GameTime Blog

Andre The Giant
02/24/2010 - 8:23pm
John Holt

About this time a year ago I was hearing the rumors. Rumors that had no doubt began to percolate long before they made their way to my ears.  Andre Drummond, the sophomore basketball prodigy at Hartford’s Capital Prep High School would be transferring to play his final 2 years at another Hartford area school, maybe East Catholic.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. Drummond did indeed transfer but not to a school near Hartford, not East Catholic and not to play 2 more years before college.  Andre enrolled at St. Thomas More School in Oakdale where he is now repeating his sophomore year.

MapQuest pegs St. Thomas More School as being 45 minutes from Hartford, but in other measurable ways it’s a world apart.  Located on picturesque Gardner Lake, St. Thomas More is a small all-boys preparatory school with a big reputation for turning boys into men and basketball prospects into Division I scholarship players.  Of course, the 6-foot-11 (and still growing) Drummond is a prospect only in the way that Miss America is a pretty girl. If more than one internet scouting report is to be believed Andre Drummond is the next Dwight Howard and a probable choice to be the #1 overall draft pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.

That’s a remarkable and heavy expectation to lay on a 16 year old.  Andre’s reaction? Laughter. He can’t believe it himself.  If he ever does start buying into the hype, the Chancellor’s 32-year head coach Jere Quinn will be certain to bring his ego back to earth.  Drummond has come to Oakdale to gain both the academic focus and level of basketball competition he needs to realize the potential others see in him.  He plays on STM’s 

post-graduate team with 18 and 19 year olds and against the finest prep school competition in the United States in the New England Prep School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) league.

Quinn will make Drummond a better basketball player just as he has for 300 other of his players that have moved on to compete in college.  Quinn believes Drummond can work harder, much harder.  Andre says his favorite NBA player is Kevin Durant so it’s no wonder that a young Drummond fashions himself as an inside/outside threat much like his idol. Quinn is working to convince Andre that the inside is where it’s at for the 

7 –footers among us. Improvement happens daily. 

Where will Andre Drummond be upon graduation from St. Thomas More in the spring of 2012? What will Andre Drummond be?  He’ll be more polished than the young man who emerged out of Connecticut’s capital city in the summer of 2009 with a breakout performance for the Under-16 USA team at the World Championships in Argentina. He’ll have a shorter list of “true” friends as he continues to weed out those that are nothing more than leeches. And if all goes as he dreams, he’ll head to college and then the NBA as Connecticut’s very own Andre The Giant.  

To See John Holt’s WFSB-TV Feature Story on Andre Drummond, click here.

An Official Response.
02/08/2010 - 9:10pm
Joe Zone

Coach, your team had a big 3rd quarter to turn the game around. Coach, what was the key in the final 2 minutes? Coach your point guard made a lot of big shots down the stretch.

That’s how a typical post game interview after just about any game on any Friday night with any winning coach goes.

But this past Friday night was anything but typical.

The Hillhouse boys had just beaten Xavier in a tough, come from behind win at the Xavier gym.

Hillhouse coach Kermit Carolina was unhappy with the officiating and I knew it.

So before I began the interview with him, I gave him a few seconds to gather himself. In fact, I told Carolina, that before we started, I’d  give him some time to calm down.

Carolina said he didn’t need time to calm down so I went ahead and started the interview.

“Coach, the game turned in the 3rd quarter when you outscored them 22-7.”

Carolina ignored my observation and began a :47 rant about how bad the officiating was in this particular game, and in games played at Xavier in general.

Carolina said he wanted to go on the record, not just for himself, but for other visiting coaches who have complained about the officiating in games at Xavier.

Carolina went on about how you would think that in America, the playing field would be even, no matter where you play. He concluded by saying “we beat them seven  against five tonight”.

I was so excited with the comments from Carolina, I could hardly wait to tell my FNF colleagues, producer Mark Fijalkowski and anchor John Holt. I said to Mark on a cell phone call on the way back from Middletown, whatever you have at the end of the show, get rid of it.

I’ve got an interview that’s about a minute long, and we have to run it all.

I’ve done thousands of interviews with high school coaches. They all have the same theme. “Those other guys are good. We were fortunate to win”. Or, “Our kids worked hard all week and it showed tonight”. Or,” It’s a good win for us but we’ve got more games to play”.

This was the first high school coach ever who went on record in such a determined fashion to criticize an entire officials organization.

The Central Connecticut Board #6 of Approved Basketball Officials who Carolina was referring to has a strict, no interview policy after games. Their officials are not permitted to speak with the media. So there was no chance for a rebuttal from the officials who Carolina criticized.

After we showed highlights of the Hillhouse Xavier game, won by Hillhouse, we ran Carolina’s :47 comment unedited and without comment from John or me.

But John, Mark and I also knew that we would have to give the officials equal time at a later date.

We talked about doing it on our Game Time show this Thursday or on FNF Friday.

I also told them that this was going to be big, and would be picked up and picked on around the state..

And so it was. On Sunday, I received am email letter from Dave Anderson, the president of the board 6 officials Carolina criticized. Anderson also was one of the officials in that game.

Anderson feels it was completely inappropriate and totally unfair to air such a piece. He says Mr. Carolina’s comments were not only untrue and unfounded, they were derogatory and shameful as well. Anderson went on to say that me and WFSB are equally culpable in the entire matter given our poor judgment in airing the segment.

Anderson said that his organization should be allowed to set the record straight.

And so it will.

I spoke with Anderson on the phone and explained why we aired the interview, telling him we thought any time a coach calls into question an entire officials organization and is willing to say so publicly, we think that’s news worthy.

I also agreed with him that he should have his chance to answer the allegations, which was our intent all along, as far back as Friday night when the comments aired.

Anderson will have his response delivered on camera without edit this Friday night on FNF.

Hope you’ll be there.

Five Games or Five Guys?
02/02/2010 - 9:20am
Joe Zone

When it comes to deciding which games we cover for our WFSB Friday Night Frenzy coverage, there are two big challenges. The first. Where can we go in the state to maximize the amount of games we can shoot with our two available photographers. The second, and not any less important. How and where do we fit in my dinner break? 

The strategy we've used for getting the most games on, and believe me, when you're doing a 15 minute show, we're most always going for quantity, not quality, but the strategy is to figure out where I can go with a cameraman to get a minimum of four games shot. John Holt spends hours every week checking the schedules of all of the schools and all of the sports. The key is to find a 4pm event, like hockey and then hope for a 6pm start, like wrestling, then finish up with basketball which most always begins at 7:00. And the games have to be with-in driving distance, say 30 minutes, especially the last two, or it can't be done. 

So last Friday night, we planned for a hockey game in Cromwell, wrestling and basketball in Simsbury, girls basketball in West Hartford and boys basketball in Bloomfield.

Five games, one crew, very aggressive planning.

So cameraman Mike Koppleman, Trinity intern Allison and I left WFSB in Rocky Hill at 3:30. We started off with the hockey game in Cromwell, Hall/Southington vs... East Catholic. That game started at 4:00. We knew we could shoot 2 periods, hope for a couple of goals, and then leave for our next assignment, a 6:00 wrestling match at Simsbury. 

We got lucky with the hockey, 3 goals by E.Catholic in the first two periods. So we got out of there at 5:00 and headed for Simsbury for the wrestling match between Simsbury and Conard. We were ahead of schedule, always a key when you're trying to fit dinner in.The basketball in Simsbury, Southington vs. Simsbury, (across the hall in another gym) didn't start until 7pm. It was 5:45 when we rolled into Avon. I live in Avon. I know where to grab a quick bite on the fly. McDonald's on rt 44 was the fast, easy choice. But about a half mile down the road was one of my favorites, Five Guys Burgers and Fries. The thing is, if we stop there, we're going to have to wait longer, and that could throw off the time for the rest of the night. What the heck, let's chance it. I mean it is Five Guys. 

While waiting for my order, bacon cheeseburger, small fries, no drink, my cell phone rang . Mark Fijalkowski, our FNF producer said not to worry about the basketball in West Hartford, a news crew was going to shoot it. There it was. "Don't worry about the game in West Hartford". What, me worry! Without having to make that stop in West Hartford, we could sit down at Five Guys for 15 or 20 minutes, then get to wrestling at 6:45, basketball across the gym at 7:00, and leave there to get to Bloomfield for the boys game between E.O.Smith and Bloomfield. 

We got to the wrestling at 6:40, in time to shoot 3 matches before the game across the hall started at 7. We left Simsbury at 7:15  with wrestling and basketball, enough highlights for our 30 second segments,  then drove the 18 minutes down the mountain to Bloomfield, arriving there in time for the second half.

That turned out to be our game of the night. E.O.Smith won the game by a point making a foul shot with less than 2 seconds to go. 

Four games, Five Guys. And that's why we call it the Frenzy.

All Signs Pointing To February 3rd
01/29/2010 - 10:11am
John Holt

While most texting savvy 17 and 18-year olds (are there any other types?) know the abbreviations LOL, OMG, GTG and BTW - just a select few probably throw around NLI with equal regularity.  NLI stands for National Letter of Intent and next Wednesday, February 3rd, elite high school athletes around Connecticut will be signing these letters as they accept scholarships to compete in college.

Nationally - and particularly in football hotbeds like the South - Signing Day is big news.  In fact incoming recruiting classes are a full time topic on sports radio in the South this time of year.  As a smaller state Connecticut is holding its own in producing Division 1 college football talent.  Next Wednesday will see as many as 12 high school athletes who played football in Connecticut last fall sign NLIs to play D-1 football.

Landing spots for this dynamic dozen include Penn State (Stamford's Khairi Fortt and The King School's Silas Redd),  UConn (St. Paul's Byron Jones and New Britain's Tebucky Jones, Jr.), Florida State (Xavier's Will Tye - by way of Salisbury School) and Florida (Wethersfield's Tyler Murphy).

Thanks to former Cheshire High School Head Coach Steve Addazio, currently the Gators' Offensive Coordinator and the acting head coach during Urban Meyer's leave, the Connecticut to Gainesville pipeline has become a fruitful one for the University of Florida. Bristol Central's Aaron Hernandez just finished an All American career at tight end for the Gators,  New London's Jordan Reed is a Florida QB who will be in his second year next fall and now Wethersfield's Tyler Murphy is also headed to Florida as a QB - joining Reed in the battle to take over for the legendary Tim Tebow.

Signing Day seems to become a bigger and bigger deal in Connecticut with each passing year.  It's a day of celebration for local athletes and a day that brings to an end what can be a stressful recruiting process in which nothing is certain until the ink drys on the NLI. Just ask Tyler Murphy who until a few days ago was expected to make official a verbal commitment he had given to not Florida, but Temple.

Click here to see a state by state breakdown of just what states are producing the most D-1 football players:

For its' size, Connecticut is doing itself proud and it's the leader among New England states.

Connecticut has a past (soon to be NFL Draft picks - Aaron Hernandez, Maryland's Bruce Campbell / Hyde and Iowa's Amari Spievey / Xavier) present (see above) and future (Berlin's Max Delorenzo, St Joseph's Tyler Matakevich and Ridgefield's Tommy Jordan) that have or will all make local headlines on Signing Day and to me that's PDG (that's Pretty Darn Good for your non-texting types).