Help Coach Pinkham: Is he the best coach in America?
The road to naming America's best high school boys basketball coach has entered its final stage.
It started with 306 of the country's top high school boys hoops coaches, and now there are 10 remaining.
The coach receiving the most votes in this final national round will be crowned champion and win $2,000 for his school.
The final round begins at noon ET Friday and ends at 3 p.m. ET Feb. 7.
The eight regional winners were Frank Ostanik of Monroe Catholic (Fairbanks, Alaska), I.J. Pinkham of Boothbay (Boothbay Harbor, Maine), Brendan O'Connell of Eleanor Roosevelt (Greenbelt, Md.), Jack Doss of J.O. Johnson (Huntsville, Ala.), Dan Fleming of LaSalle (Cincinnati), Danny Fletcher of Rosepine (Rosepine, La.), Shane Cowherd of Memorial (Edmond, Okla.) and Doug Robison of Billings West (Billings, Mont.).
Joining those eight in the final round will be two wild card entrants receiving the highest number of votes nationally without winning their region. They are John Mirabello of Northwest Catholic (Hartford, Conn.) and Joe Fenlon of Tampa Prep (Tampa, Fla.).
There were 1,300,813 votes cast in the regional round alone, bringing the contest total to nearly 2 million votes. Pinkham led the country in the regional round with 127,886 votes, and Doss was close behind at 127,812.
USA TODAY High School Sports selected six active high school basketball coaches in each state and Washington, D.C. after more than a month of conversations with local media and other state/school officials with expertise. From there, the fans are deciding which boys basketball coach will emerge from a list of 306.
Fifty-three coaches advanced from the state round to the regional round, which ended Thursday. In the state round, Cedric Lane of Wenonah High School in Birmingham, Ala., received the most votes nationally with 56,889. More than 532,124 votes were cast nationwide during the state round.
The "Best Of" contest series launched in November 2012 with the first best high school football rivalry competition, won by Brookfield vs. Marceline in Missouri. The teams celebrated their national title rivalry on Sept. 13 in Brookfield.
In January, Hartford (Vt.) was crowned as the People's Champion high school football team. The monster of them all (the top high school mascot last spring) was won by the Centralia (Ill.) Orphans after 80 million total votes were cast during the competition.
Earlier this fall, the best high school football coach competition crowned Philip Haywood of Belfry (Ky.) as its champion. And the most recent contest, the second annual best high school football rivalry, went to the North Carolina small-town matchup of Bunn vs. Louisburg when voting wrapped up in December.
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