THE ALLEN GYM EMPTY ACCORDING TO KEITH GROLLER

From my Buddy Keith Groller,

Visited Sewards Gym for the first time tonight, and caught a fairly entertaining boys basketball game between Allen and Northampton.

Allen looked great, then Northampton looked great, and ultimately Allen hung on for a 54-48 win.

This was pretty good basketball, not the kind of slow-tempoed stuff that bothers so many people around here. Neither team held anything back.

What struck me most, however, as I looked around the gym, was the empty seats. Lots of them to look at.

The shot on the lower right by The Morning Call's Rob Kandel shows Northampton's Landon Small driving to get past Allen's Jalen Cannon, but it also gives you an indication of the empty feeling I had. Ditto for the one of Allen's Branden Harrington and Northampton's Tyler Stephenson below.



This was a meeting between two of the best teams in the league, and the area, and there was no more than 400 or 500 people in the building and those figures may be generous. No one could blame TV coverage either since neither RCN nor Service Electric was there to broadcast the game live or on tape.

And this saddened me more than many other quarter-filled gyms I've seen this season because I grew up going to Allen games at the Little Palestra in the late 60s and early 70s before what was first called the Phys Ed Center opened.

Yes, I graduated from Dieruff, but my parents were Allentown High grads (class of 1959) and when I was a little tyke we had Allen season tickets and didn't miss a home game, nor many road games.

I couldn't wait for those games. Each one was an event. Being at the Boston Garden couldn't have been better for me. There was always a spirited atmosphere led by some spirited student fan sections (Allen's ws called the Sons of Milo). The crowds were always good, especially when Allen was playing a good team.

All of that is gone now, like so many of the sports traditions in Allentown. Maybe it will pick up as the games get more important. I hope so.



My next game is Friday at Whitehall, another place that used to be packed when I first started covering games for this newspaper in the early 1980s.

I truly will be disappointed if that one isn't a sellout because it's Hall of Fame night and Pete Lisicky, Dan Koppen and three other deserving selections will be inducted before the start of the varsity game. Not to mention that Whitehall is also one of the best teams in the area and they're playing rival Central Catholic in a game that was an automatic sellout every year a few decades ago, especially at cozy Whitehall.

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In terms of Tuesday's results, we're getting to the point where the playoff races really start to come into focus.

In the LVC, Liberty and Allen look to be in real good shape with solid division leads. Whitehall still holds a one-game edge in the North over Nazareth and is up two games over Northampton. The fight for the wild-card looks like it could very well come down to Nazareth, Freedom and Northampton.

But in addition to the race to the league's final four, you've got a bunch of teams trying to nail down district spots.

Five teams -- Becahi, Easton, Central, Emmaus and Parkland -- are all firmly on the bubble. You need to go .500 in either league play or overall to qualify for districts and in the case of Parkland, which got a key win over Becahi on Tuesday, the only route is going to be via the league record where they are 4-5 with five games left in the league, but still three games under .500 overall.

The only team with no shot is, sadly, Dieruff.

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In the Colonial League, it's looking more and more like three teams are going to make it to the league tournament out of the South Division. Wilson and Notre Dame look like locks at 10-1 and 9-2 respectively.

Southern Lehigh, coming on strong, looks like it could get the third spot with an 8-3 record and that would leave only the North Division winner, probably Northern Lehigh rather than fading Bangor, with the fourth spot. Both are now 7-4.

Even Catty isn't out of the division race at 6-5, but the big thing is -- again -- only one from that division is going to make it unless Southern Lehigh fades.

And just like in the LVC, the added intrigue with the Colonial teams is the quest for a bunch of them to make districts.

Northwestern, Salisbury, Saucon Valley, and even Catty and Bangor have some more work to do.

And while they're not going to make districts, congrats to Palmerton on getting its first league win on Tuesday, beating Palisades and gaining revenge for last year's big Pirates win in Palmerton that ended their long losing streak.

But looking ahead, it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks with almost every game having some meaning for somebody.

Keith Groller