With district tournaments getting underway Monday night, KMMO’s longtime play-by-play man Greg Schmidt will spend part of the week providing a recap of conference title chases.  His first installment takes a look at the Central Activities Conference.

For the Central Activities Conference, everything came down to the final week and the final night of the regular season pertaining to who would finish on top in the 2025-2026 league standings. At the end, Glasgow and New Franklin had big roles to play on both the boys and girls’ side of the equation.

To their credit, the Glasgow boys took care of matters themselves by rolling to an unbeaten conference campaign. Their 53-44 win over Cairo on December 12 and the 48-43 victory they pounded out at New Franklin on Jan. 13 was certainly a key to setting themselves apart from the rest of the field during the first half of the season.  The Yellowjackets were able to finish things off for themselves last week during a couple of CAC league tests at home.

Taking on Slater last Tuesday, Glasgow overcame an early 12-6 deficit and rode the coattails of nine three-pointers and 36 points by Bronson Foster, along with another 24 on the part of Jackson Meyer to down the Wildcats, 73-52.  Then on Thursday, the Yellowjackets entertained New Franklin, faced with the opportunity to claim the conference championship outright. To their credit, since their January loss to Glasgow, the Bulldogs had defeated six straight CAC opponents, some of them by slim margins, to improve to 8-1 in the league standings.

That gave New Franklin a chance to claim a share of the top spot if they could win at Glasgow in that final conference showdown.  However, in a battle very typical of those that occur between two CAC rivals, the Yellowjackets persevered and fought off the Bulldogs, 64-58, thanks to 32 points from Jackson Meyer along with 17 more by Kyler Kottman.  That left Glasgow at 10-0 in league play with New Franklin ending up 8-2. Cairo, who lost a pair of key league tests to New Franklin and Slater the first half of February, came in at 7-3.

On the girls’ side, things were a little more jumbled with three teams fitting into the picture until the very end.  Glasgow put themselves into a favorable position early by defeating Cairo, 61-51 back on Dec. 12.  However, the edge they created for themselves was erased Jan. 13 when they lost at New Franklin, 43-35.  In the meantime, the Cairo girls overcame a slow start to steamroll their way through the rest of their schedule, including the crucial, 51-40 win they posed at New Franklin on February 6, handing the Bulldogs their first CAC loss of the campaign.

Cairo kept knocking off the rest of their conference opponents all the way to the end, posting a final mark of 9-1. That left New Franklin and their trip to Glasgow last Thursday as both schools owned 8-1 league records with a share of the CAC title serving as a reward for the winner.  In that matchup, the Bulldogs came out on top again, hammering their way to a 31-24 victory over Glasgow as the defenses dominated and points were at a premium for both sides. In the end, New Franklin and Cairo thus deadlocked for the top spot at 9-1 as the Yellowjackets came in third with an 8-2 record.