The best women's college basketball program is in ... Four Lakes? Really?

Finding a Crunch Time topic during the between-season periods is often a challenge.

It may not seem like we’re between seasons, with college basketball heating up as March Madness approaches, but here at the Free Press, our calendar pretty much revolves around the local school districts and their sports lineups. And right now, winter sports are over and spring sports are, well, in reality, getting canceled.

That’s typical for baseball, softball, track and field, etc. Even in atypical winters like this one, where we received a lot of our snowpack in one month, it’s common to see the automated emails announcing cancellations of this junior varsity game, that varsity match, roll in.

Spring sports practice began Feb. 25, so we haven’t reached the two-week mark for number of practices in order to be eligible to play, and already it looks like Cheney High School athletic director Jeff Chandler and his baseball and softball coaches will be scrambling to squeeze in games later in the season.

As of Tuesday, March 5, there were 10 postponed events on the CHS athletics website. Even with warming weather, and the possibility of rain helping to melt snow, there will be more.

Makes for a busy, frantic schedule.

So it’s times like these when we sportswriters are thankful for something like this email title that was sent to me on Jan. 29, and which I just had to save for just such an emergency as the need for column material.

“Four Lakes Top City for Women’s Basketball.”

Yep, THAT Four Lakes.

The email came from an organization called “College Factual” (maybe not so much, eh?) and was ostensibly from the CEO and co-founder, Bill Phelan. College Factual bills itself as “a free website that helps students discover their best-fit college and major.”

“We’ve done a deep analysis of college locations around the country, and have found Four Lakes to be one of the best places for Women’s Basketball because of its proximity to high-ranking colleges and universities,” Phelan writes. “In other words, it’s a great location for women who want to participate in a College Basketball program while getting a high-quality education.”

What’s even more humorous is I received an identical email from College Factual a few days later, this time telling me that Four Lakes is a hotbed for mens basketball.

Is there something that Four Lakes residents aren’t telling us about their little unincorporated burg on State Route 904 between Cheney and Interstate 90?

Diving into the website, the methodology College Factual used for determining rankings seemed pretty good. Overall team winning percentage, athletic competitiveness, overall university academic standings, athletic aid per student and financial resources.

According to the website, these factors have likely been ranking university athletics since January 2014. Hmmm.

I wanted to find out how Four Lakes got the nod, so I emailed Phelan the question. I probably shouldn’t have pointed out that Four Lakes is a town of roughly 400 people, and that there is a major regional university about four miles to the south because the reply I received was “Thanks for pointing this out.”

Nothing more.

Oh well. So kudos to Four Lakes for providing quality university basketball — mens and womens, although personally, I’ve always though the university in Marshal had the better football team.

More importantly, I found a column topic for my turn in the rotation.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].