Basketball notes and news
Beginning in January The Gateway Tire & Service Center Player of the Week for basketball will get underway. Each week a player will be selected and, as was the case during football season, a plaque in that player's name will be sent to their school. Stats and a player photo must be sent via email to aafandaman@yahoo.com no later than Sunday night each week.
Each year the Southern Sports & Travel All MAIS Basketball boys and girls teams are recognized following the season. The players considered for these teams are painstakingly selected through much research and input from coaches and some who follow MAIS basketball closely. Southern Sports & Travel will begin reaching out to coaches next month in an effort to begin gathering as much data possible in selecting not only a boys and girls team but also a boys and girls player of the year.
Recently two of the very best high school basketball coaches in the state reached notable milestones. Leake Academy head coach Doyle Wolverton recently got his 1,218th win to become the second winningest girl's high school basketball coach of all time and Marshall head basketball coach Craig Dailey earned his 1,000th win.
A big thank you goes out to all of you who faithfully report scores each night. Over 80% of the scores posted each night on Southern Sports & Travel are reported directly from you. Southern Sports & Travel will also gladly post stats associated with those scores and those will be archived in the basketball scores page. I received a message this week regarding listing scorers from games each night and for the remainder of the season any player game stats that are reported will be listed and saved to the basketball archives. Those stats can be emailed to aafandaman@yahoo.com or faxed to 985-732-9306 or a text to 985-750-3455 will suffice.
Much effort and time has been spent on district basketball standings for all three classes over the past week and as of now Classes AAA and AA are shaping up well due to lots of help from some great coaches who have always been willing to lend a hand. Unfortunately Class A is once again going to be a challenge for a few reasons.
The decision will be made soon as to whether to list just those Class A districts which are possible to track accurately and leave off those which choose not to report scores to any publication whatsoever off the standings all together. Every effort has been made over the past few years to network Class A schools so coaches, players and fans can see how other teams in Class A are performing but it appears some facets of Class A are more than happy to impede recognition of their own school, players and supporters.
