Conference tournament time arrives

The local girls basketball league championship tournaments begin this week and the boys events get underway next week. I am not a big fan of these, but a lot of folks love them.

I would much rather see the state tournament directly follow the regular season rather than having kids go through intense league playoffs risking injury. I also think teams that go to league title games risk coming up flat for their first tourney games.

No matter what I think — honest! — the local teams will debut with Middletown home Thursday in a Central Connecticut Conference match and Mercy home Saturday in a Southern Connecticut Conference game.

What a weekend!

For openers, Xavier’s basketball team pulled a big upset by

knocking off Fairfield Prep 56-54 Saturday. Jackson Benigni — reminder, the kid’s a sophomore — had 29 points as the Falcons came from behind in the fourth quarter to win.

Prep (10-9) has been an enigma all season. Before the Jesuits played Xavier, they beat Hillhouse. Go figure.

Next, Middletown High’s boys indoor track team finished second in the Class L state championship meet, losing out to Hall of West Hartford by two points 50-48. It would have been the Blue Dragons’ first state title since 1998.

Middletown led the meet until the final event, the 4x400 meter relay. Hall won the race, edging Bristol Central by 4/100ths of a second.

Middletown’s Laurenzo Thompkins continued to star, winning the 55 meter hurdles, DeShaun Bradshaw and Garrett Dandridge went 1-2 in the 55 meter dash and Middletown’s 4x100 meter relay team of Bradshaw, Thompkins, Dandridge and Nice Cavaliere won.

Middletown — obviously — will be a force in outdoor track this spring.

Third, Xavier’s wrestling team won the Southern Connecticut Conference championship Saturday and four wrestlers — Ronan Marino (106), Patrick Moynihan (132), Grant Barber (138) and Ryan Devivo (160) — won league championships.

Fourth, Xavier’s ice hockey team improved to 12-3-1 with a 2-0 win over East Catholic Saturday and the co-op of Middletown/Wethersfield/Plainville/Rocky Hill beat the co-op of Shepaug Valley/Litchfield/Thomaston/Nonnewaug 8-0 Saturday to improve to 12-3.

The only down note of the weekend came when Middletown’s girls basketball team got hammered 71-43 at RHAM. “They shot 60 percent, we shot 24 percent,” said MHS coach Rob Smenoff. “Brielle [Wilborn] fouled out and Dominique [Highsmtih] had just one point. I guess every year you get one of those games.”

Not that RHAM is chopped liver. The Sachems are 13-5.

Lombardi vs. Belichick

One of the topics of the week in the wake of the Patriots’ stunning Super Bowl win was whether Vince Lombardi or Bill Belichick is the greatest coach of all time. There is no way to resolve that argument, but Mike Francesa of WFAN was adamant in saying that Lombardi was the greatest.

His logic was that there were fewer teams, therefore the qualify of play was higher, and that Lombardi was 10-1 in the playoffs was offered as proof positive. Uhhh, no. Let’s start with the obvious: today’s athletes, across the board, are bigger, faster and stronger. Next, in Lombardi’s era, the population of the country was less than 200 million. Today, it is 324 million. Basic math says that’s a 62 percent difference. It follows that makes for a greater talent pool.

Next, far more colleges are playing football, many more at the Division I level. That’s not a watering down of talent, that’s because there is more talent available.

Finally — and perhaps most importantly — one has to remember that most NFL teams, including the Packers, ignored a huge supply of talent in that they were predominantly white. Not only was there blatant discrimination at the NFL level, but also at the college level. In the 1960s, the Southwest Conference (Texas, Arkansas, et al) and the Southeast Conference simply didn’t recruit black players.

Simply put, the talent pool of players of the Lombardi era was smaller than the talent pool of today. Dramatically so, both in sheer numbers, and in the numbers of players who come out of high-powered collegiate programs.

An online photo of the 1966 Green Bay Packers shows seven African-American players. In 1970, some 30 percent of NFL players were African-American. Today, the percentage is 68.

None of that says that Belichick or Lombardi is a better coach. But to argue that the competition in Lombardi’s era was better is silly on the face of it.

Also, teams today have to beat three — and if a team has to play a wild card round game, four — teams to win a championship, each of which has many players that are bigger, stronger and faster than the teams of Lombardi’s era.

Fact is, winning a title today is much tougher than winning one then.

Just is.

This week in boys hoops

Middletown High, winners of 15 in row, has an interesting game at Hamden Wednesday, then plays at Maloney of Meriden Friday before finishing its season with Rocky Hill at home next Monday. It would behoove the Blue Dragons to win out as that would guarantee them home games through the quarterfinal round on the Class L tournament — if they win, of course — as they would lock down a top four spot in the CIAC rankings.

Xavier clinched a Class LL tourney berth with its stunning win over Fairfield Prep Saturday, although all its tourney games would almost certainly be on the road. The Falcons have a tough one tonight when they host Hillhouse, which likely will fall from its No. 1 spot in the NHR/GameTimeCT poll after its loss to Prep. The Academics might be in a particularly foul mood this evening.

WCNXRadio.com, the local Internet station, will carry the game.

Cromwell (10-7) needs to win out to be certain of a home game in the first round of the Class M tourney. East Hampton (13-2) is in a battle for a top four spot, which would guarantee home games through three rounds, Coginchaug (10-5) with a win or two, looks to have a first-round home game locked up, but Haddam-Killingworth (9-7), needs to win out to get a berth in the top 16 and guarantee a home game.

XL Center — yes!

Hartford Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs was right on point when he called for the state to spend $250 to refurbish the shabby XL — formerly the Hartford Civic — Center.

Like Jacobs, I am sick of folks denigrating this state. It is a beautiful state, with great public schools everywhere you look, a highly educated citizenry, a skilled workforce, first-rate cultural events and world-class colleges and universities like Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity. Connecticut College, the USCGA and on and on.

The state university system, headlined by UConn, is the envy of many states.

Yup, taxes are high, but you get services for those tax dollars, services you won’t get in places like South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.

I heard one guy call in to WTIC’s JoeD and Gresh show blasting the idea of improving the XL Center, ranting about wasted money, overspending and corrupt politicians. This knee-jerk, facts-bedamned approach has to stop.

I want to see someone show me waste. I want to see what services they wish to cut. Schools? Colleges? Police? Fire? Snow removal? Highway repairs?

I want our schools to remain among the best in the nation, I want our capital city to be beautiful and vibrant, I want our state university to remain among the best public universities in the land — which it is — and I want a modern, state-of-the-art arena in downtown Hartford.

There are enough examples of states around the Union who do it on the cheap. Thank God I don’t live in one of them.

Kids in College

Xavier alum Tyler Williams is playing basketball for Colby College in Maine, averaging 19 minutes per game as a freshman. Colby finished its season with a loss at Wesleyan Saturday. Xavier alum Evan Curtin is playing for Western Connecticut State University averaging about 10 minutes per game and 4.6 ppg as a frosh.

Here and there

News item: California state colleges won’t be scheduling schools from Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and North Carolina any time soon ... that’s because California has a law in place that prohibits its public universities from scheduling games with teams from states like the above four that discriminate against LGBTQ citizens.

Good for California ... add to that the NFL is threatening not to play a Super Bowl in Texas again as that state is considering a hateful bill aimed at transgendered citizens ... good for the NFL ... North Carolina has lost untold millions because of its hateful so-called bathroom bill, which really is a bill aimed at all LGBTQ citizens ... only the American Legion Baseball program remains oblivious, continually scheduling its World Series in Shelby, N.C., thus missing a golden opportunity to teach the young people who play Legion Baseball an object lesson in prejudice and discrimination.

The Legion committee responsible for this is called the Americanism Commission ... perhaps it needs a lesson on real Americanism.

WCNXRadio.com will carry the Cromwell girls game against H-K Friday and the big South Windsor vs. East Catholic boys game next Tuesday.

The new scoreboard is in place at Palmer Field ... the clock atop the board is on 24/7 ... the infield has also been resodded with the grass touching the baseline, like in MLB parks ... Public Works Director Bill Russo said that the next job is to refurbish the entrance to the park, which it badly needs, then repainting of all the buildings, plus the installation of seats with backs throughout the grandstand ... the work is overdue ... the park was built in 1988 and that, my friends, is a loooong time ago.

Xavier, despite having constructed its new Richard Magner Baseball Field, will play most of its varsity baseball games at Palmer Field ...only its opener with Norwich Free Academy on April 1 will be at Magner Field, the other nine are slated for Palmer ... Middletown will play two games at Palmer, one with Portland on May 11 and the other with Berlin on May 17 ... all the rest will be played at the John DeNunzio Field on campus.

The CIAC baseball finals will be held at Palmer Field June 9 and 10 ... there will be a semifinal double header at Palmer June 6.

Many major newspapers have editions in various parts of the country ... the Boston Globe has a Florida edition ... late in the Super Bowl, deadline loomed ... the Globe sent a front page to Florida that had the Pats losing the Super Bowl ... shades of Dewey Defeats Truman.

Middletown and Xavier don’t meet very often, but the two will swim each other this Thursday at MHS’ Baldwin-Parmelee pool at 4 p.m . ... MHS is on a roll, winning its last eight meets in a row.

If the Middletown and Mercy girls both win their final games, MHS (ranked No. 4) will be guaranteed three home games in the LL tourney — assuming they keep winning — and Mercy (ranked No. 5) will be guaranteed two ... but if MHS loses and Mercy wins its finale, then Mercy, which has won six in a row, would jump over MHS for the No. 4 spot in LL, thus guaranteeing three home games ... little intercity seeding competition here, folks.

Mercy ends its regular season tonight hosting Hamden while MHS finishes on the road at Rocky Hill.

Final sign that the Apocalypse is near: Baseball, in a goofy, dumb, ridiculous attempt to speed up the game, will try starting extra innings with a runner on second base in a couple of its instructional leagues.

First, what’s the rush? ... why are we always trying to “speed things up?” ... extra innings are almost always very exciting ... I seem to remember a fabulous seventh game of the World Series last year which was won in dramatic style in extra innings ...so why try to fix something that’s not broken?... dumb, dumber, dumbest.

Ya know, I have friends who think I’m nuts to drive to Florida or take the train ... “too slow,” they say, or “I want to get there,” ... I call my way enjoying life, taking in the sights and relaxing.

Sort of like baseball.