Tom Reck
Special to the Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE —
September arrives this week — the month that has become possibly the busiest and maybe most important month of the season for sports teams and fans.
High school football teams play about half their games in the month. College and football teams begin their seasons, and the major league baseball season comes to a close.
Some interesting college football games on tap this week.
Some of the more interesting are Missouri-Illinois, Colorado-Colorado State, Northwestern-Vanderbilt, Notre Dame-Purdue, Michigan-Connecticut, Kansas State-UCLA, Brigham Young-Washington, LSU-North Carolina, Fresno State-Cincinnati, Navy-Maryland, and Boise State-Virginia Tech.
Locally, Indiana State takes on old Indiana Collegiate Conference rival St. Joseph’s at Memorial Stadium.
In baseball, Cincinnati opened a five-game lead over St. Louis on Sunday in the NL Central, Atlanta was two games up on Philadelphia in the NL East while San Diego had a five-game lead on San Francisco in the NL West.
The Reds and Braves both have shown a knack for winning in the late innings and likely will hold on to their leads. We like Philadelphia to be the NL wild card.
In the AL, New York and Tampa Bay were tied after Sunday’s games and figure to battle down to the wire in the East. Chicago may make a run at Minnesota in the Central, but the Twins should hold on to win that division while Texas has been in command all season in the West and doesn’t figure to let down now.
• Tom-Cattin’ It — Shakamak scoring leader Billy Newton has signed to play basketball for Oakland City. He should be in the lineup for the Oaks when they play at ISU this season.
• Former Indiana University player Eric Gordon and Indiana Pacer Danny Granger are members of the U.S. basketball team that is off to a good start in the world championships.
• Butler has received a commitment in basketball from 6-foot-8 Kameron Woods of Louisville Eastern. He averaged seven points, seven rebounds and four blocks his junior year and had a stellar AAU season.
• Avon pitcher Jared Miller says he will play college baseball at Vanderbilt.
• Eastern Greene has had some nice victories in volleyball, beating Terre Haute North and Bloomington South. And the Greene County school is fielding a girls golf team for the first time.
• Southern Indiana will play men’s basketball exhibition games at Vanderbilt and Illinois.
• In the Football Championship Subdivision voting done by coaches, Villanova is No. 1.
Missouri Valley Conference teams in the top 25 are Southern Illinois 5, South Dakota State 10 and Northern Iowa 13. Eastern Illinois is 16 and Illinois State was second in the received-votes tabulation.
Tom Reck may be contacted by telephone at (812) 232-3231, by email at tm_reck@yahoo.com or by mail at 4284 South 5th Street, Apt. 3, Terre Haute, IN 47802.
