Liberty 81 Lexington 51

[blik]

I wondered how you got you info so quick. I think I know who you are now.

 

I dont think this surpised many Lexington fans. The margin of victory maybe, but not the loss. Liberty and Bolivar are likley to be like the Bolivar-Southside match up a couple of years ago, with both teams meeting in the finals. AA is tough this year but 2 of the toughest and best coached teams are in this district.

I don't have a vested interest in Lexington basketball as i don't live anywhere near there, but I do know a fair amount about West TN basketball. I don't understand why the Gardners get bashed so much. The fact is that the talent level at Lexington is enough to win 20+ games a year but not enough to beat the premier teams in the District and Region. There's no shame in that. The same thing happened to your football team. You went undefeated against fairly weak competition and you came up to Nashville and got trounced. I watched the game against Lipscomb and the talent simply was not there to go much farther than you went. That doesn't detract from the accomplishments of the season. As for Mac, I've never seen him play but I can imagine that he is not overly talented but gets the most out of his ability. That seems like something to be commended, but he gets raked over the coals by Lexington's supposed fans. Apparently, he is good enough to have signed a scholarship, so I expect he is good enough to be getting the playing time that he gets. Surely you people are not so ridiculous that you think Coach Gardner plys his own kid at the expense of better players. i find that hard to believe and since I haven't heard about any of Lexington's back-ups signing scholarships to play ball at the next level, I don't expect it is true.

 

Also, if I recall correctly, Lexington basketball was plain awful in the years immediately preceding the Gardners arriving. Maybe there is no connection there, but it does seem suspicious.

[sports]

Well I hate to say I was right but I was pretty close to it. I said 85-58 and I was just a few points off.

 

Also, I guess I was right about Miss Gardner, But I guess the Lex fan that said he just had a bad game against Bolivar probobly thinks he just had another bad game. Face it, Lexington you are no good and Gardner plays so much because he is the coaches son and that is the only reason he signed any scholership. He could not play for Bethel.

 

I'm sick also of all the articles on him. Could we see an article about an actual good player. I mean good grief. No wonder you Lexington pathetics are so conceded. Your terrible and the only reason your record is good is because you did not count a loss early in the season, why I dont know, and you play horrible competition.

 

Congrats to Liberty, you guys are on your way to big things this year. But last night was a decent district win over a terrible team.

[montague1]

I don't have a vested interest in Lexington basketball as i don't live anywhere near there, but I do know a fair amount about West TN basketball. I don't understand why the Gardners get bashed so much. The fact is that the talent level at Lexington is enough to win 20+ games a year but not enough to beat the premier teams in the District and Region. There's no shame in that. The same thing happened to your football team. You went undefeated against fairly weak competition and you came up to Nashville and got trounced. I watched the game against Lipscomb and the talent simply was not there to go much farther than you went. That doesn't detract from the accomplishments of the season. As for Mac, I've never seen him play but I can imagine that he is not overly talented but gets the most out of his ability. That seems like something to be commended, but he gets raked over the coals by Lexington's supposed fans. Apparently, he is good enough to have signed a scholarship, so I expect he is good enough to be getting the playing time that he gets. Surely you people are not so ridiculous that you think Coach Gardner plys his own kid at the expense of better players. i find that hard to believe and since I haven't heard about any of Lexington's back-ups signing scholarships to play ball at the next level, I don't expect it is true.

 

Also, if I recall correctly, Lexington basketball was plain awful in the years immediately preceding the Gardners arriving. Maybe there is no connection there, but it does seem suspicious.

 

The people that bash Mack are not from Lexington. We've seen Mack play in this town for a long time and he gets no bashing from Lexington fans. People talk about his match ups with other PGs and its really not fair to him. He's not asked to take over a game, he does everything a PG is supposed to do. Now he was a little trigger happy from 3 land in previous years, but he shoots a good precentage from back there. Kemp is a once in a generation talent that no PG can be compared to. He can take over a game at any moment. Sure compared to him, Mack doesnt add up, put how many PGs do. Mack doesnt play all the time, he is just the PG on this team that runs Gardner's system the best. He gets switched with Kevis a lot.

 

As for his dad, he wins, but he has done some things thats rubbed people wrong. Lexington is a small town with 1 high school. Everybody knows someone on that team and people just don agree with the way he uses his players. He is the one at practice with them everyday, but we as fans form our own opinions as does all fans. As for me, I have a large family, so every year I've had 2 or 3 of my close family members on the team. 1 was the starting PG on the same AAU team as Mack, but when they started playing for Lexington, he got moved to the bench, so he sit out his entire sophomore season. Then there was the incident agianst Christrian Brothers last year that caused us to lose a very good player. These are things that everybody in this small town sees that leads people to put Garder under the magnifing glass. But he has some very good qualities too, he invites the senior citiziens to thier own night at ball games, he gets the great Lexington teams of the past together and introduces them to the crowd at ball games, the list goes on about his good qualities also. The man knows the game of basketball, I dont care who you play against, you dont win that many games without knowing how to coach basketball. Nobody questions his knowlede of the sport.

 

And just for your info, we had 2 players off of last years team that tried out for the team at Bethel College. 1 made it 1 didnt. The 1 that made it was a reserve. The 1 that didnt was a starter. And thats a fact not hearsay. The both played the same position.

Edited January 18, 2006 by montague1

[PrepFanatic]

IThe same thing happened to your football team. You went undefeated against fairly weak competition and you came up to Nashville and got trounced. I watched the game against Lipscomb and the talent simply was not there to go much farther than you went.

 

Sorry guy, I know this is the basketball fourm, but I just got to address this. We got beat by a better football TEAM. We had a ton of talent. I should just leave it at that, but.........

 

16 All-Region selections including the Def and Off Mvps

4 First team all state selections..more than any team

5 Jackson Sun all west tenn team selections including the defensive mvp

1 Mr. Football finalist

1 D-II signee (pending)

2 D-1 signees

 

Now back to basketball....

And you're right, we cant run with the big boys. Its like Reggie Bomar said, "we couldnt do any thing about it" But this is a positive in a way. Every time you play a team this good you learn from your beat downs. Bomar and Staten are just juniors, and with a young bench maybe we can turn it around and be able to run with these teams next year. We get a little help with both teams losing big names, but Bolivar is always good and Liberty is proving to be also. I look forward to seeing Liberty @ Bolivar in a couple of days.

Edited January 18, 2006 by PrepFanatic

[truhoopsfan]

Sorry guy, I know this is the basketball fourm, but I just got to address this. We got beat by a better football TEAM. We had a ton of talent. I should just leave it at that, but.........

 

16 All-Region selections including the Def and Off Mvps

4 First team all state selections..more than any team

5 Jackson Sun all west tenn team selections including the defensive mvp

1 Mr. Football finalist

1 D-II signee (pending)

2 D-1 signees

 

Now back to basketball....

And you're right, we cant run with the big boys. Its like Reggie Bomar said, "we couldnt do any thing about it" But this is a positive in a way. Every time you play a team this good you learn from your beat downs. Bomar and Staten are just juniors, and with a young bench maybe we can turn it around and be able to run with these teams next year. We get a little help with both teams losing big names, but Bolivar is always good and Liberty is proving to be also. I look forward to seeing Liberty @ Bolivar in a couple of days.

 

 

That was a good write up in the Jackson Sun this morning about Gardner and Evans.

[gowiththeflow_6]

I'm sorry..... but lexington is no better than 3rd place in their district. They need to face it, the fans need to face it, forget all the talk about mac and his daddy. They need to let their playing do their talking and quit with all this other garbage. People get tired of seeing post on here about how "bad" they are. Third place is the best they'll be, if they are even third place.

[hackashaq]

Montague, I agree to a point with what you said. But you have been drinking a little of that snake oil yourself. Gardner does good things, but they are self serving and designed to protect him from the obvious wrongs he is doing. You mention the problem with the Christian Brothers game - that should have been bigger than it played out, but because he has done "all these good things" the town as a whole turns their heads. What I find tragic is the fact that if you notice the guards from Macks freshman (well even 1 years prior to that - there was a player from Westover that was a ball handler and shooter, he didn't even make the team, that is when I started questioning Gardners motives) year until now have been stepped on and pushed out. You shoot and hit a shot as guard, he would psychologically find a way to break you down for one mistake - something he did with Kenny. Sitting behind Gardner, you can hear this mess and it allowed to go on. What is hilarious, Keck quits and then Gardner manuevers ever so carefully thru the back door to get him back, why? because he is not threat at the guard position. I feel sorry for Keck, the impression left is that he was the bad guy - that is wrong. What is funny, Keck scored quite a few last night - why??? Because the right guy is now shooting the rock - I guess he got his point across to Gardner that he wasn't going to put up with the pschological mind games. Good for him!

 

As for a gardner and good coach???? yikes, I have to totally disagree there. The guy didn't even play the game in high school and it shows. He was closer to being the jock boy if anything. If you sit in on his practices you will notice they are weak in intensity and endurance drills. Some are allowed to pace themselves at ridiculous levels. Fisher was not like that and neither was Leasure (in fact, I can remember fights breaking out in practice, ask the Bolivar fans about Leasure's teams, I don't think you will hear that they were soft! If you sit back and watch one these games, you can see our motor running down by the 3rd quarter. Mack has tried to put in some big shots at the end of the game, but his legs are gone - nothing but intense training and substituting for sufficient rest is going to help the boy.

 

BLIK - I can understand why you think a 20 win record is good and most everybody in Lexington thinks the same. If you think losing to Bolivar and Liberty is our only problem, then you are not that aware of W. TN bball! I don't think any of us will forget the big district tournament loss to a weak Milan team. Throw in Humboldt, Chester County into some really embarassing losses in the past. It is pretty simple - we were 3a and now 2a, we are the largest 3a school in 2a. Some of these schools we play are at the very bottom of 2a verging on 1a (and Gardner also throws in a few 1a games). It would be like Univ Memphis playing Union, FHU, Lipscomb on a regular basis and sometimes a Bethel and then expect to be in the top 10 of the nation. Now if you don't believe me, then Coacht even ranks us low on who we play. Again, we march around whipping these poor teams and spouting 20 game wins/yr. That is sick - yes, we dominate - but is that what we want?? That is nothing but being the school yard bulley but on a much bigger scale and then going out and say look at me and all my 400 wins!!! I can see a few give me games, but when your schedule is just full of them?? We are playing in the same district as Bolivar/Rudesill and they have 7 losses (of course living on the otherside of the state, that might make you think we are better than Bolivar), but everyone knows the reason why Rudesill schedules these games - tough competition makes a tough team (next year Bolivar will be without Chism and Kemp, they will still be tough and the team to beat because he is forcing others to grow into ball players. But our schedule is deceiving for those like yourself Blik, that see the 20 game win and say whoa now they must be a tough team. Bottom line, a lot of people are pointing the finger at Keck, Staten and Bomar as being the problem ono defense. Honestly, these guys are horses without direction - if they were groomed in a Rudesill system they could be scary! But instead everything is controlled for one person only. That is why all the newspaper articles are pointed at one person - the Jackson Sun only mimics what Gardner tells them.

 

Blik, As for comparing coach Steve Lindsey (football) and coach garnder? Yikes!! now you are talking daylight and dark. I am sure gardner loves that comparison too. But let me be the first to tell you it ain't so. Steve may not dress in his Sunday duds at the game, but don't let that fool you. He is a top notch coach with high integrity - and he teaches people how to get to the next level. As for football practices, well they ain't for wall flowers - that place is a boot camp. There is a huge difference in what Steve has done vs gardner - Steve has gone deep into the tournament as a coach and he was tough athlete that (yes!) actually played the game. Whereas Gardner barely gets out of a weak district and loses the first game in the tournmanet almost every year.

 

So why the frustration? basically we are good enough to compete against the Humboldts, Chester Counties, Liberties and Bolivars (granted Liberty and Bolivar this year are better, but beating us like a yard dawg - nope!) but until we get the someone that can see the WHOLE picture and encourage all (and don't give me that pizza or those fake, obsequious "you have been a good guy" trophies at the end of the year and expect us to be appeased - it is called winning some big ones just every once in a while, not the ONE AND DONE junk!

 

Gardner is a control freak - if he would just relax and look directly across the court, there is a wealth of knowledge just waiting to be tapped into. But it is all sitting over there going to waste. All he would have to do is ask and I guarantee we'd get this "Ltrain" over the One and Done hill together (but as the Jackson Sun pointed out in this last article that Mack was "white", well all I can say is there is still a wide traverse to span in this situation for coach, but when he comes to grip with it, you will find that this team is a competitor at the higher levels.

Edited January 19, 2006 by hackashaq

[Solomon]

Montague, I agree to a point with what you said. But you have been drinking a little of that snake oil yourself. Gardner does good things, but they are self serving and designed to protect him from the obvious wrongs he is doing. You mention the problem with the Christian Brothers game - that should have been bigger than it played out, but because he has done "all these good things" the town as a whole turns their heads. What I find tragic is the fact that if you notice the guards from Macks freshman (well even 1 years prior to that - there was a player from Westover that was a ball handler and shooter, he didn't even make the team, that is when I started questioning Gardners motives) year until now have been stepped on and pushed out. You shoot and hit a shot as guard, he would psychologically find a way to break you down for one mistake - something he did with Kenny. Sitting behind Gardner, you can hear this mess and it allowed to go on. What is hilarious, Keck quits and then Gardner manuevers ever so carefully thru the back door to get him back, why? because he is not threat at the guard position. I feel sorry for Keck, the impression left is that he was the bad guy - that is wrong. What is funny, Keck scored quite a few last night - why??? Because the right guy is now shooting the rock - I guess he got his point across to Gardner that he wasn't going to put up with the pschological mind games. Good for him!

 

As for a gardner and good coach???? yikes, I have to totally disagree there. The guy didn't even play the game in high school and it shows. He was closer to being the jock boy if anything. If you sit in on his practices you will notice they are weak in intensity and endurance drills. Some are allowed to pace themselves at ridiculous levels. Fisher was not like that and neither was Leasure (in fact, I can remember fights breaking out in practice, ask the Bolivar fans about Leasure's teams, I don't think you will hear that they were soft! If you sit back and watch one these games, you can see our motor running down by the 3rd quarter. Mack has tried to put in some big shots at the end of the game, but his legs are gone - nothing but intense training and substituting for sufficient rest is going to help the boy.

 

BLIK - I can understand why you think a 20 win record is good and most everybody in Lexington thinks the same. If you think losing to Bolivar and Liberty is our only problem, then you are not that aware of W. TN bball! I don't think any of us will forget the big district tournament loss to a weak Milan team. Throw in Humboldt, Chester County into some really embarassing losses in the past. It is pretty simple - we were 3a and now 2a, we are the largest 3a school in 2a. Some of these schools we play are at the very bottom of 2a verging on 1a (and Gardner also throws in a few 1a games). It would be like Univ Memphis playing Union, FHU, Lipscomb on a regular basis and sometimes a Bethel and then expect to be in the top 10 of the nation. Now if you don't believe me, then Coacht even ranks us low on who we play. Again, we march around whipping these poor teams and spouting 20 game wins/yr. That is sick - yes, we dominate - but is that what we want?? That is nothing but being the school yard bulley but on a much bigger scale and then going out and say look at me and all my 400 wins!!! I can see a few give me games, but when your schedule is just full of them?? We are playing in the same district as Bolivar/Rudesill and they have 7 losses (of course living on the otherside of the state, that might make you think we are better than Bolivar), but everyone knows the reason why Rudesill schedules these games - tough competition makes a tough team (next year Bolivar will be without Chism and Kemp, they will still be tough and the team to beat because he is forcing others to grow into ball players. But our schedule is deceiving for those like yourself Blik, that see the 20 game win and say whoa now they must be a tough team. Bottom line, a lot of people are pointing the finger at Keck, Staten and Bomar as being the problem ono defense. Honestly, these guys are horses without direction - if they were groomed in a Rudesill system they could be scary! But instead everything is controlled for one person only. That is why all the newspaper articles are pointed at one person - the Jackson Sun only mimics what Gardner tells them.

 

Blik, As for comparing coach Steve Lindsey (football) and coach garnder? Yikes!! now you are talking daylight and dark. I am sure gardner loves that comparison too. But let me be the first to tell you it ain't so. Steve may not dress in his Sunday duds at the game, but don't let that fool you. He is a top notch coach with high integrity - and he teaches people how to get to the next level. As for football practices, well they ain't for wall flowers - that place is a boot camp. There is a huge difference in what Steve has done vs gardner - Steve has gone deep into the tournament as a coach and he was tough athlete that (yes!) actually played the game. Whereas Gardner barely gets out of a weak district and loses the first game in the tournmanet almost every year.

 

So why the frustration? basically we are good enough to compete against the Humboldts, Chester Counties, Liberties and Bolivars (granted Liberty and Bolivar this year are better, but beating us like a yard dawg - nope!) but until we get the someone that can see the WHOLE picture and encourage all (and don't give me that pizza or those fake, obsequious "you have been a good guy" trophies at the end of the year and expect us to be appeased - it is called winning some big ones just every once in a while, not the ONE AND DONE junk!

 

Gardner is a control freak - if he would just relax and look directly across the court, there is a wealth of knowledge just waiting to be tapped into. But it is all sitting over there going to waste. All he would have to do is ask and I guarantee we'd get this "Ltrain" over the One and Done hill together (but as the Jackson Sun pointed out in this last article that Mack was "white", well all I can say is there is still a wide traverse to span in this situation for coach, but when he comes to grip with it, you will find that this team is a competitor at the higher levels.

 

Boy hackashaq, with all of your knowledge, why didn't you coach somewhere? How about you go up to Gardner and offer him a point or two? I guess it's just muc heasier to hide behind a screenname on the internet though isn't it?

[firefulmer]

I sure want Bolivar to win every game they play!

 

And Liberty has a great team. But I don't want them to win this Fri. night!

 

As for Lexington, I know nothing about any of your guys or your coach. But you guys on this board can sure rag great teams with the best of them!!!

 

I wish Lexington good luck. Why not?

 

Some of your posters need to watch how hard they rag teams....but it's a free world!

[tigerbaseball33]

I don't have a vested interest in Lexington basketball as i don't live anywhere near there, but I do know a fair amount about West TN basketball. I don't understand why the Gardners get bashed so much. The fact is that the talent level at Lexington is enough to win 20+ games a year but not enough to beat the premier teams in the District and Region. There's no shame in that. The same thing happened to your football team. You went undefeated against fairly weak competition and you came up to Nashville and got trounced. I watched the game against Lipscomb and the talent simply was not there to go much farther than you went. That doesn't detract from the accomplishments of the season. As for Mac, I've never seen him play but I can imagine that he is not overly talented but gets the most out of his ability. That seems like something to be commended, but he gets raked over the coals by Lexington's supposed fans. Apparently, he is good enough to have signed a scholarship, so I expect he is good enough to be getting the playing time that he gets. Surely you people are not so ridiculous that you think Coach Gardner plys his own kid at the expense of better players. i find that hard to believe and since I haven't heard about any of Lexington's back-ups signing scholarships to play ball at the next level, I don't expect it is true.

 

Also, if I recall correctly, Lexington basketball was plain awful in the years immediately preceding the Gardners arriving. Maybe there is no connection there, but it does seem suspicious.

 

 

 

 

 

OMG.........Finally somebody with some sense!!!!!!!!!! You know after I read the bashes on the Gardners year after year, i began to see just how many ignorant people were posting on here. The fact of this matter is that Lexington has ONE ball handler and his name is Mack Gardner. People will say " well we got killed by Liberty because Mack turned the ball over a lot more than usual"....well DUH... its hard to play one on five when you are bringing the ball up the court. There are so many people with absolutely no knowledge of the game of basketball in this town if they think that someone else should be starting in Mack's place.... You know its kinda like Steve Spurrier says..."IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT.... GET BETTER"

[hackashaq]

ummmmmm????? 1 against 5 ??? yep, there are alot just plain old dumb people here on coacht!! ha! ok, if you say so --- I am just wondering what happen to the other 4 ball players on our team?? Are they just standing around watching Mack??? Shame on them - they should get out ther and help him. I mean they cannot dribble at all?? Why do you think that happens???? Quite literally it is because Gardner has crippled the team into this mentality. What are we going to do next year!!!! oh no!!!!!! we might as well disband the team because the remainder of the team is just completely inept at dribbling. Get a grip, we will survive unless Gardner just choses to stop winning 20 games a year to omake everyone realize that we canaot survive without Mack. Long story short, some of coaches realize that they must teach there team to pass through a strong pass because they don't have a Willie Kemp or Alan Iverson - butttt that takes planning, plays and developing skill in the passing department. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out either that the team has been compromised by this. Hey - you might even be surprised if McNairy doesn't pull something like this. Mack is a fine person, but he is no Kemp/Iverson and it shows when we play some tought competition. Not ever good team has a Kemp and they learn to break presses via passing. By saying he is playing 1 on 5, you are insulting the rest of the team. All that needs to happen is to train some folks during these wipe out games that we play - but someone might not get his high point scoring that night!!!! Mack better get ready,that protective bubble that is falling apart now will be gone entirely in college. It only gets tougher in college unless he goes to Bethel. There won't be anybody to blame your turnovers on there!!!

 

Solomon - one question, how do you know that I haven't tried to help????????? Just curious - Solomon as your moniker????? Are you truly familiar with who that is???

[PrepFanatic]

The whole Gardner issue has grown old on me also. Macks a good player and nobody should be bashing his name. And I dont care if we had Coach K running this team, Lexington is not as good as Liberty or Bolivar. Willie is 1 of the top 5 point gaurds in the nation, you cant compare any other point gaurd in this state to him, let alone this district.

Edited January 20, 2006 by PrepFanatic