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State tournament time

By Roy Waters | The News Herald

Published: February 24, 2009

In the 1990s, Freedom High School reigned as the premier basketball school in our state.
The teams won five state championships and the years they didn't, the winners had to battle us to get there.
With the great seasons Freedom's boys and girls are having, maybe we are seeing a return to those days. Let's hope so.
I'm writing this before the first round of the state playoffs but it's going to take a very good team to beat either of them. There are so many good teams out there, however, that on any given night, anyone can be beaten regardless of their record.
Youngsters play so many games now that everyone has talent. Traveling teams, middle school teams, varsity and JV high school teams, that not only play 25 games during the basketball season, but also another 20 during the summer, produce experienced players that may have played more than 100 games by their senior year of high school.
With that level of experience, most teams can upset anyone at any stage of the playoffs. That was evident last year on the college scene when little Gardner-Webb University took on one of the most storied basketball teams of all-time in the University of Kentucky at Rupp Arena and beat the Wildcats.
The legend of that game will always be a part of the basketball lore at both schools.
The bottom line, everybody has talent now because of the sheer number of games available to our youth.
It would be great if both of Freedom's teams could add another state championship to the five already won and win in the same year like they did in '94.
Clay Henson
I had not seen former Patriot star Clay Henson play this year so I made the trip to Greensboro on Saturday to see my new great-granddaughter for the first time and also take in Clay's game at Guilford College.
Clay is a junior this year and having a great season. He is averaging almost 20 points a game and leading the Old Dominion Conference in scoring. He is a team co-captain and leading three-point shooter and also adds rebounding, assists and good defense to his team's effort each game.
The Quakers knocked off Randolph Macon in Saturday's game but it took a great final few minutes of the game to do it.
Clay had 15 points in the game and the young man who guarded him did one of the best defensive jobs on an outside shooter I've ever seen. The former Freedom all-star hit two threes early in the game and he never got another good look for one again.
Guilford will be the favorite this week as the Old Dominion Conference stages its annual tournament in Salem, Va. Last year, Guilford won the conference championship and advanced past the first round of the NCAA Division II playoffs.

Roy Waters is a sports columnist for The News Herald. Waters was baseball and basketball coach at Salem High School from 1955-1966, where his teams won 18 championships. In 2007, he was inducted into the Burke County Sports Hall of Fame.