More on the QC RiverHawks

[ABA-hater]

This is from The Quad City Times on Friday:

Scheduling snafu keeps Riverhawks from playingBy Eric Page | Friday, December 01, 2006

The Quad-City Riverhawks’ first six games went off without a hitch. But in the American Basketball Association, games on the schedule never are guaranteed.

The Riverhawks’ first road trip hit a dead end Thursday when owner Tom McGinn found out tonight’s opponent didn’t have the game on its schedule.

“I was talking to the owner of the Anderson (Ind.) Champions, and he was wondering why we were getting hotel rooms out there, because on his schedule we’re not coming out there,” McGinn said. “On our schedule, we are coming out there. If you pull out a few different ABA schedules online, some of them have us going to Anderson, some of them don’t have anything until we go to Chicago on Saturday.”

Sure enough, the league schedule on Web site abalive.com shows the Riverhawks were to play at 7:05 p.m. today at Anderson. Yet, the Champions’ Web site indicates their next game is not until Saturday night against the Twin City Ballers.

McGinn spoke to the league office Thursday, and ABA officials promised a make-up game at home on a to-be-determined date. The game likely will be against the Champions, who the Riverhawks beat 107-98 on Nov. 13, but McGinn said the league was waiting to see if a different team was in need of a road game down the line.

Not a single ABA team played its entire 36-game schedule last season.

But McGinn, who has been steadfast in his efforts to bring professional basketball back to the Quad-Cities, is not discouraged by the mishap. In fact, he’s planning to expand.

“I’m looking at acquiring another ABA team if it becomes possible,” said McGinn, who owns 24/7 Directories, a firm that specializes in yellow pages advertising.

“My goal is within the next three to four years to have two or three different teams. It depends on where everything bounces. It won’t be in the Quad-Cities, but it will be in the area on the Illinois side.”

McGinn mentioned Rock Falls, Ill., where he lives and runs the family farm, as a possible site for an expansion team. But, he added, there might be the chance to take over an ABA team that already is off the ground.

“I’d have to see how it all works out,” he said. “With the ABA being the ABA, we may even have a team somewhere this year. We’ll see how it goes.

“The ABA loves me for some reason. If there’s ever a problem, they’re probably going to shift something my way.”

The Riverhawks are off to a 4-2 start and rank 16th in the ABA power rankings — the top 24 teams at the end of the season qualify for the playoffs — but the average attendance of 235 has been below what McGinn anticipated.

And a scheduling error on the team’s first try at a road trip certainly doesn’t help.

McGinn already had rented vans for the weekend — the team normally will travel in the McGinn family Winnebago, but McGinn didn’t want to risk potential snowy conditions — and the team prepared all week for a matchup with Anderson. Now the Riverhawks will drive over and back to Chicago on Saturday for a game against the Rockstars, a team they beat Monday, 114-67.

In spite of everything, McGinn still is confident the team will stick.

“It’s been almost right what I thought it would be except we’ve been about 250 fans light of what I thought we’d bring in on average,” McGinn said. “But I feel like we’ve got a good start. People have still got to find it, and to be 4-2 is a pretty good way to get things off the ground.”

Eric Page can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.

[ABA-hater]

Snow bails out scheduling snafu
By Dan Tomlin, dtomlin@qconline.com


Friday's snowfall corrected an American Basketball Association (ABA) scheduling snafu in which the Anderson Champions had no idea the Quad City RiverHawks were supposed to come to town Friday night.

As a result, the RiverHawks had to scratch their first road game of the season. The cancellation happened Thursday night when QC owner Tom McGinn called his Anderson counterpart asking if hotel reservations were set, and heard:

"We can get you rooms, but what do you need them for," said McGinn.

The ABA, the RiverHawks and the Champions had contradicting schedules that were to blame for the confusion. According to McGinn, the 'Hawks will be given a home game at a later date.

Seeing as how I-80 was at a standstill from Princeton to Chicago, McGinn "couldn't ask for a better disaster, if you want to look at it that way."

The RiverHawks will be taking off this afternoon for Chicago to play the Rockstars. It will be QC's second straight game against Chicago, having knocked them off 114-67 Monday for the 'Hawks (4-2) most lopsided win of the season.

In defense of the Rockstars, the loss came at the tail end of a four-games-in-four-nights road trip, in which they went 2-2. Chicago was also without a game Friday. It was presumably due to the weather, but attempts to contact officials of the St. Louis franchise were thwarted by dead phone lines. There is speculation that the Stunners have folded up shop. Making that interesting is that QC is scheduled to host St. Louis on Friday.

Both ABA CEO Joe Newman and McGinn insist that the QC-Anderson scheduling error was a one-time problem, and that the 'Hawks have full intentions of completing their full 36-game schedule, a Herculean feat in this rendition of the six years of the modern ABA.

Newman has been top dog in the league for three years, after working with the Indiana Pacers in their ABA days. He has grown the league from a laughable six teams in 2003 to today's 48-team configuration, with prospects of making that number 70 through expansion next season.

-- Rock Falls could be next ABA stop: McGinn's hometown could be the site of another ABA team, as he would be a "foster parent" to any team that falls under suspension from the league.

"When a team's ownership doesn't pay its players, or pay for use of the facility, they go on suspension," Newman said. "Not all of our owners are as stable as Tom (McGinn). They don't all show the same type of commitment. We've talked about him owning a second team."

It may even start before the end of this season. According to McGinn, if need be, he would "foster" a team whose owners get "suspended" and they would host games at a number of different venues in Carroll, Whiteside and Lee counties.

"By doing it in the middle of a season, there's no way we'd have just one venue," McGinn said.

-- RiverHawkettes to return! Earlier in the week I listed my "Top 10 Reasons to Watch the RiverHawks," and mentioned that the RiverHawkettes (the QC cheerleaders) had been disbanded, which threw numerous readers into a tizzy. Everyone wanted to know why.

Ask no more. They shall return. Like Michael Jordan wearing No. 45 upon his return, the 'Hawkettes new uniforms may look different, but the substance will be there.

"They weren't completely ready for the season," McGinn said. "They only practiced one or two days a week, and they just didn't have enough time to prepare for the season. We just put them on hold."

When will they be back? Drum roll please... January, according to McGinn. So for the six home games in December the team is planning on bringing in temporary cheerleaders from high schools, and they hope, some dance teams.

[Sam Hill]

the 'Hawkettes new uniforms may look different, but the substance will be there.

That's what we want to see, the substance. :)