The landscape shifted for Winfield and Logan this season, as their respected basketball programs departed the Class AA Cardinal Conference for life in the AAA ranks.
The landscape shifted for Winfield and Logan this season, as their respected basketball programs departed the Class AA Cardinal Conference for life in the AAA ranks.
The two schools have met the change in different ways.
The Generals stocked their schedule with nothing but fellow AAA schools, while the Wildcats are taking on all comers. First up for Logan was a trip to the Dec. 20-23 Chick-fil-A Classic in Columbia, S.C., with future games against state power teams like South Charleston and Wheeling Park (AAA), Westside and Scott (AA), and Wheeling Central, Mountain State Academy and Charleston Catholic (A).
About the only thing that hasn't changed for Winfield (6-1) and Logan (2-2) is their annual home-and-home series, which continues with tonight's matchup at the Willie Akers Arena in Logan.
Logan coach Mark Hatcher said he and Winfield coach Pat McGinnis took different approaches to their new situations.
"Pat plays a lot of teams in the [Mountain State Athletic Conference],'' Hatcher said, "We have some really good rivals down here, and we stuck with some of them. We play our share of in-state schools also. We went back to our roots and got Wheeling Park back on the schedule.
"We think we can compete in triple-A, and Winfield's already proven they can compete. It's just like the old Cardinal Conference rivalry for us and Winfield. Our kids played against each other in Buddy League, they're in the same middle school conference and were in the same double-A conference. Now we're in triple-A together, and it's as big a rivalry game as we have now. There's us and [AA schools] Westside and Wyoming East, of course, but as far as triple-A, this is the only rivalry we've stuck with the last so many years.''
Neither Logan nor Winfield has broken into the Class AAA regular-season state rankings yet, but Hatcher thinks the field is wide open.
"I think there's a lot of parity right now,'' he said. "I was talking to Roy Edman [Parkersburg South's coach] and we were saying that on any given night in triple-A this year, any team can beat anybody. You've got to bring it every night, or you're gonna lose. There's 20 teams out there that are pretty even. I don't know how many unbeaten triple-A teams there are in West Virginia.''
Tonight's game will be the first for Logan in 17 days. Initially, the Wildcats had a game against Mountain State set for the first week in January, but the latter asked to pull out of the agreement when it received the chance to compete in a tournament.
"We didn't plan a 17-day layoff,'' Hatcher said. "You always want to avoid scheduling against a [possible] BCS bowl with West Virginia, because you lose a lot of your [fans]. I don't know if [the layoff's] done a lot to us. We got to work on some things and toned up our conditioning. It may take a little while to catch up to game speed, but there's still a long part of the season left.''
Snow way to play
Snow on Thursday knocked out several key games involving Kanawha Valley boys teams, including George Washington at Cabell Midland and Ripley at South Charleston. The Ripley-SC game was reset for Monday, Feb. 16.
Other boys games called off (with makeup date, if available) were Nitro at St. Albans (tonight), Sherman at Sissonville (tonight), Riverside at Capital (Saturday), Parkersburg at Hurricane (Feb. 7) and Woodrow Wilson at Spring Valley.
Also, the Sissonville at Herbert Hoover girls game was postponed, with no makeup date immediately scheduled.
Woodrow slows GW's bid
The landscape shifted for Winfield and Logan this season, as their respected basketball programs departed the Class AA Cardinal Conference for life in the AAA ranks.
The two schools have met the change in different ways.
The Generals stocked their schedule with nothing but fellow AAA schools, while the Wildcats are taking on all comers. First up for Logan was a trip to the Dec. 20-23 Chick-fil-A Classic in Columbia, S.C., with future games against state power teams like South Charleston and Wheeling Park (AAA), Westside and Scott (AA), and Wheeling Central, Mountain State Academy and Charleston Catholic (A).
About the only thing that hasn't changed for Winfield (6-1) and Logan (2-2) is their annual home-and-home series, which continues with tonight's matchup at the Willie Akers Arena in Logan.
Logan coach Mark Hatcher said he and Winfield coach Pat McGinnis took different approaches to their new situations.
"Pat plays a lot of teams in the [Mountain State Athletic Conference],'' Hatcher said, "We have some really good rivals down here, and we stuck with some of them. We play our share of in-state schools also. We went back to our roots and got Wheeling Park back on the schedule.
"We think we can compete in triple-A, and Winfield's already proven they can compete. It's just like the old Cardinal Conference rivalry for us and Winfield. Our kids played against each other in Buddy League, they're in the same middle school conference and were in the same double-A conference. Now we're in triple-A together, and it's as big a rivalry game as we have now. There's us and [AA schools] Westside and Wyoming East, of course, but as far as triple-A, this is the only rivalry we've stuck with the last so many years.''
Neither Logan nor Winfield has broken into the Class AAA regular-season state rankings yet, but Hatcher thinks the field is wide open.
"I think there's a lot of parity right now,'' he said. "I was talking to Roy Edman [Parkersburg South's coach] and we were saying that on any given night in triple-A this year, any team can beat anybody. You've got to bring it every night, or you're gonna lose. There's 20 teams out there that are pretty even. I don't know how many unbeaten triple-A teams there are in West Virginia.''
Tonight's game will be the first for Logan in 17 days. Initially, the Wildcats had a game against Mountain State set for the first week in January, but the latter asked to pull out of the agreement when it received the chance to compete in a tournament.
"We didn't plan a 17-day layoff,'' Hatcher said. "You always want to avoid scheduling against a [possible] BCS bowl with West Virginia, because you lose a lot of your [fans]. I don't know if [the layoff's] done a lot to us. We got to work on some things and toned up our conditioning. It may take a little while to catch up to game speed, but there's still a long part of the season left.''
Snow way to play
Snow on Thursday knocked out several key games involving Kanawha Valley boys teams, including George Washington at Cabell Midland and Ripley at South Charleston. The Ripley-SC game was reset for Monday, Feb. 16.
Other boys games called off (with makeup date, if available) were Nitro at St. Albans (tonight), Sherman at Sissonville (tonight), Riverside at Capital (Saturday), Parkersburg at Hurricane (Feb. 7) and Woodrow Wilson at Spring Valley.
Also, the Sissonville at Herbert Hoover girls game was postponed, with no makeup date immediately scheduled.
Woodrow slows GW's bid
Woodrow Wilson's 68-67 victory at George Washington Tuesday prevented GW from taking over the driver's seat in the MSAC East Division standings.
Had the Patriots won that game, they would have been 3-0 in the East with wins over Capital and Woodrow - two traditional contenders. The divisional standings determine who plays for the league title in the MSAC Night of Champions in February.
Woodrow is now 3-0 in the East, but has tough divisional games left against Capital, Ripley and Parkersburg. The only losses for the Flying Eagles (5-2) this season came at Parkersburg South and No. 2 Martinsburg.
"Any time you play Parkersburg South, I don't care who you are, it's hard to win up there,'' said Woodrow Wilson coach Ron Kidd. "It's a great atmosphere, and they play hard. And Martinsburg's got everybody back from last year. They're an extremely good team. I'm just proud of our kids to get a big win against GW.''
Intersectional issues
With four Eastern Panhandle schools ranked in the top eight in Class AAA, it may be hard for the rest of the state to get a feel for those teams because so few get the chance to play them.
"It makes it kind of hard to play teams across the state in the regular season,'' said Hedgesville coach Kelly Church. "I know teams around here like to do it more often, but it becomes a scheduling nightmare both ways - for the other part of the state to travel here or vice versa. You have to schedule games on the weekend because it's so far away. Then if you get bad weather, you can't travel over those mountains.''
Church said Eastern Panhandle teams are reluctant to give away their weekend dates, because Hedgesville, Martinsburg, Jefferson, Musselman and Washington prefer to play each other on those days.
"Most of those games will be sellouts,'' Church said, "and it becomes a pretty lucrative gate for the home school. Obviously, if you play games on Friday night, you have a lot better chance to make money. With the economic times we're in, athletics costs more and more, so [you have to do it].
"We're not naïve as to how talented the other teams are. It just becomes tough to schedule teams from across the state.''
Fast breaks
Ravenswood's Mick Price, who recently picked up his 500th career victory, has the Red Devils (5-1) on pace for their 14th straight winning season.
Herbert Hoover is 3-0 when it scores at least 55 points, and 0-5 when it doesn't.
Parkersburg South's Michael Riggins has 22 3-point goals in the first five games.
Reach Rick Ryan at 304-348-5175 or rickr...@wvgazette.com.
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