What a Friday!

I really should be sleeping after a long Friday here in Austin covering the 5A state golf tournament and keeping an eye on everything going on back home, but that's the reason I am blogging at nearly 1 a.m. What a wild Friday here and in Houston. Where to begin?
- Congratulations to the Cy-Fair softball team for upsetting previously undefeated Klein Oak in their 5A-Region II area round series. Fair pulled off two straight wins at Tomball after dropping Game 1 Thursday night.
We should know not to count out the Bobcats. This is two straight postseasons they've pulled off upsets; last year they ousted then-18-5A champion Katy and 19-5A winner Memorial.
“When it comes to the playoffs, you just never know,” Cy-Fair softball coach Debbie Burrow told HCN's Michael Sudhalter. “Their team is probably stronger than my team, but tonight was ours, and we owned it. Our kids wanted it more – we kept them off-balanced.”

- What is with these baseball scores?: Baytown Sterling 16, Pearland 14 ... The Woodlands 21, Klein Oak 9 ... Cypress Creek 13, Round Rock Stony Point 12 ... La Porte 16, Baytown Lee 6. Goodness. Was it windy back there today? In the words of Yankees announcer Suzyn Waldman, oh my goodness gracious!

- Congratulations to Clements junior Portland Rosen on winning the 5A state golf individual title. The Virginia commit shot 6-under par 66 today after a round of 1-under 71 on Thursday. The Rangers themselves had a tremendous turnaround, cutting 17 shots off their Thursday score to finish tied for third. They lost a one-hole playoff with The Woodlands.
Here are a few quotes that did not make my story from golf ...
* Clements coach Jason Jesek on the team's finish: “This year, just in our region Clear Lake got us quite often. They got us every time we saw them. But when you lose two players to college, we had two players come up who really hadn’t been on this stage and we shot our two lowest scores of the year at regionals. Yesterday we tied that same score, which was the best they’d ever shot. And then they come out and do this today.”
“They just had fun. They just wanted to play. I’ve never seen a group of girls who love each other as much as they do. They just want to go play.”
* Travis junior Brandon Wilhide, on what he learned from shooting 81 in the final round after a 70 Thursday: “I need to take this last 18 and learn from it and bring that back next year. Those short birdie putts, even though they were short they weren’t gimmes. I need to pick an exact spot where to hit to instead of just hitting toward the hole.”
* Seven Lakes' Brian Swanson, who shot 70 today after a 77 Thursday and hit no fewer than a dozen greens: “We weren’t thinking at all about yesterday. We just wanted to take this one hole at a time and we did that. I didn’t have a great finish yesterday so I just wanted to come out firing today.”

- To wrap up, we know a few baseball and softball series for the next round but not all of them. I will search out dates and times over the next few days. Here's the current lineup for baseball's area round and the softball regional quarterfinals, both of which must be played as one-game series on Tuesday.
Anywhere there's a "Team A or Team B" scenario, those teams are playing Game 3 of their series today:
BASEBALL
Area playoffs
Seven Lakes or Strake Jesuit vs. Bellaire
Memorial vs. Milby
Kempner or Clear Creek vs. Baytown Lee or La Porte
Katy Taylor or Stratford vs. Atascocita
Westside vs. Katy
Dulles or Clear Brook vs. Baytown Sterling or Pearland
Fort Bend Austin vs. Channelview or Dobie
Cypress Woods vs. Spring or College Park
Cy-Fair vs. Lufkin
Cypress Creek or Round Rock Stony Point vs. Klein Collins or Oak Ridge

SOFTBALL
Regional quarterfinals
Bellaire vs. Seven Lakes
Cinco Ranch vs. Katy, 5 p.m. Tuesday at Seven Lakes (thanks to The Katy Times for that info)
Cy-Fair vs. Spring/Round Rock
Clements or Dobie vs. Clear Creek or Pasadena Memorial