Wow, what a run so far for high school hoops

One of Missouri's longest losing streaks ended. An even longer one almost did.

The No. 1 team in Southeast Missouri lost. So did No. 3. And the new No. 10 team wasn't even on the radar before the season started.

Two weeks into the high school boys basketball season, it's starting to look like a repeat of the college football season, where the most unlikely teams rise to the top, fall, rise. Then fall. And rise. And on and on.

First, the streaks: Delta C-7 ended a losing streak with its first win in 42 tries, a 63-52 defeat of Senath-Hornersville in Senath's own tournament Friday. It's the first win for the Chargers since a win over Risco in February 2005; they were 0-18 last season and 0-20 the year before.

At the Caledonia tournament, Kingston came within five points of ending its losing streak at 93 games, the longest recorded in Southeast Missouri (the previous was 92 by the former Arbyrd High School, which combined with Cardwell to form Southland).

According to the published recap, Kingston cut the lead to a point with 1:20 to play, but Bismark hit four of its final six free throws to pull away. Kingston's last win was in February 2003 against Bunker, and now an intriguing home date with Grandview (0-5) awaits Dec. 11.

• We've already seen surprises in the high school boys basketball season, but Salem's defeat of Jackson for the Farmington Invitational title is, hands down, at the top of the list so far. Salem was seeded No. 6, Jackson was seeded first. Salem was unranked in our Top 25, Jackson was No. 3 (although that changed with our new Top 25 posted Sunday night, which featured Salem at No. 10). That sends Jackson into this week's SEMO Conference Tournament with a loss, and the schedule is hardly forgiving. Click here for the full lineup this week at Sikeston High School.

On Friday, No. 1 Scott County Central lost to Bell City in the Oran Invitational finale, adding more changes to the Top 25. It's shaping up to be an anything-goes season among teams across the region, and that should mean a Top 25 with a lot of changes as the season progresses.

• We'll have a new poll on the SemoSportsWeb home page this week, but the last poll asking for the area's high school football MVP puts Waylon Sparkman of Perryville out in front of Ryan Sawyer of Fredericktown. We'll post the final results this week, along with the final top 10 leaders in four categories (passing, rushing, receiving, tackles) among the 33 high school football teams in our area.