1) Cubs radio announcer and future non-Hall of Fame baseball player Ron Santo
2) Danica Patrick
3) Sox announcer Hawk Harrelson's stories about how he did it when he played, which was about 40 years ago. Has the game changed in 40 years, Hawk? Maybe a bit?
4) All talk about Brett Favre coming out of retirement
5) The Chicago team in the women's pro basketball league
6) All TV commercials for Web site godaddy.com (see No. 9 above)
7) Any talk that suggests that the pro soccer league the Fire plays in is a "major" league like the NBA or NFL.
8) Anybody who thinks the Bulls should draft anyone besides Derrick Rose
9) Three of the hosts at sports-talk radio station WSCR (670-AM)
10) Bulls/Sox owner Jerry Reinsdord
May 2008 Archives
Of the 21 area high schools that field boys basketball teams, the three least-successful teams in terms of wins and losses last season were:
3) Round Lake with 7 wins
2) Carmel with 4 wins
1) Antioch with 1 win.
Note that Carmel will have a new coach next season.
Note that Round Lake will have a new coach next season.
Note that Antioch coach Mike Skinner has only been on the job one season. He replaced a coach after the Sequoits won just 6 of 28 games the year before last.
As we count down the hours to the end of another prep sports season, a tip of the Carmel High cap has to go in the direction of the Corsairs.
The school's girls soccer team is playing tonight at Buffalo Grove and is just one win away from qualifying for the Elite Eight state tournament.
The school's softball team was a surprise winner of a Class 4A regional title last weekend and will now try to defend the sectional crown it won last spring.
And the school's baseball team has at least a 50-50 shot of winning the Libertyville Sectional this week.
That's three pretty darn good spring sports teams coming from a football school.
A star running back for an area high-school team is rumored to be relocating this summer and will apparently attend another area high school that always seems to be good in football.
And, no, we're not talking about Carmel High because any student-athlete who transfers to Carmel would have to sit out a year. And any star running back who currently attends Carmel would be foolish to transfer somewhere else because he would already be in the best possible situation.
Keep your ears and eyes open during 7-on-7 passing camps this summer to see who's playing with who.
Yes, we were celebrating in The Locker Room when the Bulls won the NBA draft lottery to earn the right to draft Memphis point guard Derrick Rose.
These NBA playoffs have shown how important an all-star calibre point guard is to a team's success, especially if that team does not have a Hall of Fame-calibre player. Think Williams (Utah), Paul (New Orleans) & Billups (Detroit) among others.
The point-guard position is equally vital at the high-school level.
The News-Sun Player of the Year this past winter was Ronald Steward, point guard for Zion-Benton. And it had nothing to do with the halfcourt shot he hit at the buzzer to beat Evanston in the IHSA state tourney semifinals.
Rather, Ronald was the most important player to our area's most successful team.That makes him the most valuable. Maybe not the best ... but the most important.
That's what point guards are ... the most important.
Remember Warren during its great three-year run? It had Jordan Dalton at the point for two years and Ceola Clark for the third. Both were outstanding point guards.
You can't put too much value on a PG. Which is why the Bulls picking Derrick Rose is a no-brainer.
Reading and writing about Grant High girls track star Bailey Wagner winning state titles in three different years was the talk of The Locker Room until we started talking about the only area athlete to win girls track state titles in FOUR different years.
Whatever happened to Shakedia Jones, who was a sprint star at UCLA, and tried to make the U.S. Olympic Team in 2000 and 2004, only to be victimized both times by legendary cheater Marian Jones?
Back in the day, word was that Shakedia was going to become a doctor, but she doesn't surface on google for anything after her loses to legendary cheater Marian Jones in the 2004 Olympic Trials.
Plenty of mistakes are made in The Locker Room.
But the response made recently about former Niles West High hoops star Nik Garcia cannot go without comment.
Nik Garcia, one of the top prep basketball players in the state, is about to finish his junior year at Niles West High. He has ALREADY announced that he is transferring from Niles West because the hoops program is, in his words, "a shambles." That makes him a soon-to-be FORMER Niles West High hoops star.
The hope here is that he works his way up the shoreline and lands at Waukegan High. We can use him!
If you want to rank Brandon Paul of Warren as the No. 1 soon-to-be-senior boys basketball player in the state, go for it. After all, he is committed to the University of Illinois.
Brandon is not the problem.
Nor is ranking former Niles West star Nik Garcia No. 10.
However, when Web site ChicagoHoops.com lists the top 30 soon-to-be-senior boys basketball players in the state and does NOT include Zion-Benton High's Ronald Steward on it, the list is wrong.
That is as a bad an omission as you will see on any list of top players this season.
Terrible.
Waukegan High athletic director Dave Perkins may be way, way, way too conservative for some tastes, and may be a stickler for the letter of the IHSA law in a community in which we're pretty used to following the spirit of the law.
But you've got to give the guy credit for focusing on the all-important job of making sure as many of our Bulldog athletes as possible get to put their athletic skills to use at the collegiate level.
One of the key things a high school athletic program can do is make sure a school's student-athletes get a chance to take their game and brain to the next level.
In just one year on the job, Perkins has made a special point of making sure that happens ... and Waukegan's student-athletes -- now and in future years -- will benefit from it by getting an all-important college education.
So while Perkins sadly continues to not lead the bandwagon to get lights and artificial turf for the school's football field, our Bulldog cap is tipped in his direction for putting the school's student-athletes in position to succeed at the next level.
You probably don't have to look any further than Libertyville High, where the dynamic duo coaching team of Tiffany Taylor (head) and Laura Allen (assistant) has recently taken over.
The two have spent the last couple of years coaching cheerleading at Round Lake High, where they've been fighting a losing battle on a couple of fronts.
The change to Libertyville should energize them as well, plus they will now have the numbers to work with that they couldn't get at Round Lake.
Also, with Stevenson's longtime coach now retired, there is an opportunity for Libertyville to step up and join the ranks of the elite cheer programs in the North Suburban Conference.
The guess is that is exactly what will happen.
On the list of sports that are getting better as they're getting older, high-school softball is right at the top.
Back in the day, the sport was all about having a pitcher who could throw bullets and every batter was a walk or strikeout.
Then, came the slap-happy generation in whcih every girl was taught to bat left-handed and do this thing where they start running to first and slapping at the pitches with their aluminum bats.
Now, the sport has finally evolved to where it's actually very entertaining. The hitting has caught up to the pitching, and big thumpers who can turn games around with one swing of the bat are now integral in every lineup. That has also put a premium on defense. There have been more great defensive plays made in the last five college World Series than there were in the 20 prior years.
Defense, hitting and the infusion of the long ball have made this a very entertaining sport.
Can't think of a single reason why Zion-Benton High sophomore basketball star Lenzelle Smith needs to make a hasty decision about where he's going to play college basketball.
One of the top students in his class academically, the 6-3 guard/forward has already reportedly been offered scholarships by Illinois, Northwestern, Southern Illinois and Purdue.
That said, best he wait so that he can size up where he will best fit in at the next level.
There is no rush. As in just about everything in life, haste in recruiting makes for waste.
Good luck Lenzelle.
P.S. -- I luv the DePaul Blue Demons
