Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

So you’re 4-15.

And you haven’t won in four weeks.

And you’re down 17 points at halftime in the last game of the season.

Okay, it’s pretty obvious it has been a dismal, disappointing season – far more dismal and disappointing than anyone expected it to be way back in December when the full brunt of losing the last two graduating classes became all too apparent – but what are you to do now?

Pack it in?

Give up?

I mean, spring is on the horizon. Guys are going to be playing baseball, golf, running track, playing tennis or – perhaps – just relaxing.

The basketball season is over.

Isn’t it?

Well, wait a minute …

The Newtown High School boys’ basketball team wasn’t about to give up that easily last Wednesday in Danbury. Sure, Immaculate – which beat Newtown by 16 points back in December – needed a win to have any hope of getting into the South-West Conference playoffs but Newtown needed a win to close out the season with a little pride.

Oh, it was quite a exhibition in the second half.

Showing the kind of heart and character one wouldn’t expect out of a 4-15 team – the kind of heart and character a lot of teams can only dream about – the Nighthawks came out of the locker room determined that their last memory of the 2005-06 season wasn’t going to be one of getting blown out on a frigid night in February.

The ‘Hawks came out with an aggressive, suffocating defense while – at the same time – punching in the launch code on an offensive three-point bombardment.

So while the ‘Hawks limited the Mustangs to just two points in the first eight minutes, senior co-captain Dave McLaughlin launched six bombs (added to his two three-pointers in the first half, they have him a school-record eight for the game) as Joe DeVellis launched three of his own … all in the fourth quarter.

That’s 11 treys all told … and if McLaughlin and DeVellis missed more than three of those long-range bombs shots I’d be shocked.

So, a deficit that had been 17 points was whittled down to only three with 57 seconds left to play in the fourth quarter. Ultimately, though, the Mustangs – hitting 8-of-10 free throws down the stretch – came away with the win.

Now, even though know everyone hates the term moral victory, the ‘Hawks showed tremendous heart and pride at a time when no one would have faulted them for simply going through the motions and getting through the final 16 minutes of their season as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

And they ought to be commended for that.

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Why in heaven’s name does it cost $7 ($5 for students and seniors) to attend a high school basketball game?

Ask the CIAC, which imposes the fee – usually to the chagrin of the local athletic directors – on all state tournament contests.

Local parents have already spent two or three hundred dollars just on pay-for-play and admission prices throughout the season and to bang for another $7 each (plus $5, $10, $15 or $20 for the kids and grandparents) seems a little excessive.

What’s the solution? Don’t ask me – I just like to gripe.

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If the coaches don’t come to you, then go to them.

At least, that’s the aim of the Blue Chip Girls Basketball Shootout coming to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield on Sunday, March 19. The one-day Shootout is designed for student athletes who’d like to play ball in college.

Division II and III coaches are allowed to attend, but Division I coaches are not. So Blue Chip will film all the games and each participant will be presented with a DVD of their two games. Blue Chip also says it will send a detailed scouting report to all Division I coaches and make all DVDs available should they be requested.

But check out www.bluechipbasketball.com or call Dave Danko at 203-579-9729 to see if this is the right opportunity for you.

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If it’s still too cold to go outside (and it is), then dig that bowling ball out of the closet and lace up those bowling shoes because the 48th annual Connecticut State Bowling Association Tournament is being hosted by the Danbury Bowling Associated at Brookfield Lanes in Brookfield.

Competition will take place every weekend in April (except for Easter Sunday). Anyone interested in participating can contact the lanes at 775-4343.

The tournament (100% handicap of 230, maximum of 80) is being held in honor of James Byrnes Sr and Kenneth West. All participants must be members of the USBC Association.

There will be five-player team, doubles and singles events.

Fee per entrant, per event is $25.

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Remember the good old days when you had four, maybe five channels on the television?

I know lots of teenagers are scratching their heads and saying, huh? But, yeah, before the arrival of cable – back in the Stone Ages – you had maybe five channels and depending on where you lived and where the television was in your house, you usually had to wrestle with the antenna to get any of them to come in.

A couple of stations out of New York, a couple out of Connecticut, and maybe one snowy channel from God alone knew where – that’s all you got.

Then came cable and then came satellite.

Today, satellite providers like to tout the hundreds of available channels. I have a satellite service and if I ponied up the $90 I’d have access to roughly 500 channels (not including sports packages) and there are times – I swear – I cannot find a single interesting thing to watch.

Like sports. I though satellite would be a boon for me with dozens of available channels from ESPN and YES to NESN, OLN and GOLF. It never occurred to me that it seemed impossible to fill 24 hours of programming on hundreds of channels even though – back in the Stone Ages, remember – there were times we couldn’t find anything good on the four or five channels we had and they all went off the air after midnight.

On Sunday night – after The Simpsons and before Family Guy – I scanned around for something to watch for 30 minutes. I didn’t want to watch the Celtics and the Lakers or the closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics (good lord), so I looked around and came across the NFL Network and there, for heaven’s sake, was the NFL Combine.

It was 8:30 pm and the program still had another 90 minutes. That’s two hours of watching 40-yard sprints, over-the-shoulder-adjustment, passing and catching drills with a lot of guys you will never see in the NFL.

The NFL Network is going to be a good thing … especially when it starts broadcasting real games. But the NFL Combine? Except for a brief glimpse of quarterbacks Marcus Vick or Jay Cutler, it’s like watching the early days of ESPN when all they had on was Australian Rules football and Division III rugby from some dark corner of Europe.

I couldn’t take the NFL Combine, so I switched over to the PBR Enterprise Rent-A-Car Classic bullriding competition on the Outdoor Life Network.

Now that’s sports.

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You might like mundane names like Reggie, Matt and Vince. But me? I like ... D’Brickashaw.