pinkpanther

I just saw in the local paper that April Hickok and Brittney Farley have signed on to play at Roane State. This is great. I was always impressed by Hickok's play. It also shows that I didn't know what I was talking about when it came to Farley. My bad. Further proof that I need to stay out of the evaluation and prediction business. Good job girls! Good luck at Roane State!

If Hacker's back on the team, that's good to hear. She's way too good of a player to not be playing.

Please let me clarify an earlier statement I made about Brent Jolley. I said he looked awkward playing the point. I should have said he looked more comfortable at the 2 guard than he did at the point. He looked more like a natural 2 to me, and that's where he spent the majority of his time in college. No player that good could ever look awkward. That came out wrong. As far as the Kyle Gribble question goes, that's just what I have heard. I was curious if anyone else had heard it.

I'm sorry if it sounded like I'm running these girls down. I don't see them at practice or in the offseason. I only see them at home games. I hope Sunday and Lewis both go D-1. Sparta has a legacy of D-1 players that I would like to see carried on. My statements were based on the talent and potential I saw in Hacker. She made the game look easy. I've always been a Sunday fan. I like Lewis' explosiveness. She's fun to watch when she's on. I'm not a coach. I'm not a scout. I'm not even a player. I'm just a fan. My judge of talent comes from over 20 years of watching the game. After a while, you can see who's got it and who don't. All 3 girls mentioned in this post have definitely got it. It's a shame Hacker might not be putting it on display on the court next season. Maybe, hopefully, she will change her mind. It could only be good for the team as a whole. After this post, I'm officially out of the evaluation and prediction business. I'll leave that to you folks who see them on a more regular basis than I do. I'll just go out and watch them play. Deal? [Edited by pinkpanther on 4-22-03 4:20P]

I have just learned tonight that Hacker quit the team. That's going to be a big blow. I could see her scoring 15-18 points per game. That will be hard to replace. She was the best player on the team last year. She would have been by far the best player this year. It's a shame. I think she should have started last year. I would have started her in place of either Farley or Anderson. Farley made too many bad decisions, and Anderson was too inconsistent. She would follow a 20-point game with a 3-point game. Hacker brought it every time I saw her play. Somebody questioned her defense in an earlier post. She would have probably played harder if she had known she wasn't going to get pulled out after a couple of minutes. If she quit because of PT, it's Hess' fault. If she quit because of burnout, she needed to. A player who doesn't have her heart in it isn't good for the team. She will be missed more than people think. I know talent when I see it. Hacker is the real deal. She makes it look easy. She's the only D-1 talent Sparta has. Lewis is JUCO at best. Sunday's future is in volleyball. Sparta is really going to miss Hacker if she doesn't come back.

Buckner better do some growing. That's all I have to say. Gribble is super-talented, but has had a little bit of an attitude since he was just a kid. Gwynn has always given me the impression that he is lazy. I've never seen him work very hard. Maybe I've missed something. If Sparta is counting on getting help from Freshmen playing up, they're already in trouble. Very few freshmen come in ready for varsity-level competition. I would say that Brent Jolley was the most accomplished point guard to ever play at White Co. That doesn't necessarily make him the best, although I can't think of anybody better right off the top of my head. Brent was really a natural 2 playing the 1 position. I always thought he looked a little awkward and out of place playing the point. He was awfully good at it, though. On another subject..........I was glad to see Kyle Gribble getting the All-America honors at Carson-Newman. I have heard he is going to get a tryout with the Utah Jazz. Has anyone else heard this?

tmac...Go back and read my last post again. I said that I didn't see enough wins this season. I did see progress, though. The team played much harder and just looked better in general than it did last year. Take Sam Agee away from last year's team, and they would have gotten ZERO wins. They were improved this year with basically that same team, less Sam. I think they need to break even, or better, next year. If the team doesn't, people should probably start losing a little patience. By then, this team will have been together for 3 years, even longer if you count Middle School and freshman ball. Three years is plenty of time to at least have the groundwork laid for a winning program. I feel that winning the district is probably out of the question, but they shouldn't settle for less than middle of the pack. Another last place finish would be unacceptable.

Good point, supperstar. I have been reading tmac21's posts for a long time. I have always thought that he (I'm assuming that it's a he) couldn't stand the heat, so he got out of the kitchen. It all sounds like a lot of sour grapes to me. I'm glad Slatten is staying, although I never really heard that he was going to leave. People were just starting a lot of nasty rumors. I saw progress this year. I didn't see near enough wins, but this year's team looked far better than last year's. That's a fairly promising trend. No one ever addressed the question about Coach Dotson. Is he going to be back too?

Take I-40 east toward Knoxville. Get off at exit 288 (Sparta/Livingston). Turn right, south, toward Sparta. You will go about 12-15 miles until you see an exit for route 289. You will recognize it by the old drive-in theatre on your left. Take this exit and turn left at the top of the ramp. Follow 289 until you see a Food Lion on your right. Turn right immediately past the Food Lion. There's a sign there for the school. You can't miss it. This street will take you right up to the school. It takes about 1 hour and 10 minutes to get to Sparta from the Nashville airport. This is with light traffic and a heavy foot, though. [Edited by pinkpanther on 3-3-03 2:42P]

benchcoach, I can't believe what I'm about to say. I totally agree with your last post. We've had our differences here and there, but we are in total agreement on this point. A coach has to have talent to win big. They can be competitive with mediocre talent, but big-time talent has to be there to produce the big-time wins. That's what Whited had. Name any Sparta boys' team that has had that much talent over a 4 to 5 year stretch. Maybe the "Blitz Kids" in the early 70's, but that's it. All programs have lulls. The Shelbyville girls have dropped off the radar a few times. Look at the UNC Tarheels right now. It's going to take talent, and a lot of it, to win in 7-AAA ball. Sparta isn't there yet. They're going to be. I just hope Slatten is still around to coach them when it happens. By the way, here's a good mark for you benchcoach.

volplaya...I have to ask this question. Kirk Haston - a future hall-of-famer? You have got to be joking. Does he even get off the bench in New Orleans? I will be surprised if he ever STARTS in the NBA. A future NBA player will make more difference in A ball than he probably would in AAA. He would still need coaching, though. Everybody makes it sound like Slatten has rode talent to the winning seasons he has had. Let's wait until he gets some better talent in Sparta, then see how far he can ride it. No coach, no matter how good he is, can win without talent. Lack of talent is what makes a lot of coaches go into other professions.

Wins are wins. That's the beauty of a tournament. Even the worst team has a chance to get on a roll and move into the region. This is also the downside. Sometimes bad teams move on while good teams stay at home. A lot of times, it boils down to dumb luck. Ultimately, it comes down to players. The rest of the district obviously has better players right now. Coaches can't get out there and play, or they probably would. [Edited by pinkpanther on 1-21-03 9:13A]

Why is everybody so hung up on district wins? Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug. Sparta just happens to be the bug right now. People should be happy with wins no matter where they come from. Everybody keeps talking about no district wins for the last 2 seasons. Sparta has just been the worst team in the district for the last 2 years. I think people need to look for signs of improvement. The team is playing better this year than they did last year. Take Agee away from last year's team, and they don't win a game. The team is playing pretty well this year considering they lost the 7-AAA Player of the Year, and don't have a single senior. Give them a 24-point and 9-rebound per game player this year and they have a winning record. District wins aren't as important as just wins. The district wins will come later. If the team doesn't improve next year, or has a backslide, then maybe Slatten should go. Don't base it on district wins alone. Sparta could win every district game and poeple would still complain. They would gripe because we weren't winning by big enough margins or something like that. People just want to complain because Slatten isn't Roy Whited. Slatten only has 1 player that could have even made Whited's teams. Maybe 2. That's how much talent Whited had. Give Slatten some time, talent, and support and see what he can do. Please answer these questions. Would the team have won more last year if the Selbys and Sims had stayed? Would the team be winning more if the Selbys, Sims, and some of the others who quit were playing this year? Could Whited win any more games with the team Slatten has right now? If Sparta was winning, would we even be having this discussion? My answers are yes, yes, no, and no. I think this says that the biggest difference between Whited's teams and Slatten's teams is talent. If the talent was there, or had stunk it up and stayed there, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. I expressed my true feelings in that last post, but I knew it would stir some people up. These Sparta threads were getting boring. It's good to be back! [Edited by pinkpanther on 1-21-03 12:23A]

wigwam...I say Amen to your last post. You and I are in total agreement. 85warrior...Slatten doesn't have 1/10 of the talent that Whited had. That's why Whited is selling real estate right now. I personally think he didn't want to go through this rebuild that is going on right now. I can't say as I blame him. Once you've been to the top of the mountain, it's hard to ever be happy in the valley again. Give Slatten that type of talent and see what happens. He's just as good, maybe better. He's getting a lot of bang for his buck right now. He has a weak team playing at just 3 games under .500. Yeah, some players quit on him. That's not his fault. They just couldn't take it. If I were a coach, I would rather have a group of marginal players who wanted to play than a group of really good players who wanted to complain all the time and compare me to who used to be there.

Did the player who had scored all the points have any fouls when the coach took him out? Some coaches work off a set substitution pattern no matter how a player is doing. It doesn't make sense sometimes, but coaches have their reasons. Sometimes it's not good for one player to do all the scoring. The other players tend to sit back and wait for him to carry them. Sometimes taking out the player who is scoring all the points forces the rest of the team to step up. If this doesn't work, though, a coach needs to get the hot player back in ASAP.