Scheduling snafu keeps Riverhawks from playing
The Quad-City Riverhawks’ first six games went off without a hitch. But in the American Basketball Association, games on the schedule never are guaranteed.
The Riverhawks’ first road trip hit a dead end Thursday when owner Tom McGinn found out tonight’s opponent didn’t have the game on its schedule.
“I was talking to the owner of the Anderson (Ind.) Champions, and he was wondering why we were getting hotel rooms out there, because on his schedule we’re not coming out there,” McGinn said. “On our schedule, we are coming out there. If you pull out a few different ABA schedules online, some of them have us going to Anderson, some of them don’t have anything until we go to Chicago on Saturday.”
Then, there is this little line later in the story:
Not a single ABA team played its entire 36-game schedule last season.
What? Baseball I can understand not playing every game on the schedule. There have been a few hockey games that I have been involved in that had to be postponed, but the games were always made up at some point. Basketball?
And this passage will make me feel guilty if I ever complain about travel by a motor coach:
The Riverhawks are off to a 4-2 start and rank 16th in the ABA power rankings — the top 24 teams at the end of the season qualify for the playoffs — but the average attendance of 235 has been below what McGinn anticipated.
And a scheduling error on the team’s first try at a road trip certainly doesn’t help.
McGinn already had rented vans for the weekend — the team normally will travel in the McGinn family Winnebago, but McGinn didn’t want to risk potential snowy conditions — and the team prepared all week for a matchup with Anderson. Now the Riverhawks will drive over and back to Chicago on Saturday for a game against the Rockstars, a team they beat Monday, 114-67.
The ABA site is HERE. There doesn't appear to be a Riverhawk website.
No comments:
Post a Comment