JimThorpe

Game is tied at 53

And the officials are stinking up the joint. This is getting weird.

Tigers are not clicking. Lots of mistakes.

All these teams are good. No more easy stuff. We will see if the Tigers can get a run in the third or if it will be a hard slog.

Only one foul. So he will be a factor for the rest of the game probably

Yates didn’t shoot the three quite as well as the did against HJ.

Waxahachie has had its moments. They seem to have had China Springs' number this year. Wax beat CS 65 - 47 in a tournament. They lost to Kennedale by only 4 and lost to Argyle by 4 in overtime, I think in that same tournament. They went undefeated in their district. Their last loss was to Crandell 57 -51 on Jan. 8. Crandell is another 4A team in Region II. Crandell was a pretty good team, undefeated in district and made it to the third round. They are on a roll. On paper it's not a bad matchup for them. But I doubt if they've seen anything like the explosiveness of the Tigers. They could be cruising along, doing pretty well, only a few points behind and BAM! the game's over. That's what happened to Huffman. They're like, "Hey! We're doing okay! We really can play with these guys! ......wait.... what just happened? What do you mean we just lost the game? It's only half way through the third quarter. What? 22 points behind? No way!" Um, yes way. And don't go blaming yourselves cause it's nobody's fault. It's just the way things are right now.

That's why they were 3rd in district. But something must have happened to them since then. They are young, starting only 1 senior, so maybe they are coming of age. You never know with a young team. Sometimes they don't have enough experience to realize that they should have been eliminated before this.

Oh yea, I agree completely. The Yates game (if there is one - don't want to count chickens) will be a barn burner. Overtime is a strong likelihood. This was just a math game for fun. I will say this though. Having seen him play twice, that No. 22 for Huff is as good or better than anybody on Yates team this year. The Falcons should have handled Furr with relative ease last week but they struggled. You saw how solid the point guard No. 10 was against the Tigers. He was making mistakes in the Furr game. It was weird. But No. 22 wasn't having it. His solid play all game long kept them going. His 30 points against the Tigers speaks for itself. Look at that half time score of 43 - 37 and compare it to the halftime score of 43 - 18 the last time Silsbee played HJ. Okay, Silsbee wasn't having the best night defensively. Well? Why is that? Maybe it was because the Falcons were making us look bad. The buzzer beating 3 by Jordyn at the end of the first quarter and the fabulous grab and shoot buzzer beating 2 by Bush at the half were basically the difference. Without those two shots we go into the locker room only 1 point up.

Connelly beat Lorena by ten after Lorena beat No. 12 Palestine by 12. That's something anyway. But I doubt very much at they will be able to hold up when the Lions start raining 3's in the 3rd qtr. I predict a 20 point margin.

They don't look super good do they? I guess it could be argued that if Silsbee and Yates meet again, Silsbee may have had the easier road. Yates faced the 15th ranked team in HJ. A team which came within 3 of the short handed Tigers. And Yates semi opponent Connally beat the 23rd ranked team that had previously beaten the 12th ranked team. Silsbee on the other hand has faced two unranked opponents and the 24th ranked Huffman Falcons. And Wax does looks a little less than spectacular in this vid. By extrapolation however it can be shown that Huffman is just as good as Yates. Yates' margin over HJ was 11. Silsbee's margin over HJ in the second meeting was 26. 26 - 11 is 15. Silsbee's projected spread over Yates is 15. Reinforced by the fact that this is in keeping with our 17 pt. margin in last year's final. Silsbee's margin over Huff was 15. Therefore we can draw the conclusion that Huff and Yates are equal. And a second conclusion we can draw from the above is that the old adage, statistics don't lie but statisticians do, has some credence.

I hope Bush can play Friday night. Selfishly, just because it's something of a drive and he's so much fun to watch. But I'm not that greedy. If they need to put him on an as needed basis I can I'll live with my disappointment for the greater good. But dang, the kid is a one man highlight reel. He makes an acrobatic layup, falls, gets up, runs down the ball handler on the other end who thinks he's headed for a layup, steals the ball from behind without breaking stride, makes a big loop all the way down to the opponents baseline, and dribbles back the other way. He's making a drive but gets turned around in the lane. Not to worry, we'll just go ahead and make this layup with our back to the goal. You can understand why you frequently hear the word "blessed" when you see Coach being interviewed.

I guess you could call Silsbee a dynasty like the Patriots. Except Coach Sig is a much better dresser than Belichick.

Since Silsbee and Hardin Jefferson are there so often and usually with decent crowds it might save overall driving miles to hold the Region III 4A tournament at Lamar.

We've familiar with silly teenagers chanting "Overrated". Well, I'm got a chant to direct at the Huffman Falcons, "Underrated!".

Everything you,d want in a quarter final. Huffman isn’t going anywhere. Silsbee May pull away and they may not. I’m confident we can hold on but it may be a wild ride.

The first meeting resulted in 55 pt margin. The second was only 31. So Washington is getting closer. If it's a linear progression this game should result in a 7 point margin. Anybody buying that? Or is it more likely an alternating series and this time it reverts back to the 55? After this Yates will be facing Connally in the semi. Bit of a surprise to me. Lorena upsets Palestine and then Connally takes Lorena by 10 last night. I was expecting Palestine to face Yates in the semi. Good for Connally anyway. Third straight trip to the tournament, always respectable. Sure gave us all we wanted last year. And the year before that they nearly upset Yates. So I'm looking for Connolly to pull off one spectacular upset. But only one.

I was there a couple of rows below wearing my good luck Silsbee tee from 2016-17. Talked to them before the Furr game started. Am I right about the main point, and you know better than me, the Tigers won't be looking past the Falcons to the tournament. And that's bad news for Huffman.

The problem for Huffman is that there's a good chance that Tigers are going to take this game very seriously, like a Hardin Jefferson game. I sat in front of the Silsbee Coaches last Thursday, tried to get them to talk about how well HJ did against Yates and what that meant for the Regional final. But they very reticent about that. They really were focusing on Huffman. Nobody wants to jinx anything by overlooking the challenge at hand. Freak circumstances are a possibility, if a remote one. The flu has been going around in Silsbee. Report cards aren't out till Friday and if that's going to be a thing it's not going to help the Falcons on Tuesday; unless maybe there are Tigers with incompletes that have to stay home and do desperate makeup work. But if I was a Falcon I'd want the Tigers' best game and let the chips fall where they may. A Miracle on Ice type thing maybe? Except on wood? But no, Coach Sig has outlawed miracles.

Not more than 6'1 if he's that. I like it when he makes a move into the paint and pulls up for a 10 or 12 footer. It's a pretty thing.

No it didn't. He had his moments, there was one monster dunk in particular and that fun, but he seemed to be behind the action a lot of the time. He was probably a net weakness in transition.

I'm figuring that guard play will improve at each level. Consequently the opportunities for easy baskets will decrease as well at each level. But even good guards have mental lapses and the Tigers are always ready to pounce.

Kryptonite? Height and size?

Sure! Course they do. They have a Big Man in the Middle kind of game, all except the big man in the middle. But yea, Silsbee runs an offense.... when they have to.... sort of. Let's just put it this way, a 15 second shot clock would rarely catch them. And they have a pretty good half court defense even without a big man in the middle. For a while. Until they can't stand it any more and start ad hoc trapping. But seriously, while it's true that they are a team of 15 guards they can adapt and they do have tall feisty guards willing to mix it up with anybody. They learned a lot in some really bad matchup games that resulted in disappointing loses at tournaments and early in the season. It culminated with two really big wins in the Sugar Bowl Prep tournament in New Orleans on January 4th and 5th against big time opposition. Solid games all around with good transition and half court play. Only one time since those tourney games has the whole package been on display in deadly earnest and that was the first half of the second game against Hardin Jefferson, the score was 43 - 18. Compare that to the half time score in Tuesday's HJ - Yates game, 34 -34.

This will be one bunch of guards vs. another bunch of guards. In other words, 4A heaven, a game not sullied by the presence of plodding power forwards or hulking centers. But our starting guards are mostly taller than theirs. (note the hypocrisy) Based on what I saw on Tuesday I don't see how Huffman can consistently stop Silsbee's transition game even if they do get back on defense. The Tigers won't have to go around, they can shoot over the Falcons. Over the Falcons? That sounds counterintuitive doesn't it? Huffman does represent something of a threat which is a good thing for a change. So far the prey has been sort of like women washing clothes at the bank of the stream or children playing too far from the village. Tigers will make those kills but they aren't really that satisfying. Now we're moving on to bigger game that can run and even fight back.