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By CORY ERICKSONBy now, I’m sure many have

seen or at least heard about Se-attle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman and his temperamental postgame interview with FOX side-line reporter Erin Andrews Sunday.

A bewildered Andrews stood with microphone in hand as Sher-man, who had just saved a potential game-winning touchdown in the inal minute of the NFC championship game, went ballistic.

“Well, I’m the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like (Michael) Crabtree, that’s the result you are going to get. Don’t you ever talk about me,” he said, screaming into the camera.

Andrews, rightfully perplexed, asked, “Who was talking about you?”

“Crabtree. Don’t open your mouth about the best or I’m going to shut it for you real quick,” Sherman responded.

This man clearly never watched the movie “Bull Durham,” which fea-tures three phrases that are canoni-cal to any athlete being interviewed by the press:

“We’ve got to play ’em one day at a time.”

“I’m just happy to be here. Hope I can help the ballclub.”

“I just want to give it my best shot and, the good Lord willing, things will work out.”

Thousands of armchair sports pundits took to Facebook and Twitter to give their thoughts on Sherman’s outburst.

Many used derogatory, offensive language to describe Sherman, who happens to be African-American.

Many more in turn labeled those others as racists.

I’m not writing to delve into racial overtones of one man’s nationally televised comments and a whole na-tion’s collective freakout over it.

Rather, the headlines and col-umns and articles generated by it, frankly, surprised me.

Sherman’s comments — while admittedly in poor taste, although he did apologize for them earlier this week — are not exactly uncommon in the world of professional sports.

Consider Muhammad Ali speak-ing about his ight with Sonny Liston in 1964.

“After the ight I’m gonna build myself a pretty home and use him as a bearskin rug. Liston even smells like a bear. I’m gonna give him to the local zoo after I whoop him.”

Could you imagine if Sherman had said anything close to this on television?

Twitter would shut down due to the volume of comments. ESPN would probably spin off a new pundit show just to talk about it. (They prob-ably already did.)

It’s times like this — when a non-story can become the only story — when I stop and think a little about the context of it all.

Are people growing more sensi-tive over time or are we all just look-ing for the next thing to blast out to the web?

The two are probably related.I see more and more people

feeling the need to offer their opinion on things that really aren’t going to matter in the long run.

This column is a prime example.In a little over a week, Sherman’s

comments won’t buzz as they have this week. Of course, they’ll live on in infamy on Youtube and probably be replayed as offseason football cover-age ramps up again in late February.

The fact is, people say outra-geous things all the time.

The people taking to airwaves and Internet to call Sherman class-less for his comments are only going to hear more about it and likely get more of it.

With more cameras always roll-ing and more microphones always running, we’re all going to keep hearing things we don’t necessarily care for.

It doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it more wrong.

If you hope to “class-up” the trash talking in sports, keep ighting the good ight.

You’ll have to play it one day at a time, give it your best shot and, the good Lord willing, things will work out.

By CORY ERICKSON

Four days after discover-ing it could compete with a second-ranked Thompson team, Hillsboro-Central Valley’s girls basketball team had the roles switched on them Tuesday.

The Burros, No. 9 in state rankings, won in a 46-40 nail-biter in Central Valley over Larimore, a four-loss squad cur-rently sitting in third place in District 3 standings.

“Assistant coach Scott Kel-ley had a great analogy for this game,” said H-CV Keith Meyer. “It’s a lot like the Thompson game in a role reversal.

“We learned that night that we can stay with (the Tommies). Tonight, Larimore learned that they can stay with us.”

The Burros had a season-low 46 points against the Polar Bears. Kennedy Henningsgard inished with 13 points and Ra-chel Murphy added 10.

H-CV was outrebounded by the more aggressive Larimore squad and tallied nearly 30 turn-overs, uncharacteristic of the po-tent Burro lineup.

Loose balls seemingly found a player in a Polar Bears jersey all evening long.

“They rebounded like crazy,” Meyer said. “We were always letting somebody slide in there and get that offensive rebound. … That just killed us.”

The Burros scored seconds into the game, winning the opening tip and streaking down the court for an easy layup.

Payton Kritzberger helped give H-CV a six-point lead at 8-2 on a putback off an offen-sive rebound midway through the irst quarter.

It seemed the rout was on, but Larimore wouldn’t go away.

The Polar Bears climbed within 9-8 early and trailed by six after eight minutes.

Larimore held the Burros to 10 points in the second quarter and cut H-CV’s lead to only ive at the break.

“Some of that is just intensi-ty. I don’t feel like we were near as intense as we usually are,” Meyer said. “When we give up a couple offensive rebounds – when we throw the ball around like we did – we get down men-tally. I’m trying to lift (the girls) back up into a better state of mind.”

The normally quick-scoring Burro offense was slowed to eight points in the third quarter as Larimore again slashed its op-ponent’s lead.

With the score 34-30 enter-ing the fourth quarter, Meyer’s squad regained its composure in the game’s inal minutes.

“I told them they have a re-markable ability for survival,” he said. “They put it together

when they need to.”Larimore scored a bucket to

pull within 42-40 with 35 sec-onds left in the game.

The Polar Bears fouled Hen-ningsgard, who added two free throws to make it a two-posses-sion lead.

A 3-point attempt by Lari-more’s Katie Berge missed the mark. The Burros rebounded and Murphy added a pair of foul shots to help H-CV escape with a six-point win.

Larimore was led by Mer-edith Mutch’s 13 points. The Polar Bears also got 11 and 10 points out of Kayla Schneider and Katie Berge, respectively.

Rachel Dryburgh, who fouled out in the fourth quarter, inished with eight points for H-CV.

Meyer liked what he saw from the Burros team late, but he added the squad will need to have that focus for 32 full min-utes as the season continues.

“I’d just like to see that kind of effort that we had late – to put the game away – for four quar-ters for once,” he said. “That’s what we’re striving for is four consistent quarters. We’re not there yet.”

Burros win in McVilleH-CV traveled to McVille

Saturday for a rescheduled game against Dakota Prairie from Jan. 16.

The Burros had little trouble with the winless Knights in a 71-18 blowout win.

Henningsgard scored 20 points to pace H-CV, which led 40-11 at halftime.

Murphy poured in 14 points as eight Burro players scored at least four points. Madi Lazur scored a season-high nine points in the win.

Madysen Kouba led Dakota Prairie, 0-9 on the season, with eight points.

Hillsboro-Central Valley 71,Dakota Prairie 18H-CV ................. 21 19 20 11 71Dakota Prairie ..... 5 6 4 3 18Hillsboro-Central Valley — Kennedy Henningsgard 20, Kylie Pastian 8, Ra-chel Dryburgh 7, Rachel Murphy 14, Madi Lazur 9, Tedi Perkins 5, Payton Kritzberger 4, Katlyn Buethner 4Dakota Prairie — Quinn Anderson 2, Carleigh Stein 3, Paige Dahl 1, Kaylee Flaagan 2, Madysen Kouba 8, Kaylie Haugen 2Thompson 55,Hillsboro-Central Valley 43H-CV ................. 14 2 15 12 43Thompson ......... 16 9 13 17 55Hillsboro-Central Valley — Rachel Dryburgh 6, Payton Kritzberger 2, Ken-nedy Henningsgard 17, Rachel Murphy 16, Madison Lazur 2Thompson — Samantha Hegg 3, Beth-any Ivesdal 7, Shaice Marx 4, Karleigh Weber 16, McKenna DeMoe 2, Shan-non Galegher 18, Emily Overby 5

Hillsboro-Central Valley 46,Larimore 40Larimore ........... 10 11 9 10 40H-CV ................. 16 10 8 12 46Hillsboro-Central Valley — Rachel Dryburgh 8, Payton Kritzberger 4, Ken-nedy Henningsgard 13, Kylie Pastian 6, Tedi Perkins 5, Rachel Murphy 10Thompson — Brittany Georgeson 1, Kayla Schneider 11, Meredith Mutch 13, Katie Berge 10, Maddie Johnson 2, Faith Kadelbach 3

Tommies take first matchup between state top-10 teamsBy CORY ERICKSON

Rebounding was the down-fall of Hillsboro-Central Val-ley’s girls basketball team last Friday.

The Burros fell 55-43 to No. 2 Thompson on the road in a fa-ceoff between top-10 teams.

The Tommies had 10 re-bounds to H-CV’s two during a 14-point fourth quarter run which pushed the Tommies past the Burros, who entered the game ranked seventh in the state.

“We know that if we play well, we’re going to be right there with them,” said H-CV coach Keith Meyer.

H-CV trailed by 10 in the second half, but closed the game

to a point off Rachel Dryburgh’s three-point play with 5:53 re-maining in the game.

Thompson held the Burros scoreless over the next 4:49, however and escaped with the win.

“We all felt really good about what happened against Thomp-son,” said Meyer. “It was a real good emotional lift.”

Kennedy Henningsgard led H-CV with 17 points. Forward Rachel Murphy added 16.

The Tommies were led by Shannon Galegher’s 18 points. Senior guard Karleigh Weber chipped in 16.

The Tommies improved to 9-1 with the win.

Hopefully the last column on Seattle’s Richard Sherman

Sixth NDAPSSA Girls Class B PollReleased Jan. 20, 2014

Rank ....Team (1st-place) .. Record ..Points .. Last week1...........Bishop Ryan (15) ...... 9-0 ........ 150 .................... 1 2...........Thompson .................8-1 ........ 132 .................... 23...........Beach ........................ 7-0 ........ 108 .................... 34...........North Star .................. 9-0 ........ 104 .................... 45...........Central Cass .............6-1 ......... 80 ..................... 56...........Shiloh Christian .........8-1 ......... 69 ..................... 67...........Rolla .......................... 7-0 ......... 59 ..................... 88...........Fairmount-C-T ........... 8-0 ......... 39 ................... 109...........H-CV ......................... 7-1 ......... 33 ..................... 710.........Lakota-Edmore ..........5-3 ......... 29 ..................... 9Receiving votes: Maple Valley (8-1), Linton-HMB (7-1), El-lendale (8-1), Carrington (6-2), Underwood (9-1)

Rachel Murphy drove into traffic and tallied 10 points against the Polar Bears.

Shaice Marx and the Tommies outpaced H-CV’s Kennedy Henningsgard (20) and Rachel Dryburgh (3) in a 55-43 win last Friday.

PHOTO BY CORY ERICKSON

Burros avoid late scare