December Madness during the Pizza Hut Tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum

55-54……

You could have just printed those two scores and then printed the team names and seeds beside them and that would tell you the story, of the early rounds of the 2010 Pizza Hut Invitational Basketball Tournament, at the Greensboro Coliseum…

It was like NCAA March Madness in December, so we will call it “December Madness”……Greensboro Sports Commission leader Demp Bradford was talking in those terms yesterday and he is on the money…..

Those 55-54 scores will not soon be forgotten and you look at the first one with,

#8 seed Northwest Guilford 55
#1 seed Greensboro Day School 54

and then you had,

#7 seed Northern Guilford 55
#2 seed Northeast Guilford 54

and before that you had #6 Ragsdale taking out #3 Smith, all on the boy’s side of the bracket……

I doubt they had ever seen anything quite like that, on the opening day of the tournament. Now in the future, there is no real need to be concerned, if your team gets that lower seed at #8, #7 or #6….Just go out and do a Valpo or Gonzaga or a Butler or come out like NWG, Northern and Ragsdale did this year…..

March Madness in December?????

Let’s call it “December Madness” and it really has been, A December to Remember, at the Pizza Hut Invitational Tournament, where today, we have the womens and mens finals set to go off at 5:30pm and at 7:45pm……We started with these kids as boys and girls and now we have seen them grow into men and women, over the past two days……

Both of the final contests are set for the Greensboro Coliseum main arena and we have:
#1 Northwest Guilford versus #7 Smith in the Women’s Final at 5:30 and
#4 Page versus #7 Northern Guilford in the Men’s Final at 7:45…..

The Smith girls are the defending champions from last year and the Northern boys reached the championship round last year, where they fell to the Grimsley Whirlies….The Page boys have not been in the finals since 1989 and that is a long drought, for a team that won several titles under the guidance of Coach Mac Morris…..The NWG girls have won at least two titles, while current-head coach Darlene Joyner has been leading the Vikings’ ship/boat/fleet……..

The Northern Guilford boys have almost been playing in shifts…One kid will lead for a while and then another player will take over….Yesterday Will Mulliken worked the first shift and the John McBeth took over….Daniel Downing has been working close to a 24/7 shift this season for the Nighthawks and the addition of TJ Logan has really helped NG in the backcourt….He has been a very solid compliment to Patrick Chandler….The Downing-Summers battles should be very fun to watch in the lane tonight, and they should materialize some way, at some point in the game…..

Good seasonal basketball in the Greensboro Coliseum, as we saw top seeds Falling on Tuesday and we have James Summers from Page and Zhana Winters from Smith, both looking to Spring into action tonight on the Coliseum floor…..Not sure if the Fall Guy, Lee Majors will be able to attend or if Ron Springs can still get out to watch a game, or even if Jonathan Winters is still around to watch one, or if maybe Jaime Summers(Bionic Woman) is still game for an evening…..Nice line of thinking, with focus on Summers from Page and Winters from Smith…..

The Page boys can score and they are at their best when Jackson Kent, Frankie Eaves and Bryson Fonville are in the flow….Dillon Sykes has given the Pirates some excellent minutes in this tournament and Justin Conner was tough around the boards and in the lane on Wednesday, to take some of the pressure off of Summers near the basket….

The NWG girls have a nice group of young ladies that move well without the ball….After the pass they continue to move, with Harper, Shelton and Williams is really moving, plus Harmony White is playing like a point forward and Alyssa Munson is going to be one heck of player before she retires her Red and White….

For Smith, you have five players that are in sync….Breana Garris can go, then Jo Jo Phillips can fly, you have Quan Greer and she may have the best eye on the team, there’s big Lynn in the middle and Ms. Winters is cooking up some of the best five-foot basketball biscuits in town……Just across the foul line, near that broken circle is where you have to stop Smith….You can’t let them penetrate into the area around that broken line/circle or you will pay…..Smith has a five that can move and they are like inter-changable moving parts…..NWG may have to look to their bench at Brandi Burrell and others to push the Eagles and make them deplete their oxygen resources….NWG use that depth, if for no other reason, you’ve got to make Smith work…..NWG may want to slow it down, but they may be better off to push Smith and see if the Eagles will run out of gas…….

A great night is in store, for all that make the move on out to the Greensboro Coliseum, for the Finals of the 2010 Pizza Hut Invitational Tournament……

*****One more note on this LONG shopping list of basketball thoughts from the tournament……I was very impressed with #24 Jaxon Randolph from Ragsdale, in the second half of the Northern game, on Wednesday….That kid was tearing it up…….*****

+++++#2 Cody Hylton from Northwest was another kid that shot the ball well in the boy’s semifinals…..+++++

One thought on “December Madness during the Pizza Hut Tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum

  1. you are right andy this has been a very exciting tournament with a lot of upsets i cant wait to get up in that vip room again tonite and munch on some more pizza

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