On The Tournament Trail: Beardstown

For the first time in over five years, I was able to take in another holiday tournament not held at Western Hall. While I don’t mind living at the Macomb-Western Holiday Tournament for three days, it’s nice to hit the roads and see other action.

My Wednesday took me to the 26th annual Lady Tiger Classic in Beardstown. Unfortunately, a busy day kept me from watching a days worth of basketball, but I did catch some action. In the first game I watched, B-PC/Avon came back from an eight-point deficit to Brown County to close within one. A couple missed opportunites, and the Hornets took a 50-42 victory, mostly spent at the free throw line in the waning minute.

My broadcast was the Macomb/Carrollton matchup. This was supposed to be one of the better games of the day, the #1 vs. #8 seed in the 20-team field. It looked like a 1/20 matchup, as the Lady Bombers opened up a 21-5 first quarter lead. I counted 10 Carrollton turnovers in the first 2:30 of play. I must credit the Lady Hawks for turning things around and not letting their deficit increase through the game, and also limiting turnovers.

Only caught one more quarter of action, and that was Illini West and Pittsfield. The Chargers built up a first quarter lead on their way to one of many blowouts in the first day at Beardstown. A surprising result, as the Saukee ladies had a 7-2 record heading into the matchup. Many people have discounted this Illini West team with five losses so far on the year, but mind you, many of these losses are to 3A schools….and strong 3A schools to boot.

This write-up is coming to you Thursday morning, a result of my Internet connection going down. I had looked forward to enjoying a little time tuning into online tournament broadcasts Wednesday evening. That’s the way the late afternoon started as I tuned in to the North Lawndale/Nashville game from the Breese Mater Dei tournament. The Phoenix had closed to within four points with 0:18 left when I lost my connection for the night…OH THE INSANITY!

My tournament trail will keep me busy in Macomb at Western Hall over the next three days. I’ll be covering Macomb, Monmouth-Roseville, Brown County, and a little bit of B-PC/A this week, likely causing some hoarseness by week’s end. Tune in to our online broadcasts at www.radiomacomb.com/sports.htm. The games will also be broadcast at the tournaments website, www.holidaybasketball.com.