Thursday, March 9, 2023

Girls' Sweet Sixteen, Thursday

Oh, my ...


Comments flow.

42 comments:

  1. Good news back in Hindman: The KCC Lady Patriots closed the first half on a 5-0 run. It's 21-6, Blazer, in the first of four games today at Rupp Arena.

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  2. "You've got to have the will to not give up," one of the Killer B commentators tells the other.

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  3. The navy, cardinal and white Lady Patriots are on their eighth trip to the Sweet Sixteen. They have one all-time win in the state tournament.

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  4. The maroon and white Kittens of Paul G. Blazer High School in Ashland are in their 14th Sweet Sixteen, though this is their first trip since 2015. Blazer has never won the state championship and is 5-13 all time in the state tournament.

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  5. "Paul Garrett Blazer (September 19, 1890 – December 9, 1966) was President and CEO of Ashland Oil and Refining Company (Ashland, Inc.) located in Ashland, Kentucky."

    I wonder how many times in the history of the HP I've looked up this Wikipedia page and relearned who Paul Blazer was.

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  6. Blazer was born on September 19, 1890, in New Boston, Illinois to Presbyterians David Newton Blazer and Mary Melinda Blazer (née Janes).[1] Blazer's father's childhood home was station number three on the Underground Railroad that began at Quincy, Illinois and was described as being on "the avenue to freedom in Canada for runaway slaves from Missouri and Kentucky and hundreds of them passing through to freedom were harbored at the Blazer home."[2] Blazer's father, his father's brother and father's sister were school teachers. His father left the teaching profession as a school principal and subsequently became the publisher of the nearby Aledo Times-Record regional newspaper.[3]

    At the age of 12, Blazer began selling magazine subscriptions for The Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal, and he eventually hired a full-time secretary.[1] Blazer was a star on his high school football team and a track star in high school and in college.[1][4] After high school, he enrolled at William & Vashti College in Aledo, Illinois.[5] After one year of college, Blazer joined the Educational Division of Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as manager of its school subscriptions.[3] His responsibilities included devising advertisements that ran in the Saturday Evening Post.[5]

    While in Philadelphia, Blazer became active in the progressive Bull Moose Party and former President Theodore Roosevelt's unsuccessful campaign for the 1912 Republican Party presidential nomination. Blazer ended up on the platform with President Roosevelt for his April 10 whistle-stop train tour stop in Philadelphia.[6] Blazer left Curtis Publishing and Philadelphia in 1914, and returned to his magazine business in Illinois. On a Curtis Publishing scholarship, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, earning an associate degree in Philosophy in 1915. The scholarship was conditional on maintaining 400 magazine subscriptions. Blazer further expanded his subscription business when he purchased a renewal subscriptions business with 960 customers in 1914 and another renewal subscription business in 1916 with 1900 customers from a Curtis distributor in Chicago, further expanding his magazine business in Chicago and into Milwaukee. While attending University of Chicago, Blazer was the student coordinator for the student sports program and business manager of the Cap & Gown yearbook staff. Under his direction they achieved record income.

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  7. Knott County Central has, indeed, exhibited the will to not give up. The Lady Patriots have outscored the Kittens, 16-8, since I put up this post. It's 29-17 with about a minute to go in the third quarter.

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  8. Through three quarters:

    Ashland Paul G. Blazer Kittens 33
    Knott County Central Lady Patriots 22

    Hmmm ...

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  9. Next up (scheduled tip 12:30 Central): Bardstown Bethlehem Banshees vs. our McCracken County Lady Mustangs.

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  10. Bethlehem High enrollment: 296.

    McCracken County High enrollment: 2,002.

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  11. The blue, gold and white Banshees had made three Sweet Sixteen apperances--all of them since 2019.

    The crimson, black and white Lady Mustangs made their first Sweet Sixteen appearance last season (and lost in the first round).

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  12. The Killer B commentators sign off from Rupp, and HIndman goes back to dancing to "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell.

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  13. In terms of KHSAA RPI, this game portended as the second-best of the first round. Per those rankings, McCracken County is No. 3 in the state; Bethlehem, No. 13. The only matchup featuring a slightly higher-ranked pair was No. 4 Sacred Heart vs. No. 11 Lawrence County.

    Of course, that game ended up a 37-point spread in favor of Sacred Heart.

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  14. The WPAD commentators say they've been advised multiple times to pronounce the Bardstown school as beth-luhm and not beth-li-hem. One of the guys says this is going to be especially challenging for him because his daughter's middle name is Bethlehem/beth-li-hem.

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  15. McCracken County beat Marshall County, 61-19, in the First Region championship to advance to the state tournament.

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  16. Bethlehem High School began in 1819 when Bishop Flaget requested the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth to open an elementary day school for the children in the Bardstown area. Brother David, the founder of this religious order, provided the school, which was staffed by Sisters Harriet Gardiner, Polly Beavin and Nancy Lynd. The name "Bethlehem" was given to this new school to signify the birth of the first branch house stemming from Nazareth, the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

    Bethlehem continued as an elementary school until 1911, when St. Joseph Preparatory High School for boys was founded. The boys attended "St. Joe Prep", as the school was affectionately called, while girls continued their schooling at Bethlehem. Bethlehem's first high school graduating class was in 1913. From 1911 until 1953, Bethlehem continued as a co-educational elementary school, and a girls' high school. In the fall of 1953, St. Joseph Parochial Elementary School (now St. Joseph School), built by St. Joseph Parish, opened. Bethlehem was operated exclusively as a parish high school for girls, no longer owned by the Sisters, but staffed by them.

    In 1968, St. Joe Prep closed. In 1970, Bethlehem became a co-educational high school, as it continues today. Bethlehem is the only Roman Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of Louisville outside of Jefferson County. It serves eight counties and 35 parishes, with a current enrollment of around 300 students. The school mascots are the Eagles for the boys' teams and the Banshees for the girls' teams.

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    1. Paul Hornung went to Flaget High School in Louisville.

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    2. The story of Midwestern Catholicism is an epic that has never been fully told.

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  17. Among Bethlehem High's grads: Thabiso "Boyzzz" Khumalo, a 42-year-old from Soweto, South Africa, who played with the 2008-10 Major League Soccer D.C. United and 2010-11 Premier Arena Soccer League Louisville Lightning.

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  18. Today's pre-game prayer on WPAD is offered by one of the pastors on staff at Heartland Church in Paducah. That's the big one that you see as you enter Paducah from the east via I-24.

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  19. We're underway at Rupp, and the Lady Mustangs are up by 7-0. WPAD reports that the McCracken County High band is arriving in Rupp Arena only now.

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  20. Bethlehem timeout with 2:59 to go in the first quarter: 11-2, McCracken County.

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  21. WPAD reports that the McCracken County High School football team is listening to today's game.

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  22. 1:36 to go in the third quarter:

    McCracken County 55
    Bethlehem 32

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  23. Among those also listening to (and receiving shoutouts from) WPAD: Reidland Middle science class, McCracken County High daytime custodians, the parents of WPAD play-by-play announcer Eric Chumbler, Chumbler's fifth-grade Heath Elementary class, Heath Middle's librarian and library friends, Kiwanians, various Lady Mustang player "fan clubs," Miss Buchanan's seventh-grade class at Lone Oak Middle ...

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    1. To me, McCracken County H.S. will always just be Lone Oak under another name.

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  24. 4:37 to go in the fourth:

    McCracken County 68
    Bethlehem 37

    "The Lady Mustangs seem to be peaking at the right time. ... Beth-luhm is shell-shocked."

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  25. Final: 71-41. The Lady Mustangs advance to the state quarters, and WPAD turns the microphones on the fine McCracken County High pep band!

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  26. I still think the Georgia Dome was the best home of the SEC Men's basketball tournament.

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  27. In the C-USA Quarters, FAU takes out Western Kentucky, 75 to 51.

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  28. That means that UK and the Norse are the only two Kentucky schools still alive.

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    1. I would be inclined to suggest that WKU should go do everything it could to bring back Darrin Horn and try to set him up to be the king of Bowling Green for the last 20 years of his career. But I'm afraid the Hilltoppers are best served by climbers who run off for South Carolina or wherever after five years.

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    2. Murray State brought back Steve Prohm, and they went 17-15 this year.

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  29. Cooper, which was No. 1 in the KHSAA RPI, was eliminated last night! Thursday's evening-session finals:

    -- No. 24 Louisville Mercy Jaguars 70, No. 1 Union Cooper Lady Jaguars 64
    -- No. 14 Henderson County Lady Colonels 56, No. 82 Independence Simon Kenton Lady Pioneers 54

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