A group of students from a Louisiana high school have landed themselves in hot water for displaying signs displayer a rather tame zinger aimed at a rival Baptist high school.

While some particularly sensitive folks at Baton Rouge (La.) Parkview Baptist School may have been a bit miffed by a sign held aloft by two female fans at Baton Rouge (La.) Patterson High, others certainly would have reacted with a chuckle at the tagline: “Jesus loves you … unless you attend Parkview Baptist.”

Remarkably, the two unidentified students in the photo you see above have “been disciplined” by the Patterson High School following the playoff rivalry matchup between the schools on Friday night. While some might argue that the teens’ sign was in poor taste, it hardly seems to be worthy of a suspension.

Just consider: The two girls in question didn’t use any foul language. They didn’t dress inappropriately or act overly aggressively. All they did was twist a lyric from the Austin Lounge Lizards satirical country western group.

In the end, the sign didn’t have the intended effect, with No. 23 seed Parkview Baptist upsetting No. 7-seeded Patterson in a surprisingly one-sided 59-42 victory. Still, thanks to the wonders of social media, all the talk since the game has focused on the Jesus Loves You sign, not Parkview’s inspired performance. In fact, Parkview’s coach, Don Green, told Baton Rouge CBS affiliate WAFB that his team was so focused on earning a victory in a rowdy crowd that his players never even noticed the sign.

“It was electric, very loud,” Green told WAFB and other media outlets. “The conduct from the Patterson players was outstanding.

"I don't believe there was any intent or ill will, just going maybe just a step too far in trying to support the team."

Tell that to the Patterson administration, who have found a new way to be a bit heavy handed with fan-based student discipline.

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The 2012-13 basketball season has already seen a full share of inspirational baskets, heartwarming assists and general good will. Now a game in Massachusetts may have brought on a true first: An inspirational dunk serving as a player’s only career points.

As uncovered by NBC Sports and brought to Prep Rally’s attention by USA Today, the Lawrence (Mass.) Academy basketball team wanted to honor longtime team manager Joey Mullaney in the team’s final home game. Mullaney suffers from a rare neurological disorder called Friedrich’s ataxia, which essentially kept him from competing with the Lawrence squad throughout his high school years. Lawrence coach Kevin Wiercinski offered up the idea of starting Mullaney on senior night to his team and all accepted, including Mullaney himself.

Except Mullaney had a specific condition for his participation: He had to be allowed to dunk. Not take a shot, or even just handle the ball. Mullaney wanted a dunk, and he wasn’t going to accept the token gesture unless he got to hang on the rim.

While Wiercinski laughed off the request at first, he soon learned that his senior team manager was hardly kidding around.

“[Coach Wiercinski] laughed it off,” Mullaney told NBC Sports. “I was like, ‘I’m not lying. I’m dunking it.’ I’ve seen these kind of shots before where kids do layups or threes. I just really wanted to go out with a bang.”

Yet, to go out with a bang, Lawrence would have to get another team to cooperate with the plan. It was no secret that Mullaney wouldn’t be able to dunk under his own power, so Lawrence would have to come up with a plan to help him get to the rim to throw down his only points.

The solution was brokered with Lawrence’s Senior Night opponent -- Boston-based ISL rival Buckingham Browne & Nichols -- and that day’s game referees, with all agreeing to temporarily suspend Dr. James’ Naismith’s adapted rules of basketball to allow Mullaney to receive a piggyback lift up for a dunk.

According to the Lowell Sun, the players who gave Mullaney a helping hand were 6-foot-7 Lawrence center Darrien Myers -- he was the piggyback host, if you will -- and Joey Mullaney’s twin brother, Sean Mullaney. Once near the rim, Joey Mullaney wasted little time to flush home a memorable bucket, eventually lingering on the rim for a bit longer while channeling his inner Dwayne Wade with a rim-edge pull up … while wearing Superman socks.

Perhaps fittingly, the dunk was actually the final act for both Joey and Sean Mullaney. Sean does not suffer from Friedrich’s ataxia and has emerged as a basketball stalwart and senior captain at Lawrence. Yet Sean suffered a badly sprained ankle and has found himself on the bench with an injury in recent weeks.

On Senior Night, he suited up, handed his brother the ball, smiled as he completed a first and only dunk, then left the court alongside him, reveling in a special moment for both the Mullaney family and the larger Lawrence community as a whole.

"It was an incredible act of human kindness on the part of coach Kevin Wiercinski and coach Kevin Sullivan and, accordingly, Lawrence Academy," David Mullaney, the brothers’ father, told the Sun.

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There have been plenty of remarkable prep dunks over the course of the 2012-13 basketball season. It’s Prep Rally’s humble opinion that few, if any, have been more impressive than the one you see directly below.

The youngster slamming home the dunk in question is Jaylen Shaw, a mesmerizingly athletic point guard for Hartsville (S.C.) High. The guard is athletic, has blazing speed and a penchant for making big plays at the rim.

The entire senior year highlight reel contained above is a veritable master class of explosive athleticism, yet nothing tops the preposterous poster jam Prep Rally focused on above. Shaw not only went over a defender standing directly in his way on a fast break, he cleared him with ease, like some kind of a condor soaring over a cliff.

More impressive is just how high Shaw got, given his height of 6-foot-1. He’s way, way above the rim often on his most important plays, whether they be dunks or ridiculous chase down blocks at rim level.

He would have some competition for this title, but Shaw’s slams are so aggressive and athletic he might just be the most exciting prep dunker since Shaq Johnson (now starring at Auburn).

Unlike Johnson, who was frequently feted here on Prep Rally and elsewhere on the internet, Shaw seems to have gone completely under the national radar. He doesn’t have a single scholarship offer from a significant Division I basketball program, with only Tulane among schools that could even be considered a chance for him to play in front of TV cameras.

That’s incredible for such a remarkable athlete. Perhaps if Shaw’s dunk gets a little more airtime he might just end up somewhere more people will get to take his feats in first person. Otherwise, it’ll take treks to Winthrop, Presbyterian, Radford or High Point just to get a look at one of the most athletic prospects in the Class of 2013.

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You’ve seen the best highlight reels, both at Rivals.com and here at Prep Rally. You’ve seen all their imitators littered across YouTube and other prep sites like Hudl. Now see the worst highlight reel of all-time, or the best if one considers the sense of humor expressed by the reel’s subject a badge of valor (which Prep Rally certainly does).

The player in the video above, who happens to be its film editor as well, is Dominion (Va.) High senior Rich Tran. In his only season of high school football, Tran lined up as a tight end and linebacker. The critical term in that prior sentence is “line up,” since Tran was barely on the field long enough for him to even know what his true position was.

Of course, that’s precisely why Tran cobbling together a highlight reel is almost sublimely funny. The senior claims he had to comb through an entire season of Dominion game footage just to cobble together enough footage of himself in the viewfinder. According to the Washington Post, it took Tran an hour to splice those shots together, set them to a nasty backbeat track, all with himself circled brightly in each shot … even when he’s standing on the sideline.

“I spent a lot more time working on it than it looks,” Tran told the Post. “Roughly an hour, I’d say. And actually, I made another video first, but I accidentally exited out of it before saving, so I had to do it again. So maybe two hours total.

“Really, the plays in the video were the only ones that I was on the field for this season. But overall, I had a lot of fun.”

That clearly shows. Of course, what Tran may not have anticipated was the viral success his humble endeavor has become. After submitting his video to B.J. Kouraboulis, a former Washington Post high school reporter who now runs his own video production company that serves the Post and other clients, Tran also posted his video on Hudl and shared it with friends.

Within days it had circulated around the Post, and has since landed on Deadspin and, now, here on Yahoo!.

Fittingly, Tran isn’t content with that exposure alone. The Post reported that he has also sent his clip to frequent ESPN contributor Woody Paige and the ESPN morning show Mike & Mike in the Morning. Oh, and one college football program in particular.

Which one? Alabama. Hey, if you’ve got the self-titled “Best Highlight Reel Ever,” Nick Saban ought to know about it, right?

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Joseph Brunelle’s life has not been easy. The 14-year-old manager of the Cumming (Ga.) Vickery Creek Middle School baketball team, Brunelle has lived his entire life in a wheelchair. He was born with spina bifida, a condition that has robbed him of the opportunity to compete in able-bodied sports.

Of course, that has never slowed him from competing in wheelchair basketball. Nor has it dampened his love of the game, with the eighth grader an ever-present around all the Vickery Creek boys basketball games.

Fittingly, at the end of the season, the team wanted to do something special to acknowledge Brunelle’s time as manager. As reported by Atlanta NBC affiliate and WXIA and USA Today, the Vickery Creek team decided to present Brunelle with a personal team jersey before the start of the fourth quarter of the team’s final game against Pinecrest (Ga.) Academy. That move alone was enough to earn huge smiles and cheers from the Brunelle family and the crowd, yet it was only the beginning of a massive tribute to the wheelchair-bound star.

What happened next reads like a Hollywood script. Players from both Vickery Creek and Pinecrest brought out wheelchairs and invited Brunelle to play with them. The wheelchairs had been loaned to the teams by the league in which Brunelle plays. Suddenly, rather than a traditional basketball game, the fourth quarter was competed as a wheelchair basketball game, all with fans in the stands and Brunelle himself stunned at the gesture.

"For a little bit I wasn't really sure what to think," Brunelle told WXIA. "It was probably pretty hard for [the other players] at first."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Brunelle was the star of the fourth quarter, scoring eight points for the Vickery Creek Vipers.

According to WXIA, the Vickery Creek team volunteered at Atlanta-area disabled-access sports center No Limits Sports earlier in the basketball season and were inspired by how well Brunelle played. That inspiration eventually led to motivation to play in wheelchairs themselves as a tribute, if only temporarily.

As one might expect, the tribute to the longtime team manager earned plaudits from all around, not least of all those who took part, who claimed that they would never approach basketball the same way again.

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Just your ordinary girls' youth hockey fight. Wait, what?

How many adult Russian hockey referees, coaches and fans does it take to break up a brawl between two girls' youth hockey teams? Apparently a lot.

This bench-clearing affair occurred between teams from Tumen and the Republic of Tatarstan in the finals of the sixth annual Russian Winter Student Games (h/t Big Lead).

Of course, we've seen Hilary Swank win an Oscar for brutal fighting among girls as a boxer in Clint Eastwood's 2004 vehicle "Million Dollar Baby," but this is real life.

And these are real punches. Just ask No. 12 in white, who receives a vicious right cross from No. 16 on the opposing team. She also threw her fair share of haymakers into the mix before forming the bottom layer of a pile of punches. Yet, afterwards, she calmly rose to her feet, wiped the hair from her face and skated to center ice, ready for Round 2.

Who ever said girls aren't tough? She was more steady on her feet than Boston Bruins tough guy Sean Thornton after his bout with Buffalo Sabres goon John Scott a month ago.

We've also seen a young Utah female soccer player knee her opponent in the face and even a couple California cheerleaders duking it out on their coach's orders, but nothing involving so many female competitors and so many fights, even in the sport of hockey.

I know they made a failed version of "Slap Shot 3: The Junior League" back in 2008, but maybe that franchise should consider "Slap Shot 4: From Russia With Love."

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The Egg Harbor City (N.J.) Cedar Creek High girls basketball team features a rather remarkable coincidence: There are times when four of the five players on the court were born on the same day. Yet it turns out there’s a legitimate reason for that, more than a mere coincidence: All four were born minutes apart from the same mother and father.

As reported by Courier-Post out of suburban Philadelphia, the Stefanski quadruplets are four big reasons why the Cedar Creek girls basketball team is the defending New Jersey Group 1 state champion. At any given time, the Cedar Creek squad can feature a point guard, shooting guard, small forward/swingwoman and power forward with Stefanski on the back of their jersey. Three of the four sisters are Cedar Creek starters, while Monique Stefanski, technically the oldest of the four, is the team’s sixth woman, an impact sub who often has a significant effect on the outcome.

All four of the sisters love playing basketball, though unlike some twins they’ve expressed a willingness to go their separate ways in college. Morgan, the 5-foot-8 forward, and 5-foot-5 shooting guard Mikila could both end up at Monmouth University, if it weren’t for Mikila’s desire to strike out on her own.

“Me and Mikila both like Monmouth University, but she’ll say, ‘I don’t want to go to college with her. I want to be by myself.’” Morgan Stefanski told the Courier-Post. “I don’t know where we’ll end up, but I’m sure when we come home for holidays and stuff, it’ll still be the same and we’ll all be close.”

In the meantime, the Stefanski girls will continue arriving at team outings in their PT Cruiser with the license plate “QUADZ”. And their parents will continue struggling to buy enough groceries to feed the energetic quartet, racking up a monthly grocery bill of roughly $1,200.

“It’s an adventure,” Marian Stafanski, the quads’ mother, told the Courier-Post. “The weddings they talk about. I’m like, ‘Hold on, I’ve still got college.’ Even when we need sneakers, it’s a big job. Grocery shopping, for just milk and eggs, it’s $150. I’m constantly buying and buying. They can eat like you don’t know.

“I was so blessed. Once and done now. I don’t have any boys, but I have a lot of boys at my house, whether it’s boyfriends or just friends. They get along with everybody and it attracts a big crowd.”

Now the quads are attracting big crowds for Cedar Creek home games, helping lead the team toward a potential second-straight Section 1 title. Such a feat would be a remarkable achievement, and one that all four are excited to feel again.

Morgan said winning a state title with her sisters is something she won’t forget.

“After the game, we all hugged and cried and said that we finally did it.”

Said Mikila: “I think (playing together) brings us closer together.”

“There are other quadruplets out there, but not all of them win a state championship together,” Mercina added. “Every day at practice, I look up at the championship banner with all of our names on it.

“It just motivates me.”

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Ladies and Gentlemen, say hello to what is absolutely, positively the most incredible, bizarre outrageous buzzer beater of 2013, at any level.

The video you see above comes from Sunday’s New York Section I Class AA boys basketball championship game between New Rochelle (N.Y.) High and Mt. Vernon (N.Y.) High. As described more thoroughly by Newsday and Patch, Mt. Vernon led the sectional title game by two points with just 2.9 seconds remaining. Game over, right? Anything but.

With New Rochelle holding possession on the opposite side of the court from where they wanted to be, the team enlisted the school’s star quarterback, Khalil Edney (he plays hoops too, obviously) to send the ball upcourt as deep and accurately as possible. Edney got the ball up to midcourt, but it landed in the wrong set of hands, with Mt. Vernon’s Jalen David coming up with the ball.

[Related: Ben Howland talks Shabazz Muhammad's NBA future]

What happened next defies all logic. David tossed the ball up in the air. The goal was both simple and obvious: He was trying to kill off the remainder of the game without giving New Rochelle the chance to foul and get a final shot.

Yet the strategy backfired spectacularly, because time never ran out. Instead, the toss arched to the left and forward, with the ball eventually landing right in Edney’s hands just behind midcourt with 0.1 seconds remaining. Given an instant chance to redeem himself, Edney didn’t disappoint, drilling a 55-foot shot to hand New Rochelle the most unlikely of 61-60 victories in memory.

"I was just praying for it to go in," Edney told MSGVarsity, which was televising the game. "That's one of them last-second things you throw up, and it goes in."

The victory earns New Rochelle a spot in the regional semifinals at the expense of a stunned Mt. Vernon, whose fans thought that the final shot might not have counted as they felt time had expired. It hadn’t, as referees conferred and agreed, and the wild celebration by the New Rochelle Huguenots and their fans served as the coda to the wildest finish in basketball during the 2012-13 season, if not one of the most amazing of all time. As noted by the inimitable Jeff Eisenberg of Prep Rally's brotherly college basketball blog The Dagger, one of the only other finishes which even compares was the 1999 matchup between USC and Oregon, where the Trojans (and for that matter, Adam Spanich by himself) somehow scored 6 points in 2.8 seconds in a remarkable comeback.

No matter what happens for the rest of New Rochelle’s tournament run, Edney’s fame is virtually assured, as is the stunned shock facing Mt. Vernon and its fans after an ending even Hollywood would have deemed far fetched.

Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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In a disturbing incident in Tennessee, a 22-year-old married man allegedly posed as a senior transfer student at one of Memphis’ best boys basketball teams, leading to the squad’s elimination from the state playoffs.

As reported by Memphis CBS affiliate WREG and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, McKinzie Sewell used a fake transcript to enroll at Memphis (Tn.) Ridgeway High, where he starred on the boys basketball team. Sewell’s transcript was allegedly submitted to the school by his wife, who posed as his mother so he would have a back story to explain why he was enrolling at the school.

Sewell never previously graduated from a high school, but he earned a GED. Somewhat ironically, he wore the number 22 for Ridgeway, identical to his age. He also set up a BeRecruited profile under his name portraying himself as an 18-year-old senior at Ridgeway.

It has not been confirmed whether Sewell registered with the school for the fall or winter term. Regardless, the fact that he had taken the court at all immediately made the entire Ridgeway squad ineligible for the state playoffs, just after the school had reached the regional final round of the tournament.

“It has come to our attention that an ineligible player played in the closing minutes of the Region 8-AAA semi-finals against Whitehaven High School,” Memphis Community Schools said in a statement. “Ridgeway High School reported this information to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association [TSSAA]. Ridgeway HS has forfeited that game and has been removed from the tournament playoffs.”

[More from Prep Rally: No exaggeration: The craziest buzzer-beater you've ever seen]

That removal has effectively ended the season for a group of players who had overcome significant hardship to reach the state semis. Most notably, one of the team’s assistant coaches was killed in his home in February.

Now the team will have to stay home, with parents of the players furious at the Memphis Community Schools’ inability to catch Sewell before he had suited up for a game.

“It’s absurd the administration has failed," Adrian Jones, a Ridgeway parent told WREG. "They’re not keeping the kids safe. They’re not doing checks and balances.”

Sewell is not the first imposter to strike the prep hoops ranks. In 2010 a Haitian 22-year-old named Guerdwich Montimere played the high school basketball season at Odessa (Tx.) Permian High. He was eventually caught and sentenced to three years in prison because of a relationship with a teenager while he was at the school.

Now Sewell joins the ranks of Montimere and others in the ranks of disturbing prep imposters who have threatened the safety of the teens they compete with and against.

Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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There are epic teenage temper tantrums, and then there’s the wild fit that was thrown by a Canadian junior hockey player in Ontario.

As reported by Prep Rally’s Canadian brotherly junior hockey blog Buzzing the Net, 17-year-old Kingston (Ont.) Frontenacs defenseman Ryan Hutchinson found himself drawn into a scrap with Erie (Pa.) Otters star Jake Evans after Evans checked Hutchinson into the boards from behind. Given what precipitated it, perhaps it is no major surprise that Hutchinson swiveled and began tossing punches at Evans.

The fighting major led to an ejection for Hutchinson, who then proceeded to react as aggressively -- and perhaps hilariously -- as possible.

First, Hutchinson tried to boot an Otters helmet strewn on the ice into the stands. That turned out to be a total failure, with the helmet causing Hutchinson to slip an land on his rear end on the ice in front of a rabid Erie crowd.

[More from Prep Rally: No exaggeration: The craziest buzzer-beater you've ever seen]

With the embarrassment now setting in, Hutchinson was escorted off the ice, slamming his own helmet to the ice as he trotted off. Still not appeased, the bulky defenseman found a chair and tossed it toward the exit doors, WWE style.

That’s when the second Keystone Kops reaction set in. Just check out the look on the middle schoolers’ face as they trot out from behind the Erie locker rooms just as Hutchinson makes his way in.

According Buzzing the New, the game -- and by connection, the penalty -- were actually pivotal for Kingston’s playoff hopes. Naturally, that doesn’t justify Hutchinson’s reaction, though it may make why it happened a little more understandable.

So long as everyone can keep laughing and no one gets hurt, Hutchinson’s rant, and others, aren’t the end of the world, either.

Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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The Washington state basketball tournament is held at three different locations in the state each year, with Spokane traditionally hosting the 1B and 2B boys and girls divisions, bringing pre-March Madness delirium to the Apple State while stealing the thunder from Gonzaga as the days slip away before the NCAA Tournament. Considering the fact that all the different classes compete for state titles in Spokane, one wouldn’t naturally look to Class 2B, one of the smallest divisions, to bring the biggest or most powerful highlights.

Yet that’s precisely what happened in 2013, with one Spokane (Wa.) St. George’s School star bringing down the house … and the entire hoop.

[Related: New Rochelle pulls off one of the wildest buzzer-beating wins of all time]

As brought to Prep Rally’s attention by MaxPreps, St. George’s forward Dexter Sienko elevated to throw down a jam in his team’s Hardwood Classic semifinal against Morton-White Pass (Wa.) High. The junior easily slid past the MWP defense and cleanly completed his dunk, then trotted up court as the basket collapsed like a deflating bouncy castle.

The basket collapse was a fairly stunning turn in a tight game that went down to the wire, and eventually landed St. George’s a spot in the state title game. The Dragons held on for a 73-69 victory in overtime after surviving a situation in which they probably should have lost with less than a second remaining in regulation. With the Dragons holding a one-point lead, St. George’s fouled a MWP player in the paint on a put back attempt. The shooter hit just one of the two free throws, forcing overtime rather than close the game out.

That gave more opportunity for Sienko, who scored a game-high 28 points, 10 of them in overtime. Still, none were anywhere near as emphatic as the dunk he finished that brought about a temporary delay while officials at the Spokane Arena fixed the upright and got the basket back up and operational.

[Also: 22-year-old married man sneaks way onto Memphis high school team]

A day later, St. George’s topped Colfax (Wa.) High to earn a state title. The subsequent celebration was a memorable one for Sienko and all his teammates. More memorable than Sienko’s amazing collapsible slam? Probably not.

Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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In this sibling rivalry, little brother may have won the battle, but big bro won the war.

Philadelphia (Pa.) Communications Tech High senior forward Terrence Brown totaled 19 points and six rebounds in a 70-60 Philadelphia Class AA City Title victory against Levittown (Pa.) Conwell-Egan Catholic High, which features Brown's younger brother Jordan Burney.

"I've been in games with a lot more pressure," Burney told the Philadelphia Daily News in a feature on the siblings. "But this was a game against my older brother, and I might never get that chance again. So, I was feeling excited."

The two brothers reportedly didn't speak during the game, even when they lined up next to each other during a pair of free throws.

"We had that agreement -- no talking," Brown told the paper. "We'd do our talking after the game."

While Brown's MVP performance did some talking for him, Burney got the better of his older brother in a 1-on-1 matchup. With Brown defending, the sophomore backup guard unleashed a vicious crossover to blow by his bro and earn a trip to the charity stripe.

"I knew what he was thinking, that I was gonna go to my right," Burney told the Daily News. "So, I started that way. He fell for it. I finished it."

Last season, Brown and Burney teamed with a third brother, Cheyney University freshman forward Chris Burney, to capture the Philly city championship, but when Conwell-Egan offered Jordan Burney a chance to transfer, he took it. During the week, Burney lives with a host family in Bensalem, near his new school, but the two brothers still live together on the weekends, according to the Daily News feature.

"I didn't want him to do it, especially since this was going to be our last season together," Brown told the paper. "But I understood why he did it -- better academics; help for his future -- and I supported his decision. We talk on the phone every day. The environment's different up there, and he's still getting used to it. But he likes it.

"I had my chance to go to Egan, too. Couldn't do it, though. I've been at Comm Tech from ninth grade on up. I love this place and I love coach 'Bies' (Lou Biester). I would have felt bad about leaving everybody behind."

Ouch. Sounds like this sibling rivalry isn't settled yet.

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The Indiana state boys basketball playoffs are among the most heated and obsessively followed of any sport at any level in the country. March heroes in Indiana become legends overnight as video and word of their triumphs spread like wildfire. Remember Gary Harris in 2012? He’s now a freshman star at Michigan State, but he’ll never outgrow that buzzer beater.

Now Harris and the likes of Hickory High have company, in the person of Lafayette (Ind.) McCutcheon High sophomore Tre’Shon Heard, who drilled a buzzer beater from a full 80 feet to top Logansport (Ind.) High in the Indiana Class 4A Lafayette Jeff section semifinal.

“I had it in my hand, and I had to turn around and let it go,” Heard told the Journal Courier. “I just had to get it up there.

“I looked at it for a minute, and something told me it was going to be a good shot.”

Heard got it up there, and when his shot came down McCutcheon could celebrate a 56-53 victory and a berth in the sectional title game against Kokomo (Ind.) High. The resulting crush of fans stampeding on to the court was a fitting testament to the delirium the win brought, yet was also slightly scary for the 5-foot-9 Heard, who was rapidly swamped under the gaggle of the onrushing crowd.

Something tells Prep Rally that Heard would be happy to trade off that personal risk for the shot of his life slipping through the net exactly as it did.

“Fortunately we did enough at the end of the game to be there, and that shot by Tre — that’s a once-in-a-lifetime type shot,” McCutcheon coach Rick Peckinpaugh said. “You don’t expect that to go in, but doggone it I’m glad it did.”

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From today on out, Riverside (Ca.) JW North High will be known as the Southern Section Division II-AA boys basketball champion. It shouldn’t be. Not that JW North didn’t finish in front on the scoreboard, it just shouldn’t have.

That’s because JW North was given credit for a free throw it never hit in the first quarter. The final score was 59-58, in North’s favor against Villa Park (Ca.) High, but that gave North credit for the free throw that never was. Instead, the game should have headed to overtime.

Yet the dramatic scoring error, which was first uncovered by the Orange County Register, won’t be reversed because it can’t be reversed, as held by California Interscholastic Federation bylaws.

According to the Register, the extra point came during the first quarter, when North’s D.J. Richardson missed both of his free throws, but was credited with connecting on the first free throw.

In a way, Villa Park can only blame itself for the letdown, as the official scorer for the game was provided by Villa Park. The team also didn’t know of the scoring discrepancy itself when it happened, with coach Kevin Reynolds first notified of the errant free throw credit during his postgame press conference.

"I don't have an answer for that," Reynolds told the Register about the error. "We were pretty focused on other things."

As a result of that distraction, North is holding a sectional title -- and an all but certain higher seed in the forthcoming state playoffs -- and Villa Park is holding a grudge.

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In one of the most bizarre prep coaching sagas of recent times, Weston (Ct.) High reinstated boys basketball head man Mike Hvizdo after he spent a month on the sidelines for previously appearing in a movie -- and not a pornographic one -- that school officials had deemed inappropriate.

As reported by the Norwalk Hour, Hvizdo was officially reinstated at the start of March, a month after he had been forced to resign on February 7. The coach was brought back just in time to preside over the Trojans first game in the Class M state playoffs.

That the Hvizdo saga reached the level it did is fairly shocking. The second-year coach was pushed into resigning after it was disclosed that he had participated in filming an adult-themed comedy called ‘Forbidden Fruit’, which depicted multiple sexual experiences but involved no nudity or any illegal actions. The film was brought to the attention of Weston administrators by a parent who termed the movie “a porn."

According to the coach, he took part in the film when he was in his younger 20s living in New York, yet that did little to sway the Weston administration at the time, with the school body determining that, “The existence of this film compromises Mr. Hvizdo’s ability to continue to serve as a coach at Weston High School.”

That apparently changed over a period of more than three weeks, with parents and town members advocating for a public hearing over the dismissal, then essentially taking over a monthly school board meeting to protest his dismissal. According to The Hour, more than 100 Weston citizens showed up at that meeting, with plenty speakers making impassioned pleas for Hvizdo’s reinstatement and no one speaking against him.

With the odds stacked against them, the Weston administration relented and reinstated a coach who has been as beleaguered by the events of the past month as his team has.

“I have to say the town of Weston is filled with a bunch of wonderfully loving people, and I want to believe that there are those type of people in every town,” Hvizdo told The Hour. “People didn’t have to stick out their necks for me, but they did and that’s just a tribute. It’s people fighting for what’s right.

“It’s been very difficult. It’s been surreal. It’s been shocking. It’s been tough, stressful, a lot of highs and lows, sadness, anger, frustration. It was like I lost a member of my family and I’ve been grieving. The good thing about it is I’m getting that family back.”

And getting them back just in time for the most important game of the Trojans’ year, a fairy tale ending to a what had been shaping up as a true horror story. That story keeps rolling, with Weston ekeing out a 54-53 victory in the CIAC first rounds on Monday, keeping Hvizdo and his team's latest show on the road.

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Mentor (Ohio) High basketball coach Bob Krizanic should have been ecstatic. His team had just set a new school single-game scoring record by notching 118 points. The team had done so in a sectional final, guaranteeing advancement in the playoffs in the process.

Yet Krizanic may have just set the new threshold for constructive criticism when he had only negative things to say about his Cardinals squad, attacking his team’s defense rather than laud their offensive abilities, following an astounding 118-98 victory against Lakeside (Ohio) High in a story that was first brought to Prep Rally's attention by USA Today.

"If you score 118 and have a great defensive effort, then it's worthy of the record," Krizancic told the News Herald, a newspaper that covers the Cleveland suburbs. "This wasn't. This means nothing. This one should go down as an asterisk with us giving up 98 points and how poor defensively we played."

If you thought that was the only negative thing Krizancic had to say about his charges, you’d be wrong. Just check out the following statement in which he put his entire squad -- and himself -- on blast.

"We played one of the poorest defensive games I have ever coached here," he said. "It starts with me. It's my fault. It was just a very, very, very poor defensive game all the way around, coaches, players, managers, whatever you want to call it. Just a poor defensive effort. Wasn't tough. Wasn't aggressive."

It’s one thing to criticize a team for giving up 98 points. But criticizing a team for giving up a lot of points when it scored far more itself? That seems a bit harsh, particularly when the Cardinals offense is humming so effectively; the Cardinals scored 114 points in their prior game, the third highest total in school history.

Prep Rally has no idea what Krizancic would say if his team lost a game when allowing an opponent to get anywhere near the century mark. Quite frankly, we don’t think we want to find out, either.

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If the Harlem Shake hadn't already jumped the shark, leave it to Shaquille O'Neal to make it official.

Capturing the bizarre dance craze on tape has become a prerequisite in basketball locker rooms, especially after the Miami Heat pulled it off with surprising entertainment value, so naturally Blanche Ely (Pompano, Fla.) High invited its newest and largest fan to join them in a celebratory Harlem Shake video after winning their second straight state title.

“I didn’t even know he was there until Lance Tejada was at the free throw line and I saw this dude with some real big feet,” Blanche Ely guard Dallas Cameron told The Miami Herald following the Class 7A state title victory. “I said, ‘Gosh, that dude got some big feet.’ That is when I realized it was Shaq. He congratulated us after the game and then we told him, ‘Hey, you have to do the Harlem Shake with us.’ He said OK and then started busting some moves. I was standing right next to the camera man, just dying laughing.”

On hand to watch his home state's championship games at Central Florida's Lakeland Center, O'Neal reportedly congratulated the Tigers on a 58-50 win over Evans (Orlando, Fla.) High during the medal ceremony. Cameron captured tourney MVP honors.

Coming off that high, he and his teammates had enough confidence to not only convince Shaq to join them in their Harlem Shake video but also to mention them during Tuesday's NBA on TNT broadcasts of the Boston Celtics at Philadelphia 76ers and Minnesota Timberwolves at Los Angeles Lakers matchups.

“After the Harlem Shake, we asked Shaq if he would discuss our state title on TNT, and he said yes,” Cameron told The Miami Herald. “I have to make sure to watch the game.”

Thankfully, Blanche Ely waited until after winning the state title to record their Harlem Shake performance, avoiding the fate of a couple hockey teams from New York and Minnesota that had their playoff dreams cut short by suspensions for doing the dance.

Any time you can get Shaq and a bunch of high schoolers together, it's good times, especially when there are dance moves involved, and then it's probably time to stop Harlem Shaking.

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The Washington Post has a well-earned reputation as an edifice of journalistic integrity. It is the house that Woodward and Bernstein built, the newspaper that was big enough to bring down a President and breathlessly cover countless others. It is an institution to itself, with enough awards from each of its sections to fill a Washington rowhouse.

That award-winning coverage has always included the paper’s high school sports section as well, which still churns out fabulous features and fantastic photography and video footage. In fact, one recent high school sports photo was even honored by the White House News Photographer’s Association (WHNPA). The shot, taken by veteran Post sports photographer Tracy Woodward, depicted a victorious high school wrestler exulting in the glory of victory while his opponent lies on the mat with his head in his hands. It’s an absolutely fabulous shot, depicting all the raw, pure emotion that flows into prep sports every day.

There’s just one problem: The award-winning photo isn’t real. Or at least it isn’t accurate. Sure, the match happened, as did the captivating poses by Freedom (Va.) High wrestler DeQuonte Timbers (he won) and Robinson (Va.) High wrestler Jake Pinkerton (he lost). Yet the photo that Woodward submitted to the WHNPA shows only the two wrestlers. When it actually happened, the wrestlers were accompanied by an official in the background.

As reported by the NPPA, that photo of the two wrestlers and the referee was previously published as part of a collecting depicting Woodward's best work from 2012, leaving the photographer little room to justify his personal re-touching before the shot was submitted for consideration. Perhaps in a nod to its aforementioned integrity, it was the Post’s own staff that noticed the difference between the two photos, reporting the irregularity to the WHNPA, which then rescinded the award.

You can check out the clear differences between the two photos above.

It’s important to note here that the Post never submitted the photo itself, and that it was submitted by Woodward himself. Still, for a longtime, award-winning photographer to so brazenly put forward a clearly altered shot -- particularly when the original was just as compelling, if lacking a few of the dramatic overtones from lighting -- is a stunning faux paus for one of the nation’s last remaining journalist grande dames.

Of course, this doesn't even mention what Woodward was thinking himself when he submitted the photo. Did he really think that no one would notice the difference between the photos if he won?

There has been no official statement about any potential punishment for Woodward, though MaryAnne Golon, the Post's photography editor, told the NPPA that Woodward's discipline was "an internal matter" and would be "consistent with our policy for photo manipulation."

Regardless of what the Post decides to do, everyone can rest assured that he won’t earn any plaudits -- nor the paper any fancy hardware or plaques -- for a falsified effort that ironically covered up brief imperfections, all while demonstrating how those exact competitive imperfections make prep sports so wonderful.

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Paris Jackson has always been known as Michael Jackson’s daughter. Yet she’s no little kid anymore. Instead, she’s a 14-year-old teen with a massive Twitter following of more than 1 million fans. Evidently she’s also a varsity cheerleader, as the world learned when she tweeted out of a photo of her cheering on Sherman Oaks (Ca.) Buckley School’s boys basketball team.

The photo was apparently taken by a MaxPreps photograher and posted to Jackson’s Twitter account days after Buckley earned the school’s first ever California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section title with a 54-46 win over San Luis Obispo (Ca.) Mission Prep.

“I’m so excited for our community,” Buckley boys basketball coach Mike Hamilton told Buckley’s in-house website, Buckley.org. “They are the reason we won CIF. Everyone has been so supportive and kind. We have been feeding off of their energy for several games now. Our fans, faculty and staff are continuing to carry us across the finish line.

“In terms of the team, these guys worked so hard to be here. Everything they did in the preseason prepared them for this time. I’m just happy to be along for the ride. This sort of success could not happen to a better group of young men.”

Jackson has attended Buckley for three years, largely because the private school is extremely exclusive. In theory, Buckley helps Jackson avoid the everpresent media spotlight abdicated by her father, the King of Pop, when he tragically passed away.

Yet Twitter subverts that dynamic, with the teen sharing all different aspects of her life to a rabid following that she has cultivated en route to fame and, she hopes, a future career in movies.

For now, the teen pseudo-celebrity has a lot more cheering to do. Buckley’s victory ensures that the school will take place in the Division V state tournament, where the team will begin against Escondido (Ca.) Calvin Christian High on Wednesday.

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Throughout the town of Newton Connecticut’s gradual healing following the horrific incidents of December 14, sports have played a major role. Professional teams from both New York and Boston have visited the town and put on clinics. Individual professional athletes have stepped forward in touching ways (none more so than Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz).

Yet nothing has provided as strong a rallying cry as the performance of the town’s high school teams themselves. First, the Newtown boys basketball team hit an inspiring buzzer beater to win their senior night game. Now, the same team has landed one of the most remarkable upsets in recent Connecticut state tournament history, if not since the likes of Hickory High itself.

As reported by the Danbury News Times and Associated Press, Newtown’s boys basketball team entered the state tournament with the No. 29 seed in the Class LL tournament. As one might expect, the Nighthawks were enormous underdogs against Waterbury (Ct.) Crosby High, the No. 4 overall seed in the classification.

Yet rather than wilt and fade into the night, the Nighthawks thrived, pulling out a 61-58 victory behind star Connor Quinn’s 14 points.

The victory improved Newtown’s record to just 9-13 on the season, a far cry from the one-loss record sported by Crosby when it entered what would become its final game of the season as the No. 2 ranked team in the entire state.

According to Newtown boys basketball coach Tim Tallcouch, the Nighthawks stunning upset was inspired by the town itself, with the players taking resolve and confidence from the knowledge that an upset would give the town another positive thing to talk about.

“It’s been a tough three months for everybody here in Newtown and as much as we want to win for ourselves, we want to win for the town itself,” Tallcouch told New York news radio station WCBS 880. “Last night, we felt like Cinderella. Hopefully, it doesn’t strike midnight anytime soon.”

For the sake of Newtown, and perhaps for Connecticut basketball itself, many will hope that the Nighthawks’ playoff journey continues at pace just as much as Tallcouch and his charges do themselves.

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