Ky. high-school basketball tourney is rural festival

A great rural festival began today, in Kentucky's second largest city. It's the state high school basketball tournament, and though it's at Rupp Arena in Lexington, it has a rural look, feel and sound. That's because Kentucky is one of the few states that choose a single high-school basketball champion and don't use a class system, in which schools are grouped according to enrollment and several champions are crowned. Some Kentuckians think their state is the only one without any hint of a class system in basketball.

The lack of a class system means that Kentucky's smaller rural schools almost always outnumber their urban counterparts when the champions of the 16 regions face off in the "Sweet Sixteen." (The Kentucky High School Athletic Association might prefer that we put a trademark after that, but quotation marks will have to do. They might also think we should give you the name of the bank that is a corporate sponsor.)

Today's first session (in photo) was, fittingly, mainly rural. Hazard, the smallest school in the tournament with an enrollment of 286, played gamely but ran out of gas against West Jessamine (County), a school that is in the Lexington metropolitan area but has many rural students. The second game pitted two thoroughly rural schools, Adair County and Grayson County. Adair had the only player with a college scholarship, but Grayson won 45-33. Both afternoon winners had never won a state tournament game, notes Jason Frakes of The Courier-Journal.

Tonight's card has two rural-urban matchups: Louisville Central vs. Graves County, and Louisville Eastern vs. Corbin. Tomorrow afternoon, it's Lexington Catholic vs. Bowling Green and Covington Holmes vs. Christian County. Tomorrow night, it's all rural, with Mason County vs. Shelby Valley and Anderson County vs. Elliott County, one of the state's smallest. Elliott and Shelby Valley (Pike County) are the top teams in Eastern Kentucky, and are expected to go farther in the tournament than the area's recent representatives, as reported by Frakes and Mike Fields of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

UPDATE, March 21: The last truly rural team in the tourney, Elliott County, lost in a semifinal this morning to Covington Holmes. For Herald-Leader coverage, click here. In a story earlier in the week, Pat Forde of ESPN.com likened Elliott's quest to that of the Milan, Ind., Indians of 1954, memorialized in the 1986 film "Hoosiers." "The Lions' story has captured the attention of basketball fans around the globe, among them "Hoosiers" screenwriter Angelo Pizzo, an Indiana resident," Forde reported. (Read more)