Published: November 16, 2009 10:22 am      

Roff boys to face pair of rivals

ROFF — Roff’s Tigers have a chance for a little payback against one rival within their class and an opportunity to continue their recent domination of another rival — this one within the area but outside their class — Tuesday and Friday during a busy week for local basketball squads from Classes B through 2A.

Kale Simon is 0-3 against Stringtown in two seasons as Roff’s head coach, including a pair of defeats during a 2008-2009 campaign in which his club lost just four games, and Stringtown has beaten Roff handily in the last five meetings between the two teams. Most recently, Stringtown eliminated Simon’s Tigers in the first round of the Class B state tournament in March and also manhandled them last December in a regular-season contest.

But when the two teams meet Tuesday night in Stringtown, Roff will be favored against the host Tigers for the first time in recent memory. Simon has Class B’s No. 1 team heading into the third week of the season, and the young coach tried to downplay the revenge factor in Tuesday’s contest.

“We’re looking forward to it because it’s the next game on our schedule,” Simon said.

If Roff gets past Stringtown, the Tigers will bring a 3-0 record back home for Friday’s showdown with Donnie Husband’s Latta Panthers, who are ranked No. 11 in Class 2A but have approached the same kind of futility against Roff in recent years that Simon and his predecessor, Darrick Farriell, experienced against Stringtown over the past four seasons.

The Panthers, who struggled early in the 2008-2009 season before closing with a flourish to finish 18-15 overall, return eight of their top 10 players, including senior forward Wacey Henderson and junior swing man Reed Johnson, who combined to score almost 30 points per game a season ago. While Roff will have three games under its belt, Latta will have played just one before Friday night’s rivalry showdown — Tuesday at home against a Dale squad ranked No. 8 in 2A.

“If you’re expecting anything less than a dogfight with Latta, you’re not approaching it right,” Simon noted. “It’s a rivalry game, and I’m sure they’ll be ready for us.”

Roff will counter Henderson, Johnson and Company with a balanced, senior-laden lineup featuring a talented backcourt rotation of seniors Dayne Parker, Brendan McCurry and Aaron Cornell and a front line led by high-scoring 6-5 senior Dylan Lemley. The Tigers, who suffered pre-Christmas losses to Vanoss, Strington and Red Oak last season, then didn’t lose again until the state tournament, dominated Vanoss and Varnum in their first two games of the season.

Although his first two Roff teams — which both reached the state tournament — improved steadily as the year went along, Simon said he isn’t worried about this group getting too good too soon.

“We’re not peaking by any means,” he said. “It’s a process and we have a long way to go. We’ve been lucky to have more talent at each position than the teams we’ve played so far. Win or lose, we’re just trying to improve day-by-day-by-day.

“I enjoy this group,” Simon added. “They’ve been working and they’ve been playing extremely hard. Our No. 1 concern is judging games by our standards and not by the scoreboard. When we win games, we won’t look at the score as much as how we win those games.”

Despite the talent and tradition of Stringtown and Latta, the Tigers and Panthers are just two of the quality teams on a beefed-up Roff schedule.

Simon will take his club to Dale next week, and the Tigers have a home date with Class A No. 3 Stratford on Dec. 15 in the midst of a December slate capped by a trip to the rugged Tournament of Champions in Tulsa just before New Year’s. Things get a little easier in January, but the Tigers close the regular season with a showdown against Class A No. 1 Garber at Carl Albert High School in Midwest City on Dec. 6 before traveling to Latta for their season finale three days later.

“A basketball schedule is hard to change year to year, but we went out and tried to find the best teams we could,” Simon explained.

And the Roff-Stringtown and Roff-Latta boys contests are only two of seven games this week in which area teams will face ranked opponents.

The winner of the Dale-Latta boys game Tuesday will have a chance to move up the 2A rankings, but the girls contest that night will also featured a ranked team as the No. 3 Lady Pirates battle the host Lady Panthers.

On the same night, Stonewall’s Lady Longhorns (2-1 and ranked No. 20 in Class A) will take on an old rival to open a doubleheader at Crowder. Stonewall eliminated Crowder at the 2006 Class A girls state tournament but has lost four straight in the rivalry since then, including a regular-season contest and an elimination game at the area tournament last season.

Elsewhere, the Vanoss girls, 2-0 under new coach Jason Fulks, will face easily their toughest test of the season so far when they face Class B’s No. 17 team in the opener of a doubleheader at New Lima. Tuesday’s other two twinbills are all-area affairs, with Asher at old rival Wanette and Tupelo at Calvin.

Roff-Latta is the highlight of an abbreviated Friday schedule that features two other all-area doubleheaders — Asher at Tupelo and Stonewall at Vanoss — that figure to have a huge impact on the Pontotoc Conference boys and girls races. The Tupelo girls are ranked No. 20 in Class B.