SPB's High School Sports

We’re at Ingalls Rink in New Haven all night for the Division I hockey semifinals.

Click the window below to follow along.

We didn’t get a rematch of the FCIAC championship game in the Class LL championship at Mohegan Sun.

But it’s probably just as well. Central and St. Joseph already settled the issue back then.

What we have now is, in my opinion, a lot more enticing.

New Haven vs. Bridgeport.

Two storied basketball towns duking it out for a state championship and, quite possibly, the No. 1 ranking.*

We haven’t had a Bridgeport vs. New Haven final in 35 years — when Central defeated Wilbur Cross for the 1975 Class LL title. New Haven and Bridgeport have met in the championship a grand total of five times. New Haven schools are 4-1 against Bridgeport schools in title games.

New Haven schools have won 35 state championships to Bridgeport’s 17.

It’s been a while since we had a Bridgeport team in a true basketball state championship game — one that will command the attention of hoops aficionados across the state. Central, which has assembled one of its best teams in school history, takes on the perennial power from New Haven, which has won two titles under current coach Kermit Carolina in the last five seasons (2006, 2007).

Hillhouse is a Class L school by trade. But Carolina said his team purposefully moved up into the Class LL bracket because they’re not concerned about just any championship. They want to win the championship.

“Let me just say this: In order to be the best you’ve got to play the best,” said Carolina, who was spotted at a handful of Central basketball games this winter. “We moved up into the double-L division for a reason. We wanted to play whoever the best team was considered to be in the state. And we’re happy that the state gets to watch two very powerful programs go head-to-head.”

Hillhouse started the season No. 1. Central, which hasn’t lost a game all season (not including the forfeit loss to Staples), usurped the top ranking midseason. Central creates off its full-court pressure defense, has solid outside shooting and a strong interior game. Hillhouse, relatively smaller than the Hilltoppers, runs a basketball version of the football spread offense. They play a four-guard set and love to hammer you with 3-pointers.

“We have a great deal of respect for what they bring to the table,” Carolina said. “We’re pretty sure they’re going to be on their A-game. So will we.”

We’ll have much more on this mega-match up a little bit later.

For now, give us your thoughts.

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*Stratford might have something to say about this.

Just got the word via the CIAC on Twitter, the state championship girls and boys basketball championship times at Mohegan Sun Arena are set.

Here’s the schedule:

Class LL boys: (Central/Sacred Heart) vs. (St. Joseph/Hillhouse), Saturday, 8:30 p.m.

Class L boys: Stratford vs. New London — Saturday, 6:30 p.m.

Class M boys: (Abbott Tech/Bloomfield) vs. (Sheehan/Cromwell) –  Saturday, 1:30 p.m.

Class S boys: Hyde vs. Prince Tech — Saturday, 9:30 a.m.

Class LL girls: Mercy vs. Norwich Free Academy — Friday, 8 p.m.

Class L girls: Hillhouse vs. Wethersfield — Saturday, 4:30 p.m.

Class M girls: Brookfield vs. Kolbe Cathedral, Friday, 6 p.m.

Class S girls: Portland vs. St. Paul, Saturday, 11:30 p.m.

So we will definitely be at the Sun on Friday night at 6 p.m. to cover the Kolbe Cathedral-Brookfield game. Then we’ll be back at it again Saturday at 6:30 p.m. for Stratford. Regardless of who gets into the final game, we will be covering the Class LL game.

All of our coverage will be on the live blog. Check back here for more details.

-spb

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Sean Patrick,

We’ll be taking our St. Patty’s Day festivities to New Haven and New Britain for the Class LL boys basketball semifinal games. Central takes on Sacred Heart in one semifinal at the New Haven Athletic Center at 7 p.m. St. Joseph takes on Hillhouse at Central Connecticut State at 7 p.m.

Since I know Central is well covered by our man in the field, Henry Chisholm, I will be running the live blog up at Central Connecticut for Hillhouse-St. Joseph (besides, it’s easier to get an internet connection there).

We’ll also attempt to get Abbott Tech-Bloomfield updates from Kennedy High School in the Class M semifinals.

Follow along all the action, including in-game videos, here on our liveblog:

Stratford takes on Wilbur Cross in the Class L boys basketball semifinals; Masuk takes on Brookfield/Bethel/Danbury in the Division III hockey semifinals… Can’t go? Follow all the action here on our live scoring blog.

We’ll also have reports from Guilford-Northwest Catholic hockey and some of the other regional games.

We begin the final week of the winter sports season, but there’s so much more on tap for the next few days.

Tonight, we’ll have correspondents at the major Class LL boys basketball quarterfinals: Harding-Sacred Heart and Central-New Britain at the New Haven Athletic Center. We have St. Joseph vs. East Hartford in East Haven. And, yes, we may even get the Hillhouse-Windsor quarterfinal updates from Southington. We’ll also have Abbott Tech vs. Granby Memorial and Law vs. Bloomfield Class M quarterfinal updates.

In hockey we’re hoping to get Amity-Trumbull and St. Joseph-Branford Division II semifinal hockey updates from Ingalls Rink.

As always, the reports will come from our correspondents and citizen journalists via Twitter, which will show up here. Can’t get to the games, click the window below to follow all the action.

The CIAC has recently announced new legislation that enables it to punish coaches of member schools who publicly criticize basketball referees.

The rule, which goes into effect immediately, comes on the heels of Hillhouse boys basketball coach Kermit Carolina’s berating of officials following a close victory (yes, victory) over Xavier in Middletown last month.

According to the new legislation, already dubbed the ‘Kermit Rule’ by at least one media outlet covering the Academics, schools are fined $250 and the offending coach is suspended after the first offense. In a second offense, the coach is suspended for two games and the school fined $500.

A third offense means the offending coach is disqualified for the rest of the season and the school is fined $750.

Should the third offense come at or near the end of the season, the coach will be suspended for a minimum of five games. If the season ends before that five-game suspension is completed, it will be carried into the next season.

With each infraction, the CIAC also requires a report from offending school’s administration on how they are handling the situation.

To be fair, and (hopefully) to prevent overzealous enforcement by king CIAC, there is a public appeals process in place.

Read the full policy here.

I’ve heard good arguments for and against the new policy.

Since I believe open criticism of referees is wrong, that it goes against everything we should be teaching our student athletes, I believe this policy is — in fact — the correct way to go.

Yes, it can be invasive,  much like the CIAC’s 50-point policy is over school administrations. Would we much rather have this handled in-house? Yes.

But the lines can get blurred around a school’s supposed objectivity. Maybe an athletic director believes his coach was justified in making critical comments and won’t take any hard-line action. Or maybe they simply don’t believe action is necessary at all.

In any case, I believe a third-party should needs to intervene in these cases. Any problems a coach or athletic director or principal has with certain referees or officials boards must be handled behind closed doors; so when we walk onto the field or into a gymnasium, our participants can maintain an even greater degree of integrity and sportsmanship, instead of squabbling over who might have gotten screwed by whom.

Besides, if you believe your team has been so egregiously harmed by the actions of a referee, you’re still welcome to let us know. You’ll just have to pay to do it.

We’re going to return this feature to the regular sports blog, in case there are those out there who haven’t found them on the regular sports channels of our sports websites.

We’re covering the Class L and S boys basketball quarterfinals and the Division II boys hockey quarterfinals tonight.

We’ll have correspondents at the Stratford-Avon game in Class L and the Kolbe Cathedral-Prince Tech; Ansonia-Hyde Class S games. Plus there’s sure to be plenty of other Tweets from other statewide papers.

Most likely, reader comments will accepted but not approved until later in the evening as we’re compiling all the results and look forward to the final week of the 2009-10 winter season.

As always, you can report your scores from your game via Twitter. Just tweet the results from your moblie phone or other device and make sure to add #ctbb (for boys basketball), #ctgb (for girls basketball) or #cthk (for hockey) so everybody can watch your updates live.

Anyway, let’s get on with the games…

<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=942a94bcb5″ mce_href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=942a94bcb5″ >Live High School Scoring Updates (March 12)</a>