Just as a small town in Michigan begins to recover from the tragedy of losing a favorite son, a South Texas community is beginning the grieving process after another teen basketball player died during a basketball game on Saturday.

According to the Associated Press, Roma (Texas) High junior Robert Garza collapsed during a game at an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) tournament Saturday in Austin, falling just after taking a sip of water on the bench during a timeout. The McAllen Monitor reported that paramedics attempted to revive Garza at the scene, but failed to do so. He died approximately an hour after collapsing at Brackenridge Hospital in downtown Austin.

"During pregame warm-ups, he was dunking the ball and laughing with his teammates. Everything looked good," South Texas Hoopsters coach Arnold Martinez told The Monitor. "It's unexplainable. He got a glass of water. He high-fived [teammate] Pablo Adame and then it just happened. He collapsed."

The circumstances surrounding Garza's

In Fennville's latest triumph, the real MVP wasn't even on the court. Wes Leonard's brother, who isn't on the team, accepted the district championship trophy. And for once in a tumultuous seven-day period that saw Fennville, Mich., become the epicenter of America's basketball-mad March subconscious, everyone got to smile.

The smiles came thanks to a tense, come-from-behind, 51-48 Fennville (Mich.) High victory over Covert (Mich.) High in a Class C district final playoff game. The smiles came thanks to Fennville player Reid Sexton, who connected on both his free throws with 16.5 seconds remaining, giving the Blackhawks a three-point lead that Covert couldn't match, despite a desperation attempt in the closing seconds.

And once again, the smiles and tears came to Mitchell Leonard, the younger brother of the now departed Wes Leonard, an eighth-grader who has become a fixture on the Fennville bench and with the team since his brother's sudden death. He's become so close, in fact, that he

Why beat around the bush when all the best highlights at the start of March are fabulous playoff dunks? Here's the best of the past week, with a nifty block, a game-changing mid-air lay-in in a nationally hyped game and jv buzzer beater for good measure.

• Wayne Blackshear, Morgan Park (Ill.) vs. Hillcrest (Ill.): The defending Illinois 3A state champs are no more, thanks in large part to three humongous dunks by Wayne Blackshear, the nationally-hyped Louisville commit.

• Klinton Carlson, Waverly-Shell Rock (Iowa) vs. Norwalk (Iowa): What's better than a great alley-oop dunk? A great alley-oop dunk that provides the margin of victory in an overtime state title game. In this case, Klinton Carlson provided the finishing touches on a terrific alley-oop from Connor Coleman, who made his only assist of the game count more than any other.

• Gary Harris, Hamilton Southeastern (Ind.) vs. Fishers (Ind.): Gary Harris wasn't the only player who came up big in Southeastern's win, but he was the

On Thursday, RivalsHigh senior analyst Dallas Jackson helped break the news that Chandler (Ariz.) Hamilton High would be joining Sherman Oaks (Calif.) Notre Dame High in Dublin in 2012 for what will almost surely be the longest distance, out-of-state game ever played.

While both teams will need to raise plenty of money to help defray immense costs of the trip, Notre Dame has a head start on fundraising because of its earlier commitment to play at the event. Shortly after word of Hamilton's inclusion in the event broke, the Los Angeles Times also reported of a big fundraising lift for Notre Dame, thanks to an unlikely celebrity source: Magic Johnson.

According to the Times, the Hall of Fame hoops star donated his Staples Center luxury suite to the school for the March 18 game between the Lakers and Timberwolves. Fittingly, the team is auctioning off the suite's use on eBay, with bids currently above $2,000 with days remaining. Here's hoping that the auction site doesn't charge its

The goals just kept going in. At 3-0, the Minnesota Class 1A state hockey playoffs first-round game was practically over. At 5-0, St. Thomas (Minn.) Academy had thoroughly demoralized New Ulm (Minn.) High. By the time the scoreline reached 7-0, fans started to feel awkward about the rout.

Yet something made that score even worse: It was 7-0, and it was only the end of the first period.

According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Thomas tied a Minnesota state record by scoring seven goals in a single period in its Wednesday state quarterfinal rout. Then they went on to tear apart New Ulm by a final score of 13-2.

It would be one thing if that score was put up early in the regular season, but this was the state playoffs, in front of a huge crowd at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center, home of the NHL's Minnesota Wild. This was not supposed to be the time for a record-setting rout.

"The way they came out in the first period, we've never seen anything like that since last year we were here

The ranks of women who dunked in a game are notably slim. Lisa Leslie famously broke the dunking glass ceiling with a slam in a 2002 game. She was followed by Tennessee's Candace Parker in the 2005-06 season, and in 2009 by current Baylor center Brittney Griner.

Yet ... that's it. Those three are all the notable female dunkers that have reached the cultural mainstream, and none of them pulled off the feat in high school. That might all be about to change, thanks to the explosive leaping ability of a Georgia sophomore who some have already tipped to be the next girl to throw down a slam in a game.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Michael Carvell, Diamond DeShields has come mighty close to the feat already. She's also successfully dunked off an alley oop in practice, as you can see in the video clip above.

But there's something notably different about DeShields -- the daughter of longtime MLB player Delino DeShields -- when compared to the female dunkers of the past:

It's true, records are meant to be broken. Yet sometimes the truly amazing aspect of a new mark comes not from its final tally, but rather from the monumental consistency required to reach it.

That may never have been more clearly the case than with the new all-time leading scorer in Massachusetts girls' hockey. According to the Boston Globe, Governor's (Mass.) Academy senior Alex Carpenter, a Boston College recruit, set the new career mark in her team's New England Private School Athletic Conference Division 2 championship-game victory, a 5-2 win against Rivers (Mass.) School that handed Governor's its fourth consecutive NEPSAC Division 2 crown.

While the victory was a watershed for an entire class of Governor's seniors, it was a monumental statistical breakthrough for Carpenter. Not only did the forward earn her fourth consecutive NEPSAC Div. 2 tournament MVP, she also netted a hat trick and an assist to finish her scholastic career with 410 points, trumping the previous

The final score 54-0 gives off the impression of an atrocious high school football rout. In Texas on Tuesday, it somehow became a bizarre baseball score.

As reported in the Dallas Morning News -- and by the victorious team itself on its own website -- the Lake Highlands (Texas) High baseball team cruised to one of history's most merciless mercy-rule games, topping Samuell (Texas) High by an official final score of 54-0.

We say "official final score" because the two different coaches had differing opines on precisely how many times Lake Highlands had scored, with Wildcats coach Jay Higgins claiming that his team scored 57 runs, and Samuell coach Mike Peña claiming the final score was 53-0.

One can almost understand how a scorekeeper could have become lost trying to keep up with Lake Highlands' offense. The Wildcats took only five innings to rack up their 54 runs, and in a feat of extraordinary consistence, they did so without hitting any home runs.

"We did everything possible," Higgins