Brian is finally SICK OF SNOW!!!

As spring has now arrived with...ahem...WINTER weather, I find it funny that the weather conditions for the recent State Tournament weekends really weren't all that bad. Although, gymnastics fans will be quick to point out that their weekend wasn't so much fun. It seems like it's been a while, but didn't it used to seem like the weather during the State Basketball Tournament weekends always seemed to include some kind of snowstorm? Obviously that wasn't the case this season, but as I spent time in Aberdeen for the State B's, I had to laugh to myself when an Aberdeen Central coach (who was helping to run the tournament that they were hosting) told me to not be fooled by the nice weather -- it hasn't been that nice all winter. I knew what he meant, but I still thought to myself: "Let's see, there's still about 5 feet of snow on the ground in most people's front yards, Moccasin Creek will be too full very soon, it was in the upper fifties in Pierre, and in the upper sixties in Rapid City. Wow, Aberdeen folks sure do get a kick out of a sunny, 40-degree day!" I think DRG's Chuck Hanson said it about as well as could be said once about Aberdeen, when he referred to the fact that it never stops snowing in the winter, there's no way to prevent major flooding in the spring, and your entire summer is spent cleaning the mess! Hey, nothing against Aberdeen - aside from the bad climate, it has produced some very fine people -- like ME! (I was born there.)

Speaking of the State B's, it was another fine tournament for two of our area teams, Sully Buttes and White River, who continue to make Aberdeen their second home in the month of March. Sully Buttes made their 7th straight trip and White River their 6th this year, which shows the true mark of consistency in two great basketball programs. But do you realize that in the six straight years that White River has made that tournament, they have played Sully Buttes now in five of them? Not only that, but every one of those five meetings has been on a Friday or Saturday night, which means they both played in the winner's bracket each time. Twice the two teams played for third place, splitting those two contests; twice they have met in the Friday night semifinals, with WR winning both of those, including last weekend; and then of course, there was their one-point championship classic that Sully won just two years ago. Talk about consistency....talk about basketball excellence, right here in Central South Dakota!!

Specifically, this year's State B featured an amazing fourth straight championship game appearance for WR, although they came up short to Corsica/Stickney this time, and are now 2-2 in those title tilts. However, for a team that started four sophomores and a junior, it'll be hard to imagine anyone preventing them from getting at least that far again next year, and maybe the year after that as well. As for Sully Buttes, a third place finish ended another fine season, but this year's tourney might best be remembered for the bracket busting first round upset of previously unbeaten Hitchcock-Tulare. What a great game to call, and I must say, what impressed me the most was that you just got the sense that the boys knew they were going to, if not beat H-T, then at least make it extremely difficult for them stay unbeaten. As a fan, I'm not sure I could have imagined a team playing a more perfect basketball game, and if you think about it, that's exactly what makes March basketball so awesome -- March Madness isn't just for the college ranks, is it?

It's all about match-ups, though. Sully Buttes was a bad match-up for Hitchcock-Tulare, and then the following night, the Chargers just had a bad match-up against White River, who themselves had a tough match-up against the champions from Corsica/Stickney. I think that's unfortunately how our area Class A teams may have felt in their tournament. I had seen Miller play two of their three postseason games going leading up to State, and I really couldn't imagine too many teams playing better ball than the Rustlers at the time. But, whatever the reason, it turned out to be a tough weekend for the guys. Maybe the same goes for Winner, who beat Miller for 7th place by turning a close 3-quarter game into an eventual 4th-quarter runaway. The hard part about playing in that 7th place game is that it sometimes feels like it taints what really was a great season, so let's not forget the successes of the seasons for those two teams, as well as all the others who came close to making the "Big Dance" as well.

Much of the buzz of the State Tournaments, though, came from the AA in Sioux Falls, and much of it centered around the Pierre Governors. Oh by the way, O'Gorman beat Mitchell for the championship, but who cares -- DID YOU SEE THAT SHOT BY TERRELLE WALKER?!?!?!?! What a way for a senior to finish a high school basketball career, even if his team didn't win a championship! As if sinking two clutch free throws to beat Brandon Valley on Friday wasn't good enough, Walker came back on Saturday and turned in a miracle one-handed heave that, once the word (and the video) finally spread enough, might very well land himself right into the ESPN Top 10 play list!! With an unfortunate irony, it wasn't enough to help the Govs beat Sturgis and claim the Consolation Championship, but as far as memories go, who cares?!

Here's the fun fact, though. In my regular day job, I deal with South Dakota Public Broadcasting on a fairly regular basis. SDPB, of course, not only televises the State Tournaments, but they also run live video webcasts of all the games of all the tournaments on their website. Not long after the game was completed, the video clip of Walker's 65-footer made it to YouTube, and naturally, it took off from there. From YouTube, the clip was added to articles in other websites, including one I saw called PrepRally.com, or something like that, which also had a very nice write-up along with the video clip. Meanwhile, on Friday (6 days after the game), I had a conversation with the webmaster for SDPB in Vermillion, who had the proud task of telling me, as well as all of his SDPB co-workers, and I quote: "We (SDPB) finally have our first viral video!" (If you're not familiar with the term, a "viral" video is one that literally spreads like an airborne virus. See the movie Outbreak.) Anyway, the webmaster told me that early on Friday, that clip on YouTube had about 6000 hits in its first 6 days on the site, but late in the afternoon, it was up over 83,000! Now, as I write this late Saturday evening, I just went to YouTube and watched it again, and I was viewer number 514,111! Dude, that's INSANE!!! The webmaster also mentioned to me that they had been contacted directly by Yahoo!, probably for permission to use the video, and that it had also made ESPN's YouTube channel, which might be the best indicator that we may very well see the shot on ESPN's Top 10 play list, as mentioned earlier.

So with that, congratulations to Terrelle, and congrats to the Govs, who along with the other area teams who made State Tournament appearances, capped off very fine seasons. And with apologies for not writing up on the girls teams who made it that far -- Highmore-Harrold, Kadoka, Mobridge-Pollock -- congratulations on your efforts and successes this season as well. I'm sure I speak for all my fellow DRG sportscasters when I say it was definitely another fun season of sports coverage, so I think we'll stick around and do it again next sports season. :o)