ricola wrote: that triway team was awesome. and has a hiland backer I don't think there's any way last year's Hiland team beats them. had they not run into a future Big Ten and NBA player at Dunbar theylikely would have been state champs at least one year

That Upper Sandusky team we lost to in 2004-'05 was more loaded than people think, too - it of course had OSU-bound Jon Diebler (OHSAA career scoring leader), but also had his brother Jacob Diebler (DII POY that year, I believe, and I think played at Valporaiso), and Greg Micheli (NOL football POY that year, good QB at Mount Union). And we had cut the game to 4 points within the last minute or two, only to lose 94-86.

Then of course in 2005-'06, Dunbar had Dequan Cook (OSU, Miami Heat), but they also had 6'whatever" Aaron Pogue, Norris Cole (star on last year's Cleveland State team), and others that repeated as champs the following year (against Upper Sandusky). LoL!

the DR sportswriters all had it exactly right - how you could vote for any other team than Triway is laughable, they went to c-bus - twice. The smithies had a very, very good team but they accomplished as much as Rittman, Dalton, Northwestern, Hillsdale, etc, etc, etc. did in that decade (these all had teams that made it to the regionals. As far as Bates as player of the year - I am trying to type between my laughter. I wouldn't have even voted him over KK off of the same team. A very nice point guard, yes, but no better than 5 or 6 other PG's that played that decade. I don't see how you can vote for a team based on what they could have accomplished - you have to go by what they DID accomplish.

Excellent post 1486... I am not trying to knock Bates at all here, but just off the top of my head I can probably name 5 point guard or Gurads that were better than him, in Steve Summers (1000 point scorer), Jared Noletti, Todd Barkman (2000 MVP, start of the decade) Joel Gause, Joe Brightbill, thats is five and I could keep going, plus I didn't even mention the true player of the decade in Rottman. Summers is the one player I think that got slighted in this whole thing. He was a flat out scorer, and was very hard to stop. I can remember seeing Chippewa late in games going to that 1-4 low set and watching him just blow by any defender.

WCAL wrote: Excellent post 1486... I am not trying to knock Bates at all here, but just off the top of my head I can probably name 5 point guard or Gurads that were better than him, in Steve Summers (1000 point scorer), Jared Noletti, Todd Barkman (2000 MVP, start of the decade) Joel Gause, Joe Brightbill, thats is five and I could keep going, plus I didn't even mention the true player of the decade in Rottman. Summers is the one player I think that got slighted in this whole thing. He was a flat out scorer, and was very hard to stop. I can remember seeing Chippewa late in games going to that 1-4 low set and watching him just blow by any defender.

The whole problem with the team and players of the decade is it just has to many people to remember and the names you brought up are excellent examples of players I had even forgotten about. The people voting ( I did not because I could forsee ballot stuffing for undeserving players over those that should be noted. ) they have the same problem, they only remember recent seasons and you have biased voting such as Smithville team and players being fresh memories and earlier players are lost. Just imagine if they tried to come up with the top 50 players of alltime, it would be definetly be mainly recent players and few from before the 90's or 2000's. How many people who voted would even remember Denson and Ray from Orrville's 95-96 state champs or Summers and Durden from the 92 team?

I believe I mentioned more recent successes overshadowing past successes in my first post on this thread. But you are right. And that is why there is such a vast difference in the selections of the public vote, and the writers vote. The writers actually did some research before voting.