A touch of the flu and a case of writer’s block are conspiring against me as this week’s column deadline approaches. Therefore, I’ll offer up a few random thoughts to keep you entertained enough to come back next week and just long enough to not realize I’m winging it this week …
• The state basketball tournament is a weird and brutal place sometimes. Warren Central’s girls’ team is the best it’s been in almost a decade, and has to go face a 29-1 Olive Branch team in the second round. Vicksburg’s boys are talented enough to get to the Jackson portion of the Class 5A tournament no matter what, but draw two sub-.500 teams in their first two games.
It never hurts to have the luck of the draw on your side.
• Speaking of basketball, congratulations to Warren Central’s boys’ team for winning its first state tournament game in 42 years by beating Hernando Tuesday. The Vikings’ last tournament win was 18 months before I was born. Now I feel old.
• It’s amazing the things that come into your head when you’re in a deep, fevery dream state. While sleeping through my illness Monday and Tuesday, I conjured up solutions for controlling dreams, making time travel possible, and how to beat Connecticut’s women’s basketball team. All of them, sadly, went into the ether a few minutes after I woke up.
Maybe next flu season I’ll come up with a way to make interstellar travel feasible and then forget the details while brushing my teeth.
• Malcolm Butler is serving as the grand marshal of Vicksburg’s Mardi Gras parade this weekend. It’s the second parade in the city in three years where he’s been the featured guest. If the football thing doesn’t work out he might have a career as a professional float rider.
• The St. Aloysius soccer team plays at Central Hinds this afternoon in the MAIS Class AAA semifinals. Central Hinds has won 59 games and three state championships in a row, and St. Al is missing several injured starters. This could be one of the biggest upsets in state history, or get as ugly as Central Hinds wants it to be.
• Baseball and softball are starting already, and we apparently won’t even have to suffer through the brutal cold nights that so often mark the early part of the season. Score one for climate change.
You’ve been a great audience. Be sure to tip your waitress.
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Ernest Bowker is a sports writer for The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com