NOW AT 4-0 THE LYNX CONTINUE TO SUPRISE

Another game, another win. This time there was no need to battle back from a 3 or more possession deficit.

Lynx | Mercury | Box Score | Recap | Game Info | WNBA

LYNX NOW 3-0

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

The Minnesota Lynx are the WNBA's only undefeated team.

The recent doormat for the WNBA over the last couple of years have reeled off a 3-0 start including 2-0 on the road. Last season the Lynx couldn't buy a road win.

Tough defense against the Chicago Sky (1-2) resulted in a 75-69 win for the Minnesota Lynx (3-0).

See below for complete game information including the box score, game recap, and team links.

Lynx Sky Box Score Recap Game Info WNBA

OPENING TEXT FROM THE SKY WEBSITE - The Chicago Sky were within two points of the Minnesota Lynx in the final minute on Thursday, but couldn't get any closer, losing at home 75-69. Sylvia Fowles led the way for Chicago with 16 points and 11 rebounds.

OPENING TEXT FROM THE LYNX WEBSITE - No team in the previous nine seasons of Minnesota Lynx history had ever started a season 3-0, but the 2008 squad did just that with a 75-69 win over the Chicago Sky Thursday night.

Mn. Lakers prepare for The Battle On The Hardwoods Tournament this weekend

The Minnesota Lakers have received a tough draw in this weekend’s Battle on the Hardwood held at Woodbury High School. NC Heat, ranked #1 on Kevin Anderson's recruiting website for the 17U age group, and North Tartan, ranked #4 in the same polling, is lumped in Pool A with the Minnesota Lakers. The top 2 finishers will advance to the championship bracket. The Lakers are coming off of a 4th place finish at the state MYAS Championships held in Saint Francis. If the players can remain healthy, the Lakers might be able to steal 1 game, if not both games, in their pool play. With the other two teams having the expectation to win because of their ranking, the Lakers should be able to play with a sense of looseness, which can only help their efforts. The Lakers are comprised of players from southwest Minnesota and with the MYAS Championships being their first main tournament, expect the Lakers to be on the rise. The team is balanced with inside shooting, and outside shooting, and they are able to interchange players with ease. Definitely a team to watch for in the upcoming weeks.

Lynx Get First Road Win Since 2006

For complete details please visit one (or more) of the following links:

Game Info | Recap | Boxscore | Play By Play | Lynx Home | Comets Home |

The Battle on the Hardwood Tournament

This Tournament is hosted by the North Tartan Program using the gyms floors at Woodbury High School.

We are posting the published schedule links because there seems to be some issues with some browsers linking to them. We recommend using an IE browser.

11U/12U Bracket

13U/14U Bracket

14U Bracket

15U Bracket

16U Pool Play Bracket

16U Bracket Play Bracket

17U Bracket

MSHSL Boys' Lacrosse Semi-Final Photos

Photos by www.AnnaRajdl.com

For more information on the MSHSL and the Lacrosse Tournaments click on the links below:
MSHSL
Boys' Tournament
Girls' Tournament

Lynx Defuse Shock in Home Opener

The following is part of a story on the Minnesota Lynx website:

Mike Trudell
Lynx Reporter

Heading into Minnesota's season-opening contest against the Detroit Shock Sunday afternoon at Target Center, one expected the Lynx to put forth a solid 40-minute effort. After all, head coach Don Zierden's team did as much in nearly each and every game last season.

Well, let's just say that expectations were exceeded.

Not only was Minnesota's energy fantastic from the beginning, but all three of its 2008 draft picks were absolutely terrific in helping to deliver an improbable 84-70 victory over the defending Eastern Conference champs.

To read more - Click Here

The following are links to stories related to this game:
WNBA.COM This will include the AP news story, box score, and NBA-TV highlights.
StarTribune - Lynx local paper coverage
PioneerPress - Lynx local paper coverage
The Detroit News - Shock local paper coverage
ESPN Message Board
Inside Hoops Message Board
Yahoo Message Board
Lynx Fan's Message Board
Shock Fan's Message Board
Minnesota Lynx official web site
Detroit Shock official web site
WNBA official web site

If you want us to list a message board not mentioned - drop us an e-mail to wnba@communityhoops.com.

MN Lakers Win Twice

The Seeds For Girls 17U/11th I event this weekend @ St. Francis
1 MN Triple Threat 16U
2 Champlin Park Rebels
3 X-Factor 2
4 SM Magic
5 MN Finishers
6 Wayzata DD
7 MN Comets 16
8 MN Lakers
9 Howard Lake Lakers

I want to first thank Coach Mark Kellen for calling in this result.

The 8th seeded MN Lakers needed sudden death overtime to beat Howard Lake Lakers 35-33. Then in the second game of the night for the MN Lakers, they beat MN Comets 16's 55-52.

Now personally, when I look at the seedings for this tournament, I wonder why the bottom 3 seeds are in the same pool, while the top 3 seeds are in the same pool as well. Granted you must beat whom ever to win anyway but still, if i was the 3rd seed I would want a better chance at a braket game after pool play then to play the top 2 teams right off the bat. Just my thought.

Coaches - feel free to post your results in the comments section. please provide some names for your team and some scoring as well. If you want, I will set you up as a contributer to this blog to promote your team/program. Just e-mail your request for this to Tony@communityhoops.com.

GOOD NEWS & BAD NEWS

The Good News - It is now easier to get to our blog service. Just type in www.communityhoops.com and boom - your here.

The Bad News - All audio and older pre-blog things we have posted are no longer available with this new change including links to audio clips on this blog - at least not as you have known it in the past.

If you want to hear some old audio from the past 3 years just e-mail us and we will re-post it for all to enjoy. Our new temporary e-mail address is UR_HOOPS@YAHOO.COM

- Thanks -

Photo Link Is Fixed!

For those of you that have been waiting for the Photos from Ellsworth's visit to the capital, it is now fixed.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS

or scroll down to see the slide show we put together.

Holiday Tournament Schedule Announced - just a tad early

As posted on gbbrecruit2.blogspot.com, here is the 2008 Dick's Sporting Goods Holiday Classic hosted by Hopkins High School on December 29-31.

Once again Community Hoops will be there with complete coverage of each game for the Internet but on a delayed feed. We will have both video and audio coverage.

The championship will be at 6 pm on New Year's Eve.

The event kicks off on Monday the 29th with:

Osseo vs Burnsville at 2 pm

Mpls South vs Eastview at 4 pm

St. Paul Central vs Eden Prairie at 6 pm

Grand Rapids vs Hopkins at 8 pm

Five of the teams were in the state tournament last year.

Honored at the State Capital

The Ellsworth Boys team was honored at the State Capital on Thursday - 5/1/2008 - and we hope to have audio late Friday 5/2/08 - The audio was not good enough to post.

The Ellsworth Boy's Basketball Team and Cody Schilling both received Minnesota Legislature House Resolution's dated for April 15th, 2008 - on May 1st, 2008. We here at Community Hoops were honored to have been invited by the coaches to cover this event and take some pictures. Anna Rajdl took the photo's and did a great job. Here are just 17 of the over 350 she took.



CLICK THE PLAY ARROW TO SEE THE PHOTO SLIDE SHOW

Click Here to purchase photo's

The team arrived a tad early after allowing for traffic issues that might have slowed them down so there was a chance to just hang out on the front lawn for a while. Then at about 11:45am the Panthers got to visit with Governor Pawlenty, State Representative Doug Magnus, and others.

After about 15 minutes of pictures and fellowship, they made their way to the House floor where the team was honored by having the 2 resolutions read by Speaker - Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Chair - Anthony "Tony" Sertich.

Following this the team and coaches were treated to a personal tour of the House side of the Capital Building by State Representative Doug Magnus where he lead them through the daily schedule and explained how fast and slow bills can pass or fail.

AREA CLINIC HAS FEW OPINGINGS

Tom Nordland is in town for the week and weekend. His clinics have very few openings remaining. For more information please go to his web site www.swish22.com

SOME FANS NEED TO GET A CLUE

I found this comment on another board and I could not agree more with the general statement that is made here.

The following link was added to this posting on 4/29/2008 at 10:15pm

This comment was found at StevensSports.blogspot.com

I cannot believe all the selfish clowns out there who think that if you go to "Augustana" you have not hit the big time.

Here are a few facts for you to think about (if you have any brain cells).

Not every player wants to play at Duke, North Carolina, or other traditional winners.

Fact - Cody had already decided to stay near his home and family a long time ago.

Fact - Too many times a player goes to a college that is more than a 6 hour drive from their hometown and wishes they had not for all kinds of reasons.

Fact - Cody was looking for a college that was more than basketball. One that would help him grow educationally, spiritually, and personally.

Did he deserve the Mr. Basketball Award? I think he did but so did at least 3 of the 5 finalists. I will tell you what Cody does not deserve and that is most of the "FANS" putting down his ability just because he wanted to stay near his home.

Too many "FANATICS" and not enough "FANS" out there I guess (and yes, if you do not know the difference LOOK IT UP).

And the winners are....

Miss. Basketball 2008 is Courtney Boylan - Chaska

Mr. Basketball 2008 is Jordan Taylor - Benilde-St. Margret's

Mr. & Miss. Basketball awards are today

The awards ceremony begins at 5pm today in St. Louis Park. Don Shelby of WCCO-TV Channel 4 will be the Master of Ceremonies.

Community Hoops will be the first to bring you the results immediately after the announcement live from the banquet.

The finalists for the Miss Basketball Award are:
Courtney Boylan, Chaska
Kiara Buford, St. Paul Central
Briana Mastey, Becker
Kamille Wahlin, Crookston
Brittnye McSparron, Eastview

The finalists for the Mr. Basketball Award are:
Jared Berggren - Princeton
Michel Floyd – Cretin-Derham Hall
Cody Shilling - Ellsworth
Jordan Taylor - Benilde-St.Margaret’s
Anthony Tucker - Minnetonka

Temporary change for gbbrecruit.blogspot

Due to technical issues Kevin Anderson's website has changed addresses for the next few days. The new web address is http://gbbrecruit2.blogspot.com/

You Tube Interviews from the Girl's All-Star Weekend

Your comments are welcomed - After viewing 1 or more of these interviews scroll down a little more to add your comments for all to see.

It was a pleasure to be a part of the broadcast team from Keystone Productions this past weekend for the 2008 Girl's All-Star Games. You can read more about the coverage at The Sports Brain Blog.

The 2 games that were taped on Sunday will be edited and posted soon. You can always check here for the update on the games.

Stats for the 4 games were done by Wayzata Results Inc. You will need to click on "Clash of the Classes Website Link" to view them.

The following are some of the interviews already posted on the You Tube Channel -

Don Mulhern - Head Coach at University of Wisconsin - Superior

University of Minnesota players Ashley Ellis-Milan and Zoe Harper

Becca Friestleben - Holy Family Catholic

Alex Montgomery - Cannon Falls

Jennifer Dowd - Rogers teammate of All-Star Casey Mann

Brianna Mastey - Becker

Casey Mann - Rogers

Kiara Buford - St. Paul Central and Ephesia Holmes - Minneapolis South

CODY SCHILLING SIGNS WITH AUGUSTANA

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM STEVENSSPORTS.BLOGSPOT.COM

According to John Millea of the Minneapolis StarTribune, Cody Schilling signed a letter of intent to go play basketball at Augustana College in Sioux Falls South Dakota. Cody Schilling is Minnesota’s all time boy’s basketball leading scorer.

This information has been confirmed by Mark Kellen.

Minnesota basketball shooting expert returns for clinics at Powell Center

The “SWISH SHOOTING TOUR” is coming to Minnesota this month. Tom Nordland, one of Minnesota’s greatest high school shooters, is returning to put on a set of clinics for coaches and players at the Colin Powell Youth Leadership Center in south Minneapolis. The creator of the highly-acclaimed Swish and Swish 2 shooting videos, Tom is on a mission to shift the way the “Lost Art” of shooting is understood, learned and taught.

In conjunction with Kelby Brothen and the “Urban Stars Basketball Club,” Tom will put on eight 4-hour clinics from April 30th through May 5th. Some of the clinics are reserved for the Powell Center kids, but most are open to the public, and two of them will be just for coaches. You can see the details and enroll at Tom’s website (www.swish22.com). Click on “Clinics, Camps, Lessons.”

Tom’s approach to basketball’s most important skill is different from the way shooting is normally taught, yet it can be proven to be the way of the great shooters. It comes from being a great high school shooter at Minnesota Roosevelt* who lost his touch for over 30 years and then rediscovered it 18 years ago. Because of this experience, he sees shooting in a different light, in terms of big muscles vs. small muscles, minimizing variables, the importance of alignment of hand and ball with the eye, the generation and use of inertia to make accuracy easier, and a constant, automatic Release. In a word, he’s “simplified” the skill of shooting.

As Dale Davis, former Indiana Pacer and Detroit Piston power forward put it years ago, Tom teaches “a combination of technique and the science of repeatability.” That’s a beautiful way to describe it -- part technique, part the putting of shooting into a form that allows the shooter to find the center of the basket over and over and over, even under great pressure.

Current coaching methodology isn’t working. Mediocre shooting performance is rampant. You see a magnificent team like Memphis (final record 38-2) miss 4 of 5 crucial free throws where just one more of them would have won the game. For years our national teams have been getting beaten by teams with less physical ability and talent, but who have better teamwork and shooting. This is the “answer” people are seeking!

Visit Tom’s website for his background and the special endorsements, remarkable testimonials, video clips, articles, and a collection of 107 monthly Newsletters. Come to the Powell Center and learn how to coach yourself and others.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact: Tom Nordland

Swish International, Inc.

888/794-7422

Tom@swish22.com

*Tom lead his ‘57 team to the second of two consecutive State Championships and was honored last year for the 50th anniversary of his free throw record that was tied by Cody Schilling of Ellsworth -- 19 in one game.