SPB's High School Sports

The sports editorial staff has decided to publish our all-star football team on New Years day. We want to do it right, over all the Hearst Connecticut Newspapers, so we felt this was the perfect time.

The team is selected and we’re in the process of putting it together. Thanks in advance for your patience. -sp

Central's Jerome Parkins gets the rebound during the first half of Tuesday night's game against Trinity Catholic.

Central's Jerry Washington dunks over Trinity Catholic's Jonathan Boykin during the first half of Tuesday night's game in Bridgeport.

Here was the situation: Since I’m no long the regular beat writer for the Connecticut Post, just a sports web producer and commentator, I have the pick of the litter on where I spend a my basketball nights.

So, where to go Stamford at Bassick or Trinity Catholic at Central. I wasn’t overly impressed with Bassick in its second game at Ludlowe and Stamford was… well, despite its high preseason praise and a rout of Danbury, still of a question mark. I mean, they’re good with big man Mark Ellis back, but without Chris Evans — who’s going to run that show this year?

And then there was Central-Trinity Catholic, though Central hadn’t beaten the Crusaders in years, it’s always entertaining. And I hadn’t seen Central yet, so I figured it was best to hit Bassick first (it’s close to the home office, anyway) and then fly up and catch the end of Central-Trinity.

After the young Lions had pressed and harassed and outhustled the shocked Black Knights en route to a 35-23 halftime lead (and an eventual 63-43 win — somewhat impressively, I’ll add, the Lions remain anonymous but they can play — I jetted out to Central.

When I pulled up to the gym, people were actually streaming out of there.

The Hilltoppers had a 76-34 lead after three.

Woah.

I’d thought I’d missed all the good stuff. But no, Central’s foot was still on the gas.

They were running, jukin’, jivin’, throwing down vicious dunks and droppin’ 3-point bombs. All of the starters — seniors who, along with most of the North End, had been waiting a long, long time for this — were having a ball.

Now, granted, Trinity Catholic this year is going through a phase right now. They were 2-0, but their top player, Takari Smalls, is now gone. They needed and got a miracle to beat St. Joseph. They’re going to be a decent team this season because — well — they’re still Trinity Catholic and I don’t see many other great FCIAC teams out there.

But Central… Central is incredible. Everything, and I mean the sun, moon and stars, was going its way tonight. The Hilltoppers went over 20 points in all four quarters and had six players in double digits in their decisive 101-43 victory.

Let that sink in.

101 (One hundred and one) to 43 (forty-three).

“This was just like the New Canaan game,” said guard Christon Gill of the game dubbed ‘The Big City Beat Down’ in these parts. “Exactly like it.”

But, as good as it was, Gill’s football team didn’t win a title. They were beat by Staples in the FCIAC championship and were edged out of Class LL in playoff points.

What better way for Gill to make amends than with a hoops title? “It’s my senior year,” he said. “I’m getting that championship.”

And he has quite a cast: Jerome Parkins, the sterling and versatile forward, leads the show (he had 22 tonight). Guards Diontay Washington and brother Jerry Washington play fearless both inside and outside. Point guard Chris Colon is now a savvy veteran. Center Andrew Victoria is big and strong up front. And they have some talented reserves in Andrew Coore and Damien Francis.

Coach Barry McLeod has had this group for a while and it showed Tuesday night in front of a relatively large crowd at Reilly Gym (one that included Hillhouse coach Kermit Carolina and, of course, royalty in Joseph “Hoops” Morelli.)

Afterward, McLeod reserved some cautionary tones for us and the MSG Varsity broadcasters. This is, after all just Game 3. But you could tell he enjoyed this early Christmas gift: Seeing his team perform precisely how he expects it to perform: all out, with the pedal to the metal. Heck, even Trinity Catholic pulled the ball out late in the fourth quarter to slow things down, their way of saying, ‘No mas.’

But Central just wasn’t going to be denied 100, especially not against Trinity Catholic.

“Well, I told coach, `We’ve lost seven straight years to (Trinity Catholic), we’re coming out strong,’ ” Parkins said. “When we were at 92, I told him, `I’m not trying to be cocky, but coach, I want to hit 100. It’s a big day for us; it’s our home opener, we got to hit 100.’ ”

You could just feel it walking out of the gym. The North End is fired up about this team. They’re already looking down the road. St. Joseph is coming to town in two weeks. Then Bassick. Then Harding.

“We’re all seniors,” Gill said. “We’ve been playing together for a long time. We feel this is our year.”

Everybody else, frankly, should get out of the way because, right now, this team looks like a freight train that’s only starting to build up a head of steam.

Welcome to the winter edition of the live scoring blog. Tonight’s featured games are huge in the FCIAC boys basketball race: Trinity Catholic (2-0) travels to Reilly Gym to face Central. Defending champ Stamford comes to Bassick.

Follow our correspondents Twitter updates from those games, plus many more in boys basketball, girls basketball and elsewhere.

For those new to the scoring blog, this is a live feed of our Twitter updates. If you’re at another game, have a mobile phone and have a Twitter account you can send your scoring updates to the blog. Just remember to add #ctbb for boys basketball, #ctgb for girls basketball, #cthk for hockey and even #ctwr for wrestling.

If you’re home, just click the window below to follow along.

Here are the CSWA boys and girls basketball polls brought to you by the Connectcut Sports Writers Alliance. We’ll be running these polls exclusively throughout the season on this space (which will be picking up big time after the holidays, promise!)

And it looks like all Hillhouse, all the time.

I really haven’t examined the girls polls yet, but the boys polls pretty much looked like a retread of last year’s results, which were already skewed (IMHO) because too, too much emphasis was put on the postseason.

Anyway, from what I’ve seen and heard so far with the boys, Hillhouse is loaded. Crosby and Sacred Heart are two teams to beat in the NVL. It looks like Central’s going to be legit if they can get everybody on the same page. I’m not sold on Trinity Catholic yet. St. Joseph disappointed in its first game. Stratford’s legit (beat New London the other night). And in the CCC, it looks like New Britain and Bloomfield making waves.

It’s going to be a huge night in Bridgeport Tuesday night when Trinity Catholic (at Central) and Stamford (at Bassick) come to the Park City.

We’ll do a live high school blog from the events tomorrow night.

For now, here are your polls.

BOYS BASKETBALL

Also Receiving Votes: East Hartford 1-0 83; Stamford 2-0 72; St. Joseph 0-1 70; Holy Cross 2-0 45; Middletown 1-0 38; East Catholic 2-0 31; Harding 2-0 27; Hyde Leadership 0-0 22; Wilbur Cross 1-1 16; Sheehan 2-0 11; Trumbull 10; Windsor Locks 1-1 10; Bassick 2-0 9; Pomperaug 1-0 9; Torrington 2-0 9; Xavier 2-0 9; Capital Prep 2-0 6; Maloney 0-1 6; New London 0-1 5; Northwest Catholic 0-1 5; Weaver 1-0 5; Career Magnet 1-0 4; Cromwell 1-0 4; Fairfield Warde 2-0 3; Masuk 2-0 3; Abbott Tech 2-0 2; New Milford 2-0 2; Newtown 2; Jonathan Law 2-0 1; Kolbe Cathedral 0-0 1; RHAM 2-0 1

Voters: Jim Bransfield (Middletown Press), Mike Cardillo (Connecticut Post), Henry Chisholm (Connecticut Post), Garrett Dale (Torrington Register Citizen), Anthony Della Calce (Central CT weeklies), Ted Glanzer (The Valley Press), Dave Greenleaf (CCC website), Mike Guerrera (Southington Citizen), Greg Lederer (Cheshire Herald), Ken Lipshez (New Britain Herald), Andrew Lovell (New Britain Herald), Sean Patrick Bowley (Connecticut Post), Dave Phillips (Shoreline Times), Ryan Pipke (New Britain Herald), Jesse Quinlan (Greenwich Time), Tom Yantz (Hartford Courant), Rich Zalusky (Willimantic Chronicle), Jimmy Zanor (Shore Line Newspapers).

GIRLS BASKETBALL

With 2010 and a brand-new decade just weeks around the corner, everybody and their grandmother have started to get out their top 10 lists of the decade. I’m seeing it everywhere in the media, in newspapers, in magazines, heck even The Daily Show with Jon Stewart published a montage of their stories from the last 10 years on its website.

Ugh, 10 years. Has it been that long since we all celebrated the new millennium either at lavish parties (me in Times Square) or cowering in our  basements awaiting Armageddon from the Y2K bug?

Yeah, I’m feeling a little nostalgic. So why not we all gather ’round and figure out what were the top moments from high school athletics in southwestern Connecticut over the past 10 years?

I’ve been a member of the local sports media for (gasp!) almost the entire time since coming home from Syracuse in 1999, first in New Haven county as the sports editor for Elm City Newspapers, the New Haven Register’s weekly division and then, after a brief stop at the Torrington Register-Citizen for the 2004 spring season, I took over for Dave Agostino at Connecticut Post.

So while I’ve been around, I didn’t get into the Greater Bridgeport and Southwestern Connecticut until the decade was almost half over. So last night I enlisted the help of Dave, who pretty much covered it all before me. Dave gave me a few ideas, I contributed my own and we’re in the process of publishing our master lists.

But what about you? What are your top moments of the decade? We want to hear from you, especially since my mind is going in my old age and since Dave’s been out of the game for most of the last five years.

We’d like to have your Top 10 in the following categories: Top 10 Games of the Decade, Top 10 Players of the Decade, Top 10 Stories.

That last one is more for us media types who revel in the stories our young athletes have produced over the years, but if you have some general stories, we’d love to hear it.

There are no hard rules, you can just post your Top 10 in list form, or you can just give us a single game, player or moment that sticks out.

REMEMBER, however, that we’re really only interested in Southwest Connecticut stories — i.e. Fairfield County and Western New Haven. There might be a huge story statewide that impacted us all (for example, the 50-point policy in football; the ill-conceived Division structure for basketball).

And, it’s just dawned on me, that today’s high schoolers were mere 7- and 8-year old tykes back in 2000. …I don’t know what you guys remember, but feel free to give us your thoughts, too.

So  fire away and enjoy.

UPDATE Looks like this didn’t work tonight. We didn’t have the right settings in place. We’ll try it again on Friday night. -SP

Go to http://Connpost.com/highschoolbasketball for all the scores later this evening.

Thanks

(more…)

Behold, your 2009 Connecticut High School Coaches Association Football All-State Teams. These are the real McCoys, folks.

Thanks to Ned from The Day of New London for furnishing these babies. It’s an annual pain trying to find them for media consumption, which, frankly,  should be the first order of business when releasing these teams.

Anyway, here they are. (We’ve tried to correct many of the misspellings in the copy we received, but if you notice any others let me know.)

Regional players in bold.

CLASS LL
OFFENSE

DEFENSE

CLASS L
OFFENSE

DEFENSE

CLASS MM
OFFENSE

DEFENSE

CLASS M
OFFENSE

DEFENSE

CLASS SS

OFFENSE

DEFENSE

CLASS S

OFFENSE

DEFENSE

Derby announced a head coaching vacancy for its football program today on the CIAC website, ending the tenure of Carmen DiCenso who had presided over the program since 2004. DiCenso was 20-41 at Derby, which became a co-op with O’Brien Tech in 2007.

DiCenso was one of the school’s most outspoken critics of its membership in the SCC. He helped lobby for a move to the Naugatuck Valley League. Derby made the switch earlier this year and went 4-6 in its inaugural season.

We’ll have more on this development later.

Derby/O’Brien Tech’s vacancy is the fifth of the region. Fairfield Prep, McMahon, Stratford and New Fairfield are the others.