pdfan

Maybe Buckingham will be looking ahead so much for their trip to Richlands that they'll forget about Martinsville coming to town Friday. lol ! Hopefully the Dogs can keep it within 40

EHC, game of the week in the PD area will be Magna Vista @ GW-Danville. Both teams with a ton of athletes, MV with a Wake Forest commit and GW with a NC State commit( both are DB/WR). Will be a big time atmosphere in Danville on Friday. Also Mavahi should beat Patrick Co on Friday to finish 4-6, could easily be 7-3 as they have blown 3 4th quarter leads in losses to McMichael, Tunstall and Halifax Co. Former VT defensive end Orion Martin is got the program going in the right direction but they shouldn't be a threat to any of the SWVA powers. It's just good seeing the Dogs being competitive again. For awhile now football was just a distraction until bball started.

I graduated in 75 from another local high school(F-C) and played against all of the names you mentioned above, I still think the 75 state champs had about the most talent on it as a whole as any team I've witnessed over the years, Mason and Varn went to Clemson, Mahan to Tennessee then Hampton, Burgess played D1 somewhere and has had 2 sons play bball for VCU over the last few years and a bunch of others played D2 and D3. The early 60's(the Sonny Wade-Taylor Edwards era) till the early 90's were the golden era of Mavahi football. Hard to believe they only have 2 state championships. But they did have to play AAA from 67 thru 74. They still have those 14 state bball championships to fall back on, lol. Good to talk about M-HC history with you EHC

EHC, segregation had nothing to do with it. This rule came about 6-7 years after intergration of Martinsville-Henry Co schools. This was called the "Martinsville rule" by the VHSL and was brought about by the school AD's and principals who were tired of MHS beating their football teams very badly. The rule only applied for football. At the time the Piedmont was a 10 team district and the rule stated you only had to play 8 district games to qualify for the championship instead of 9. So everybody dropped the Dogs in football, but played them in all other sports. A fellow whose last name was Carter who played on those teams wrote a book about the teams experiences over the 2 or 3 years that the Dogs had to play under this rule, all leading up to when Martinsville went to Southhampton and beat them 7-0 to end a long home winning for Southhampton who by the way won the state championship that year with their only loss coming to the Dogs. If you can find the book EHC it's a good read, a lot of good memories from bygone era. Football hasn't been good as a whole in the area recently except for Magna Vista the last few years.

Final Magna Vista 68 Halifax Co 6

Martinsville 64 Greensville 48 Final

Couldn't have put it any better G-Man. For 3 and a half quarters it was there for the taking for the Dogs but in the last 4 minutes I guess we figured it was better to give than to receive!!

Martinsville led for over 3 quarters of the game and by as many as 10 points in the 3rd period. DR trimmed the lead to 3 at the end of the 3rd and finally took the lead with around 4 minutes to go, but Mavahi would tie it up 2 times in the last couple of minutes but could not get the ball with a chance to take the lead. The Dogs were down 2 with 45 seconds to go with a chance to tie and down 3 with under :20 to go but missed shots both times. DR hit a foul shot with 6.5 seconds to go for the final margin, which was DR's largest lead of the game. Edmunds was a beast on the defensive end of the court holding Holland to 11 points and pretty much making Mavahi"s life miserable on the boards. Congrats to DR on a well played game. Hope we get to see them again in the finals if we take care of business in the semis.

Props to the G-Men, you were everything that was advertised and more. Knowing Mavahi, I thought your coaches had a great game plan and the kids executed it well until the last 2-3 minutes. It came down to 2 or 3 missed shots or turnovers and Martinsville finally hitting a couple of 3's down the stretch to get back in the game. 4 & 23 were as good a pair of guards that we have seen all year and you can tell 10 has a bright future ahead of him. I had said in an earlier post I hoped the Dogs could keep it close and pull it out at the end and luckily that's what happened for the Dogs faithful. It's obvious to me with the coaches you have in place and the talent you have coming back that this won't be the last time these teams will see each other in the post season in years to come. I wish it would be some way to play a home and home with Graham in the regular season, I think it would be a benefit to both programs. Again, congrats on a great season and good luck in the future.

You are correct G-Man, they told us before we left the gym Wednesday night that the game would be at Magna Vista on Friday night.

Doesn't sound as if this match up is going to be very favorable for the Dogs. Graham sounds a lot like Halifax Co. who beat Martinsville 2 out of 3 times this year, the only difference being Halifax did have their on 6-7 kid to match up with Holland on the inside. Mavahi is going to do what they do, try to turn you over and get out and run. A lot of trapping in the half court don't press much in the full court. I agree with mhsalum, I think a lot of this games outcome will be decided on how close the game is officiated. Dogs will have a long trip ahead of them Wed. and as G-Man said they have not played as well on the road as they have at home. Hopefully they will be ready to play when they get to Richlands today, because if they aren't ready it sounds like Graham could make this ugly quick. The Dogs are still a fairly young team( only play 1 senior a significant amount of minutes, start 1 sr 3 jr 1 soph), and with a jv program that has gone 40-4 the last 2 years, I really think that next year could be the year for them. They will be loaded in 05-06. Don't sleep on Dan River, I don't think they are quite as good as last year but they are still a very solid team with good overall size and are very quick.

Mavahi hitting on all cylinders tonite. Didn't get but 10 from big man Holland. I think they hit 14 or 15 three's tonight. They got big nights on the defensive end of the court from everybody that played. With all that being said, I still think they are more than going to have their hands full with the G-Men Wednesday night. With the long trip ahead of them and with all of the talent that Graham has, I feel as if the Dogs are the underdogs in this game. I just hope they can keep it close and have a shot to pull it out at the end. Mhsalum what is your take on this game?

You got more than a shot, Martinsville has lost 6 games this year. Don't think they are as strong this year as they were last year. To me factoring in the long trip to Richlands for the game I would say that Graham would be favored in this game, what's their record like 22-3. I think Mavahi will have their hands full Wed. night.

They have to win the next game and get to the regional finals. They could hypothetically lose the regional finals and still move on to face the winner of the east region in the state semis. So they would have to win 3 possibly 4 games to win the state championship. The state semis and finals are in Richmond.

When do they play and where?

The 4 teams to advance to the 2A west bracket from down southside way are Martinsville, Glenvar,Dan River and Buckingham. After the finals are played we will see who the match ups will be and where they will be at.

Conference 38 semi finals; Glenvar 55-James River 38. J. Williams leads Glenvar with 20 points. JR led by 2 at the half but Glenvar out scored them 29-10 in the second half. They will meet Martinsville in the finals of the tourney after the Dogs beat Floyd Co 84-50 behind 41 points from 6-7 center Devonntae Holland. The Dogs led 50-20 at the half and cruised from there. Finals are tomorrow at James River HS (weather permitting) @6:00 girls final #1 seed Floyd vs #2 seed Mavahi and boys at 7:45 #1 seed Mavahi vs #2 seed Glenvar.

Conference 38 pushed back another night. Semis now on Tues. the 24th Mavahi-Floyd at 6:00 and Glenvar-James River at 7:45. I guess the finals will still be played on Wed, I think I heard that they moved the girls semis Tuesday night to Glenvar,

G-Man, thanks for letting us down here in southside know the hard cold facts on what chance the teams out of conference 37 and 38 have in the regionals. I guess we can all save gas and eating money for something else since the outcome of the tournament has already been decided. Good luck to the G-Men, maybe they have a snowballs chance of pulling off an upset. Mavahi and Dan River aren't as strong as last year, so it may be a hard row to hoe trying to get back to the state semi's this year.

Martinsville lost tonight in the Piedmont District tourney finals to 5A Halifax Co. 58-41. The Dogs open up Conference 38 play Wed. at James River High School against the winner of the Giles-Floyd Co. game. The other semi-final game will be Glenvar vs.James River. I still think right now that Dan River is the class of the region down this way, can't really speak about the teams from SWVA but thru some coaches I have heard nothing but good things about VHS and Graham.

Martinsville at 17-4 have lost twice to 4A GW-Danville(who they beat 82-68 the last time the played)once to 5A Halifax Co.(who they split with this year, both winning big at home)and to 1A Radford by 1 point on 2 foul shots with 3 seconds left. Like I said in a earlier post they are not unbeatable, but they play very hard on the defensive end and get a lot of turnovers, they love to run but also have the big 6-7 kid to grab a lot of rebounds and score on the inside. If they get out of conference play I believe the regionals are at Richlands, so them and Dan River will have to make the long trek out to SWVA to do battle with the teams from out there.

Vista is tough and when they get one of the big boys back they will really be a handful for anyone to beat. Should come down between them and Radford this year in 1A, I believe anything else would be an upset.

Don't discount Dan River either. Martinsville beat them 50-39 earlier in the year but their big man Edmunds was only playing his 2nd or 3rd game after returning from an injury from football.(he's going to Tech next year on football scholly) They have beat AltaVista by 19 recently and play them again tomorrow night at home. Mavahi and Dan River are both very quick and have good size with the Holland boy from the Bulldogs being 6-6 or 6-7 and Dan River has 2 or 3 guys in the 6-4, 6-5 range. Both teams are not unbeatable, but both are pretty solid teams.

Bob, appreciate your opinion on the relative strength of the 2A teams in the state, of which I haven't seen as many as you have. But with that being said, after watching the regionals last year at Floyd Co., the teams in SWVA are going to have to step it up to compete with Dan River or Martinsville, who both return a lot of key parts from their teams from last year. Martinsville(record is 16-4 at this time) especially returns 4 starters from last years team and is a team with only 1 senior playing any significant minutes. Both of these teams are going to be tough outs at the regional level.

GW and Martinsville have always been big rivals in bball and a lot of talk had been going on social media building up to the game. There was heavy police presence, everybody going in had to go thru medal detectors and so on. The game was very physical with around 40 fouls and 4 T's called on both teams combined. With 4:10 left on a loose ball situation under the GW basket players got tangled up and punches were thrown. At the Mavahi gym the crowd is very close to the floor on all 4 sides and when the fight happened, all heck broke loose and the crowd rushed the floor. After about 10 minutes they got everything under control and were clearing the gym, and there was talk of finishing the game with the gym empty. But after a few more minutes police officials suggested they not resume the game because of the atmosphere outside the gym. When the discussion went on about what they were going to do to finish the game(at the time it was 55-51 GW) the Martinsville AD said that since GW was ahead at the time he would just forfeit the game to the Eagles. This whole thing was not one sided, the only 2 arrested were from Danville(obstruction of justice and felony assault of a police officer) but there is plenty of blame to be laid at the feet of the Martinsville players and fans. As far as calling the 2 coaches trashy, if you knew these two fellows personally I don't think you would feel that way. But if you feel that way so be it, nothing I can say on here will change your mind.