Leading off today: For a couple of girls basketball teams that don't play each other very often, St. Michael's and Christ The King certainly have quite the rivalry going.

   It resumes tonight at Holy Trinity High School in the first round of the CHSAA Class AA tournament, with the winner becoming the heavy favorite to win the earn the championship next weekend and head to Glens Falls.

   St. Michael's has never been to the Federation tournament, an event Christ the King has won 14 times. The last meeting between the teams resulted in a CTK victory in the CHSAA Class A state semifinals two years ago.

   "It’s huge," St. Michael's coach Apache Paschall told FiveBoroSports.com. "Everybody knows what it is. We’ve won everything else in this city. After we do this, then what are they gonna say?"

   There's a mixture of mild animosity and outright hostility going on here bewteen figures in and around the programs, which FiveBoroSports.com gets into in its game preview.

   "It’s great for girls’ basketball,” Paschall said. "I grew up in a time when Riverside and the Gauchos would go to battle all the time. If you’re really into girls’ basketball and the sport, you have to create these rivalries. If Christ the King didn’t exist, I would have started a fight with Bergtraum. I would have started a fight with somebody."

   Mission accomplished: Officials announced yesterday that the Mount Vernon Educational Foundation has met its goal to fund this year's school sports program by raising $940,000.

   The effort became necessary after voters rejected the 2008-09 school budget, forcing the district into austerity.

   "Have no fear, sports is back for the entire year," foundation head Ronnie Cox told students.

   Mount Vernon's boys and girls basketball teams are playing in the repective Class AA tournaments this weekend. Without the private funding, AD Donna Pirro told The Journal Newsthe students "wouldn't have been able to take to the court," let alone get this far. They are very much influenced by the fundraising efforts and the work of so many amazing people from the county, the state, the nation, who have given us this opportunity."

   They grow 'em tall in Avon: Avon didn’t get the memo that boys Class C basketball teams are supposed to have a 6-foot-2 center, a 5-11 power forward and a bunch of 5-foot-9 guards on the court.

   And they apparently haven’t figured out that playoff teams are supposed to have a "signature win” on their resume.

   Instead of having a victory that the Braves can point to as proof of their legitimacy, they have a signature setback.

Winter tournament brackets NYSPHSAA boys basketball NYSPHSAA girls basketball NYSPHSAA boys ice hockey

A 55-43 loss to Bishop Kearney cost Avon its perfect record a month ago, but playing solid basketball against a team that will represent Section 5 in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class B quarterfinals tomorrow proved that Avon would be a tough out the rest of the way.

   The Braves (24-1) have done nothing but win since the Kearney game and are three wins from a state Class C championship. The journey continues tomorrow against Randolph at SUNY Brockport, with the winner moving on to the semifinals in Glens Falls.

   Scheduling Kearney (20-3) as a non-leaguer was part of Rob Fries’ plan for toughening up his team. The coach started dialing up Class B coaches shortly after a 22-1 season ended last winter with a 45-38 loss to Gananda in a post-sectional qualifier for the state tournament.

   "I loaded our February schedule up," he said. "I got Dansville (12-8 regular-season record) twice, Livonia (14-6) and Kearney, who I knew would probably beat us. I wanted us to regain our focus and get to where we needed to be playing going into sectionals."

   It worked. Avon muscled its way through sectionals and then defeated a very pesky Harley Allendale-Columbia, 73-61, on Tuesday at Rochester Institute of Technology to reach the state tournament and put to rest the ghosts of seasons past.

   "This was a hurdle," Fries said. "We lost last year on this floor and we talked about that coming over. I don’t think we played our best game here last year and Gananda beat us. They had guys who knocked it down from the outside and it gave us trouble. It was like déjà vu at halftime. But the guys came out in the third quarter and I always say, 'Every possession is your life. You’ve got to get every rebound and loose ball.'"

   Getting every rebound isn’t much of an issue for the Braves, whose starting front court consists of 6-5 John Housel, 6-4 Matt McBride and 6-3 Matt Phillips. The first man off the bench many nights is 6-5 junior Corey Upright, and the four big men account for about 60 percent of the team’s scoring and 70 percent of the rebounding.

   With height like that, it’s tough to tell whether Avon can knock down any 18-footers because their next attempt from that distance this season would be just about their first.

   “We see a lot of zone, so we work the high post and try throwing it in low,” said McBride, a four-year varsity player. “We don’t need 15-footers. My job is to rebound and play defense. And rebound some more.”

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