Gatling's View: Mounties earn place among best
Posted on Monday, March 5, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/Sports/46235/
A few leftover notes from this week’s Class 7 A State Tournament in Springdale.
The Rogers Mounties last season earned their status as one of the best basketball teams in school history, if not the best.
This year’s team followed it up by earning their own place in history, too.
Gotta give this team its due respect. Not since the Mounties won their only state title in 1957 had a Rogers team advanced to the state semifinals.
And 18-9 at Rogers may be one of the top five seasons ever.
When you take into account who they’ve played, who they’ve beaten and the teams that beat them, you can really grasp what this year’s Mounties had to do to accomplish their success.
Of their 9 losses:
• Three came to the No. 1 team in the 7 A classification (Har-Ber ) and all by single digits;
• One was to Fort Smith Northside, who will play Har-Ber this weekend for the 7 A state championship;
• Russellville at Russellville, a 7 A state quarterfinalist;
• Fayetteville, a state tournament qualifier and the flag-bearer for 7 A-West success;
• Bentonville at Bentonville, a state tournament qualifier;
• Shiloh Christian, a 3 A state semifinalist; and
• Waynesville, Mo., quite possibly the best team out of the entire group that ended its season last week 22-4 following a 52-47 loss to Missouri Class 5 A No. 1 Springfield Kickapoo (26-1 ).
Highlights among the wins:
• A victory against the Arkadelphia Badgers in the first-round of the Cyclone Classic. Arkadelphia will play for the 5 A state title this weekend in Hot Springs;
• Fayetteville at Fayetteville by 11 early in the conference season to set the tone;
• The big one on the road at Northside;
• The tip-in by Cody Lay to beat Bentonville and secure a third-place finish in the conference
• Holding Morrilton and Fort Smith Southside to 18 — yes, 18 — points; and
• The quarterfinal win against Little Rock Central, which entered the tournament on a 6-game win streak. Watching a team score 35 points in the fourth quarter and make its final 11 shots of the game is something every sportswriter should be lucky enough to write about just once. What a way to give a coach his 500 th win.
The seniors (Kyle Moix, Jonathan Moore, Alec Borkowski, Taylor Holcomb ) finish their career with a record of 57-26, easily the best career team record in school history.
They’ve helped lay the foundation for the future with the likes of sophomores Aaron Hawley and Hunter Smeltzer and juniors Cody Lay and Ronyae Samuels.
Shawn Davidson, Jordan Ganoung and the rest of coach Tom Olsen’s 13-3 JV team will add to the mix as will the additions of players from Elmwood and Oakdale — several of whom were at Saturday’s game — who will be hungry to expand on the success of Mountie basketball.
Barnes hurt for his current players following the 39-32 loss to Har-Ber but was proud for one of his former players. Second-year Har-Ber coach Eric Burnett was a four-year starter at Arkansas Tech University from 1989-1993 while playing for Barnes. He was a two-time All-AIC pick and an honorable mention All-America his senior season. Burnett, who has reached the state tournament in each of his six seasons as a head coach, is taking a team to the state finals for the first time. “ I think the world of Eric, ” Barnes said. “ He was a great player for us at Tech and I’m really proud that I know him and had the chance to coach him. ” Burnett, a FS Northside alum, won 68 games in four seasons at FS Southside and led the Rebels to the state semifinals in 2004.
Burnett said after the game that playing for Barnes and now coaching against him helps him understand what the veteran coach is thinking. Which is not an easy thing to do. “ He has 50 offensive plays that he runs, ” he says. “ And it may look like they throw up ‘ X-Game’ every time but there’s a different play off of that every time. I don’t know if I know of another coach in the state as smart as coach Barnes. ” Burnett, though, has a better feel for the plays than most coaches in the 7 AWest. “ Yes sir; because he ran ‘ em all for me to shoot the three, ” he jokes. “ I was (Jonathan ) Moore coming off the pick. ”
It may take a while for the students at Springdale’s two high schools to catch on to this rivalry idea and develop a true distaste for each other. Among the “ Blue Crew” Har-Ber cheering section for the Wildcats’ two playoff games were several students from Springdale High. All were wearing white T-shirts with the words “ Red Crew” on the back. On the front was a Har-Ber Wildcat logo in SHS red. I guess if you can’t beat ‘ em, join ‘ em. Bob Gatling and Joe Fred Young, however, would not approve.
Former Razorbacks were in abundance during tournament week at Har-Ber. It would have been a great picture to get of Eugene Nash, Marvin Delph, Jim Counce and Ron Brewer, Sr. sitting together in the bleachers Wednesday afternoon during the Fayetteville-Conway girls game. Nash’s daughter plays for Fayetteville, Delph’s daughter plays for Conway and Counce and Brewer have had children play basketball at FHS in recent years. Joe Kleine was also up from Little Rock to watch Little Rock Catholic, where his son is a senior member of the team. Big Joe from Slater, Mo., was animated in the final minutes against Har-Ber, to say the least.
Paul Gatling is the sports editor of The Daily Record and can be reached by e-mail at paulg @ nwanews. com. The opinions expressed are those of the author.