The battle for the top seed in the Eastern Connecticut Conference girls basketball tournament begins tonight in Norwich and Willimantic.
Both the Waterford and Windham girls have had perfect league records (11-0) so far but one of the toughest tests remaining on the schedule for Waterford takes place tonight. The Lancers travel to Alumni Hall to face the Norwich Free Academy Wildcats. NFA still could have a shot at the top seed and a playdown round bye with a win over Waterford. The Lancers have only one real big test left tonight and it comes at home vs. East Lyme in the last game of the regular season.
Windham begins a tough stretch tonight as they host Bacon but then have to go on the road for games at Stonington, Griswold and Montville, all potential stumbling blocks. Windham is also 11-0 in league play.
Griswold coach Gary Kinel goes for win number 499 tonight when his Wolverines face a much improved Killingly squad in Jewett City. St. Bernard, the number two team in the ECC Small Division, pays a visit to number three, Plainfield. Woodstock, which has already qualified for the ECC and state tournaments, plays a team still struggling to get there, Ledyard, at home tonight in Woodstock.

You can say one thing about him, he doesn't beat around the bush.
Putnam coach Tony Falzarano's quote to Norwich Bulletin freelancer Josh Barton was just about priceless on Saturday after his team lost to Tourtellotte for the first time since 1992 in boys basketball.
"You can't make chicken salad out of chicken-you-know-what," Falzarano said.
While some may want to try and take offense out of that statement, it does illustrate one thing clearly- it's not easy to win year in and year out in a small school.
The Clippers went to an unexpected state championship game a year ago but that, essentially, cleaned their closet of a group of talented players who had been together for awhile. Konrad Lueders, their foreign student from Germany, is also gone.
That left only Tim Sabourin from the starting group and a host of players who were involved in supporting roles at best last season. It also accounts for the Clippers woes this season as it isn't easy to start all over again in a school that has less than 200 boys in it.
Sabourin has added to those woes as well as he has been fighting to get back into playing shape after an illness scare followed by a back injury. Travis Godley had been providing much of the offense for the Clippers early in the season but the opposition has become wise to him and Putnam needs someone to step up. Putnam has averaged just over 40 points a game this year and that won't win you too many games in the ECC.

This is what you would have to call playing an away game at home.
Ledyard boys basketball coach Jeff Brown went back to work at Norwich Free Academy last night, he just couldn't go into his office.
Brown, you see, is not only the Ledyard varsity coach but a physical education teacher at NFA as well. That means his office is the one the basketball coaches use during game time.
"It's tough," Brown laughed when we talked about it prior to the Colonels game with the Wildcats last night. "But it's exciting too because I know all the (NFA) players and they all razzed me a bit about it but it was all in good fun- it's a good atmosphere."
Brown said he had no plans to go near his office, didn't even bring his keys with him.
Brown almost brought an upset with him as the Colonels played a never-say-die game and fought back from a couple of large deficits to make it close at the end. A couple of ill-timed turnovers ended their upset bid.
You can read more about Brown and his first year as Ledyard coach as well as the Colonels need for a bigger presence inside in the Monday basketball notebook.

There is a certain responsibility that comes with the coverage of local events such as local sports and it's a responsibility that I feel very strongly about.
We, as reporters and editors, are writing about our neighbors in the local communities, adults and youth alike.
It is this responsibility that makes us choose our words very carefully and, yes, sometimes we choose wrong.
I couldn't help but notice this in a story written in a local weekly publication in Northeastern Connecticut. The weekly covered Tim Panteleakos being named head coach of the Tri-Town American Legion baseball team and referred to him as an "infamous" coach.
Tim Panteleakos may be a lot of things to a lot of people but "infamous" is not one of them.
Webster's defines "infamous" as "having a reputation of the worst kind-notoriously evil". Those words do not define Tim Panteleakos.
Panteleakos, the football coach for the Tourtellotte/Ellis Tech program, wrestling coach at Ellis Tech and baseball coach at Brooklyn Middle School, admits he lets his own emotions run him at times but it is his passion for the game and most of all, for his players, that tend to fire up those emotions.
I've had to do some tough articles on Tim Panteleakos and have always found him to be receptive and cooperative no matter what the subject content. I'm not saying I approve of everything that Panteleakos does on the sidelines but "infamous" is one tag that I would never put on him.
Just some food for thought.
And may we add, good luck to Tim Panteleakos and the Tri-Town American Legion baseball squad.

This is what you have to call dedication and it's just about what it takes in this day and age to climb to the upper echelon of any sport.
Norwich teen Sara Bailey no longer goes to school in Norwich and no longer sees the majority of her family with the exception of weekends.
"I miss my twin sister, my brother and my dad but I've made new friends here," Bailey said from Spokane,Washington where she had just competed in the State Farm U.S. ice dance championships.
Bailey and her partner, Kyle Herring, still have a ways to go but they climbed another rung of the ladder this week with a second place finish in the novice competition. From here, they hope, is junior and senior competition and, if all goes well, the ice dancers ultimate goal- the Olympics.
But remember what it has taken Bailey.
She has moved from Norwich, with her mom, to train at the University of Delaware and now lives with her mother in Middletown, Delaware. The two make the long drive to Connecticut generally every weekend to re-unite with the rest of the family. A sacrifice, Dad Mike Bailey told me, but a necessary one.
Bailey goes to school only on a half-day schedule and makes up the rest on-line. She trains, works out and practices six hours a day. It's the kind of schedule and dedication one must have if they want to be one of the best in the world and, hopefully, for Sara Bailey- it's all worthwhile.

The Eastern Connecticut Conference may have some real good matchups when teams play within their own divisions, it gets a little tougher when the Large and small cross over with the Medium.
Such is the case tonight.
The best boys game out there probably will take place in Danielson where Fitch meets Killingly. The Redmen have a potential Division I player in Shane Gibson who's second in scoring in the area and also have Tom Derosier who is amongst the leaders in 3-point baskets made. The Falcons also have a two pronged attack with Windell Hinkson and Jesse Hahn, both of whom average in the mid-teens per game and Hinkson has also been deadly from three point range. You almost get the idea that whichever team wins the inside battle tonight, wins this game.
The best of the girls games takes place in Griswold where Kailee Grasso leads the Lyman Bulldogs into a game against the Wolverines. Grasso is averaging over 20 points a game, second best in the area, but Griswold may still welcome the break. They have the hard route as they're in the same Division as Stonington, Montville and Bacon Academy and playing outside the division is a little breather for them.

The underachievers beat the overachievers on Friday night.
Windham downed Woodstock 61-44 in a game that featured one team that is not happy with how it's been playing and another team that has been playing above what was expected of them.
Woodstock, prior to their loss to the Whippets, had won seven of their first 10 games. That's pretty good for a team that lost just about its' entire starting lineup to graduation.
"We're overachieving maybe," Woodstock coach Rob Mileski told me Friday night, "We're making a couple of plays and some shots are going down."
On the other side of the court, Windham had a 6-4 record coming into the game with a team that was expected to, not only contend, but likely win the Eastern Connecticut Conference Medium Division and also be in the midst of the battle for the league title.
"We're not playing together, the chemistry doesn't seem to be flowing," Whippets coach Bill Strand said.
Woodstock and Windham will be the featured topics in our Monday notebook, check it out on Monday morning. Also, we will update the scoring leaders in the area for both boys and girls and have the top active career point leaders in girls basketball.