[00:00:00] Speaker A: Basketball season is in full swing in northwest Arkansas and the river valley. If the weather cooperates, that is. But so far so good. We'll dive into it much more on this week's prep rally.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: You're listening to the prep rally podcast now. Here's your host, Graham Thomas.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Welcome to the Prep Rally podcast sponsored by west termite, Pest and lawn. Graham Thomas here with the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. I'm joined with sports reporter Rick Fires here in Fayetteville. Leland Barclay joined us in the River Valley. Gentlemen, welcome back. Happy New year.
It's our first podcast of the year. It's been a few weeks, but I'm ready to talk some hoops and we've got a lot to catch up on, so let's just jump right into it.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: Let's go.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: All right, guys, as I said at the beginning here, we're really right in the middle of basketball season. Conference play is well and going good.
So we'll start off with just some talking about some six a West basketball.
We had a busy night of games last night, which was Tuesday night, January the.
We'll just, rick, we'll kind of let you lead off with the game you were at last night. Okay.
[00:01:21] Speaker C: I was at Fable High school. I've seen Fable a lot so far this year. You know what? I don't know what the preseason rankings were, but man, Fable is following up his football season with a really good basketball team. This team is, I think, ranked second or third. They're 16 and two overall. Now they're four. And last night they were home to Bentonville west and just kind of really blew them out in the first half. Now Bentonville west, to its credit, they came back and cut an 18 point deficit to six points. But Fable really is a good basketball team. Looked like they got all the elements. They got the side, they got the speed, they got a great point guard Xavier Brown leading away. So really impressed with Fable. But I've also seen Springdale harbor and some others. So this is a really good basketball league.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Of course, I've seen Springdale Harbor a couple of times, too. And Springdale High, they've got a good team. You can't ever count out Bentonville or Bentonville west. And then how about Fort Smith south side the last couple of nights, gotten them a couple of wins. And in one of them, in some really interesting fashion, that's on the guy's side and on the girls side, boy, we got a wide open six a west conference at the very top with Springdale High. Northside Harbor's got a good team. Fayetteville's got a good team. And then you've got some teams that have traditionally been good, like Bentonville and Rogers, who are going to have a say in all this.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: Let me interject here about Springdale. A few, two or three years ago, they were only winning like two, three games. And Heather, man, stuck with them young kids and they developed that talent and they are easily a top ten team now in the state. So a lot of credit to Heather over there at Springdale High, and it's good to see them coming up and being a factor in the league.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Obviously, we've got a lot of good basketball teams in the boys and girls leagues in the six a west. And Leland, I'm going to give credit here to the Fort Smith south side mavericks. We just mentioned them just a couple of seconds ago, but got a big win against Northside last night, their first win against Northside in quite a while. And it's been an interesting week for the Mavericks the last two games.
[00:03:40] Speaker D: Well, when they came back from the Christmas break, they jumped out and scored 20 points in the first quarter against Rogers Heritage. And I thought, wow, this south side team's pretty good.
A lot of veteran guys, Alex Roper, George Harrell, Trey Grant. Then they added Cooper Watson off a state championship team from county line. His dad's an assistant for the girls team there at Southside. So I thought, wow, this might be the year of the Mavericks. Well, then heritage put up three straight 20 point quarters and kind of won that game going away.
So I didn't really know what to think at that point. How good is heritage?
And then Southside comes back and wins that impressive game on the road at west. Yes, and then takes Northside into overtime and wins that game. And congratulations to Southside for two straight wins. And they're looking good right now.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: Just think about how important that you got that disappointing loss at home that Leland is speaking about. And we've been around a long time. You hear coaches say, man, if you lose one at home, you got to steal one on the road. And that's exactly what Southside did. That's a long way to go up to Bentonville west. Man, you're almost in Kansas by the time you get up there. And for them to come back and win that game in the fashion that they did. So I think there was a springboard gave them a lot of confidence to come back and begin this week with it went over their number one rival. So congratulations to the Mavs there.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Yeah, and thinking about the six a West boys. I think nobody's going to argue with us. We think Springdale harbor is probably at the top of the league right now. I don't think anybody would argue that. But there's a lot of good teams in that conference. We got a long ways to go, really. Two months worth of action here, but we're excited about that. And then just a couple of highlights from some of the other conferences.
The Greenwood girls are continuing to do their thing. They're my number one team in class five a and they're going to be until somebody tells me otherwise. Don't really care who they've lost to to this point or any of that.
I'm not betting against Clay Reeves and then Farmington. Both the Farmington teams in class four a are really good basketball teams and we're going to be talking a lot about them as we go.
And then in the three a and below, we could do a whole podcast just on small school basketball.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: Oh, I love small school.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Know the the Greenwood girls did it again last night, ran away with a victory at Van Buren and won a tough one at Russellville. You said it was going to be tough on Friday of last.
[00:06:41] Speaker D: Know I knew coming into the season I felt like there were three really good teams in the conference. And of course Van Buren is off to a great start. As know they ran into Greenwood last night.
But Russellville has they start five seniors, three of which are three year starters, one of which is Talia Ely, who has got to be one of the best inside players in the state, a six one senior with a lot of experience, very good player, very dominating player inside.
And then throw in the fact they have a new coach who was an assistant at Conway and was on that state championship team last year. So they just have all the ingredients of being a really good team. But I'm sitting there last Friday watching that game, and six minutes into the game Greenwood is up 18 to three. And I think, wow, well, it's going to be another one of those nights for Greenwood. I think they seven turnovers in the first quarter allowed just one field goal in the first six attempts by Russellville.
And then, and I don't think I've seen this in a long time, maybe in a non conference game against North Little Rock or Northside. But then Greenwood was outscored each of the next three quarters and Russellville forced overtime and went up 68 64 in overtime before Greenwood rallied and got a very late basket from Anna Trusty off a steal by Izzy Smith near mid court to pull that game out. 71 to 70.
And talking to coach Reeves after the game. He expects kind of the same kind of game from Mountain home Friday night, which we'll get into all that stuff later.
That was a great game. And I talked to Brooklyn Wolsey last night after the game, and she gave me some comments about what the practice was like and the film. Watching the film study was like the next day for the Greenwood Lady Bulldogs after that 71 to 70 win over Russellville.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: I'm sure it was very informative session, no doubt about that. So, gentlemen, we've got less than a minute left on this segment of the podcast, but I'm glad you mentioned Van Buren there, Leland, because, boy, what a great start they've gotten off to. And we'll have to talk about the cross court shot they had last night that had the social media buzing a little bit.
Yeah.
But man, it's exciting to be back on the podcast, exciting to be talking basketball. And there's a lot out in front of us, and we're going to try to highlight as much of it as we can in the time we're allowed. So we're going to take a little break, and when we come back, we'll look ahead to what might be a very snowy week the rest of this week. We'll be back. You're listening to prep rally.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette or the River Valley Democrat Gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners, so visit nwanline.com nwapodcast to get started. You can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nwanline.com and rivervallieddemocratgazette.com. Or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Prep Rally podcast, sponsored by West Termite, pests and lawn. And so, guys, it's an interesting week coming up. Well, I say interesting week. I mean, we're at the end of the week and the star of another. That's kind of how we roll on this podcast.
We've got a slate of games scheduled for Friday, but as we're sitting here right now, we've got some potential winter weather rolling in on Friday, and some games have already been moved to Thursday. And for our purposes, we don't know. By the time this is released, we don't know who's going to be playing on Friday, Thursday, Saturday, moving it to Monday. We just don't know.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: But we're entering that time of year when Mother Nature dictates everything.
This ain't football anymore. Football they play anyway. You're going to see in the NFL playoffs playing in blizzard. But Mother Nature dictates. And when she say go, we go. When she said no, we don't.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So just to highlight a few games here that we're looking at on Friday's schedule, Springdale High is at Bentonville. Rogers. Heritage is at Rogers. The annual battle of Rogers. I guess I'll do that again at Heritage later on this year. Fayetteville is at south side. Bentonville west is at Harbor Mountain. We move into the five a west, a big one. There is Mountain home at Van Buren, Farmington. The big Farmington teams are going to have, they're going to go to Gentry on. That one's already on Thursday. It should be a good one with the Farmington girls and gentry girls, Bergman and Valley Springs. It's a big one in the class. Oh, my goodness. Yes. And then, Rick, you're Ozark Catholic at the new school. We don't know that one's still set for Friday. We don't know when it'll be moved to, if it gets moved at all. But what a battle of class one a teams, a lot of games, really good games to look forward to this week.
Leland, I want to kind of back up. We talked about Van Buren. They've got a big one coming up with Mountain home on the boys and the girls know two very good mountain home teams playing two really good Van Buren teams.
[00:12:42] Speaker D: Absolutely. That's going to tell a lot about really all four teams. Like I said before, Van Buren girls, the lady pointers off to a great start, ran into Greenwood on Tuesday night.
But that game against Mountain home, which is supposed to be one of the best teams in the conference as far as the girls and then the boys as well, because only four of the eight teams go the state tournament.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:13:12] Speaker D: Man.
That's the biggest game of the night in the five a west. Of course, Alma is sitting at two and two now. The boys, the Airdales. So that's a huge one at Van Buren on schedule for Friday night.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: I tell you what, every time I turn around, it seems I'm seeing some sort of highlight play from the Van Buren boys. It's a lot of dunks by Weston Wilcox, I think.
But Tuesday night, Van Buren had an 85 foot. Tim Terry called it a sky hook against Greenwood.
[00:13:48] Speaker D: I think it's 80 foot.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: So Trenton Cooley for Van Buren just heaved one at the end of the third quarter. It's at Greenwood. Heaves it almost the length of the court. It goes in the basket. Go look it up on twitter if you can find it somehow. It's a lot of fun to see that play. And Tim's reaction to it was really good, too. He said he don't normally give the oh, baby for just anyone, but he did on that one well, and I.
[00:14:16] Speaker D: Don'T get very excited.
I kind of keep the mantra know there's no cheering on press row and in the press box and things like that. That one made me go, whoa.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:31] Speaker D: It was to end the third quarter, Greenwood had missed two free throws. Weston Wilcox got the rebound, made a flip pass, kind of flipped it to Trenton Cooley, who chunked it about 80ft, and it hit the backboard and rattled in. And you can see it went in just about the time that the red lights are going off over the scoreboard to indicate the buzzer sounding. So it was really and truly a buzzer beating, almost full length court shot.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: Leland, this is what the great thing about getting involved in high school athletics, whether you win a lot or you don't win as much as you want to, this kid, when he goes back to his class reunion ten years from now, 20 of this shot is going to be brought up by his teammates, by some of his friends. No matter what, he's going to go on and do great things in life. But that'd be tickled me when he come back. Hey, dude, man, remember when you made that shot and he was on ESPN?
That's going to be brought up to him. So I just love things like that when they happen to high school athletes.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:42] Speaker D: Oh, absolutely. And it's one of the reasons, maybe the main reason that we love high school sports so much is we never know what we're going to see when we go to a game, when we walk into that gym or into that press box.
We never know what we're going to get to experience from these high school athletes.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: That's kind of why MVU Rick fires. You're supposed to attend the Ozark Catholic at the new school boys class one a contenders, and you got some pretty prolific scores on both those teams, and they both have really good records. And you get into these little small, compact areas to play basketball, it can get pretty rowdy in those deals.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I've never been there. Henry gave me direction. They're located somewhere downtown Fayetteville, and I'm looking forward to being there. And one a basketball. It's exciting. What was a couple of years ago, we had three or four teams in that league, won over 30 games, three of them. Three of them won over 30 games, and there's a lot excitement. It's just not at the six a, not at the four a. It's throughout every conference, every division, every category, big and small, throughout Arkansas. So I've seen the skill and the dunks and everything of these big schools. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these smaller schools as well.
[00:17:07] Speaker D: The setting there at the gym is fantastic. Get there early. They only have seating on one side, but they'll make you a spot on the end of the scores table, and you'll be center court for some exciting action.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: All right, so, guys, there's a lot of big games in the six A west, as there will be every week. The doubleheader I'm looking at is the Springdale at Bentonville doubleheader.
Both Bentonville teams are coming off a loss last night to harbor, and they're going to need to kind of try to look to bounce back. But no easy assignment against Springdale Lady Bulldogs and the Springdale Bulldogs.
No easy nights in this league.
Anxious to see how the Springdale girls do on the road at, um. That'd be a nice test for, um, see if they, uh, keep the momentum going. So I know coach Hunsucker will have them prepared for the battle of Rogers. That's always a big rivalry game, and we'll look forward to hearing about those. And then on Tuesday, really big one, harbor at Fayetteville.
[00:18:20] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: On the boys and girls side of it, north side at Springdale.
Rogers will be at south side, Bentonville west will be at heritage. And kind of a class four a one battle. I'm looking at is p Ridge and gravit. That'll be a really good one. And then the one four a conference. So, man, we can't go to all of them, but we enjoy seeing how these things turn out night after night.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: And you can read about it in our paper and online. We can't be there. If you're like us, you can't be everywhere, but you can read about it.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: We try to bring you what we can from the ones we're not at.
We wish there were more of us, for sure.
All right, we're going to take another break, and when we come back, we will dig into our top five. First, top five of 2024. And you're listening to prep rally.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Stay on top of all Arkansas Razorback sports with a digital plus subscription on the Hogs Illustrated app. Get complete razorbacks coverage in one location. Your subscription gives you 20 plus issues of Hogs Illustrated magazine, the most unique and compelling coverage anywhere in the state, plus total access to all the content on wholehogsports.com, including breaking news, commentaries, analysis, features, recruiting award winning photos, and premium message boards. Subscriptions start at just $17 per month. Join the HogsportsNetwork team at. Subscribe waco.com that's subscribe we Hco.com or call 479-684-5509 to get your front row seat to Arkansas Razorback sports. Go Hogs.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Prep Rally podcast sponsored by West Termite, Pest and lawn Graham Thomas, Rick Fires, Leland Barclay with you and gentlemen. We're going to get into the top five, and since it's been a while, I don't want to necessarily go to our top five plays or performances of the week or whatever. We're going to kind of just kind of catch up this week and then next week we'll get into our more traditional format of top five things that we've liked over the past week. But this week we're just going to do the top five storylines of the year so far. And Rick, we're going to start off with you. You're going to give us the rundown on the northwest Arkansas boys storylines.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: Okay, let me start off in our paper. We got Little Rock Central consensus number one. But I tell you what, if Little Rock Central number one and Springdale harbor is a very close number two, man, they just got a fantastic, it's just not Courtland mold. I was at that game, that non conference game on a Tuesday night, and Little Rock Central comes up here and I say, y'all come up here, play one game. Yeah, we wanted to test ourselves. So Little Rock Central and Harbor went at each other. It was two overtimes. I said at the time, I may not see a better game all year. And so far that's true. I haven't seen a better game than that. So they are just fantastic.
Of course, they got a big time player at Little Rock Central. I think he's committed to Missouri, but Missouri was there to look at Muldru as well. And then harbor, man, they got Jackson Conley, Hayden Wood, fantastic receiver, man, he's a pretty good basketball player. So good athletes right there. Harbor, if Central is number one, harbor is number two. Let's go to fable. Man, I've seen Fable a lot this year. Very impressed with them, 16 and two overall, four. And I think they're ranked three or four. They've got all the ingredients. I think Leland said something about ingredient. They got a six six center. And DJ Hudson really still a little bit raw, but he's getting there. He's six foot six. And then you got the point guard, Xavier Brown, he had the floor general. He runs the show.
And you got to have a great point guard and this type of high school basketball. And then last night, Jaden Haney. I remember hearing from last year, but, man, he has really improved. He's like a six four wing player. He had 22 points last night.
Fable just kind of blew him away. And just a very all round, balanced team right there. And I'm going to go even past predate myself. I remember my parents talking about going to the drive in movie and they had the double feature and they had popcorn and said, man, you can go see two great movies, two great shows in one setting. That's what you get at Farmington. The Farmington girls and the Farmington boys. If you're in northwest Arkansas and you don't have any allegiance, go to Farmington, go to Cardinal Jim, and you're going to see a show with these Farmington girls and Farmington boys. The Farmington boys are just. Excellent job. Of course, Lane Taylor, we've been watching him since he was a freshman.
He's just toned up his body. He just keeps adding to his game and he keeps scoring 2030 points a game. I think he's, what? Going to North Texas, maybe committed.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: North Texas signed there.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Yeah, he signed there.
And then the little schools, like I said, I'm going to look forward to going. I haven't seen Ozark Catholic. They're one of them new schools that's coming on course, new school is the new school. And you remember in the old days you had these, like the Dell blue school that no longer exists were the power. Now you got these schools right here that are the powers. And I'm really looking forward to seeing them on Friday night. I think that's five or close to five.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Well, you got lots more than five names in there, that's for sure. So that's a good job. I'm going to take the Northwest Arkansas girls basketball scene for this week. And I'm just going to start off. We've got a log jam at the top of the six a west standings with four teams that are right there in the hunt. It's still early, mind you. We got more than two thirds of the rest of the season, maybe three fourth to go. But you got Springdale Northside, Fayetteville and Harbor. All right up there with really good conference records, overall records, and they all still got to play each other. I think Northside and Fayetteville are the only ones that play each other.
You got the Harbor Springdale matchup looming in a couple of weeks. Really good. Like Rick said, farmington girls, my goodness, they're only lost. They're 21 three. And the conference, their only loss has been to a team out of Texas that was really good.
They're defending state champions, and it'll be hard pressed for someone to beat them again this year.
But if you look at that four a one conference, there's two really other good teams in that conference that don't get enough attention. That's gentry and gravit. Gravit played Farmington really tough a couple of nights ago. Henry was there for that one. And Gentry girls will get their shot at them this week. They'll try and pull out all kinds of tricks to try and slow them down, so we'll just see what happens. Another girls team in northwest Arkansas that I'm going to give a little shout out to is Providence academy. They're not AAA member yet, but they're going to be. And here's some teams they've beaten. They've beaten Peteridge twice. They've beaten Siloam Springs. They've beaten Fort Smith Southside, and they've got a really good record or a really good ball team.
[00:25:53] Speaker C: Wow. I had no idea. Thanks for pointing that out.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And they're going to be AA members in this upcoming next year.
[00:25:59] Speaker C: What league will they go into?
[00:26:00] Speaker A: That one a. I don't know.
It'll be interesting to find out. I'm sure we can find out the answer to that question. And then the three a one girls, Bergman Valley Springs, two teams that are traditionally very good in that league. They're supposed to play, I think, Thursday night because of the weather now, but when they do play, it'll be quite the matchup. So that's my top five on the high school girl scene. If I've left anybody out, I do apologize, but it's a lot to cover. So, Leland, how about what's going on in the River Valley? What's top five?
[00:26:31] Speaker D: Well, we're only halfway through the second week of 2024, and we've already had 80 foot three pointers, dunks, buzzer beaters, overtimes, and already had rivalry night. So I've got to start off with Trenton Cooley and he's 80 foot three pointer that I guess by now everybody in the nation has seen that. Hit off the backboard and rattled in to end the third quarter in Van Buren 68 45 win over Greenwood on Tuesday night. Cooley finished. And Cooley, he's as electric on the basketball court as he was on the football field. He was one of the top receivers in the state as a junior this past year.
Tuesday night at Greenwood, he finished with ten points, ten rebounds and four steals.
And of course, we mentioned rivalry night. Southside's Alex Roper scored 25 points to lead Southside to a 66 63 overtime win over north side for the Mavericks first win against the Grizzlies in six years. It snapped a nine game losing streak to the Grizzlies. Roper hit a three pointer in overtime, hit four free throws, including two to seal the win, and he also had two free throws with 21 seconds left in regulation. That kind of forced overtime been a long time. Coming back to last Friday, George Harrell hit what we thought was a game winning three pointer from the corner to lift Southside to a 66 65 win at Bentonville west. As it turns out, that shot just, I say, merely sealed a 66 62 win because it was discovered that with 606 left in the game and Southside leading 59 52 during an injury time out, the scoreboard suddenly changed to 59 55, giving three points to the home team.
Southside noticed the change and after a brief discussion at the scores table, the referees just continued the game with the score as is. Regardless, Harold finished with 21 points and he hit seven three pointers in the win. And then we've mentioned Anna trustee a lot.
She scored 28 points on Tuesday night in Greenwood's 65 34 win over Van Buren. That moved her past Maddie Cartwright into fourth place on the career scoring list in Lady Bulldogs history. And she's now scored 1595 points in her career.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Great player. She is a good player.
[00:29:25] Speaker D: So that's what I've got for the River Valley in just a short amount of time already. And of course, that's on top of Greenwood's Lady Bulldogs overtime win at Russellville Friday night. So if the first ten days of the new year is any indication, this is going to be a wild two months of basketball season.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Well, I'm excited. I mean, we got a lot of fun leagues to cover up here in northwest Arkansas, and we certainly have a good time doing it. And folks, that's going to wrap us up for this week's edition of Prep rally. You can listen to prep
[email protected] or watch it on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts doesn't matter to us. We want to say thanks again to our sponsor, west termite, pest and lawn. And be sure and go out and watch some basketball. There's a lot of it around here. And, and we'll see you next week. We love.
