If college basketball’s tournament season is March Madness, I suppose these couple of weeks in Mississippi could be called the February Frenzy.

High school division tournaments are going on this week across the state, and the state tournaments begin next week. There have already been some upsets, and by midnight Friday more than a few Cinderella stories could be launched.

One of them is right here in Warren County.

The Vicksburg Missy Gators aren’t a bad basketball team. They’re more like the person in every class that can’t seem to find themselves.

The Missy Gators have all of the tools to be successful — a superstar (Karry Callahan), a capable leader on the floor who’s also a strong second option (Keiyana Gaskin) and enough role players (3-point specialists Pleasure King, Alexis Carter and Micha Williams, and rebounders Monique Jones and Maya Clay) to fill in the gaps.

It’s a good roster that has never quite lived up to its potential, however.

The Missy Gators are 12-15 this season. They only hit 40 percent of their free throws — a fatal flaw that probably costs them at least 10 points a game — and seem as likely to be blown out as to win big. As a sports fan, it’s maddening to watch them knowing how good they can be and how mediocre they often are.

And yet, of all of our local teams, they’re the only one that’s punched their ticket to the state tournament. They did it by beating top-seeded Ridgeland 47-45 on Tuesday in a game where they still only shot 13-of-33 from the foul line but did everything else right.

Vicksburg’s boys, and both teams from Warren Central, are facing elimination games in the division tournament on Friday. The Missy Gators, warts and all, are playing for a title and will host a state tournament game next week.

The randomness of it is one of the reasons you can’t help but love sports. The odds say the Missy Gators won’t win a state championship, that they’ll run into a better and more consistent team somewhere along the line. But they’re still in there fighting and can certainly spoil somebody’s dreams.

Here’s hoping that they do. Even though watching them has caused me to scratch my head on more than one occasion over the years, they still have what it takes to create a lot of memories.

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Ernest Bowker is a sports writer for The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached via email at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com