Friday might have been the most exciting night of the boys basketball season around the Tri-Cities.

But it's not crazy to say that this coming week could get even juicier, highlighted by East-North on Wednesday and North-Geneva on Saturday.

The Fighting Saints seemed like they were on life support a couple weeks back, losing four in a row and getting their posteriors handed to them at home by Larkin. But things are starting to click in a big way for East now and beating Elgin has to be a huge confident boost going into the "We St. Charles, Yeah, Yeah" Bowl on Wednesday at East.

North is at the other end of the spectrum. The North Stars have played good ball lately but took a heavy-duty (or is that doo-doo) step backward on Friday in a costly L at Geneva. North has some guys who have played enough varsity ball to rise above the chippiness and solve a variety of defenses but the North Stars couldn't do it. With East lurking Wednesday and another crack at Geneva on Saturday, North can still make a go of it, but they better learn from this one in a major way.

If you look at the rosters of the four leaders in the River, Geneva, East, North and Elgin, you figure most would rank the Vikings #4 on that list, talent-wise. But right now, where it counts, Geneva is #1.

Make that hold up for two more weeks, and the Vikings will have had themselves an extremely special regular season.

Congrats to the Geneva girls basketball team on winning the UEC RIver, but you gotta say, that was not much of a conference race.

Geneva was head-and-shoulders better than the rest of the conference, so there wasn't much suspense. Fortunately, it looks like things are going to be a lot different on the guys' side these next coupla weeks.

Looking like a sweet little three-team race is brewing between Geneva, St. Charles North and Elgin, with St. Charles East not down for the count quite yet but maybe needing to run the table.

North went 3-0 this week including that big W at Elgin. Give the North Stars oodles of credit for playing their way into the hunt when it didn't seem like they were contending material going into the new year.

Geneva has one loss in the conference, North and Elgin have two each. The best part of it all, North and Geneva still square off two times in these last few weeks of the season. Those should be lots of fun, especially since those teams weren't exactly lovey-dovey last year, far as Sly recalls.

With Geneva's second ballgame against Elgin not on tap until late February, you figure the Vikings are in great position to at least be in it all the way to the wire, unless the Viking ship goes off course in a hurry.

If you're going to tell Sly to get his blue tail off the fence and make a call, the prediction would still be Elgin, even with the Maroons behind Geneva at the moment.

Still think Elgin is the best team in the conference, especially when they get back to full strength. But the Maroons winning the conference is by no means the lock some might have thought it'd be a few weeks back.

Give the Vikes and the Stars plenty of credit for spicing this sucker up for the long-haul.

This winter has been one of the worst on the injury front.

Boys basketball, girls basketball, wrestling ... you name it, and they've been dropping at a hard-to-believe rate.

This weekend's UEC Wrestling Meet was dampened quite a bit with St. Charles East and Batavia both missing stud wrestlers with injuries. Batavia's Joey Shump is out for the year, a huge downer ... he is one of the area kids that really coulda done some damage at state.

Don't even get Sly started on basketball. It's been ugly!

Both Santos sisters have gone down with ACL injuries at Geneva, and Batavia's promising post also fell vicitim to an ACL tear. Rosary also has seen a starter lost to the dreaded ACL.

The Batavia and Geneva boys basketball teams have both been without multiple key players for stretches of the year, and St. Charles North only recently got a key guard back from ACL rehab.

Outside the Tri-Cities, ACC star Robert DeMyers has missed half of the season with a foot injury, and Kaneland standout Trever Heinle has missed a similar chunk after a scary spill led to neck/shoulder problems.

Injuries are a drag no matter who goes down, but we're talking about some of the very best athletes in the area, people. Injuries are part of the game, true, but this winter, the aches and pains have been awfully tough to take.

Not much you can say about the Ashley Santos ACL news, other than it's a darn shame.

Santos was the most exciting girls hoopster in the area and losing her really puts a crimp in the Vikings' postseason hopes. You don't lose a player like her and not feel it in a major way.

Most of all, you feel for the kid, though. She's done some great things in a Geneva uni but there's no substitute for going out in style as a senior.

Between her and her little sis Sidney, that's some ungodly, awful injury luck for some really talented young ladies.

It was a good sign to see Geneva get a W without Santos on Tuesday night, and Sly thinks the Vikings are still in great shape to finish the year strong and win the conference.

But this is still tough news to swallow in a lot of ways. Here's wishing Ashley the best at Marquette, and thanks for providing area hoops fans some great memories!

Sly'll be honest, last week might have been about as ugly a week for our local boys hoopsters as there's been this season.

Batavia lost its fifth game in a row to not-so-mighty Streamwood, and has injury problems. Geneva was torn to pieces by 40(!) points against St. Viator. St. Charles East stunk it up in a home loss to Larkin on Saturday, and on the same night, St. Charles North failed to dig out of a 28-5 hole to Metea Valley.

The news wasn't much rosier to the west, where Kaneland was upset by Morris in a damaging conference loss.

Misery loves company, Sly supposes.

All of the above makes this week very, very interesting. Which teams have the character to bounce back, and which teams will let the doom and gloom snowball?

It's got to get better, and not just because it can't get worse, as the song goes. After all, Batavia plays North as well as Geneva this weekend.

Coach Sly hasn't written a lot about wrestling this winter, but the UEC River grapping race might turn out to have been the most interesting conference race of all.

You had three quality Tri-Cities teams in the mix right down to the end, but it was the Battlin' Bulldogs that took the prize by virtue of beating Geneva on Friday night in a close dual.

Close, but not quite as tight as the match with STC East was. That one a couple weeks back was a tie, but Batavia won by "criteria" as they say in the biz ... well, that tiebreaker victory ended up loomin' large.

Congrats to the Bulldogs. By the sound of it, those guys are really deserving champs, having withstood a bunch of guys quitting two years in a row, and some tough competition around the area.

Coach Sly is glad to see the (relatively) new coach having some success with Bulldog wrestling.

When coach Arlis left, you had to wonder if the program was going to be able to keep up its high level of success. Well, looks like the answer is yes.

Looking forward to seeing how all our local grapplers fare next in the postseason meets.

Coach Sly is ready to make a CNN-like projection and "call" the UEC River girls hoops race in favor of Geneva.

It's not even halfway through January yet, but we've seen enough to tell there's not a true challenger to the Vikings in that conference. It's gonna be a landslide.

Geneva's good but not invincible, as we saw at the Benet tournament around Christmas. Hate to say it, but it's more a reflection on the state of the rest of the conference that there ain't much drama in that River race.

The Vikings still need to take these last several weeks seriously because they will be challenged before long once the postseason gets going next month. Always fun to see what those girls can do in postseason play.