Last modified: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 12:11 AM EST FARINELLA: Miss hoop? BY MARK FARINELLA / THE SUN CHRONICLE If you're like me, you've been feeling withdrawal pains for about a week now. It's tough to face the middle of March without a basketball team to follow in the MIAA Tournament. Ever since the ``Black Saturday'' dismissal of the six teams we had in the sectional quarterfinals, there has been a void in my life and that of a lot of other local basketball fans. Oh, sure, it's still legal for us to attend games at UMass-Boston, the TD Banknorth Garden or the DCU Center in Worcester, but it's just not the same without a local rooting interest. But because I'm always trying to keep my ears open to any sort of hoop news, I've noted that in a few corners of the state, there has been a renewed call for scrutiny of the Catholic schools that are participating in the MIAA Tournament, or even a separation of the public and private schools in the postseason. I'm never sure why this argument comes up. The hockey tournament may be dominated by the Catholic schools, for understandable reasons, but the hoop tournaments don't seem to be top-heavy with the parochial schools that can supposedly ``recruit'' athletes from the surrounding towns and their public schools. Just to confirm that suspicion, I took a look at what the state tournament had to offer entering Monday's games at the Garden. Before the girls' games tapped off, there were 28 teams from 26 schools left in the boys' and girls' tournament in Divisions 1-4. They broke down as follows: * Nine schools with Catholic affiliation (Central Catholic of Lawrence, the boys' and girls' teams of Holy Name of Worcester, the boys' and girls' teams of St. Bernard's of Fitchburg, Holyoke Catholic, Archbishop Williams of Braintree, Cathedral of Boston, Cardinal Spellman of Brockton, Mount Alvernia of Newton and Marian of Framingham). * One Christian school (Whitinsville Christian). * One charter school (Sabis International Charter of Springfield). * Four public regional schools (Minnechaug of Wilbraham, Minuteman of Lexington, Hampshire of Westhampton and Quaboag of Warren) * Two city district schools (Newton North, Springfield Central). * Nine one-town schools (Winchester, Duxbury, Ipswich, Lowell, Braintree, Melrose, Oliver Ames of Easton, Swampscott and Lee). So, of those 26 schools, 58 percent of them are traditionally public, 38 percent have religious affiliations and one is a charter school. That doesn't sound like domination to me. What's more, most of the complaints I have heard came from the girls' brackets in the south section. However, only two of those schools -- Cardinal Spellman and Marian, both of whom won on Monday, with Marian claiming the Division 4 state title as a result, hail from the south. That would seem to be enough evidence to support my belief that sour grapes or personal jealousies are fueling most of the attacks upon the Catholic schools in the basketball tournament. Frankly, I enjoy the inclusive nature of the hoop tourney. The last thing I would want to see is local kids whose parents made an educational choice for them denied a chance to compete against other local kids just because their schools operate differently than the publics. Besides, if the Catholic schools were doing such a great job of ``recruiting,'' you'd think that the publics would never have a chance to win a title. Yet in the boys' north-south brackets, five of the eight schools entering state tournament play were from public schools -- and the same numbers held true for the girls. The one true inequity of the basketball tournaments is the lot of life for the state's vocational schools, none of which made past the sectionals. Particularly in the girls' Division 4 brackets, where most of the vocational schools are placed, it just seems unfair that schools like Tri-County can qualify for the tournament by playing schools of similar philosophies, then have to face schools from much tougher leagues just because their enrollment numbers make them artificial powers in the lowest divisions. For instance, both teams from Millis (total enrolment: 139 boys, 146 girls) went fairly deep into the D4-South tournaments despite being middle-of-the-pack finishers in the Tri-Valley League. The competition level between the TVL and Division 3 of the Mayflower League, which Tri-County calls home, is altogether different. The problem is, there are all sorts of inequities in Division 4. Greater New Bedford Vocational has 1,848 students, almost as big as Attleboro High, but has struggled to keep a girls' basketball program alive. The smallest school in the division is New Testament of Norton (which has not competed at a varsity level for the past couple of years) with 80 students, followed closely by South Shore Christian -- the top-seeded girls' team at the start of this year's tournament -- at 98. The smallest public school in the division is Provincetown (99). But for Tri-County to have a chance in the tournament, it would have to fight its way past public schools like Avon, Holbrook, Cohasset, Harwich, Hull, Nantucket, West Bridgewater and Westport. In some ways, it seems fair to have the vocationals and small Christian schools crown their own champion. But that would also put the tiny publics at a greater disadvantage if they were merged back into Division 3. I don't have any solutions here, but if anyone else does, please feel free to suggest them. For those of you who are sharing my withdrawal symptoms, however, I suggest that you hitch your wagon to the Oliver Ames girls this Saturday at the former Centrum. Laney Clement-Holbrook has been coaching at OA even longer than I've been writing here, and she is a class act, through and through. Indeed, it saddens me that our circulation area ends at the Mansfield-Easton and Norton-Easton lines, because it would have been a pleasure to include the Tigers in our coverage plans all these years. If you look at Hockomock League girls' basketball over the past 20 years or so, there have been three schools that have been consistently good for a long period of time -- North Attleboro, Foxboro and Oliver Ames. The Tigers hadn't made it to the state level since 2000, however, and their rousing win over Melrose gives Laney and her talented team a chance to add another coveted state championship to the Hockomock's laurels. I couldn't think of a better way for this season to end -- except, of course, to have one of our own teams there in Worcester. MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com