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Altered States, No. 9
April 9, 2009

Just Tuesday afternoon I was watching the end of Patuxent's baseball win over Leonardtown, and it was freezing. It was pretty well miserable for a game being played during over spring break. But yesterday I came out to Tucson to see some family and thaw out, so now after a day of that I'm ready to think a little more about spring.

First, why couldn't Villanova have won at least one more game? I had them going deep on my bracket, which other people made fun of at the tournament's start. But come the Final Four the jokes had come to a halt. One more win and I would have probably taken every pool I was in, but oh well ...

We're almost three weeks into the spring season, and here are some things that I know. First, not a whole lot has changed in baseball. This is still one of the best, if not the best, conferences in the state top to bottom. With very few exceptions, anybody can beat anybody else. It makes for an interesting regular-season race, and will remain interesting into the postseason. Who knows if anyone will be able to duplicate La Plata's success of last year, but there are several teams more than capable of making deep runs.

Softball -- I saw Huntingtown and Northern play a 13-12 game a couple weeks ago. You wouldn't have seen too much of that between elite conference teams a couple of years ago. I didn't think that sort of thing would happen again this season, but then I saw a 17-14 Huntingtown-North Point score from a couple days ago. So who knows?

I do know we won't see McDonough in a game like that. While I was traveling on Wednesday, Melanie Mitchell was tossing a perfect game in McDonough's 9-0 win over Thomas Stone -- a game Mr. James McCray III was kind enough to cover.

It will be interesting to see how Northern and Huntingtown hit against Mitchell. But regardless of what happens in the regular season, we know these teams and a couple others will be forces to be reckoned with in the postseason. It is SMAC, after all.

Lacrosse, it looks like Leonardtown is still the clear class of the conference on the girls side. On the boys, Huntingtown appears to have taken the torch after Leonardtown won four straight conference titles.

It's been almost three weeks since my last blog. The spring season hadn't even played its first game yet, but the tough thing is that now -- not even three full weeks later -- the season is nearing its halfway point. It seems like it just started. On that note, if anyone wants to contribute anything, be it little recaps or photos or anything else, never hesitate to contact me at astates@digitalsports.com. And please send any results either to me or to dcmetroscores@digitalsports.com.

Hope it's warm when I get back.

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