Stories from Wednesday, January 31, 2018

The Associated Press' Top 10 teams in each of Tennessee's three Division I non-financial aid classifications and in the combined Division II financial aid classification as selected by Tennessee AP-member sportswriters and broadcasters. With first-place votes in parentheses, records through January Girls Class AAA School Record Pts Prv 1. Riverdale (14) 22-1 1491 2. Bradley Central (1) 22-0 136 2 3. Cane Ridge 19-0 120 3 4. Morristown West 16-2 80 7 5. Stewarts Creek 17-3 76 4 6. Oak Ridge 17-4 67 8 7. East Hamilton 21-3 64 5 8. Dickson Co. 20-2 46 6 9. Daniel Boone 18-4 39 T10 10. Franklin 18-2 26 T10 Others receiving 12 or more points: None. Class AA

The Marshall County Tigers needed every one of KJ Johnson’s 43 points to put away a scrappy Community squad Friday night at Unionville, 80-78. “They (Community) definitely were not going to go home easy,” MCHS coach Lavon King said. “It was one of those things where we still have to learn what that killer instinct is.” “It is one of those things where these kids are still learning, so by the time we get to the district tournament we should be good to go.”

After a 41-31 win at longtime arch rival Giles County on Tuesday, the Marshall County Tigerettes got back on the yellow bus Friday for a trip to Unionville where they made it two District 12-AA wins a row via a 41-30 win over the Viqueens. “We were real solid in the first half,” MCHS coach David Steely said. “The second half wasn’t as bad as it looked because I wasn’t that interested in having to score because we were up fourteen.”

There are eight schools classified in Region 6A-AA Dual Wrestling and only two of the teams had wrestlers to fill enough weight classes to compete at the Region Tournament Friday night at Nolensville, the host Knights and the Forrest Rockets. “We knew how we matched up with them, so mathematically we had it worked out,” Forrest coach Chris Slaughter said. “We took a gamble at the 120 and the 126 weight class and it would have paid off, but they took a gamble at 152 and got a win and the chips just fell the way they fell.”

With his famed utterance that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan had to have known, on some level, that he was offering a cliche destined to last the ages. But the truth, like history, and so many other things these days, just ain’t what it used to be...

Chaos theory has been called the study of predicting “inherently unpredictable” systems. It is also an apt description of the study of the Trump presidency. Those closest to the president say he thrives on chaos, relishes tumult, and takes perverse pleasure in stirring up conflict among advisers and associates. The president is energized by noise. While this style of management may have served him as a businessman, it has limited his ability to lead and govern effectively...

Since the advent of sabermetrics, the already insufferable annual argument about who should get into the dysfunctional Baseball Hall of Fame has become more tedious. Sabermetricians, who have significant influence within major league baseball and on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, constantly advocate for very good but not great players’ induction. ...

The Chapel Hill Police Department is partnering with the Tennessee Highway Safety Office (THSO) to increase impaired-driving enforcement in the month of February. The THSO’s statewide Booze It and Lose It campaign is part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over nationwide mobilization...

Donnie Moses has served as Marshall County Board of Education’s 9th district representative for close to eight years, the past four years as Chairman of the Board. Moses’ term expires this year. Moses said he came to the board with no comprehension of what is involved in educating a child; after all, he had no background in education short of graduating from MCHS in 1988 and MTSU in 1992. ...