Friday nights just got more important.

Here’s a couple of key tidbits about a few of Friday’s bigger playoff match-ups.

Ridgeway-Germantown (at Halle)….After missing three games due to a high ankle sprain, Roadrunner senior RB Aaron Crawford is back. That could be bad news for Germantown, though Charlie White did a fantastic job of gameplanning for Crawford’s brother, Jocques Crawford, in a first-round playoff win over Cordova last season, limiting him to 48 rushing yards in a 37-0 shutout.

Wooddale-Millington (at Cordova)…My pick for game of the week. Both teams have outstanding atheltes on both sides of the ball - Wooddale with senior QB Jeremy Perry, senior receiver Roderick Davis and junior receiver Sean Armstrong and Millington with junior running back Travis Simpson, one of the area’s top rushers this season with over 1,150 yards. The difference here will be special teams and turnovers.

White Station-Cordova (at Fairgrounds) …. White Station is talented, yes, but without junior quarterback Jeff Link at the helm, the Spartans come down a couple of notches. While junior Martin Haaga is certainly capable at quarterback (he split time with Link at QB last year before moving to TE this season), he doesn’t have much time to develop much chemistry between himself and the receivers, having started at QB for the first time this season last Friday.

Raleigh-Egpyt at Munford …… Did you really think former East High coach Wayne Randall would get it turned around at Munford this quickly? No way.

Mitchell at Dyersburg…..Last year Dyersburg, at 10-0, was asking first-round opponent Sheffield what it knew about Mitchell, which Dyersburg assumed it would face in the second round. Sheffield, with just two wins last season, ended up knocking off top-seeded Dyersburg in one of the biggest upset in recent playoff history. Think Dyersburg will look past Mitchell to its second-round opponent this year?

Washington at Trenton Peabody……Find me one quality win on Washington’s schedule. Take your time. I can wait.

Eight games into a difficult season and Tiger coach Tommy West continues to be impressed by freshman receiver Duke Calhoun.

Before the season began, Calhoun was the incoming freshman getting most of the ink because of his ability. West asked several members of the media to back off and not hype the ex-Raleigh-Egypt receiver too much, especially before he had played a game.

But it’s apparent with four games left, Calhoun has made an impact. He leads the team in receiving yards (420) and receiving touchdowns (4). While West admits Calhoun “has a long way to go without the ball”, he is accomplished with it.

And if there was a team ESPY award for catch of the year, Calhoun would have several receptions nominated, including a one-handed TD grab at East Carolina.

Tonight marks the start of another NBA season. And with that comes the start of my new gig as The Commercial Appeal’s new NBA writer. As part of my new duties, on our Sunday NBA page, we will feature a mailbag section where readers can send me their NBA-related questions and I’ll do my best to give you answer. In order for this to be a success, though, I need for you all to do me a favor and keep the mailbag full. Send your questions to morgan@commercialappeal.com. Then, be sure to check out our new, revamped NBA page, which makes its debut this Sunday.

As you hopefully read in Tuesday’s edition of The Commercial Appeal, John Calipari on Monday suspended sophomore center Kareem Cooper from the team.

The news wasn’t surprising. When Cooper missed Thursday’s practice — along with freshman Hashim Bailey — Calipari said they could be back Friday. But only Bailey came back Friday, and Cooper was gone all weekend.

Though Calipari didn’t talk about why he suspended Cooper, he did characterize it as “all-compassing.” A lot of other folks around the program have told me that there wasn’t necessarily one specific thing that led to the suspension.
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In the last couple of years, the SEC football race has been decided by the second week of November.

It may last a little longer this year. There are so many key games left, such as Arkansas at South Carolina, LSU at Tennessee, South Carolina at Florida, Tennessee at Arkansas, Georgia at Auburn.

Even crazier is the fact that the SEC could have as many as nine bowl-eligible teams. The last few years, the league hasn’t been able to fill all of its bowl spots.

This is the way I look at the league heading into the last month of the season, team-by-team:
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Hi Folks,

I’m going to try to use this blog platform to occasionally discuss the inner workings of the office and how things get done here at 495 Union Ave, third floor, southern territory. I’ll be happy to answer all questions you want to shoot my way.

One of our tasks today — besides putting the finishing touches on the Grizzlies special section (shameless plug department: this comes out in Wednesday’s paper) — was trying to figure out how to get to all the big prep football games Friday night. We started a heavy zoned-prep initiative this year, so that each of the five main zones — DeSoto County, Millington-Tipton, Bartlett-Cordova, Germantown-Collierville and the city of Memphis — had personalized prep football coverage on Friday nights. If you live in Bartlett, for instance, the feature game in your Sports section on Saturdays was different than the paper delivered in Millington or Olive Branch.

So getting all these important playoff games lined up for the various zones this week has been a challenge, one we’re still working on.

And for those of you looking for prep basketball, just as soon as we can get football to quiet down a bit, we’re already planning how we’re going to get everyone up to date for the state of the basketball season. The football-basketball overlap is a real circus!!!

PRE-KICKOFF UPDATES

** While early week forecasts had predicted rain with windy conditions and temperatues in the low 50s, sun broke through the clouds at mid-morning. It remains windy — in the 20-25 mph range — and the temperatures are in the low 50s, but there is no longer the threat of rain.
A crowd of 30,000-plus is expected for Marshall’s homecoming.

** The wind could play havoc with the U of M passing game. Most of Memphis’s big plays this season have come from the passing game.

** The 30,000-seat stadium at Marshall is reminiscent of the on-campus facility at the University of Cincinnati, a former Conference USA member now in the Big East.