Random thoughts

Does anyone else find it funny that North Carolina entered the NIT with the worst record in the tournament? The men’s basketball team arrived at the NIT with a 16-16 record and will not have a chance to defend its national title.

That is the first of my random thoughts this week:

Next, high school basketball needs a shot clock. Really. I was at the sub-state tournament in Andover where the Liberal girls spent more than a minute on two different occasions standing in one place and holding the ball. That is not basketball. If that’s all the game required, I could have had a pretty good high school basketball career, even though I was only 5 feet tall.

After the Salina Central boys won Class 5A tennis championships the past six years in a row, they are not even listed in the coaches’ preseason rankings. The Mustangs graduated all of their state semifinalists from last year: Spencer Brass, Connor Brass, Will Exline and Craig Knox. Knox and Exline won the doubles title in 2008, and Connor Brass defeated his twin brother, Spencer, for the singles championship in 2009.

The Goddard boys tennis players will take the court this season without coach John Markham, who passed away in October. That represents a significant change for them, although coach Dan Buchanan is familiar to the Lions. The John Markham Memorial Scholarship has been established, and it will be awarded to two Goddard seniors, one male and one female, who competed in Goddard tennis for four years.

The Wichita East girls swimmers have a tough start to their season after the wreck on the turnpike that killed teammate Yuna Choi and critically injured her twin sister and fellow swimmer, Hana Choi. The Aces lost only one league matchup last season and then prevailed at the City League meet. Joe Hutchinson, who is starting his 12th season as the Aces’ coach, took a tile from the old East pool that had been signed by various swimmers and left it at the crash scene.