Time for the Best Time of the Year

With apologies to my friend Galen Culver (the best One Man Reporting Band in the business), I'm not necessarily talking about Oklahoma - although I love my native land. Nope, I'm talking about the state basketball tournaments. I've had more than 30 years of playing (actually, sitting) and covering state tournament games, and it still hurts to recall my final state tourney game as a player (bench-warmer). It was 1975, my senior year at Norman High School, and we were good - really good. We were a heavy-favorite against Altus in the state semifinals at the State Fair Arena. We had bitten the Bulldogs twice during the year easily. We won by double digits in Altus and by at least 20 points in Norman. Obviously we were very confident playing them a third time. I'm sure you can figure out what happened. We messed around, kept Altus in it all night, and in a tie game late, one of our guys blew his defensive assignment and we let a dude hit a driving baseline lay-up at the gun. Man, I was distraught. It was over so quickly. But that's the deal at state, right? One-and-done, baby. You have to deal with it. Enough about my pathetic career. There's something about state tournaments that I can't get enough of. My wife played hoops at tiny Greenfield High School, and she loves to watch the small schools play. It's one of the highlights of our year, every season. We saw the coach's son from Frontier light it up for 51 points a few years ago. I've never had as much fun as last season's "Sensational Saturday" when 13,000-plus packed the old place, and I watched Keiton Page go off for 54 for Pawnee, followed by McGuinness winning again (my daughter Gracie is a cheerleader for the Irish - so I didn't watch much of Daniel Orton & Co.). Then we changed seats and moved up higher to watch Rotnei Clarke and Verdigris when he scored the toughest 37 or 38 points I've ever seen. As (bad) luck would have it, we had to leave - only to miss what many people say was the greatest game ever when the Pocola girls beat Walters in that crazy finish with a buzzer-beater for the ages. When my TV career started, Oklahoma was one of two states in America still playing 6-on-6 girls basketball in the state tournaments, and I loved that game! Sure, it was weird to watch, but there was something about that battle to get the ball across the half-court line, followed by the 3-on-3 on the offensive end with some pure scorers putting up ridiculous numbers. Kelli Litsch at Thomas was the first of the 6-on-6 stars I covered, and I was genuinely sad when that version of the game went away for good. Yep, I'm a sports fan of all games but nothing beats the state high school basketball tournaments coming to a Big House near you. Bob Barry, Jr. is the sports director at KFOR-TV Sports (NBC). He can be reached at bbjsports@hotmail.com or at bob.barryjr@kfor.com.