gantt, I understand how it happened.

As much of a mistake as that may have been, no amount of credit seems sufficient for Gantt, who on the fly figured out that, with Flowers defending him, he had to do everything he could to get a shot off and draw the foul at the same time. When I talked to him after the game, it seemed like getting the foul call was his first priority, and if he got to the line he would just hope for a putback on the final miss. But he leaned in to the point of almost falling down, drew contact — however suspect it may have been — and ended up tying, then winning the game.

I like Gantt because he is the perfect complementary player to Jordan Cyphers, Southeast’s star. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but Gantt is the X-factor of that team. When Cyphers was struggling to get open against tough defense in the first half against East, Gantt had problems taking care of the ball and tried to do too much offensively. When Cyphers got going in the second half, Gantt was able to fill his role perfectly. When Cyphers is on, that frees up Gantt to make big plays on offense and defense, and he usually does. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he was the hero on Saturday.

As far as East, I was impressed. The Aces may be a pedestrian 4-3, but they’re still quite a threat to advance deep into the postseason. An argument can be made that their starting five is better than Southeast, and East appears on its way to developing depth. If you’re a basketball fan, you have to love watching Garrius Holloman play. He’s about 6-foot-5, but he plays much bigger and gets everything out of his ability because he plays every possession like it’s the most important of the game. I wish he were 6-9, because he would be able to pick where he wanted to play college basketball. Just a great, great player.

The rest of Hoopfest on Saturday produced some surprising results. Northwest’s girls beating Kapaun topped the list. Kapaun’s girls are reeling after three straight losses, dropping them to 3-3, while the Grizzlies hope Saturday’s win gives them momentum.

If you can’t figure out why the Northwest boys seems to overachieve every year, the last play in regulation against Kapaun on Saturday should give you the answer. Coach Eric Hofer-Holdeman called a perfect play under Kapaun’s basket with Northwest needing a three-pointer to tie it, and Alex Williams got the shot off after the Grizzlies got him the ball without taking a dribble. Holdeman always seems to get the most out of his teams — he won the 6A tournament two years ago with talent that didn’t match that of East and Southeast, and will probably manage a .500 record or better with an inexperienced team this season.

Hoopfest is over. It gave us great moments and the best game many in attendance Saturday night will ever see. But it’s over, and we’re moving on to some great games this week. I’ve definitely got my eye on the Goddard-Derby girls matchup this week — what will you be watching?