Keith Groller's Basketball picks for Friday Night!

From Keith Groller

You can probably get from Nazareth to the Easton Middle School gym in Forks Township in about 10 minutes.

You can also get from Notre Dame-Green Pond to Freedom in about five.

That means that if Nazareth wins the Lehigh Valley Conference title and Notre Dame takes the Colonial League championship tonight, both teams will have very short rides home to their buildings.

But my guess is that if they both win, they will make the most of those rides home and make those journeys very loud.

This shapes up as another interesting night.

We've had two of them already this week.

We had that startling Nazareth win over Liberty, complete with what some consider to be a controversial double-foul call -- one official called a block, the other called a charge on the same play -- that resulted in league MVP Darrun Hilliard fouling out with more than four minutes left.

We also had that offensive horror show between Northern Lehigh and Wilson and an unlikely hero emerging from the bench to show the rest of the boys how its done with two clutch 3-pointers, the second giving the Bulldogs an improbable 30-29 overtime win.

So what happens tonight?

I am not sure, but something is bound to happen that will be worthy of conversation on Saturday morning.

As for predictions, well, it has been a mixed bag as well this week. And if some anonymous clowns who have nothing better to do than to take potshots at people on this blog's comment section don't like it -- too bad -- I am going to keep making predictions because predictions are like opinions.. everybody's got one, so why not share them? I'd like to hear how people think these games are going to turn out.

Of course, if they're wrong, nobody knows who the heck they are, and they won't get any abuse. That's not the case with me, and that's fine. If I've heard it once, I've heard it 1000 times: "You were wrong again Groller." At least they're reading.

Opinions and predictions are what these blogs are supposed to be about. So, here we go:

Notre Dame 66, Northern Lehigh 58 -- The Crusaders were the pick back in late November and they are the pick now. Pat Boyle has had a bunch of terrific teams at Green Pond, but offensively, I think this one is as good as any he has had. The Bulldogs will obviously shoot better and play better than they did against Wilson. They couldn't get much worse offensively. Even if they warm up, I just don't see them having the firepower to keep pace.

Pocono Mountain East 70, Pocono Mountain West 66 -- Going with the Cardinals for no other reason than that these two are so evenly matched that I can't believe one is going to 3-0 against the other and West is 2-0..

And in the LVC....

Nazareth 59, Allen 55 -- I've seen the Blue Eagles three times in the past week and they have impressed me every time. I think their 1-3-1 zone slows down Allen just enough to give Nazareth its first LVC title ever and first league title of any kind in nearly 20 years. When you think boys basketball around here, you think Allen well before you think about Nazareth. Nazareth is still a wrestling school, right? Not after tonight.

The Canaries have a great tradition and a fine team again this year. In many ways, I believe they have overachieved. No one is more suited to lead his particular program better than Doug Snyder is suited to coach at Allen where I believe he's steering lives in the right direction as much as he's winning games. But the Blue Eagles are playing like a team on a mission and I see them pulling out a close one.

League rankings and district brackets come Saturday.

From Keith Groller