Beyond the Scoresheet

going bowling!

December 20, 2006 on 12:40 pm | In analysis | 1 Comment

Time for my weekly post before I head to N’awlins for the R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, my school’s first bowl appearance in 45 years. I’m proud to say that my father was a student at Rice when he attended our last bowl appearance back in 1961 … he’s flying in from Jersey so he can attend two in a row! Along with several of my roommates and buddies, there will be plenty of proud alumni on hand in the Superdome, and a decent turnout of Rice fans – we sold out our 6,800-ticket allotment.

I’ve had a lot on my mind this week, but there’s been some exciting stuff on the ice as well. Tracking down holiday tournaments has been crazy, so my thanks to those who sent me the SCT and PCT seeds and information on other tournaments. I had to piece together the schedule for the Hamilton Hornet Holiday Invitational from highschoolsports.net schedules and follow prep school tournaments on their respective sites. I still need final pairings for the Bayonne and Montclair Tournaments. And if everybody knows of another St. Joseph in the area, we could have a fun tournament in which all four schools would have the same name.

Okay, on the ice … Delbarton only beat Rhode Island’s LaSalle Academy 1-0, but the Green Wave held a major (36-12) shot advantage. Delbarton will get a much stiffer test today against defending R.I. champion Bishop Hendricken. In other Gordon Conference action, Seton Hall Prep and Pope John have been very impressive of late, while tonight’s St. Peter’s Prep-CBA game is one of the games of the week.

There are a lot of teams out there that deserve some attention, but I want to highlight a few recent big wins … Governor Livingston beat West Orange for the first time since 2003 (0-4) with a 2-1 win the other day … Nottingham recently earned its first win of the year with an 8-2 demolition of Valley Division struggler Hightstown … Lawrenceville and Princeton Day both showed well in their respective tournaments last weekend … Verona finally won a close game with a 4-3 win over St. Joseph (Metuchen) … Watchung Hills has been on a roll lately and still drew a brutal first-round SCT matchup … Brick Memorial and Point Pleasant appear on a collision course atop the Southern Blue … The top two Morris County divisions and the NBIAL could easily lead the state in ties at their current clip.

Finally, in other media coverage, you can check out the Summit-Cranford game online tomorrow at SportsNet America. Hats off to the Star-Ledger for its terrific job of getting scores up on the same night they happen instead of waiting until the next morning. I get a lot of queries about scheduling rules and state tournament regulations – the NJSIAA does have an online document that settles a lot of that, so check it out. Still no official word on how the NJSIAA considers shootout results (Westfield and Old Bridge are definitely interested), but they will always be considered ties on this site. And kudos to Mike Morreale for his opening rankings – I don’t have a lot of criticisms and I don’t plan to throw out competing rankings until I have seen at least one game, so that means after Christmas at some point.

As always, I can be reached by e-mailing jty [at] njhockey.org.

Watch the Rice game Friday night on ESPN2, and go Owls!