In case you missed it — and if you had the stomach flu as I did recently, you missed everything for a few days — fundamental changes have been made to the three most popular high school sports. A change in basketball will affect the way the game is played, and a change in football will affect who plays who and a change in baseball affects the state tournament schedule.

Let’s start with basketball. The National Federation of State High School Associations has approved a rule change for free-throw shooting that will leave the lane spaces closest to the basket open.

The change is designed to reduce rough play in the lane and follows in the footsteps of a college rule change installed last season. The rule was installed on an experimental basis in Georgia high schools last season, and NFHS officials said it reduced fouls on free-throw rebounds while keeping defensive rebounding percentages “within an acceptable range.”

The NFHS basketball rules committee also voted against the use of instant replay to review specific situations in state tournaments. Championship games in three states last season were decided by last-second shots, including one in an Ohio girls game that clearly came after time had expired. (See story, follow-up.)

The football change affects postseason play, returning the playoffs to a more familiar format. The KHSAA has jettisoned the playoff format used for the last two years in which teams played first- and second-round games within their own districts. That system was supposed to cut travel expenses and increase attendance in the early rounds, but it proved widely unpopular among coaches and fans alike.

This season, teams from two districts will once again be bracketed with each other starting with the first round. Basically, it’s a return to the brackets that were used from 1991-2005. In the lowest five classes, teams from District 1 will be paired with District 2, as will Districts 3 and 4, Districts 5 and 6 and Districts 7 and 8. Inexplicably, Class 6A will use a different bracket created by a previously approved random draw.

I’ll never be happy about the switch to six classes, but at least some order has been restored to the pigskin world.

Finally, the state baseball tournament has been scheduled to move all four first-round games to the same day. (See bracket.) The tourney will be played Thursday through Saturday, June 12-14, eliminating the off day that two teams previously had between the first round and semifinals.

Mercer County tennis player Allison Dailey was honored last week as one of 32 recipients of the KHSAA’s regional sportsmanship awards.

The awards go to one girl and one boy in each of 16 regions and are based on grade-point average, letters of recommendation, leadership roles and honors and other criteria. Dailey and Thomas Waddle of Somerset were chosen from the 12th Region and honored at a banquet last week at which two statewide winners were also recognized.

Two baseball games scheduled for today will determine the order of things for next month’s 45th District Tournament.

The four seeds will be determined after Danville plays at Boyle County and Garrard County plays at Lincoln County this afternoon.

The Danville-Boyle game will decide the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds. It’s the only scheduled game this season between the two teams. (Teams in this district only have to play each other once for seeding, and if they play twice it’s the first game that counts.) Danville beat Boyle twice last season, 2-0 in the regular season and 12-1 in the district final.

(Important game time note: At least three different starting times are floating around for this game. It is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m., 30 minutes later than some might expect and 90 minutes earlier than others might expect. Be on time.)

Half an hour before things get started at Boyle, Garrard and Lincoln will begin their game that will decide seeds Nos. 3 and 4. This is also the only time these teams will play in the regular season. Lincoln won last year’s only meeting 6-3.

Boyle (18-4) and Danville (15-7) are both 2-0 in the district standings; Lincoln (7-12) and Garrard (10-5) are both 0-2. Here are results of the other district games that will count in the standings: April 8, Boyle County 4, Lincoln County 3; April 15, Boyle County 16, Garrard County 6; April 15, Danville 7, Lincoln County 4; April 22, Danville 8, Garrard County 4.

Track and field season is already under way, but Saturday marks the beginning of the busiest time of year on the area tracks.

It starts with the Alvis Johnson Heart of the Bluegrass, the longest-running local meet, which will be held Saturday in Harrodsburg. Started by Harrodsburg and now continued by Mercer County, the meet has been renamed to honor the former Harrodsburg coach who made it what it is.

Twenty teams are entered, including almost all of the local schools. The field also includes Central, Henry Clay, John Hardin, Lafayette and North Hardin, as well as regional rivals East Jessamine, Frankfort, Rockcastle County, West Jessamine and Western Hills.

There are two local meets next week, the Double-A Derby on Friday at Boyle County and the All “A” Classic on Saturday (April 26) at Danville. The first meet is open to Class AA schools and will also include Casey and Mercer counties. The second is not affiliated with the All “A” Classic organization that sponsors tournaments in basketball, baseball and the like, but it operates on the same principle, as it is open to teams in the smallest of Kentucky’s three track classifications.

The following week brings the E.G. Plummer Invitational on May 3, and right behind that comes the Boyle County Invitational on May 9.

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The latest statewide rankings from the Kentucky Track and Cross Country Coaches Association show several athletes from area schools near the top of their classes. Here are some of the highest rankings (based on results submitted through Monday):

Class A

Boys: 200 — 3. Derrick Henderson, Danville; 400 — 3. Nick Winkler, Danville; 800 — 1. Ross Hempel, Danville; 400 relay — 2. Danville; 800 relay — 1. Danville; 1600 relay — 3. Danville.

Girls: 200 — 2. Andrea Payne, Danville; 1600 — 3. Kaitlin Snapp, Danville; 3200 — 2. Snapp, Danville; 400 relay — 1. Danville; 800 relay — 1. Danville; Long jump — 2. Candice Taylor, Danville; Triple jump — 2. Diamond Pace, Danville.

Class AA

Boys: Triple jump — 3. Eddie Houekpon-Chincoun, Boyle County; Pole vault — 3. Manly Bryant, Boyle County.

Girls: 400 — 1. Nicole Coffman, Casey County; 800 — 1. Jenna Lee, Casey County; 2. Emily Hall, Boyle County; 1600 relay — 2. Boyle County; 3200 relay — 1. Boyle County; Discus — 2. Loran Crowell, Mercer County; Shot put — 2. Kalee Phelps, Mercer County; Pole vault — 2. Erica Mills, Boyle County.

As much as I love baseball, I’ve got to draw the line when it’s cold enough to put heaters in the dugouts. And those heaters weren’t the strangest sight at Saturday night’s Mercer County-Boyle County game.

While Mercer ran its “A” team onto the field, six of Boyle’s varsity players were in street clothes (not counting two others who are injured). That made for a pretty unusual lineup for the Rebels’ third game of the day, a home game that followed two games earlier in the day at East Jessamine.

The game started at what was basically dusk on a cool, cloudy and windy day, and of course it only got colder as darkness took hold. And while a forced-air heater in each dugout kept the players warm, the smattering of fans that watched Mercer’s 7-2 win was left to brave the elements in a 2-hour, 40-minute game played on a night that felt more like November than April.

Makes you glad they put in lights, doesn’t it?

Bullitt East has filled the football coaching vacancy left when Mike Settles moved to Lincoln County with a name many local football fans will recognize. The Pioneer News of Shepherdsville reports that Doug Preston, a former assistant coach at two area schools who has spent the last two seasons as head coach at Western.

Preston was 14-9 at Western, and prior to that he was 10-20 in three seasons at Rowan County. Ironically, his first job in high school coaching was as an assistant at Lincoln. He later worked on the staff at Danville.

Meanwhile, Settles has spread the word that he is looking for an offensive coordinator for the Lincoln staff.

Ryan Young of Lincoln County is among 40 basketball players who have been invited to try out for the Kentucky All-Stars later this month.

Young is the only boy from a 12th Region school to be invited to the tryouts. His invitation was assured after he was voted the 12th Region Player of the Year by the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches.

Tryouts will be held April 18-19 at Georgetown College. The team will be announced April 23. The Kentucky-Indiana all-star games will be played June 13 in Indianapolis and June 15 in Louisville.

There’s nothing stranger when scanning scores than to see two teams from the same region playing each 12 hours from home, but you’ll see it almost every year at this time.

Teams that travel to Florida for spring break baseball and softball trips very often end up crossing paths with other Kentucky teams, some of which they’re pretty familiar with.

This year’s example of that can be found in the Boyle County baseball team’s trip to Cocoa, Fla., for a week’s worth of games at the Cocoa Expo, a baseball/softball complex at the former spring training site of the Houston Astros.

The Rebels traveled some 850 miles, and one of the first games they played was against Rockcastle County, a regional rival located only 45 minutes from home. The very next day, Rockcastle played Pulaski County, a team in its own district.

According to the KHSAA’s Internet scoreboard, 16 Kentucky teams are at the Cocoa Expo this week. And while there’s probably no way to avoid pairing some teams from the same general area against each other — six of the 16 teams are from Boyd, Carter and Greenup counties, for instance — it always seems wrong when it happens.

Coaches don’t care much for those matchups either, but clearly the benefits of such a trip outweigh the downside.

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Perhaps because of the rising cost of transportation, Boyle is the only local school to send a team to Florida this year. The Rebels will be in Cocoa through Friday.

The only other team headed out of state is Mercer’s baseball team, which played last weekend at a tournament in Murfreesboro, Tenn., that it has visited before.

And Danville is hosting a spring break tournament again this year, the Arby’s Spring Break Classic. The three-day event begins Thursday and includes Ballard Memorial, Fort Knox, Nicholas County, Russell and Washington County, although a weather forecast calling for heavy rain Thursday and Friday puts its status very much in doubt.

Everyone who is hooked on the Sweet Sixteen can trace their interest to one person or one event that triggered their addiction to Kentucky’s greatest sporting event. For me, it was Dr. Russell Bowen.

I thought of Dr. Bowen last week when I realized this was my silver anniversary at the Sweet Sixteen. And yes, that made me realize I’m getting old in a hurry, but it also made me realize how much good basketball I’ve watched over the last 25 years, and how grateful I am to him for making that possible.

Bowen was the principal at Jackson County in 1984, my senior year. Many of us liked him, and he liked many of us, enough so that he ordered something like 10 tickets to the state tournament and offered several of them to those of us affiliated with the boys and girls basketball teams.

Most who were offered the tickets made the trip just one day, but I managed to horn my way in on the guest list for all four days. I spent a total of 12 hours on the road over those four days, ate way too many meals at the Richmond Road Arby’s and saw teams that I had previously only read about in the newspaper, teams like Madisonville and Owensboro, Ballard and Boyd County.

I had been in Rupp Arena only once before that for a Kentucky game, but by week’s end it felt like my second home. I saw Logan County win three games by a total of seven points to reach the final, where it would beat a Bourbon County team that had won twice in overtime and once by one point in regulation. And I was a fan for life.
I haven’t seen every Sweet Sixteen game in the last 25 years, but I have been there every year and figure I have seen well over 300 of them. There have been more great plays, great players and great moments than I can remember. Among my favorite memories:

• The performance that stands out as the best to most tourney fans of my generation, Richie Farmer’s 51-point effort for Clay County in a loss to Allan Houston and Ballard in the 1988 title game. It was the second straight final between the two powers — Clay won in 1987.
• The run of Wayne County’s 1989 team, led by the inside-outside combination of Jimmy John Owens and Julius Green, to the title game and a narrow loss to Pleasure Ridge Park.
• The surreal surroundings of the 1992 title game between University Heights and Lexington Catholic, where most of the few thousand fans in Freedom Hall were more interested in following the Kentucky-Duke NCAA tournament game than the action on the floor.
• The 1993 championship run of Marion County and its coach, Tim Davis, whom I had gotten to know a couple of years earlier in my first months on this job.
• Paintsville’s success behind Todd Tackett and J.R. VanHoose in 1996, helping to preserve the tournament by renewing the belief that small schools can still win it.
• The teams that came close, like Hazard in 1986, Tates Creek in 1991, Ashland Blazer in 1996, Harlan in 1995 and Paducah Tilghman in 2002.
• The players, stars and role players alike, who start a highlight reel in my head when I hear their names, like Fred Tisdale, Rex Chapman, Felton Spencer, Russ Chadwell, Jack Jennings, Jermaine Brown, DeJuan Wheat, Darren Allaway, Andy Penick, Patrick Critchelow, Rick Jones, Casey Alsop, Derek Smith, Antwain Barbour, Patrick Sparks, Orlandus Hill, Chris Lofton, Demetrius Green, O.J. Mayo, Lonnell Dewalt, Ty Proffitt, A.J. Slaughter and Arrez Henderson.
• And the local teams that got there, even though their stays were almost always brief, from the improbable Casey County team of 1993 to the Mercer County team that made it with a losing record in 2000 to the Harrodsburg team that managed a first-round win in 1996 to the Boyle County and Lincoln County teams that made back-to-back appearances (Boyle in 1998 and ‘99, Lincoln in 2007 and ‘08).

The people are part of the fun, too, whether you’re meeting friends for dinner or just getting a text message from across the arena. Thanks to the Sweet Sixteen, I knew Don Irvine long before I ever covered his games, I see old acquaintances year after year and I’ve gotten to know more good people than I can count, from the folks working in the press room to the guys who launch T-shirts into the stands.

Twenty-five years is nothing compared to the state tournament history of some folks I know, but I’ll keep going back as long as I’m able and adding to my list of memorable moments and people worth knowing.

Teams that make it to the Boys Sweet Sixteen in consecutive years shouldn’t get the jitters the second time around, but it could be that Lincoln County did just that Thursday in its 70-58 loss to Shelby County in the first round.

Just like last year, when the Patriots lost a first-round game to Adair County, their shooters were ice cold right from the start of the game. In 2007, their first three jump shots came up short and they went on to shoot 35 percent from the field. In 2008, they couldn’t connect from 3-point range, where they were 0-for-their first 9, 1-for-13 in the first half and 3-for-18 through the first three quarters.

There was good defense by Shelby, to be sure, but Lincoln didn’t lack for good looks, either. And as coach Jeff Jackson pointed out after the game, those missed shots had a negative effect on everythine else the Patriots did, from defense to rebounding.

Lincoln was similarly ineffective from 3-point range in its state tournament game last season, hitting only two of 13 long-range attempts against Adair. But the Patriots were better able to work in the interior in that game than in this one.

Maybe it wasn’t a case of nerves. Maybe it was just a bad night. But the end result was that Lincoln’s loss to Shelby this year looked a lot like its loss to Adair last year.

* * *

Practice clearly does not make perfect, because Jackson said Lincoln’s seven days of practice since winning the 12th Region Tournament on March 11 couldn’t have been much better. He said the workouts were short — usually only about 1 hour, 10 minutes — but he said the players were focused and worked hard day after day right up to their final practice Wednesday at Transylvania University.

“We had a great (seven) days of practice. We practiced as well as we had all year long,” Jackson said. “But our energy level wasn’t good today. It just didn’t carry over.”

Young echoed those thoughts.

“I felt confident coming in here today. We had great practices this week,” he said.

* * *

Some statistical nuggets from the game:

• The Patriots scored 27 of their 58 points on 3-point goals, in large part because they hit five 3s in the final 2:54 after Shelby had put the game out of reach.
• Lincoln entered the game averaging 29 rebounds on the season but got only 15 against Shelby, which surely must have been its season low, and was outrebounded by 23. Last year, Adair outrebounded the Patriots 29-23.
• Lincoln’s three senior leaders — Noah Keeton, Daniel Ralston and Ryan Young — took 38 of its 50 field-goal attempts and scored 44 of its 58 points. They combined to go 7-for-22 from 3-point range and 15-for-38 overall from the field.
• The Patriots committed only nine turnovers, three fewer than Shelby. They also had eight steals, with six different players getting at least one.
• Only six players scored for Lincoln, including junior guard Cody Willis, the only Patriot to get a basket after Jackson began emptying his bench late in the game.
• Measured by scoring margin, this was the worst defeat of the season for the Patriots (see season scores), who lost by six points to Bryan Station, by three to Henry Clay, by six to Paintsville, by nine to McCreary Central and by eight to Paul Dunbar. Their score was 10.5 points below their season average.
• The attendance for the Lincoln-Shelby game and the Hazard-South Laurel game that preceded it was 14,386, the second-largest crowd of the three first-round sessions — but almost 1,900 fans below the crowd that watched Lincoln’s first-round session last year, which included Adair, Scott County and Oldham County. And Lincoln brought the largest fan base seen to that point; its fan support was rivaled only by that of Mason County, which played in the Thursday night session that drew 15,040 fans.

For a box score from Thursday’s game, click here. For the play-by-play chart, click here. For the archived webcast from WPBK-FM/wpbkfm.com, click here.