The Saturday Evening Post

(Stats complete through game(s) of Friday, Jan. 16)

• Aided vastly by the Bruins' 10 games played, Seth Kauffman has more rebounds and steals than any player in Elkhart County. The other county teams with a 10-game completed slate are Goshen (7-3) and Elkhart Central (3-7). NorthWood's Skyler Titus is second in rebounds with 77, followed by Josh Riikonen of the Blue Blazers with 76. The steals leaders are as follows:
  1. Kauffman (Bethany) 24/2.4 per game
  2. Ethan Hussey (Goshen) 21/2.1
  3. Jordan Weaver (Bethany) 20/2.0
  4. Luke Slagel (Bethany) 19/1.9
  5. Sean Cooper (Elk. Memorial) 18/2.6
• Kauffman also leads the county with 74 two-point field goals, shooting at a clip of 66.1% from inside the 19'9" semicircle. Hussey is second at 69.
  
• Weaver, with 31 assists, trails only Goshen's Ethan Hussey (34) in that category.
• County free throw percentage leaders:
  1. Ethan Hussey (Goshen) 86.4%
  2. Elliot Smith (Northridge) 86.0%
  3. Koby Eldridge (Concord) 84.2%
     • Eldridge won the free-throw shootout at the Elkhart Sports Center Hoop Challenge in 2005, and advanced to the three-point finals a year later.
  4. Micah Horner (NorthWood) 84.0%
  5. Mark DeLeeuw (Bethany) 82.8%
  6. Tyler Forgey (Jimtown) 82.8%
• The girls basketball sectional draw will be held Thursday, January 29 at 7:00 p.m. EST. The sectional will be hosted by favorite Canterbury; Bethany will be favored against ECA (-9.5), Hamilton (-16.5), and Keystone (-28.5). Elkhart Christian travels to the Menno Lands for a 7:30 varsity-only tipoff on Monday, Feb. 2.
  
• The boys sectional draw is Thursday, February 19 at 6:00 p.m. EST. The Bruins will travel to favored Blackhawk for the sectional; Hamilton, Blackhawk, and Howe Military remain on our regular season schedule.
• As ECA and Bethany fared oppositely in the first round of the holiday tournament, the two parochial IHSAA schools of Elkhart County will not meet in the regular season. The last time this happened was 1984-85. That year, Elkhart Baptist was not in the IHSAA, the Bruins were led in scoring by Royce Schrag and Myron Bontreger, and Walter Mondale carried a grand total of one state and the District of Columbia in getting steamrolled by incumbent president Ronald Reagan.
• On Thursday, Abe Thorne played the first minute-plus of the Bethany/Jimtown 7th-grade game wearing a wristwatch. He was reminded to take it off by an official who I know I've seen, but whose name I can't remember. A brief history of illegal apparel and Bruin basketball:
  • Nov. 2004: In the first Bethany basketball game after Lance Armstrong's Tour de France win sparks a flurry of silicone bracelets, no fewer than three Bruins, including Hamilton Thorne, take the floor with them. Within the first two minutes, one official decides that they constitute jewelry. (The other official that day was Kurt Bullard (see below), who was also wearing one. He is not the official who makes the decision.) This was also Matt Miller's first game as a Bethany basketball coach.
    
  • Dec. 8/9, 2005: During a Bethany-Stanley Clark eighth-grade game, an unidentified Stanley Clark player checks in wearing four or five bracelets. This fact is discovered by official Michael Robinson immediately after beckoning the substitute.
  • Dec. 13, 2005: Bruin Dylan Downing checks into an eighth-grade game wearing earrings. He is sent back to the bench by an official (not Robinson or Bullard) and replaced with a different substitute.
  • Feb. 2006: During play in a sixth-grade girls game, Sarah Brew loses her hair band. After picking it up during a stoppage in play, she drapes it around her neck. The illegality of this is pointed out, and Brew tosses it back toward the bench. (Official may have been Robinson again; he was here a lot that year.)
    
  • Dec. 14, 2007: In the ECA-Bethany boys JV game, two Eagles start the game on the bench, wearing white undershirts in tandem with the road purple jerseys. They are sent to the locker room to change, passing directly across a bleacher railing from yours truly on the way out of the Menno Lands.
  • Jan. 15, 2009: Abe Thorne plays the first minute-plus of a seventh-grade game at Jimtown wearing a wristwatch. Further details can be found in the match report from Thursday.
  • Jan.-Mar. 2009: MS girls basketball team sets itself up for many more of these, with team photos showing nine off-color undershirts and five hair ties on wrists out of 25 people.
    
  
  
• For the second time in the last five years, Kurt Bullard is not coaching the MS girls basketball "A" team. This year's team is being coached by Sarah Moyer while Bullard handles the "B" and "C" teams, the reverse of last year's staff; in 2006, Mike Goertzen and Teri Marlow, respectively, filled those positions. The 2007 teams were coached by Bullard and Marlow, while Bryan Kehr coached the lower-level teams in 2005.