Valley Should Never Lose By 58 Points To Anybody In Anything; Drake Wins Again, So Does Keno Davis, Who Is 3-0 In the Big East At Providence

I know Ames has a fantastic high school basketball team and that there's plenty of college-bound talent on the roster.

It's embarrassing to even have to call the team the Little Cyclones.

As I've written in the past, it's silly for Ames High School to be nicknamed the Little Cyclones and City High in Iowa City to be called the Little Hawks.

If I were a high school kid, I wouldn't want to be called little anything.

But back to my original point.

Speaking of embarrassments, I would be embarrassed if I were the coach and the players at Valley High School in West Des Moines.

I've sounded off about Valley sports in the past. I live six blocks from the place, I had three sons participate in athletics there, and graduate from there.

In the near-future, I'll have four grandchildren who attend Valley.

So, naturally, I like to see Valley win in athletics and do well in band competitions and all other competitions.

The Tigers have cominated the state's class 4-A football scene since Gary Swenson has been their coach.

They won another state championship in November at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, and I was there with one of my sons and one of my grandsons to see it.

However, I find it hard to believe that Valley could lose by 58 points to Ames last night.

That's right, the Little Cyclones put an 89-31 clobbering on the Tigers.

I can't figure out how Valley can be so good in football and so bad in basketball.

Valley is too big a school and has too many athletes for something like that to happen.

Like I said, it's embarrassing, and something should be done about it. I wouldn't want to be the head coach or the athletic director at a school that lost by 58 points in any sport.

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We had a visitor at today's sportswriters' lunch at the Chinese restaurant in West Des Moines.

It was Chuck Offenburger, the author and Internet columnist who has teamed with Gary Thompson of Ames to write a very good book titled, "GARY THOMPSON: All-American."

Offenburger said sales of the book have been "fantastic" since it was published just before Christmas.

Offenburger and the regulars in our group settled all of the world's problems -- at least those dealing with sports and newspapering -- over the chicken, tofu, rice [both steamed and fried], vegetables, egg rolls and crab rangoon.

It was good to have a noontime visit with Chuck, who made the drive on a rather crappy day weatherwise from his more-than-a-century-old home on an acreage in Cooper, Ia.

Chuck and I talked a guy who was having his lunch into stopping for a minute so he could take our picture as we were on our way out of the restaurant,

It's a fine photo, and I told the guy who took it that he'd probably be getting a newspaper job any day now.

He didn't seem impressed.

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Mark Phelps, Drake's first-year coach, kept things rolling at the Knapp Center tonight.

The Bulldogs cruised past Indiana State, 69-50, for their third victory in four Missouri Valley Conference games.

For the season, Drake is an impressive 12-4 heading into Sunday night's game against Wichita State at the Knapp Center. That's a game the Bulldogs should win.

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And hand it to Keno Davis and his Providence team.

Keno, who took Drake to a 28-5 record and made a near-sweep of the national coach of the year awards last season, improved his records to 11-4 overall and 3-0 in the Big East Conference with an 87-79 victory tonight at Cincinnati.

The Friars have won seven of their last eight games and their first three league games for the first time since the 1988-89 season.

I watched the game on ESPNU, and Providence put on quite a show.