Pitchin with Pritch: Welcome 2021; here’s hoping for better year
It is the last day of 2020. The past year has been different, and I think most people would agree with that.
There is a great deal of hope that things will be better and I hope that comes true, but whatever happens, we will deal with it.
There have been so many things this past year that have been difficult to deal with for many people.
In many cases, it has been difficult to spend time with family if they lived somewhere else. Getting together for birthdays, holidays days or anything special didn’t work out.
Trips that had been planned got cancelled or possibly postponed to a later date, and in many cases the worst thing was that you lost family.
Keeping all that in mind, when I started thinking about the column for the first of 2021, I thought to myself “Who cares what you write about?” There are so many other things more important than sporting events and I have to agree, yes there are many other things.
But for me, getting back to normal starts with little things and building on those, so we can get back to some kind of normal. I just hope the new normal includes things like sporting events, whether you are participating or just watching.
So I am starting 2021 with what I hope are some of the little things that a person can think about maybe just to ease the pain of what has gone on this past year. I hope it helps people who read this column and I am hoping it helps me also.
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Have any of you had the time to watch some of the bowl games? There are a lot of them that the two teams’ records combined have a difficulty in adding up to 10.
Some of the games, at least looking at the scores, have maybe been decent to watch but a lot of them have not been all that good.
One game that I thought might be a good one was Oklahoma vs. Florida but the Sooners hung a half a hundred on Florida. I have trouble getting too interested in either team, but Oklahoma was the better of the two in that particular game.
I think the Bowl Games will get better on New Year’s Day and the College Playoffs get to going. Hope I am right.
Husker women’s hoops
The Husker women did pull off a big win Thursday and I actually stopped writing this column and watched the game.
Coach Dick Thurin has a niece that plays for Nebraska so that makes the game better to watch also. Whitney Brown is a 5-8 freshman preferred walk-on that played her high school basketball at Grand Island Northwest.
The Husker team has been hit pretty hard with sickness and injury this season but had enough players and enough fight to defeat nationally ranked Northwestern by two.
Nebraska guard Sam Haiby drove the lane, put up an off balance shot that missed and then rebounded the shot and put up an over-her-head hook shot with her back to the basket at the buzzer for the two-point win.
That was a great way to end 2020 and have a positive to look back on to start the 2021 portion of the schedule.
Husker Men’s hoops
The Husker men on the other hand ended 2020 with a dismal outing, losing to Ohio State 90-54. The Huskers started with a cold shooting streak and never found a way to heat it up.
In the first half, the Huskers went nearly 10 minutes without a field goal and went into the half trailing by 17. During that stretch the Huskers missed 12 straight shots, and missed 17 of its last 18 going into the locker room for the half.
For the night, they went 5-33 from 3-point land, committed 15 turnovers and managed just three assists.
After their 17- point lead at half, Ohio State stretched their lead to 41 at one time with a 28-3 run doing the damage.
In previous games, the Huskers had been able to have pretty good first-half efforts and results but can’t find a way to finish in the second half.
Maybe this means that if they couldn’t get anything going for two halves in a row that in their next game, they can put together a great first half and then come back and do it again in the second half. Who knows? If they do that enough, pretty soon it might become a pretty good habit to have for the rest of the season. We can always hope for the best.
PCS teams
By the time this column comes out, the locals will have been in action already in 2021.
The wrestlers went to Pleasanton on Saturday, Jan 2. and the jayvee and varsity basketball teams will have hosted Ogallala here in Grant for their regular season game.
Welcome 2021, and let’s hope the year doesn’t act up so much this year.