Published: December 16, 2009 10:51 pm      

Holiday hoops on tap

Round robins slated at trade center, CHS

Christmas is creeping closer so that means it’s time for holiday basketball round robins and tournaments.

The Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention center will host 10 boys teams and seven girls teams — they represent 11 schools — in its annual Carpet Capital Classic round robin starting Friday night with Dalton’s Catamounts and Lady Catamounts playing White County’s boys and girls.

The doubleheader begins at 6 p.m. with the girls game and the boys game will follow.

Other boys teams performing at the trade center are North Murray, Tennessee Temple, Murray County, Northwest Whitfield, Adairsville, Heritage-Catoosa, Red Bank (Tenn.) and Hixson (Tenn.).

Girls teams, in addition to Dalton, are North Murray, White County, Heritage-Catoosa, Tennessee Temple, Sequatchie County and Red Bank.

There are seven games scheduled on Saturday, six on Monday and six more on Tuesday, the final day of the round robin.

Admission to the Carpet Capital Classic is $8 for adults and $4 for children 12-and-under.

“For us this is a little different,” Dalton boys coach Mike Duffie said. “This sort of becomes our preseason. We start late and some teams already have six, seven or eight games under their belts. We can drop back, reform and work on some stuff. Our football players miss on the average three weeks of practice and this gives us a chance to get going as a group.”

The Cats are 4-1 overall and 3-1 in Region 7-4A and coming off a 73-44 thumping of rival Northwest Whitfield on Tuesday.

“I tell you what,” Duffie said, “if everybody stays healthy and we come through the grading period with everybody intact, I think we’ve got a pretty good team. We can do about everything. We’ve got some size, got some speed, and got some strong kids. But we’ve got to shoot better from the free-throw line and 3-point line. But I like the way this team, which is a veteran team, is coming together.”

Murray County boys coach Greg Linder will use the Carpet Capital Classic games to give his young squad more experience heading into the holiday break.

“We’re looking to improve and work on things we’ve seen over the last few weeks to get better at against some good varsity teams,” Linder said. “We need to work on handling pressure, work on making sure we keep up our intensity and work on fundamentals.”

The Indians (3-5, 1-2) lost their top nine players from last season to graduation and 10 of the 14 players on this year’s roster are sophomores and juniors. And those juniors didn’t get a lot of playing time in 2008-09.

“We’ve got to get our rotations in place and get some of these guys some confidence,” Linder said. “Anytime you lose two in a row, like we have, you worry about that kind of thing. With a young team like we have, you want o make sure they don’t lose confidence.”

Northwest’s No. 8-ranked Lady Bruins, coming off a 47-40 victory over rival Dalton on Dec. 28, make their yearly trek to Snellville to participate in the 19th Deep South Classic at Brookwood High School.

Coach Margaret Stock-burger’s Lady Bruins (6-2, 3-0) will tip off the tournament at 2 p.m. on Monday against Madison County. With a victory Northwest would advance to play the McEachern-Grayson winner in the winner’s bracket semifinals at 2 p.m. on Friday.

Other girls team in the tournament are Brookwood, Forest Park, Peachtree Ridge and Winder Barrow.

Christian Heritage is hosting a three-day round robin starting today at 4 p.m. when the Lady Lions play the Chattanooga Patriots, a home-school team. The Lions play the Patriots in the second game on a four-game card.

Strong Rock Christian’s girls and boys play South Pittsburg (Tenn.) and Jackson County (Tenn.) at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., respectively.

While teams competing at the trade center and in Snellville can just go play, Christian Heritage is faced with the task of staging its round robin.

“It’s pretty much a six month to a year-long process getting everything situated,” Lions coach Chad Woodson said.

“Everybody has their schedules completed pretty early, so we use our league Web site, as well as Tennessee Web sites, to get people interested.

“Once teams commit to playing here, we stay in contact with them throughout the year.”

Woodson said it takes 12 volunteers to put on each game, including concession stand workers, ticket takers, announcers and clock operators.

“Our goal it to make the other teams feel just as important as we are,” Woodson said. “We really try to do a good job with that.”

The Lions Christmas Classic started with a tournament format, but it was changed to a round robin to give teams a third game, and Woodson is OK with that.

“If I had my choice, I prefer the tournament set up where you actually play out the brackets,” he said. “We did that the first year and enjoyed that. We decided another game before the holidays was a better way to go for everybody.”

Admission to the Lions Christmas Classic is $5 for adults and $2 for students.