After a scrimmage this week with Marion Local, Anna’s boys basketball team will open its 2019-20 season on Saturday at New Bremen in a game that will be broadcast by ScoresBroadcast.com.
The Rockets, state football champs in Division VI, and the Flyers, champs in Div. VII, are both off to late starts on the hardwood after their state title runs on the gridiron.
Anna competes in D-III in basketball; Marion Local competes in D-IV.
The Anna/New Bremen webcast on Saturday night begins at 7:10 p.m. on SCORES, the Shelby County Online Radio Entertainment System. Jack Kramer and Mike Wick of SCORES will be courtside.
SCORES’ extended weekend coverage kicks off on Thursday at New Bremen where Fort Loramie’s girls put their unbeaten record on the line against an improved Cardinals girls squad. Webcast time is 7:10.
The free online service presents a third inter-conference game between the Shelby County Athletic League and the Midwest Athletic Conference on Friday night when Fort Loramie’s boys travel to St. Henry. Kramer and Chuck McBee will describe the Thursday and Friday contests.
Year after year, the SCAL and MAC match teams for regular season boys and girls basketball tilts, Kramer noted. He detailed that, for example, the Fort Loramie boys will play seven MAC schools this year while Anna will play six and Russia and Jackson Center will play five. The unbeaten Tigers have already played Coldwater away from home and won.
In addition, D-IV “tournament” games pairing schools from the two conferences have occurred often in recent seasons. But as Kramer noted, the two leagues will have to wait until Columbus to meet in tourney play this year.
“In February and March 2020, unlike several recent seasons, MAC D-IV boys and girls teams stay inside their northwest district for sectional, district, and even regional tournaments,” he stated, emphasizing that this restructuring by the Ohio High School Athletic Association was introduced for the 2019 D-IV volleyball tourney. New Bremen edged Fort Loramie at Wright State for the state championship. The two schools met in a regional semifinal in 2018.
In boys D-IV basketball last March, Jackson Center lost a heartbreaker to St. Henry in a regional final. During the previous March, Fort Loramie fell to eventual state champ Marion Local. The Minster girls, repeat state champs in 2018 and 2019, topped Fort Loramie in regional finals both seasons.
However, such D-IV “regional” hoops pairings can’t take place in 2020.
Kramer pointed out that this coming March, a Central Ohio district winner, not a Northwest winner, joins teams in the boys and girls D-IV southwest Ohio regionals.
In other basketball tournament changes, the boys Div. III and Div. IV regionals are held at the University of Dayton in March, the boys Div. III district is at Vandalia-Butler and Northmont and the Div. IV district is at Butler.
