The High School Basketball Season Comes To A Close Tonight

It was less than a month ago that we did our first high school basketball of the season at East when the Harlem Huskies were the visiting team.

And that is exactly what the scenario will be when we broadcast our last game of the year tonight at East High School.

It's been a weird, fun, and at times, difficult year. Everyone was scheduled for 3 games a week. A regular-season usually only sees 2 games a week and sometimes just one. It meant that practice schedules were severely altered from the usual routine. Coaches had to make sure the players were well-rested but still needed to work on the usual development of a team over the extremely shortened season.

Keep in mind that these players and coaches were dealing with all the pandemic chaos that the rest of the world was at the same time. It's an impressive feat that we only lost a handful of games to positive COVID tests. Hononegah was the only boys team to miss significant time this year when a contact in an early-season game against Belvidere sidelined the team for 10 days, wiping out 4 contests.

It was an exciting end to the season as well. We still didn't know who was going to play in the championship game in both divisions for the boys, and one of the divisions for the girls, going into the last night of the season. The Harlem and East boys teams won games over Jefferson and Guilford respectively to clinch their division. The Harlem girls lost, but thanks to an amazing last second upset of Auburn by Boylan, clinched their division. The Harlem girls team will host Hononegah for the girl's NIC-10 title.

Tip off for the game tonight is at 6PM. Joe Dredge, Dave Perrone, and Double T will once again be on the call. Pregame starts at 5:45.

It's been a blast and an honor to do these games all year. Everyone involved should be proud of themselves for getting this season to the finish line.

Hope we go out with a bang.