Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012: Canisius rolls past Obokoh-less Kearney

   Leading off today: Canisius College-bound Adam Weir made three 3-pointers and scored 28 points to pace Canisius High to a 69-50 win over visiting Bishop Kearney on Tuesday in boys basketball.

   Canisius is ranked ninth in Class A and Kearney seventh in Class AA this week by the New York State Sportswriters Association ratings.

   Kearney, which opened with a loss to Niagara Falls and is 1-2, played without 6-foot-9 Syracuse recruit Chinonso Obokoh, who has had ongoing foot injury problem that a source said today may substantially limit his availability for a month or more.

   Canisius' Matt MacDonald also made three 3-pointers, finishing with 18 points. The Crusaders put the game out of reach by opening the fourth quarter with a 9-0 spurt.

   Canisius has won three straight since an opening loss to Olean, ranked third in Class B.

   “Definitely a little bummed [that Obokoh didn’t play] – you want to play everyone’s best,” Weir told The Buffalo News. “We feel that if we play our game, we can beat anyone.”

   Said Kearney coach Jon Boon: “The way they shot it, it wouldn’t have mattered [if Obokoh played]. You can’t let their shooters get open.”

   Lincoln in top form: Thomas Jefferson rallied all the way back from a 20-point deficit, but visiting Abraham Lincoln then went on a 12-0 run and finished with a 90-74 victory in boys PSAL action.

   Jefferson, ranked 17th in Class AA, went on a 24-3 run capped by a Jaquan Lynch 3-pointer to take a 69-68 lead with 4:13 to play. After a timeout, junior guard Anthony Williams hit a 3-pointer that put Lincoln back in front for good.

   “That was the biggest shot of my high school career,” Williams told The New York Daily News.

   Lincoln junior Isaiah Whitehead scored eight of his 20 points in the final three minutes of the game as part of a 22-5 run. Teammate Elijah Davis, a senior transfer, finished with 24 points.

   Lincoln is 6-2 after taking a pair of losses at the Villa Classic in Glenside, Pa. Lynch and three other regulars did not play those games after missing the bus. Internet speculation that the four may have been kicked off the team proved unfounded.

   Shuffling the deck: It looks like Lincoln is making another bus trip. The Railsplitters and a Kentucky school have been recruited to fill out the lineup for the Mirabito STOP-DWI Holiday Classic after that Binghamton event lost two Canadian schools.

   Toronto-area entries Bill Crothers Secondary School and Thornlea Secondary School notified organizers they had to back out of the Dec. 28-30 National Division bracket because of a labor dispute in the province of Ontario, the Press & Sun-Bulletin reported.

   Lincoln and Louisville Trinity became available when the Gulfshore Invitational at Naples, Fla., went belly-up after a problem securing sponsorship money. The rest of the field will consist of NYC squads St. Raymond, Bishop Loughlin and Collegiate, as well as Portsmouth, Va., I.C. Norcom and Philadelphia Electric and Technology Charter High.

   Lights out in Texas: Gary Gaines, the Texas high school football coach central to the book, movie and TV series "Friday Night Lights," has retired once again. The head coach at Odessa Permian for eight seasons (1986-89 and 2009-12) compiled a 69-28-1 record.

   “We’re going to give it to someone else and, hopefully, they can make more out of it than we did,” said Gaines, 63. “We came here to make some deep playoff runs and

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we weren’t able to do that. That’s what (fans) expect, and I expect as well.”

   Gaines coached Permian to a Texas Class 5A championship in 1989, a season after H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger spent a year in town researching his best-selling book about the team and the football culture in Odessa.

   Think pink: What would you do in the world of sports if you won a preposterous amount of money in the lottery?

   Since the team itself cannot be bought, I'd settle for a lifetime suite lease at Frontier Field to watch the community-owned Rochester Red Wings play Triple-A baseball all summer long. I'd also start the country's best (and first, I assume) high school dual-meet track and field tournament and write a check to kick-start fencing as a scholastic sport in Rochester-area schools.

   Well, Brian and Mary Lohse are more ambitious than I am. The Iowa couple won a $202 million Powerball jackpot in September and will donate $3 million to the Bondurant-Farrar school district -- their son’s high school -- for a new football stadium.

   The gift comes with a catch: The visitors' locker room must be painted pink.

   The school board accepted the donation Monday, The Des Moines Register reported. The goal is to complete the stadium by the 2014 football season — in time for their oldest son’s senior year.

   “I was sort of half joking and half not, I suppose, but they said they’d do it,” Mary Lohse said of the unusual color scheme inspired by the University of Iowa visitors locker room. “It’s supposed to put them in a certain soft frame of mind,” Mary Lohse said. “It will certainly give all the players something to talk about.”

   The Lohse family has requested the stadium not be named for them. The facility will include an academic wing and a fine arts auditorium.