By Jason Avery
News-Times Staff
Scheduling conflicts are nothing new for Junction City boys basketball coach Kendall Hutcheson.
Thanks to the success of Junction City’s football team, moving November and early December games back has become a matter of routine.
But with the district tournament looming on the horizon, Tuesday’s postponement of Junction City's home games against Monticello due to the winter weather that arrived in Union County makes finding a suitable date rather difficult.
“Right now, we’re right in the middle of all the blended conference stuff,” Hutcheson said. “We have the 3A, 4A matchups, and it’s kind of frustrating just because the games don’t count but they do count.
“You’ve got to play them, so when it comes time for rescheduling, you try to put the game in a spot where it’s not going to cost you a conference game that’s going to hurt you for the district tournament.
“There’s just not a lot of room to put them right now. With us making the finals in football, we already had four games we had to make up anyway, so we played four last week and had three scheduled this week, but it looks like we’re not going to get three in this week, so that’s going to put us with having five games to put on the schedule as makeup games. It just gets really crazy.”
Coaches across Union County find themselves in similar situations with the exception of Smackover.
Smackover was scheduled to play at McGehee last Friday, but didn't due to poor weather conditions.
The schools were due to makeup the games today, but with McGehee being out of school today, they will have to find another date.
Smackover also has Tuesday's home games against Hamburg that need to be rescheduled.
The Bucks will return to action on Friday at Warren, and a big factor facing them is the amount of time off they have had.
When the Bucks hit the floor on Friday, they will have been idle since last Tuesday when they won at Lake Village.
“You hate to make up those conference games, but having not played for a while, you hope the guys are still in a rhythm once we get back to playing,” Smackover coach Reggie Turner said.
“We were able to put together back-to-back wins before the first game was canceled, so we’re just hoping to keep that momentum rolling. By having this week off and not playing a game, it kind of worries me a little bit.
“You want to make sure your guys still have their legs going into the next game, so we try to practice at a game-like pace and keep them ready for the next one.”
The last two weeks have been particularly busy for the Dragons.
Junction City played four games in five nights last week, and were scheduled for three games in four days before the weather intervened.
The Dragons host Warren tonight and play at Crossett Friday before beginning the 3A portion of the league schedule that will determine their seeding for the district tournament.
Although it is certainly a difficult grind, Hutcheson said his team has gotten used to it.
“I think the mental part of it, yes,” Hutcheson said. “I think the physical part of it, after football season, it takes us two weeks just to get our bodies back to halfway healthy for some of our kids because we’ve got kids that have been playing football that have been banged up for a month. I held one out for about two weeks to try and heal up a little bit.
“The physical part of it, I think everybody is on equal ground, but I think the mental part of it, this is something our kids are used to doing, so I don’t think that part of it bothers them at all.
“They would rather play than practice. That’s just the way they are. They just want to know when to show up and they’re ready to play, but fatigue start to sets in, especially if you’ve got two two-hour road trips back-to-back. It gets crazy.”
With two games needing to be made up, Turner knows his team could be in for a similar stretch the Dragons have encountered.
“Any time you play a string of games over a short period of days, it can take a toll on your kids,” Turner said.
“We just try to practice situations and make sure we’re ready for those games and four or five-night stretches.”
Since Christmas, the Dragons have won five of eight games, and Hutcheson believes his team can have a solid finish.
“Our losses have come to really good teams, and we’ve been competitive in all but one of the games,” Hutcheson said.
“I think just getting our legs under us and finding out our combinations and who plays well together and figuring out how to make plays down the stretch.
“We haven’t quite got that figured that out yet, but I think we’re getting closer to just figuring out what we need to do down the stretch.
“Sometimes we’ve got to be fast, but not be in a hurry. Right now, we’ve been in a hurry too many times, but I think we’re closer to figuring it out.”
As of Wednesday, only two of Tuesday’s games that were postponed have provisional makeup dates in place.
El Dorado’s slate of games at Magnolia will be played next Wednesday, while Strong is tentatively scheduled to play at Rison on Monday, Jan. 29.