Longtime Russell football coach Ivan McGlone will be inducted into the Dawahares/Kentucky High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in May.

Good for Coach McGlone, who is more than deserving of the honor.

He’s done so much good at Russell, including winning a couple of state championships in 1978 and 2005 and finishing runner-up in 2006. But, more than the victories, he’s been a father figure to many players, knows how to win and lose with class and coached great football for four decades at Russell.

Ivan McGlone is Russell football. Nobody would argue that point.

We have several from northeastern Kentucky in the KHSAA Hall of Fame but one glowing omission is the late Bert Greene, the former Olive Hill High School basketball great.

Greene scored 3,010 points in his Comet career and led them to the State Tournament twice, including the 1959 season when Olive Hill made it to the semifinals under coach Jack Fultz.

Greene was the all-time leading scorer in 16th Region boys’ history until Elliott County’s Jonathan Ferguson surpassed him last season. So it was a record that stood for 50 years.

Greene and Ferguson are the only 16th Region boys (Rose Hill great Emily Queen holds the girls record) to have scored more than 3,000 points in a career. There are only 29 players in state history that have achieved that total.

Chris Perry, a longtime supporter of all Comet sports, is putting together information on Greene to try and get him the long overlooked honor of having a place in the Hall of Fame. If there’s anything you can add to the Greene legacy, give Chris a call.

Honestly, it’s hard to understand why Greene has been overlooked. He may have had the best shooting stroke in region history, his teams won with regularity and he even did some coaching at West Carter High School.

Bert Greene gave a lot to the 16th Region and the state. It’s time for the late Comet great to be recognized.

Trivia question

Curtis Crye, an area sports historian, posed this question to me the other day.

There has been one former Ashland Tomcat who, as a head basketball college coach, took a team to the Division I NCAA Tournament. Can you name him? (Keep reading for the answer).

Tiger Town

Basketball is alive and well in Ironton.

Ironton’s girls basketball team is in the Division III Final Four, taking on No. 3 Middletown Madison at 1 p.m. at Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center.

The Lady Tigers stunned No. 1 Oak Hill 43-31 last week to reach the Final Four for the first time since 2005.

Nikki Elswick collected 18 points and 13 rebounds and Brea Tackett added 13 points and four steals. Ironton avenged a two-point loss to Oak Hill in the record season. The Lady Oaks came into the game 24-0.

Doug Graham is Ironton’s girls’ head coach.

Tonight, Ironton’s boys take on Eastern Brown in the Division III regional semifinals at Ohio University’s Convocation Center.

Tenn. Miss Basketball

Tennessee’s Miss Basketball this season has some area ties.

Taylor Hall, the daughter of Steve Hall and Kelli Cromer, has been named the Division I Class AAA Miss Basketball Award in Tennessee.

Taylor plays for Morristown West, which lost in the state championship game at the Murphy Center on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University last weekend.

The 6-foot-1 forward has already signed with Tennessee-Chattanooga. She was also Tennessee’s state Gatorade Player of the Year in girls’ basketball.

Hall started four years for the Lady Trojans and averaged 18.4 points, 9.8 rebounds, 3.8 steals and 3.4 assists per game as a senior. She is a 53 percent shooter from the field, 44 percent from 3-point range and 84 percent at the foul line.

She became the first player in school history to have a quadruple-double — 15 points, 11 steals, 10 assists and 10 rebounds. Besides her athletic achievements, Taylor also stars in the classroom with a 4.0 grade point average.

Her father, Steve, is a former Ashland Tomcat basketball and baseball player and coach. Her mother, Kelli Cromer, was a standout athlete at East Carter High School.

UK on WOWK

Kentucky’s opening-round game with East Tennessee State will be shown locally on WOWK at 7:15 p.m. Thursday night.

On Tuesday, there were reports that the station would be showing Ohio University-Georgetown instead.

However, it was confirmed later in the afternoon that UK-ETSU would be shown. CBS Sports determines what games stations will show in their market area. WOWK requested the UK-ETSU game.

Tournament play begins at noon on Thursday on CBS.

Trivia answer

That former Tomcat to take his team to the NCAA Tournament was none other than George “Eck” Allen, who led Brown University to the 1939 NCAA Tournament where it lost 42-30 to Villanova.

Brown represented the New England schools in the eight-team tournament, quite a contrast to the 65-team extravaganza of today.

Allen, the 10th honoree for the Elks Sports Day in 1984, played basketball and football on some great Tomcat teams in the late 1920s and 30s. He was a substitute on the famed 1928 national championship basketball team and was part of an undefeated football team in 1930.

Allen was on the ’30 Tomcats that destroyed Louisville Manual 91-0. Allen had seven touchdowns and nine extra-point kicks in that game for 51 points. The nine extra points was a national record.

Tomcat coach Paul Jenkins was accused of running up the score because of a running feud he had with the Manual coach. But Jenkins subbed for everybody — except Allen.

Allen was All-State and All-Southern as a senior before going on to play for West Virginia University.

Allen coached football after leading Brown basketball. He was the backfield coach at Fordham, replacing a coach named Vince Lombardi.

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.