Sports Blog

By Bill Peterson It's been a while since this space contained a new entry, so we should re-iterate the remarks from The Daily Drive: the author of this Internet confection has produced new sites dealing specifically with baseball and football so as to make this site more local in its orientation. The new sites are The Texas Baseball Review and The Football Review of Texas.
On the local front, sadly, it's long past time to eulogize the San Antonio Spurs, who fell in seven games to the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA's Western Conference semifinals. The Mavericks still live as a participant in the championship round, where they hold a 1-0 lead over the Miami Heat.
The Spurs entered the regular season as the Western Conference presumptive favorite after picking up veterans Nick Van Exel and Michael Finley. However, the less heralded Dallas roster proved deeper and more flexible.
Now that the Mavericks are clearly a threat within the Southwest Division and across the conference, the Spurs might wish to consider a couple questions.
First, how do the Spurs make themselves younger, faster and deeper all at once? And what is the right way to play the regular season? To the second, the Spurs beat Dallas in the division this year and, as close as the semifinal series played out, it might have cost them that series. The Mavericks decided to lay back and be as fresh as possible for the playoffs.
Among the Mavericks, only Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and DeSagana Diop played as many as 65 games. Injuries that hurt the Mavericks during the season may have helped them during the postseason. The various nicks sustained by the Spurs weren't as helpful.
The bruises afflicting Tony Parker might have cost the Spurs in his match-up with Terry. While Parker scored 21.1 points per game in the playoffs, compared with 18.9 during the regular season, his shooting percentage fell to 46.0 from 54.8. If a couple more of Parker's shots fall against Dallas, the Spurs probably are still playing.
Parker didn't have the quickness to stay with Terry defensively. Offensively, Parker missed the speed to penetrate and tried to compensate with his erratic three-point shot, making nine such attempts in only 13 playoff games after trying 36 threes during the regular season.
Now that Dallas has become the state of play in the West, while Phoenix and the two Los Angeles teams are on the come, it's going to be very interesting to watch the Spurs suits and see if they make a fresher team with more scoring options.

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June 10, 2006 21:56 - Summer means seven-on-seven

By Bill Peterson BUDA – It’s not too soon to begin dreaming about football season at Hays High School, where the Rebels will return to the Class 4A ranks this fall after working their way to near-dominance in six years against Class 5A Austin schools.
Indeed, the love of football has berthed in recent years a new, satellite football season played through the summer. The statewide seven-on-seven phenomenon has really caught fire in Northern Hays County after the Rebels advanced through pool play in the state tournament last year. The Rebels have played seven-on-seven for four years, with the results showing up last fall in a school-record passing attack led by quarterback Nash McPheeters.
Now, the Rebels are putting on a seven-on-seven league every Tuesday night through July 11 (excluding July 4) at Bob Shelton Stadium. The teams involved are composed of athletes who will compete in the fall for Hays, Lehman, Bowie, Dripping Springs, Akins and Del Valle. Each team will play two games per night.
The Rebels already have qualified again for the state tournament to be played July 14-15 in College Station. Lehman, which will play its first season of varsity football in the fall, will continue trying to win a berth through qualifying tournaments.
The return to Class 4A is likely to create an even bigger challenge than Class 5A for the Rebels, who routinely trounced Austin city schools where the game isn't taken as seriously. The Rebels usually stubbed their toes against Westlake, but they also wrecked the Chaparrals' 71-game district winning streak in 2003 and only a Westlake miracle snatched victory away from Hays last fall.
Joining Hays in District 26-4A will be Hays CISD cousin Lehman, as well as Schertz Clemens, Schertz Steele, New Braunfels, New Braunfels Canyon, Lockhart and Del Valle.

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