Wilson 51, Timber Creek 32

There comes a moment in a long, hard push that a person just hits a wall, and can only stare at the screen and hope energy arrives from the space in between body and air. You know the things you need to get done at these moments, and you might even know what needs to get done first, but to begin -- to continue to work -- is not quite possible.

That's where I was a couple of hours ago, but luckily a walk around the deserted newsroom dislodged me, and now I'm back, bobbing in the stream of productivity again. The way it usually works, though, is that these little moments of paralysis grow in frequency and duration until whatever ordeal I'm dealing with has ended. It used to be finals week when I was back in college, and I would end up staying over nights in my office at the student newspaper. These days it's the end of every high school sports season.

I am going home after this, so forgive me if this post doesn't cover everything.

Had fun at Wilson today, especially sitting near some particularly passionate TC parents. In any gym, I almost always try to sit behind the scorer's table on the visiting team's side, about halfway up the bleachers. That tends to be were the fewest parents and other intensely partisan fans hang out. It's not that I don't enjoy the atmosphere the fans bring with them, it's just that if anybody's saying anything really mean, I'd rather not hear it. The TC folks were more vociferous than I expected, but they weren't probably any more delusional than anybody else. At times, it just seemed like they were because they were the closest ones to me.

I applaud TC for playing hard in what can be a very intimidating environment. Woodrow Wilson is really not the place you want a game to get out of hand, and it almost did in the second half. It's almost lucky it wasn't that close, or else emotions would really have flared. The Tigers were the better team, and did a great job limiting Erin Floyd, whose status as one of the area's best players is not hurt by today's result. Wilson has been hit by the "Washington Township bug," and it supposedly took Ossiera Monroe off the court for the last four days, but you could have fooled me. That girl is quick. One of the major factors in the game is that Floyd could not beat her off the dribble. If she had been able to, that drive was there for her all day long. As it was, the Chargers had to try to get her the ball with entry passes, and Wilson's team quickness broke a lot of those up.

Toward the end of the game, the Wilson guards started to hold the ball. TC was looking for a five-second call but couldn't get one because they couldn't stay within five feet of the Wilson girls for any length of time. I felt sorry for one TC girl, who slipped and made an already good Wilson crossover dribble look postitively And-One-Mix-Tape. The Wilson faithful almost brought the house down for that one.

When I left the gym, the Pitman boys team was on its way in for its Group 1 playoff game against LEAP Academy. The Panthers boys looked small and just a little bit frightened. As I said before, Wilson is kind of an intimidating place to play, and that was during broad daylight. Pitman-LEAP was scheduled to tip off at a very dark 7 p.m. I would personally been surprised if anything bad happeded to Pitman during its stay in Camden, but I'm not sure the Panthers shared my peace of mind.

A couple of little things about the rest of the games:

They were little disappointing. After the fireworks of Wednesday, including a couple of overtime games, Thursday had a lot of relative blowouts. I guess all the excitement was used up on the boys' side of things, as Holy Spirit went down in FOUR overtimes to St. Joe Metuchen. Four. That's a lot of intense basketball.

Florence lost its last game in its old gym, which has always been famous for being kept way too hot. The Flashes fell to the Scotties of Bordentown in a showdown of two of SJ's best nicknames. The thing that stuck out was the absence of Florence center Lauren Jacobsen from the box score. If Bordentown shut her out, congrats to the Scotties. If she's injured, it's a shame.

The last thing for now: I picked up the Inquirer today to see that Pete S. has ranked CC No. 1 ( of course), Holy Spirit No. 2 (not my choice, but okay), and Absegami and Wilson BOTH No. 3. Tied?! WTF? Unless something has changed, it's not a poll with points and stuff, so the tie isn't the result of some mathematical formula. We used to do Coaches' Polls here at the C-P, folks may remember, and even back then the writers would break all the ties. Since we don't recognize the Inky's rankings at all, and since the paper's SJ profile is so slight this season it's not really a concern to me. After the initial confusion, I just thought it was funny. Is it so important not to piss anybody off that simple decisions become impossible?

Anyway, I'll be at CH East for the AC game tomorrow afternoon, and the Saturday schedule is still up for debate. To be frank, any game scheduled for Saturday afternoon stands a very good chance of getting covered, but Willingboro and Spirit are the only taker so far.

What I'm listening to: Peter Gabriel... Radiohead... Simon and Garfunkel... Chopin... Pink Floyd... Tori Amos... Jay Z... Billy Joel... Ash...