CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Always fiery on the sideline, Rich Skeen seemed on the verge of a full-scale breakdown Tuesday night at Sissonville High School.
Less than 20 minutes later and in the sanctity of his locker room, the Indians' boys basketball coach spun positives from his team's third consecutive loss, a 64-58 setback at the hands of Tolsia that was Sissonville's third in as many games.
"It's the Cardinal Conference. Everybody likes to talk about the MSAC. Well, look at double-A and the Cardinal Conference is it," Skeen said. "It's night-in and night-out that it's like this."
The Mountain State Athletic Conference is a 16-school behemoth that includes 40 percent of the state's Class AAA schools. The MSAC is noted for its successful athletic endeavors with good reason, as its members have claimed 10 football state championships, 11 boys basketball championships (three won by Beckley before joining the league) and 11 baseball championships (three won by Logan and one by Scott before leaving the league) since its creation before the 1993-94 school year.
But with a league so large, the top-tier talent comes with more than a few struggling programs elsewhere. A typical MSAC basketball schedule is taxing more because of its travel demands than because of the competitive nature of the league as a whole.
The Cardinal, pound-for-pound, is a better, more competitive basketball conference, at least this year. A quick survey of the respective league standings reveals that much. (See standings, page 2B)
There's more to it than that, as Skeen explained, and it goes to the very core of the identity difference between Class AAA schools and Class AA schools.
"A little over a week ago we played at Chapmanville and it was a packed house," Skeen said. "We love double-A basketball. It's communities.
"You can go to any triple-A school in Charleston and there's 100 people sometimes sitting there. You can go to any game in double-A and see what we just saw out there tonight. Not everywhere, but in the Cardinal Conference you can."
The Rebels overcame an eight-point deficit at the start of the fourth quarter to win their 10th consecutive game in front of a packed crowd of about 600 fans at the Sissonville gym.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Always fiery on the sideline, Rich Skeen seemed on the verge of a full-scale breakdown Tuesday night at Sissonville High School.
Less than 20 minutes later and in the sanctity of his locker room, the Indians' boys basketball coach spun positives from his team's third consecutive loss, a 64-58 setback at the hands of Tolsia that was Sissonville's third in as many games.
"It's the Cardinal Conference. Everybody likes to talk about the MSAC. Well, look at double-A and the Cardinal Conference is it," Skeen said. "It's night-in and night-out that it's like this."
The Mountain State Athletic Conference is a 16-school behemoth that includes 40 percent of the state's Class AAA schools. The MSAC is noted for its successful athletic endeavors with good reason, as its members have claimed 10 football state championships, 11 boys basketball championships (three won by Beckley before joining the league) and 11 baseball championships (three won by Logan and one by Scott before leaving the league) since its creation before the 1993-94 school year.
But with a league so large, the top-tier talent comes with more than a few struggling programs elsewhere. A typical MSAC basketball schedule is taxing more because of its travel demands than because of the competitive nature of the league as a whole.
The Cardinal, pound-for-pound, is a better, more competitive basketball conference, at least this year. A quick survey of the respective league standings reveals that much. (See standings, page 2B)
There's more to it than that, as Skeen explained, and it goes to the very core of the identity difference between Class AAA schools and Class AA schools.
"A little over a week ago we played at Chapmanville and it was a packed house," Skeen said. "We love double-A basketball. It's communities.
"You can go to any triple-A school in Charleston and there's 100 people sometimes sitting there. You can go to any game in double-A and see what we just saw out there tonight. Not everywhere, but in the Cardinal Conference you can."
The Rebels overcame an eight-point deficit at the start of the fourth quarter to win their 10th consecutive game in front of a packed crowd of about 600 fans at the Sissonville gym.
By comparison, when Capital came from behind to beat visiting Greenbrier East in overtime at home last week, there were less than 90 people in the stands, many of them junior varsity players, school and team officials.
Nearly two years ago, Capital Coach Carl Clark said that much of the lack of participation on behalf of potential student-athletes and fans at his school were due to its not being a neighborhood school.
"They took the schools out of the communities and build them out in the middle of nowhere," Clark said in 2010. "No one can identify with a school they don't feel a physical connection to."
The community atmosphere and influence indicative of many double-A schools and in most of their Class A counterparts has Cardinal Conference teams poised to make the basketball postseason more than interesting. In the eight-team league, Tolsia (10-2), Sissonville (11-3), Chapmanville (8-5), Herbert Hoover (8-5) and surprising Poca (8-4) all compete in Class AA's Region 4, while Point Pleasant (7-5) is a threat to reach the State Tournament from Region 1.
Because of the league's strength and his team's success in the first half of the year, Skeen was able to see past the immediate shortcomings and view the whole picture with more clarity once he stepped off the court.
"It would have been big, but it's not going to define our season. Last week we just had a letdown, and we beat ourselves a lot, not to take anything away from Nitro or Poca," he said, referring to the teams that began Sissonville's current losing streak.
"Tonight, I felt like I had my team back. We know our conference games are like this. We were up on Point Pleasant and they came back and made it a nailbighter. Same thing at Chapmanville.
"Where do we go from here? We'll be fine. It's just life in the Cardinal Conference."
Point Pleasant will leave the league later this year as it prepares for a move to Class AAA. For Skeen and the rest of his Cardinal contemporaries, life is good.
Contact Preps Editor Derek Taylor at derek.tay...@dailymail.com or 304-348-5170.
