Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012: Bad day for Jefferson vs. N.J. power

   His Thomas Jefferson team saw its 12-game winning streak snapped -- albeit at the hands of a great opponent. He got T'ed up for a momentum-turning skirmish with the father of one of his players. And two other players were quoted referring to the coach by his first name, perhaps indicative that Pollard doesn't command the same level of respect afforded a lot of other coaches, in a news story about the game.

   “Bud gets a little too hyped,” Jefferson’s Jaquan Lynch told ESPN New York after his team's 71-60 loss to Jersey City (N.J.) St. Anthony's. “I think he needs some chill juice if they have something called that. We tried to forget about it, but it messed up our whole game after that. We just didn't have the same energy because we were worried about that.”

   Jefferson led 23-21 midway through the second quarter when Pollard and Ken Evans, father of Jalen Evans, got into a heated argument that stopped the game for five minutes. When play resumed, St. Anthony's went on a 16-1 tear en route to the win over New York's second-ranked Class AA team at Abraham Lincoln in Brooklyn.

   Pollard had pulled Jalen Evans from the game after he failed to come up with a loose ball. The coach reportedly lit into the player, triggering the father's response. ESPN's account of the game said Ken Evans then walked up behind him near the bench and shouted expletives at the coach as the two nearly came to blows.

   Milestone alert: Shawn Mulverhill's goal midway through the third period Wednesday was all Malone needed for a 1-0 hockey victory over Saranac, giving Chuck Dievendorf his 300th coaching win at the school.

   Seventh-grader Joey Brown turned aside 18 shots in recording his first varsity win.

   Wrestling wild cards: The NYSPHSAA wrestling championships Feb. 24-25 will have a Section 2 flavor for reasons that go beyond the meet's location in Albany.

   Section 2 competitors were awarded 14 of the 60 at-large berths in Division I as well as eight more in Division II. Section 5 also landed 22 overall berths, one more than Section 6.

   The complete lists of automatic qualifiers and wild cards can be found here.

   Runaway score doesn't bother coach: There was a boys basketball game in Wisconsin two weeks ago that ended with a final score of 116-40 as East Troy, ranked No. 1 in the state in Division 3, continued to throw a full-court press at Big Foot High -- cool name, huh? -- well into the fourth quarter.

   When FOXSports Wisconsin followed up this week with a story about how much is too much when it comes to lopsided scores, East Troy coach Darryl Rayfield expressed only one regret: That his team didn't tack on even more points.

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   "I don't apologize for anything," Rayfield said. "I'd do it again. Only this time, I'd probably score 130, 140."

   Nice fella.

   I read that quote and I can't help but recall what a New York coach told me recently regarding being on the wrong end of an awful score against a potent opponent: "I've got a long memory, so he better hope he has another one of those coming along."

   Extra points: Don't be stunned to hear in the not-too-distant future that all NYSPHSAA varsity football teams will be assured the option of playing nine games and possibly a 10th even if they do not reach their sectional semifinals. I've heard chatter to that effect from opposite ends of the state in the last week.

   Dolgeville boys basketball coach Brian Ellis has retired after 173 wins in 17 seasons. "When I came to Dolgeville I didn’t plan on doing 20 years,” Ellis told the Little Falls Times. "I didn’t even plan on doing 10 ... but I know I’m going to miss it."

   Fayetteville-Manlius AD Rich Roy, 57, will retire July 1 after 22 years on the job. He was previously AD at Hannibal for three years and served as Section 3 president from 2004-06.