The Chris West Basketball Journal

UWM vs. Cardinal Stritch: Opening the Season With My Old Friends, The Panthers

2009-11-05T07:32:00.000-06:00

Ah, it’s finally here. I suppose I sort of kicked off basketball season a few weeks back on the opening evening of practice, but last night was my first opportunity to go to something resembling a game. Both Wisconsin (vs. Bemidji State) and UWM (vs. Cardinal Stritch) were playing their first exhibition games of the year last night. I neglected the Badgers last night and headed downtown to see the Panthers instead for a handful of reasons. First, I’m headed to next week’s Badger exhibition, so I thought I’d try to get an early look at the Panthers to cover all my bases. Second, I neglected UWM so badly last year that I’m not sure if I even made a trip down to the MECCA (or U.S. Cellular Arena, as the kids are calling it these days) last year, and needed to make up for that. Third, we’ve got a recession going on, and the half-price ticket deal that UWM had going on for the game, combined with the general unpopularity of a UWM exhibition game meant that I could attend this one for $5 and park on the street downtown for free. Now that’s a deal if I’ve ever seen one.

It turned out to be well worth my hard-earned $5 to see this one, which saw UWM escape with a 2-point victory when Cardinal Stritch’s Kody Haddix rimmed out a shot from just inside the top of the key as time ran out. If this is any indication of how the season is going to go, it’s going to be a fun year. As always, thoughts below. (Apologies for the lack of fanfare to start this year–I’m just jumping into things this time around, though I’ve already got some random pre-season thoughts and predictions prepared for tomorrow).

1) There’s a certain logic to putting an opposing team’s fans directly behind their team’s bench. However, it wasn’t necessarily a great idea to put the Cardinal Stritch students behind their team’s bench last night, given that sitting right next to them on the baseline was the UWM student section. Was there any question that such a seating arrangement would lead to lewd and insulting cheers being hurled between the student sections all night? Surprisingly, I don’t think that I heard the UWM students chant “Stritch is bitches” until after halftime. However there were plenty of off-color remarks made beforehand, many of which were noticeable only because the low attendance allowed for everyone to clearly hear individual students hurling insults. Of course, it was amusing to hear UWM students run down another school for having lower status than it, as Horizon League teams are usually on the other end of that situation.

2) As I shamefully alluded to earlier, I’m pretty sure I didn’t get to a UWM game last year. I’m not sure how that happened, and I’m just starting to realize how much I punted on basketball in general last year. So you’ll have to forgive me if the things that I talk about in this point are nothing new to this season, but I was very impressed with some of the improvements to the arena experience since the last time I’d been to the MECCA. Black and gold tarps covering the banks of seats behind the baskets (save for the UWM student section) are a brilliant idea, given that there are maybe two games per year when these sections of the arena have any potential of being used. It definitely makes the size of the arena feel more appropriate. And the fact that the players now run out of the locker room through a giant inflatable panther head–who couldn’t love that? The Panther Pit behind the basket on the end of the court opposite the student section looked sort of like a sad place to be last night, and the bartender at the back looked lonely all night, but it’s still a big improvement over the low-rent VIP tables that used to sit at that end of things. And I can’t complain about the UWM bookstore’s are manned by two people who looked like they were actually interested in being there, rather than the old booth that was usually staffed by someone who looked as if they would have rather been in jail. All in all, things continue to move forward at UWM.

3) In addition to UWM using its arena better, they’re also putting on a better show than they have the last few years. Rob Jeter is never going to be a guy that brings the minor league baseball-type promotion and feel that Bruce Pearl did to the MECCA, but the UWM athletic department has found a smart way to keep things fun–by stealing ideas from a place that puts on a good show. Tonight when I saw my first ever UWM halftime basketball musical chairs competition, I couldn’t help but think of all the fun that I’ve had over the years watching Marquette do the same thing at halftime. And trotting out some chosen “Season Ticket Holders of the Game” at the 16 minute timeout in the second half? That’s a Marquette staple, too. Some may find it tacky that UWM is taking these simple ideas from a school across town that they don’t exactly like, but I find it inspired. If you’re going to steal ideas, you might as well steal from the best, and Marquette consistently puts on a good show.

4) Jerard Ajami, who some may remember from his days at Madison Memorial a few years back, was among the most notable newcomers tonight for UWM, coming off his year of sitting out following his transfer from Northern Michigan. Ajami is looking to challenge for playing time this year. Based on last night’s performance, I can definitely say that he’s not a shy player, managing to get up six three pointers in his time on the floor last night. Tough to say what Ajami’s role will be, given the number of lingering questions about the Panthers’ backcourt (more on that later), but for now, he looks like a solid enough option.

5) Last night was the Cardinal Stritch coaching debut of former Fond du Lac star Drew Diener (yes, one of those Dieners). While you’d have to deem his first night a success, based on the fact that his NAIA team was one rimmed-out shot from taking a decent D-1 team to overtime, it was not a night without its challenges. Two technical fouls were assessed against the bench (seemingly both against Diener, but there was no ejection, so I can’t say for sure what went on there), and four of his players fouled out, forcing in a player outside of the rotation at the end of the game.

6) One of the first things that I noticed upon taking my seat in the arena (I arrived about a minute after tip due to some poor planning on my part) was the hair on UWM players. Several had mohawks, most notably Tony Meier and Jason Averkamp. The mohawk also seemed to be the choice of style for most of the players not in uniform last night. I get the goofy hair style if it’s a team unity thing, or a weak attempt to draw more attention to yourself individually. But if only five of the eighteen or so guys on the team do it, you just look kind of confused and dumb. As for Meier and Averkamp, the sides of Meier’s head looked so pale that I’m not sure they’ve ever seen the sun (and they never should again), and Averkamp’s failure to commit to shaving down the sides of his head made him look somewhat hobo-like (his excellent final five minutes of play notwithstanding).

7) Cardinal Stritch’s Kody Braddix was the game’s high scorer last night with 28 points, which was obviously impressive, as were the seven steals that he collected. Because of his great game, Braddix’s name came up on the post game show, when play-by-play man Bill Johnson noted to assistant coach Brian Bidlingmyer, who was handling interview duties for the night, that Braddix looked like a Horizon League caliber guard to him. That led to perhaps the most awkward moment of the night, as Bidlingmyer responded with comments that were entirely neutral with regard to Braddix’s ability. Bidlingmyer failed to even give a generic “He’s an excellent player, no doubt about that.” Instead, he talked about how Braddix definitely had the green light to shoot, and failed to ever assess his skill level. My question–why? Even if you don’t think Braddix is all that great a player, why not just lie in this instance? You’re never going to see him again, and saying that he’s a great player doesn’t hurt anyone. Instead, I’m left today thinking that the UWM coaching staff doesn’t think Kody Braddix is all that great. And even if that’s true, it doesn’t help me to know it.

8) Really, they thought it would be a good idea to break out the kiss cam at the first UWM exhibition game of the year? Predictably, finding couples to put the camera on in a minuscule crowd was not easy, and things wound down with shots of small children and pairs of people that clearly weren’t couples, none of whom were interested in kissing, or even paying attention, really. Maybe we could wait until a game that people actually attend to bust that feature out. It’s just a thought...

9) It was tough to get a read on UWM’s team last night. Sometimes when you watch an exhibition game, you get the feeling that even though the host team is struggling to gain the lead, they’ll ultimately destroy their competition in the end. I got the opposite feeling last night–that no matter how hard UWM tried, Cardinal Stritch was going to hang around until the end. Normally I’d be a bit upset to see UWM struggle so mightily to beat a team from a school that I sort of thought only existed as a place for local teachers to get their masters degrees, but this was not a typical game for UWM. The bench was used liberally and went 12 deep. Most of the players saw only 20 minutes of floor time, so Rob Jeter was definitely mixing things up. And most importantly, star guard Tone Boyle was out with and injury, as was the Panthers’ other likely starting guard, Ricky Franklin. There are some questions about whether Boyle or Franklin will play this year, as rumors surrounding Boyle’s injury make it sound fairly daunting, and I’ve yet to read a report that definitively notes that Franklin has regained the year of eligibility that he initially lost when coming in as a freshmen (though I may just be derelict in my research and such a report may be out there). With Boyle and Franklin (particularly Boyle, who can be a game-changer), this is a much different return, and all UWM fans should be hoping for the prompt return of each.

10) While the guards could clearly get better, James Eayrs was his usual magnificent self last night, putting up 20 points and 10 rebounds and generally physically over-matching Stritch’s smaller players. Fellow bulky forward Jason Averkamp did little of note until the last five minutes when he strangely took over the lane on offense and arguably became the key force in leading the Panthers to victory. There may be better frontcourts in college basketball, but I challenge you to find me a bulkier pair of forwards than this dynamic duo.

11) On an important note for the season, UWM seems to be in the process of re-branding their teams to be simply known as "Milwaukee." I kind of like that move, and hope that it catches some momentum. Nonetheless, as someone who lives in Milwaukee, everyone that I know refers to the school and its teams as UWM, and it just feels totally unnatural for me to start calling the Panthers "Milwaukee." So at least for now, I'm still going with "UWM." Anything else would feel forced right now. (And yes, I recognize that it's completely illogical that I support the re-branding, but refuse to go along with it in my blog. Sometimes I don't make sense, even to myself.)

With the game in the books, I made my drive home flipping between Wisconsin and UWM post-game interviews on the radio and made note of the construction roadblocks on the various routes back to my place from the MECCA this year. I’m going to be making the trip a few more times this year, so I might as well know the easiest way in and out of downtown.

Feeling Blue...

2009-10-20T07:34:00.000-05:00

With college basketball opening this past weekend, it’s probably time to dust off the old keyboard and crank out a few words from time to time again. I had planned on kicking off the season by documenting my trip to Duke’s “Countdown to Craziness” event this past weekend, but it seems that more interesting things were going on back here in Wisconsin while I was away. So I’ll deal with the Durham trip later this week. For now, I’ll chime in with my brief thoughts on Vander Blue’s commitment to Marquette.

As a guy who’s primarily a fan of Wisconsin, Vander Blue heading to Marquette is definitely disappointing. As he proved in the WIAA tournament last season, he’s clearly a top-notch talent, and has a “wow” factor that’s lacking with most of Wisconsin’s current guards. Losing a player of Blue’s ability, particularly when he had been committed to the Badgers just a few months ago, definitely stings. And it stings a bit more that the school he ultimately decided to attend is Wisconsin’s biggest rival. There’s simply not much that’s good about this situation if you’re a Wisconsin fan.

All that said, when I got home from North Carolina yesterday and read the newspaper report about Blue’s commitment to Marquette, I wasn’t as upset as I expected to be. While there’s no doubt I’d have rather heard that Blue was planning on wearing Badger red for the next four years, I actually respect his decision in a lot of ways. I have the sense that Blue really does have a great desire to play for Marquette. Given the pressures on him from the community to do otherwise, it couldn’t have been an easy thing for him to make that choice. But ultimately, Blue should go where he most wants to be, even if that means some initial turbulence.

The reasoning behind my belief that Blue is making the right choice is based primarily on two things: the circumstances of his initial commitment to Wisconsin, and an unsubstantiated rumor that I heard a few weeks ago. As to his original commitment, a few months back when Blue announced that he was re-opening his recruitment, my thoughts turned back to when he first announced his intentions to play for Wisconsin. While Blue was dominant in the high school championships last year and cemented himself as one of the top recruits in the country, that’s not the guy that he was when he decided to attend Wisconsin as a sophomore. Back when I first read of his verbal commitment, I mainly remembered seeing him at the state tournament because he had a cool name. Hearing that he was committing to Wisconsin was, at best, mildly exciting. I probably had the same reaction when I saw that Tim Jarmusz had committed with the Badgers (which is to say that I shrugged my shoulders and thought to myself “I guess that guy seems okay.”). Like almost everyone else, I didn’t know what was about to come in his basketball career.

It’s tough to blame the sophomore Blue, a solid player, but not a guy who’d be getting looks from UCLA, for quickly accepting a scholarship offer from his hometown school’s team, which was just one year removed from being ranked #1 in the country (albeit for a ridiculously brief time). Nor can one blame the senior Blue for wanting to reexamine things when his talent became impossible to miss and his college options had grown exponentially. What looks like the right option to you when you’re 16 years old is often not so right when you turn 18. This is particularly true in Blue’s case, where his set of options changed so drastically within just one year.

While Blue said all of the right things about Wisconsin after he re-opened his recruitment, I’d been preparing myself for him to go elsewhere ever since that day. It’s pretty rare that a player backs out of his recruitment and then ultimately decides to recommit to the same school. There was some hope for the Badgers, as it is also pretty rare for a player re-opening his recruitment to say as many positive things as Blue did about the school that he was formerly committed to. I do get the sense that Blue is telling the truth when he says that he was still very much thinking about attending Wisconsin.

What ultimately makes me feel okay about how this whole situation has shaken out, though, is a rumor that I heard a couple weeks ago from my friend Dez (who you may recall, I share Marquette tickets with). Dez mentioned to me that a co-worker of his with some Marquette connections was hearing that Vander Blue wanted to be a Golden Eagle and was constantly in contact with members of the Marquette team, most of whom he’s formed a bond with. The co-worker was also hearing, though, that Blue’s mother much preferred that he attend Wisconsin.

Neither Dez nor I have any idea whether this truly was the situation with Vander Blue and his mother. After all, it was nothing more than a rumor. But given the comments from Blue following his commitment to Marquette about how tight he is with the Golden Eagle players (particularly his old high school teammate Jeronne Maymon) it’s definitely a theory that makes sense. And if it is the case that Blue clearly wanted to go one place and his mother wanted him to go elsewhere, I’m glad that Blue is going where he wants to be. I’d rather Blue go where he wants to be and be happy, rather than going where he thinks he should go. Both Blue and Wisconsin are a lot better off with him cutting things off now, rather than him accepting two years from now that he’s rather be elsewhere.

So while I’m bummed that I won’t be getting to see what looked to be an important player suiting up for Wisconsin in the coming years, I’m glad to see that Vander Blue seems to have thought out his decision. And as a nice consolation, I’ll still get to watch Blue (and cheer for him, save for one game each year) as part of what’s shaping up to be a ridiculously talented Marquette backcourt in the coming years. I’ll undoubtedly spend the next four years having my Marquette friends throw jabs at me every time Blue has a good game, but if that’s the worst thing to come out of this whole saga, I think I’ll live.

2009 NCAA Tournament Picks

2009-03-16T08:19:00.003-05:00

Yes, the NCAA tourney is here again, and it’s time to start filling out those brackets. While I’ve largely gone silent this year for reasons due mostly to my own laziness, tourney time is no time to stay lazy. So I’m again posting my tournament picks for the world to see. Those of you who've in any way relied on me in the last few years are readily aware that I'm no expert. Despite my general failings in the ways of bracketology, though, I'm still willing to offer my opinion to friends of mine that watch little to no basketball. I may be wrong, but I try to a least have an amusing reason for picking the way that I did.

Before I get to the picks, though, a restatement of my general rules for filling out NCAA tourney brackets:

1) Don’t just completely steal my picks (or anyone else’s, for that matter). I don’t mind it personally, but what fun is that for you? Think of it this way–what’s going to be more fulfilling to you: telling the guy in the cube next to you that you “totally called” Dayton knocking off Wext Virginia, or telling him that some guy whose picks you followed got it right that Wester Kentucky beat Illinois. Advice is great when it’s coming from your doctor or your financial advisor, but this is the NCAA tournament–live a little!

2) Don’t go crazy with upsets, particularly in the first two rounds. This is particularly tempting this year, since the top teams are more flawed than usual, but resist the urge. The NCAA selection committee knows more than you, and they’ve seeded these teams for a reason. Sure, you’re no fun if you don’t go out on a limb here or there, but picking 14 first round upsets isn’t just bold, it’s stupid. Yeah, you’re probably going to have a friend that picks that miracle 10-seed that made it to the Sweet Sixteen, and he’s not going to shut up about it. He’s probably not talking so much about the 5-seed and the 7-seed that he had in the Final Four who both lost the first day, though. My picks are notoriously and painfully boring, and I make no apologies for that, even though someone inevitably mocks may lack of creativity every year.

3) Have fun and make some picks for goofy reasons. There are 64 teams in this tournament, and unless your name is Jay Bilas, you probably haven’t seen all of them. So go ahead and pick Akron to win a game because your favorite uncle lives in Akron, or pick against Syracuse because you dated a girl who went there and was totally wrong for you. After all, last year wasn’t your pool won by that guy in your office who just picked teams based on the ferocity of their mascot? See, you need some quirks, too.

On to the picks. As always, winners are in bold.

FIRST ROUND

Midwest

Louisville (1) vs. Play-In Winner (16): Each year, rather than actually talk about this game, I like to use the space to note how much I hate the play-in game. Tomorrow night, a low-level conference champion will lose their final game of the year, and won’t get the chance to fly to a regional site and play in the real tournament. Sure, the school will get a banner for its gym to denote an NCAA tournament appearance, but everyone will know that they only played in the tournament in the most technical sense. It’s a bit tougher for me to hate this game this year, since it may have been the reason that Wisconsin got into the tournament. If the NCAA needs to screw over Morehead State or Alabama State for the Badgers to get into the tourney, though, I’d frankly rather see an NIT game at the Kohl Center.

Ohio State (8) vs. Siena (9): While they’ve been playing better ball over the course of the last month, I’m just not buying Ohio State this year. If you’re going to tell me that it’s unfair for me to hold a low opinion of a team that eliminated my favorite squad from its conference tournament and then went on to nearly win the conference tournament itself, I won’t disagree with you. But that doesn’t change the fact that I'm just not feeling the Buckeyes (maybe it was all the overblown BJ Mullens hype?). So Siena it is.

Utah (5) vs. Arizona (12): Arizona shouldn’t be in the tournament, but they’re going to win this one just to tick people off. Heaven knows they have the talent to do so if they feel like it.

Wake Forest (4) vs. Cleveland State (13): Wake Forest is a team that was ranked #1 for a brief time earlier this year. Cleveland State is a team that lost to a relatively average UWM squad earlier this year. I’ll take the former #1 here.

West Virginia (6) vs. Dayton (11): A Dayton alum was instrumental in getting me tickets to one of the regional finals this year, and I really hate Bob Huggins, so there was really no other way to go here. Even if my brain does tell me that Bob Huggins teams don't lose early tournament games.

Kansas (3) vs. North Dakota State (14): I would never pick a 14 seed over a 3 seed. There’s just too much to lose. But if ever there was a time to think about it, it would be here. Kansas has lost two out of its last three games to teams near the bottom of the Big 12 standings, and North Dakota State has spent the last few years sneaking up on power conference teams (and has a head coach that just last week I advocated as a potential future head coach of Wisconsin). I’m not a bold enough man to make the call, but I wouldn’t blame you if you did.

Boston College (7) vs. USC (10): USC’s a hot pick here due to the Trojans’ strong finish to the regular season. But BC is one of those teams that I never know much about and always ends up putting together a solid year in the ACC. So I'm picking BC here, and making a promise to actually pay attention to them next year.

West

Connecticut (1) vs. Chattanooga (16): No team whose nickname is “The Mocs” is winning a game in the NCAA tournament.

BYU (8) vs. Texas A&M (9): Two years ago A&M was my “team of destiny” and they let me down after I picked them to win the NCAA championship. I’m still let down by that, and seeing as I know nothing about either team, BYU looks fine to me.

Purdue (5) vs. Northern Iowa (12): You have to respect a team when its best player spends the season playing through a fractured back. The Boilermakers build on their Big Ten Tournament championship and notch a first round win here as Robbie Hummel continues to feel better. Hopefully Northern Iowa hangs around in this one long enough to get Green Bay native and Panther star forward Adam Koch some good publicity.

Washington (4) vs. Mississippi State (13): If Washington hadn’t lost to Arizona State in the Pac-10 tournament, the Huskies may have been looking at a 2-seed. If Tennessee hadn’t played an inept second half against Mississippi State in the SEC championship game, the Bulldogs wouldn’t be here. I think you see my reasoning here.

Marquette (6) vs. Utah State (11): This will be a popular upset pick because Utah State, with 30 wins, was going to be a popular upset pick against anyone heading into the tournament. The fact that Marquette has dropped five of its last six feeds further into Utah State’s upset-darling status. But don’t buy into the hype. The Golden Eagles were a special team before Dominic James went down, and I would only downgrade them to excellent now. Their collapse down the stretch was more a by-product of playing five of the best teams in the country than anything else. Marquette will make some noise in this tournament.

Missouri (3) vs. Cornell (14): Is this a joke? Is the Ivy League really being represented by a team other than Princeton or Penn? If so, I have to go with Mizzou.

California (7) vs. Maryland (10): A cousin of mine went to Maryland, and one of my best friends from high school went to grad school at Cal. I've seen my cousin more recently, so I'll give the Terps the nod. The winner's just going to get pummeled by Memphis, so I'm not stressing too much on this one.

Memphis (2) vs. Cal State Northridge (15): Being from Conference USA, Memphis is used to beating up on inferior teams, so the Tigers should feel right at home in this contest.

East

Pittsburgh (1) vs. East Tennessee State (16): Do you think that the NCAA just set this game up because of the fierce regional interest that a potential East Tennessee State vs. Tennessee second round matchup would draw? No, me neither.

Oklahoma State (8) vs. Tennessee (9): Bruce Pearl coached teams are remarkable in their ability to beat anyone if they're playing well, or lose to just about anyone when they're not hitting their shots. There's been a whole lot more of the latter type of play this season. If you watched the Vols in the SEC championship game, you know why I can't pick them here.

Florida State (5) vs. Wisconsin (12): I want to pick the Badgers, but this just feels like one of those times when I find myself wringing my hands over the fact that the ACC-Big Ten challenge isn’t going my way (that would be every year, for the record). A Badger win isn’t out of the question, but ultimately, I’m just happy to be in the tourney.

Xavier (4) vs. Portland State (13): I’m going with Xavier here, simply because I’m mildly annoyed at how it seems to have become the trendy thing for people in their mid to late 20s to move to Portland.

UCLA (6) vs. VCU (11): UCLA finished second in a conference that received six tournament bids. That's good enough for me.

Villanova (3) vs. American (14): Back when I was a young lad applying to colleges, I chose the schools that I applied to largely on the basis of whether I would be able to watch good basketball. I also applied to American because they had an interesting looking major focused on government. At the time, I didn’t even know they had a basketball team.

Texas (7) vs. Minnesota (10): Tubby Smith will wait to totally break through until next year, particularly since he’s got a tough Texas team standing in his way right now.

Duke (2) vs. Binghamton (15): Duke will win this one, but the real issue for me is what t-shirt I’ll wear while watching the game. One of my best friends has ties to Duke. My grandparents are Binghamton natives (in fact, I spent this past Christmas with them in Binghamton). Consequently, Duke and Binghamton apparel occupies more space in my dresser than that of any other school school (aside from Wisconsin, of course). I’m thinking that I’ll probably wear my grey Binghamton ringer t-shirt just to be contrarian (and because it’s probably the coolest t-shirt I own). Great as the shirt is, though, it will be tough to root for the Bearcats after reading the scathing New York Times article about the Binghamton program.

South

North Carolina (1) vs. Radford (16): Even if Ty Lawson had turf toe on his right hand, the Tar Heels would still win this one.

LSU (8) vs. Butler (9): Butler is nothing but freshmen, and will be truly scary in two years. Particularly once they have a chance to break down what went wrong in this game.

Illinois (5) vs. Western Kentucky (12): When this game was announced during the selection show, I immediately knew I was picking Western Kentucky. Western Kentucky is one of those mid-majors that’s good year in and year out. Last week I told a friend that based on games that I had seen, I felt like Penn State was a better team than Illinois. And that was before the Illini lost Chester Frazier, the heart and soul of the team, to a broken hand. I implore you–take the Hilltoppers here. You won’t be sorry. I've seldom felt so adamant about an upset.

Gonzaga (4) vs. Akron (13): I’m not in love with Gonzaga this year, but it’s tough to imagine them being conquered by a team known as the “Zips.”

Arizona State (6) vs. Temple (11): Hey N.C. State? How’d that running Herb Sendek out of town thing go? That’s what I thought.

Syracuse (3) vs. Stephen F. Austin (14): Here’s a prediction–Syracuse will need less than six overtimes to dispose of Stephen F. Austin. I’m hoping that Stephen F. Austin is actually a school, and not just one dude who conned his way into the tournament.

Clemson (7) vs. Michigan (10): This one’s tricky. I feel like Clemson’s better than a 7-seed. At the same time, Michigan is one of those teams that runs hot and cold, and can put up a fight with anyone if things are falling right (they do have early season wins against UCLA and Duke, after all). Seeing as I’ve seen more of the bad Michigan than the good Michigan this year, I’m giving the edge to the relatively more consistent Clemson Tigers. (...and Clemson fans begin shaking their head in confusion at how little I understand their team).

Oklahoma (2) vs. Morgan State (15): Blake Griffin’s rebound total my surpass Morgan State’s leading scorer’s point total in this game. Why do I feel like I may actually have the chance to make that choice in ESPN's Streak For the Cash?

SECOND ROUND

Midwest

Louisville (1) vs. Siena (9): Here's the thing about Louisville--just based on what my eyes have seen, I'm not blown away by Louisville. In fact, I think there are plenty of teams just as good, if not better than, the Cards. But the fact is, no matter what they look like, they just keep winning. So I guess they'll do that again here.

Wake Forest (4) vs. Arizona (12): Arizona’s talent will return to being disinterested after they win a game and feel like they’ve proved they belonged in the tournament.

Dayton (11) vs. Kansas (3): Dayton, worn down from taking forearm shivers from Bob Huggins’ roster of toughs in the first round, falls to a team of guys eager to play deep into the tournament after sitting on the bench last year when their teammates won a national championship.

Boston College (7) vs. Michigan State (2): I’m somewhat of an oddball Wisconsin fan in that I have tremendous respect for Tom Izzo and the way that his teams play. That said, I feel like the only reason that Michigan State racked up so many wins this year was that virtually every other team in the Big Ten was solid, but unspectacular (I've told friends repeatedly that I felt like almost every team in the Big Ten should have been ranked 24th in the country this year). BC pulls the upset here, and Michigan State makes a big run next year.

West

Connecticut (1) vs. BYU (8): While Syracuse was heading back to onto the court on Friday and Saturday night, Connecticut was relaxing, healing, and getting ready to make a run in the real tournament. The Huskies advance easily.

Purdue (5) vs. Washington (4): Washington’s under-ranked, and Purdue’s the second-best team in a conference that was severely overrated by the media this year. The Huskies advance.

Marquette (6) vs. Missouri (3): Overlooked while Marquette was losing games at the end of the season was the fact that they were staying close with top-10 teams using two guys that hadn’t logged big minutes until Dominic James went down. Now that the rotation has had time to mesh, what would have been a near miss just weeks ago will be a win.

Maryland (10) vs. Memphis (2): It’s easy to pick on Memphis because they don’t play anyone of consequence in Conference USA. But they don’t let you down in the tourney.

East

Pittsburgh (1) vs. Oklahoma State (8): Pitt’s the best team that I’ve seen this year, so I’m not picking them to lose this early.

Florida State (5) vs. Xavier (4): Consider this pick an example of me openly disrespecting the Atlantic 10.

UCLA (6) vs. Villanova (3): It’s easy to forget about Villanova in the Big East with Louisville, Connecticut, and Pittsburgh hanging around. Factor in the disproportionate coverage of Notre Dame and Georgetown, and then sprinkle in Syracuse winning a six overtime game, and virtually no one's thinking about the Wildcats. If they were in any other conference, you'd know a lot about the Wildcats, though. And by the end of the tournament, odds are that they'll have made you pay attention to them.

Duke (2) vs. Texas (7): Seeing as I wore a Binghamton t-shirt during the first round, Duke’s going to need to give me a few more opportunities to wear my Blue Devil apparel.

South

North Carolina (1) vs. LSU (8): At the start of the season, I thought the ‘Heels had the best chance of going undefeated of any team I’d ever seen. That proved not to be true, but them not seeing the Sweet 16 would still be shocking.

Western Kentucky (12) vs. Gonzaga (4): Western Kentucky would actually be a nice sleeper pick to be that one low-seeded team that makes it to the Sweet 16, but as you know, I'm notoriously boring in my picks. The risk-reward factor of picking a 12-seed to the Sweet 16 is just too great. No, I obviously don't love Gonzaga this year. Historically, though, the Bulldogs typically do the opposite of what I expect in the NCAA tournement, so you should probably pick them through to the Final Four.

Arizona State (6) vs. Syracuse (3): It’s tough to pick against Syracuse when you see how good the Orange can be (as the world did in the Big East tournament). But ultimately playing the equivalent of five games in four days this past week catches up with them as they take on an ASU team with a solid coach (Sendek) and a legit star (James Harden).

Clemson (7) vs. Oklahoma (2): Two of Oklahoma’s five losses came when Blake Griffin was concussed. Clemson’s a scary 7-seed and a nice sleeper pick, but I still think they’re going home unless Terrence Oglesby hits Griffin over the head with a folding chair.

SWEET SIXTEEN

Midwest

Louisville (1) vs. Wake Forest (4): Like I said, I wish I was more wowed by Louisville. Wake Forest does have that "wow" factor when you see them play, even if they've been iffy down the stretch. Picking against the team that just seems to win all the time is typically a bad idea, but I just can't help myself here.

Kansas (3) vs. Boston College (7): I’m picking Kansas, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about picking a team that I’m not sure can win either of its first two games.

West

Connecticut (1) vs. Washington (4): Jon Brockman puts up shockingly good numbers (at least to those who've never seen the Huskies) against Hasheem Thabeet, but Connecticut’s guards pull out the victory. I’m hoping that a stipulation will be added that the loser of this game has to give up its claim to the “Huskies” nickname.

Marquette (6) vs. Memphis (2): I've picked Marquette through to this point because I feel like they're unfairly looked down upon right now because of their inability to win at the end of the season when they faced nothing but elite level teams. And while I think that Marquette can beat most good teams, it is true that they haven't been able to take down any of the elite level teams that they've faced recently. And guess what? Memphis is and elite level team.

East

Pittsburgh (1) vs. Florida State (5): I’m iffy on Florida State winning its second game, and I think Pitt’s the best team in the tournament. Easy call here.

Villanova (3) vs. Duke (2): I honestly have a tough time deciding this one. Both are among my favorite teams in the field. I can't get a good read on Duke, though, since every time I watch them play they seem to have a new point guard. And have we decided yet whether Brian Zoubek is a solid contributor or a guy to make fun of? It seems to change every game. So I'm going with a Villanova team that I trust more. But this will be one of the best games of the tournament.

South

North Carolina (1) vs. Gonzaga (4): North Carolina absolutely pummels the Bulldogs, proving that while Gonzaga had a nice draw that got them to the Sweet Sixteen, they don’t belong on the same court with the elite teams this year.

Arizona State (6) vs. Oklahoma (2): The Sun Devils had a nice run, but destiny dictates that the next round must feature a Tyler Hansbrough-Blake Griffin showdown. If this was the NBA, the refs would dictate it, too.

ELITE EIGHT

Midwest

Wake Forest (4) vs. Kansas (3): I’ll pick Wake, just because I’m so iffy on Kansas even making it out of the first two rounds.

West

Connecticut (1) vs. Memphis (2): Connecticut's experience in the Big East proves useful, as Memphis finds itself unable to draw from any lessons learned during its "big" games against Tulsa and UAB during the conference season.

East

Pittsburgh (1) vs. Villanova (3): Villanova won the earlier meeting between these two teams during the regular season, and Pittsburgh will be extra motivated to settle the score.

South

North Carolina (1) vs. Oklahoma (2): As I said in the beginning, North Carolina looked on paper to be the best college basketball team assembled during my lifetime. But they’ve faltered throughout the year, and I simply don't trust them at this point. Factor in questions about Ty Lawson's ailing toe, and it becomes even tougher to count on the Tar Heels to make a great run. Thus, the team that I thought would go undefeated doesn’t even make it to the Final Four, and Jeff Capel gets to put yet another accolade on his surprisingly impressive coaching resume.

FINAL FOUR

Connecticut (1) vs. Wake Forest (4): After finishing off Washington and Memphis in previous rounds, getting Wake Forest in the semi-finals feels like a day off for Connecticut.

Pittsburgh (1) vs. Oklahoma (2): I still think Pitt’s the best team in the country, so why not throw them in the national championship game?

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

Connecticut vs. Pittsburgh: Last time the two teams met, DeJuan Blair threw his co-Big East Player of the Year opponent Hasheem Thabeet around like a rag doll and the Panthers notched the victory. The toughness and muscle of Pitt once again outdoes the athleticism of Connecticut. And the Big East proves its superiority this year, as two teams who didn’t even win the conference championship battle it out in the national championship.

Syracuse vs. UConn

2009-03-13T00:22:00.000-05:00

And that, friends, is the greatest basketball game that I've ever watched. If my Syracuse-loving grandfather was capable of staying awake for this, he'd be pretty happy right now. I guess he'll just have to enjoy Sportscenter tomorrow.

As for those notes I was thinking about jotting down from the Menomonee Falls-Waukesha North game that I attended tonight, I think I'm going to pass. I'm going to bed.

A Suggestion For Your Pointless Conversation

2009-03-11T08:06:00.000-05:00

One of the most annoying conversations that I hear every year is the one about who's going to take over coaching at Wisconsin when Bo Ryan eventually retires. Trying to use today's information to figure out what to do at a point that's an undetermined number of years away, when the landscape of basketball and list of available candidates will have undoubtedly changed, is a waste of time. Unless I've missed something and Bo Ryan has made concrete plans to retire in the next two years, no one has the tools to answer this question right now.

That said, if people feel that they must keep speculating about former Wisconsin staff members heading back to Madison when Ryan decides to hang up his sport coat, don't we need to start including Saul Phillips in the discussion? I originally meant to comment on this after North Dakota State took down UWm on Bracket Buster Saturday a few weeks back, but now that Phillips has taken the Bison to the NCAA tournament during the first year that they're eligible (and just his second year as a head coach), it's officially ridiculous to ignore him.

I know it's easy to have the usual two man discussion involving Rob Jeter, whose likeable personality and local presence alway keep him on the radar, and Tony Bennett, a guy who's both a legendary former player from the state and a coach who racked up a bunch of coach-of-the-year awards last year at the most remotely located school in the Pac-10. But in just two seasons, Phillips has managed to take a division one newcomer school in a state that virtually no one actually lives in to the NCAA tournament. I obviously haven't seen enough of North Dakota State to truly understand what Phillips has his teams doing, but if you're just looking at his numbers, it's tough not to be impressed.

I'm not necessarily saying that Phillips is better than Bennett or Jeter, or that any of these three guys is necessarily the right choice for the Wisconsin job some day (remember, virtually no one was looking to hire Bo Ryan back in 2001). What I would ask, though, is that if you're going to have this insanely pointless hypothetical discussion, please at least make Saul Phillips part of it. After what he's done, it's only fair.

Marquette vs. UConn: The Injury Bug Bites

2009-02-26T07:28:00.001-06:00

It was a rough night for Marquette last night, losing not only a big game, but also one of its key players for the rest of the year. There was a buzz of excitement in the air last evening that is rarely seen at a basketball game around here, and it’s a shame that things didn’t turn out better than they did. But even so, it was still a fun night. Some reflections below:

1) Obviously the story of the night is not the loss to UConn, but the loss of starting point guard Dominic James for the year with a broken foot. Losing a four year starter always hurts, but it hurts a bit more with James, who this year finally seemed to be figuring out how to best help his team. After an incredible freshman year where James was showered with accolades and talked about as an early first-round NBA draft pick, his subsequent sophomore and junior seasons felt at times like they were merely vehicles for him to prove to scouts that he could shoot from the outside (ironically, he ended up proving that he still couldn't shoot from the outside). But this year he seemed to actually relish his role as a defender and distributor. Sure, I still cringed when he pulled up for three-pointers this year, but that was more a conditioned response from the past, since his shot selection was now much improved. James will undoubtedly be missed by Marquette down the stretch. It remains to be seen, however, whether his injury will turn the Golden Eagles from a special team to a merely excellent one.

2) Very impressive showing by the two gentlemen who broke out a choreographed dance routine to the song "Thriller" that was playing during the Jumbotron dance competition that takes place every game. As always, the winner of the contest won a $250 gift certificate to Bubb's Barbeque, sponsor of the contest. I've been sort of thrown by this contest all season long for two reasons. First, outside of their sponsorship of Marquette games, no one that I know has ever heard of Bubb's Barbeque. Second, $250 seems like it would buy one hell of a lot of barbeque. For a place that no one's heard of, it almost seems like a desperate type of prize to give away. Part of me wonders if Bubb's Barbeque doesn't actually exist, but is simply a fake sponsor designed to bring more excitement to the game.

3) While the drama of the game was outstanding, the seating conflict in my section may have been almost as amusing. My section was located behind one of the handicapped seating areas. One gentleman in the handicapped area with a family member spent a good portion of the game standing up to cheer on Marquette. Several people in my section took exception to this and yelled at him to sit down and stop blocking their view. Eventually the usher was asked by one of the people in my section to intervene. The usher spoke with the standing gentleman and the complaining parties without actually resolving anything, and then called for more Bradley Center personnel to further sort things out. As an impartial observer, it was unclear whether the usher had actually taken a side in this matter. For the second half, as many as five, but at no time fewer than three Bradley Center employees maintained a presence at the entrance to our section. At various times the employees would talk to the standing guy and then talk to the complainants. The standing guy continued to stand from time to time (at certain times, I suspect, just egg on the loudest complainers), the complainers kept complaining, and none of the five representatives of the arena ever did anything to even come close to resolving the situation.

My take on the situation? Aside from viewing it as the most mind bogglingly ineffective usher moment ever, I think that pretty much everyone involved in the situation was an idiot. The complainers were idiots for complaining about a guy who was probably no closer than 8 feet to any of them and who blocked only a small percentage of the view in our section (not to mention that no one in my section last night seemed much interested in standing, themselves. No one has a right to an absolutely unimpeded view. The standing guy was an idiot for frequently standing in the designated handicapped area and acting in an openly defiant manner to those who questioned his right to stand there. And obviously, the Bradley Center staff is at the top of the idiot list, for involving five employees in the situation without even coming close to solving the problem. (Unfortunately, this was not the grandest display of idiocy I would see on the evening, as later, while grabbing post-game drinks at a bar, one of my friends nearly came to blows with another gentleman over a game of pool that neither of them were participants in. Brilliant, guys.)
4) For all of the fear about Hasheem Thabeet, I thought he turned out to be just about what was expected against Marquette. He had some highlight-reel blocks, his mere presence altered a lot of shots, and he had the occasional moment where someone dumped the ball into him on offense at a spot above the heads of everyone else on the floor (I think I even saw one botched "Kenny George" moment, where a player just randomly tossed the ball up in the lane and waited for Thabeet to go get it). I don’t know what Thabeet is thinking about in terms of NBA future, but I hope he sticks around another year. As is well known, his offensive game needs some work, and I’d say he’s a textbook example of a big guy who hurts himself by needlessly bringing the ball down below his waist in the post. Stop the rhythm dribble, Hasheem!

5) At one point in the first half, I actually theorized that Marquette would have an easier task shooting the ball in the second half because Connecticut was dunking so much that it would lead to a loosened rim.

6) I’d like to give the Lynn Greer Memorial Award (In honor of former Temple guard Lynn Greer, who put on the most frightening offensive display I’ve ever seen in person against Wisconsin back when I was in school. Contrary to what the name implies, Greer is not actually dead.) to A.J. Price. Wow. It’s one thing to go off for 36 points and hit eight 3-pointers in a night, but it’s another thing to do it with a defender like Jerel McNeal chasing you around for much of the night. At a certain point, all I could do was shake my head in amazement.

7) Just a pet peeve of mine that has been building all season, but next year can we do away with the rule where refs get to stop the game and look at a video replay to check if a player’s feet were behind the three-point line? I’d gladly accept an occasional missed call if we end the practice of breaking the flow of the game three times per night to look at the video monitor to confirm a call. It was a noble idea, but it just doesn’t work.

8) While he obviously doesn’t completely replace Dominic James, Maurice Acker gave Marquette some good minutes last night. I was never totally sure why he had recently become essentially the seventh man in a six man rotation, because he’s never been a guy that makes me concerned when he’s out there. Clearly I’d rather not have him playing 30 minutes per game, as he may do from here on out, but Acker doesn’t give you the major drop-off in the rotation that you would see if you dug into the guys after him on the bench.

9) Speaking of the guys on the bench, it’s going to be very interesting to see how Buzz Williams goes about using his rotation from here on out. While he was basically just using six guys before, with James out of the picture, he literally has just six guys that have played meaningful minutes in the last few weeks. Now’s not a great time to work a new guy into the mix, but it seems almost implausible to go another month by just riding things out with one sub now that the team is down to three stellar players instead of four.

10) It was a nice night of signs at the Bradley Center. Two favorites of mine were the giant ("not a") Dimes with Jim Calhoun’s head on them, and the "We’re Buzzed" signs made by a couple of students that inexplicably made it onto the Jumbotron. Those crazy kids and their drinking...

11) I heard a radio host earlier this week talking about how much unnecessary gloom and doom he had seen surrounding Marquette of late, with people getting overly worried about this final stretch of games. I saw a lot of that last night. One of my friends was talking last night about how this loss likely ruined Marquette’s seed for the NCAA tournament. Whoa there, calm down! Last night was tough, but in the grand scheme of things Marquette played well enough to beat 90% of the teams in the country and hung in with arguably the best team in the country. And they did so after losing a four-year starter roughly three minutes into the game. I simply can’t be too despondent over that.

So it wasn’t a great night for Marquette. I’m still optimistic going forward. Last Tuesday I predicted to some friends that Marquette would go no worse than 3-2 in their final five-game stretch. While James’ injury changes things, I still believe that my earlier prediction will prove to be correct. Marquette’s going to play three more outstanding teams, but what people seem to be discounting a bit too much now that we’re at this point in the year is that Marquette’s a pretty outstanding team, too. Things will work out.

Tonight will be a bit of a change-up for me, as I will go from rooting for Marquette, to rooting vehemently against Marquette. Marquette High School, that is, as Marquette battles Tosa East for the Greater Metro conference championship. Two historically fierce rivals, each with one defeat, battling for conference supremacy in the final game of the year. You couldn’t script this one much better. Marquette won the first one. How will the second game turn out? However it does, it will be fun...

Three Minutes of Ineptitude

2009-02-19T08:04:00.001-06:00

While I’ve been to plenty of entertaining games over the past several weeks, for some reason it was not until last evening that I was moved to actually write about something that I’ve seen (actually, that’s not totally accurate, as below I also had the chance to recap the Marquette-Seton Hall game). I didn’t make it down to the UWM-Butler game last night for a variety of reasons (Mostly I was pouting over the fact that I couldn’t find anyone to go to a rock concert that I wanted to see last night.) But that ended up being a good thing, because it allowed me to watch the game on TV and witness something so comically bad that I had to talk about it.

Some of you are probably thinking that I’m talking about the clock mix-up at the end of the game, where controversy ensued over when the game clock started on Butler’s final possession of the game. But I’m talking about something far worse–the announcing of Daron Sutton.

I’ve never been a big fan of Sutton’s broadcast work on UWM games (I frankly don’t know enough about baseball to comment on his baseball announcing skills), but a 2-3 minute stretch last night Sutton and his broadcast partner took things to a new level of ineptitude. With about 2:30 left on the clock in the second half, James Eayrs got tangled up with Butler’s Matt Howard while trying to reign in a loose ball and Eayrs was whistled for an intentional foul.. You could tell that Eayrs foul was an intentional because the referee making the call immediately ran to the play with his hands crossed above his head, the signal for an intentional foul. Sutton and his partner (whose name I wish I could recall, so that I could include him in this shaming) apparently missed the referee in the center of every replay that they watched making one of the most clear hand signals in the game of basketball, as they spent the next 2-3 minutes talking about how offsetting fouls had been called on each Eayrs and Howard. No mention was made of an intentional foul call.

I actually began to question whether I was misinformed about something at that point. I wondered to myself "Is the hand signal for a double foul the same as the hand signal for an intentional foul? Maybe this just happens so infrequently that I don’t know the signal for it." After all, the television crew is presumably fairly close to the scorer’s table and likely hears a lot more referee chatter than I, the home viewer, am privy to. Maybe I just didn’t have all of the information.

As the referees sorted things out and the television reply of the referee clearly signaling an intention foul showed for what seemed like the 15th time, Sutton and his broadcast partner continued their maddening chatter about the double foul that they believed had been called. When Howard eventually stepped to the foul line with no one around him, they briefly speculated that UWM had been whistled for a technical foul before finally figuring out that an intentional foul had been called on Eayrs. As abruptly as this hit them, I can only speculate that some nearby sports writer got tired of overhearing their misreading of the play and finally piped up and said "Hey morons–it was an intentional foul. Were you even watching the replays?" However they eventually figured out what had happened, I was just happy that I could finally breathe a sigh of relief. I was not insane, and had I not been listening to the television announcers, I’d have known exactly what was going on. I guess I was wrong in assuming that the announcers would always be helpful in understanding the events of the game.

Of course, I would be unfair to Sutton and his partner if I didn’t point out that the intentional foul on the play in question was a horrible call. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an intentional foul called in a situation like that. Had I not seen the referee running towards the play with his arms crossed, I’d have been confused by the whole affair, too. But confusing as the call was, that doesn’t excuse the fact that the broadcasting team either didn’t notice the guy in stripes making the intentional foul signal, or didn’t know what the signal meant. That two minute stretch last night was truly a low point for sports broadcasting.

Looking on the bright side (as I always like to do), I feel a lot less upset now about not having the Time Warner Sports Channel at home, and those thoughts that I occasionally have about switching back to Time Warner Cable have subsided a bit. So maybe I should be thanking Daron Sutton and his pal for saving me some hassle.

Marqutte vs. Seton Hall: A Surprising Entertaining Game

2009-02-18T09:09:00.000-06:00

Ah, it’s been awhile. I’ve actually had some great game-watching experiences over the past few weeks, be it my trip to Iowa, my evening in Madison watching the Badgers end their losing streak, or this past Saturday when I managed to catch much of the UWM game on the radio before watching the Marquette game in person and shuttling home to watch Wisconsin on my DVR. But my documenting of games has been non-existent. I could throw some crazy excuse at you about lack of time or computer problems (actually, my work computer has been basically dead for the past two weeks), but ultimately my absence has come down to laziness. No promises that I’ll start writing more, because as history has shown, I’m pretty good at breaking promises, and I probably won’t ramp things up too much even as March approaches. But when there’s a surprisingly amusing game like last night’s Marquette-Seton Hall contest, I can’t help but make a few notes. And for today, here are those notes.

1) It was Milwaukee Public Schools Night at the game last evening, a fact that was first brought to the attention of the crowd when the Milwaukee Riverside swing choir was brought out to sing the national anthem. They did a nice job, but I couldn’t help but be a bit taken aback to learn that Milwaukee Riverside has a swing choir. I also couldn’t help but think that it must take some courage to be a part of the Riverside swing choir. High school was a long time ago for me now, but I seem to recall that people in the swing choir took a lot of crap from their peers. I can only assume this level of crap quadruples when the swing choir is in a city school, rather than a soft, suburban school setting.

2) Did my brain completely atrophy for a short time, or did the public address announcer completely fail to announce Seton Hall’s starting lineup? I know that usually there’s a quick introduction of the opposing starters where the announcer makes a point of sounding as if he’d rather be water boarded than read the names of the interlopers from another school. But at least there’s a small degree of courtesy there. Just glossing over the other team altogether seems a bit harsh. Then again, as I said, I’m not even sure that things went down like this, so maybe there were intros for Seton Hall. I sure don’t remember them, though.

3) It has been back for five of six games by now, but I like seeing the return of the classic "Where the Streets Have No Name" player introduction sequence for Marquette. I’m always mildly bothered by the fact that this sequence was almost certainly conceived of in part because of Tom Crean’s intense love of U2. But I’m willing to look beyond that because however it originated, it just feels right when the things get going. The crowd knows what to do, and gets excited every time that the music starts up. Perhaps the only thing that would make things better in my mind is if they brought back Jumbotron shots of the players doing ball slaps and looking angry as the music starts up.

4) A few comments to the guy sitting two rows behind me last night. One, the refs were not blind when they failed to call those over and back and out of bounds calls that you thought they missed. They merely understand the rules better than you. Two, do you really need to question every foul call? You’re sitting in row W of the second deck of Bradley Center and the refs are on the floor. I’m guessing that occasionally, they may have a better angle than you. Three, again, you’re sitting in row W of the Bradley Center, so when you scream at the top of your lungs to the ref that he should either open his eyes or get some glasses, he probably can’t hear you. My head’s five feet from yours, though, so I hear you loud and clear, and I don’t think that you’re nearly as amusing as the nearby giggling women who aren’t directly in front of your mouth do.

5) The first half was, for both teams, one of the sloppier halves of basketball that I’ve seen all year. There was a solid five minute stretch where I had trouble counting the number of times that Marquette players threw passes directly into the legs or barely outstretched arms of Seton Hall defenders. Most of the time Big East basketball is more exciting to watch than Big Ten basketball, but for a good portion of last night I found myself just wanting to see a team that could take care of the ball.

6) It’s not every night that you get to see three technical fouls in a game. None of the T’s handed out seemed like they were for particularly egregious offenses. Then again, as I would probably have told the guy behind me in row W, it’s pretty tough to hear what the players and coaches are saying when you’re sitting at the top of the Bradley Center.

7) The last couple of times that I’ve been to the Bradley Center I’ve seen a small banner bearing the image of Martin Luther King, Jr. displayed in a lonely corner, away from all of the Marquette, Milwaukee Bucks and Milwaukee Admirals banners. Is this banner there for Black History Month? And if so, why is it so darn small? Because frankly, with as tiny as it is in comparison to every other banner in the building, it looks like someone just forgot to take down a decoration that was hung during an MLK Day tournament.

8) My friend Dez asked the very valid question of where Patrick Hazel was after the game ended. I suppose that Hazel wasn’t really needed last night, seeing as Marquette pulled away from Seton Hall easily in the second half, and one of the Pirates’ frontcourt players fouled out with nearly 15 minutes to go. But with Hazel finding his way completely out of the rotation of late, it seems official–Marquette’s not even going to fake like it has forwards on its roster from here on out. Even though Hazel has looked good to me in limited minutes, I suppose I can’t really argue with holding him out too much. After all, the way things are going so far, it appears that Buzz Williams knows what he’s doing (don’t take that as a full endorsement of Williams, though, as I’m not passing judgment on him until the 2010-11 season).

9) During a break in the action in the second half, it was announced that Wesley Matthews had become Marquette’s all-time leader in made free throws, and that Jerel McNeal had become Marquette’s all-time steals leader. I think we’re finally at the fun part of the season where milestones like this will be reached every game by someone. I guess this is what happens when you’ve got three of the better players in school history starting together for four years.

10) Last evening featured the Milwaukee King drum line performing at halftime as part of the festivities for Milwaukee Public Schools night. I’ve seen various drum lines from Milwaukee public high schools at events like these, and I’m always wildly impressed. I’m glad that we get to see groups like this from time to time. Because for as many bad things as we hear about Milwaukee Public Schools, it’s nice to see a group of kids that can do something that seems to take a remarkable amount of skill, discipline and commitment. Dare I say that they were even more entertaining than Saturday’s entertainment, the magical super-fast clothing changing duo, Quick Change.

11) I’m not sure what amazed me more on Jimmy Butler’s thunderous alley-oop dunk late in the second half–the height that Butler got on his leap, or the precision with which Wesley Matthews tossed the ball from halfcourt.

Post game, I passed on drinks with friends (the economy is affecting us all, it seems) and headed home. It was time to start thinking about the UWM-Butler game the next day. And its never disappointing to hear the Marquette post-game radio show. Things start to get interesting with Marquette’s trip to Georgetown this weekend to kick off their brutal five-game stretch. I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing them exceed expectations.

Finally...

2009-02-06T13:42:00.003-06:00

Had I known that all it would take for Wisconsin to end its losing streak was for me to attend a game in person, I'd have headed to the Kohl Center long ago. It's not a great season, and last night wasn't a marquee game, but I can recall few happier drives home after a game. Here's hoping for a few more pleasant trips to Madison in the coming weeks.

I'd say more about my excellent night (the fact that I'm the world's worst purchaser of scalped tickets needs to be touched on at some point), but I'm about 10 minutes away from heading to Iowa to watch some division three basketball this weekend. Good chance that I'll actually get off my ass and write something in a few days when I get back...

Going Forward...

2009-01-27T08:29:00.000-06:00

Huge win for Marquette at Notre Dame last night. As usual, my DVR saved me, as I had to fix a relatively minor, but relatively peculiar problem with my car. Rather than recapping last night's game, or delving into any of the games that I attended over the weekend, I think today's a more interesting time to make a few points with regard to the bigger picture this season for both Marquette and Wisconsin, two teams that are essentially polar opposites in terms of performance in recent weeks.

1) I’d like to suggest to all of my Marquette fan friends this week to not get too worked up about the media discussions will take place (and probably already have) questioning how good Marquette is in light of their schedule to this point in the season. I don’t think this question takes away from what Marquette has done to this point in time. Going 7-0 to start the Big East is amazing, and I don’t believe anyone who’s questioning how Marquette will do as their schedule toughens is suggesting otherwise. But it’s fair to have some questions about a team that has yet to play Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Louisville and Connecticut. Notre Dame, for example, was looking a lot more attractive before their recent four-game skid against four of the top teams in the conference. So while Marquette deserves tons of credit for taking care of business so far, I'm sure even Buzz Williams is still reminding his team that things are only going to get tougher.

2) Speaking of Marquette’s Big East schedule, while things seem wonderful right now, the conference schedule-makers didn’t do Marquette any favors. With a final five-game stretch made up of all of the aforementioned power teams that Marquette has yet to face, it's a pretty safe bet that the Golden Eagles won't be coasting to the end of the season. Two risks arise with such a rough slate of games down the stretch. First, a losing streak to close out the season could be costly for NCAA tournament seeding purposes, given that human nature is to remember more recent happenings first. Second, regardless of Marquette’s success in their final five games, five straight marquee games followed by the Big East tournament has serious potential to wear the Golden Eagles out (and Marquette isn’t a team with tons of depth to begin with). The next couple weeks don’t lack any importance, but Marquette’s real season begins on February 21. On the bright side, at least this should keep things interesting until the end for us fans.

3) I was somewhat amazed at the number of discussions that I had this past Friday night with people telling me that they were going to stop watching Wisconsin play for awhile. I don’t dispute that Wisconsin has been tough to watch lately, but throwing in the towel that quickly kind of irks me. Most of my conversations took place prior to the Illinois loss, so essentially what people were telling me then is that losing three straight games, two of which went to overtime, is enough to give up on the Badgers. That’s remarkably spoiled, if you ask me. No, I don’t feel good watching the Badgers lose games in uniquely painful ways each time they play. But it’s going to take more than four horrid games to make me give up on the season. Wisconsin’s got some good games left, and I plan on watching them. They can’t all be 30-win seasons.

4) I said at the start of the season that I thought the winner of the Big East and the winner of the Big Ten would each have 4-5 losses at the end of the season, but for very different reasons. The Big East winner should have some losses because roughly half of the Big East is stellar. The Big Ten winner should have some losses because every team (with the exception of Indiana) is at a similar level: good, but far from great. I stand by my prediction of 4-5 losses for each conference champ, though I’ll admit that the records of Louisville, Marquette and Michigan State are making me nervous.

Here's hoping that Wisconsin gets back on track against Purdue tonight. Though if I'm being honest, that's about the last team in the conference that I want to see the Badgers play tonight.

Wisconsin vs. Iowa: So Much For That Northwestern Miracle

2009-01-22T08:22:00.001-06:00

Here's the weird thing about last night's Wisconsin-Iowa game--if I wasn't a huge Wisconsin fan and was simply a disinterested party tuning in to watch a random hoops game, I'd have been cheering for Iowa. The Hawkeyes' toughness and hustle were apparent on a night when they needed every ounce of effort. The refs weren't doing them any favors, and Wisconsin certainly didn't let up with its physical play. Iowa had the underdog thing going for it heading into the game, and the way things played out, it became even tougher not to root for them. Because I’m not some disinterested party, I was still screaming my head off with joy when Jordan Taylor hit is wild three-pointer. And if pressed, I'd tell you that neither team played a particularly pretty game, but I gained a lot of respect for Iowa's toughness last night. I had written them off as just a notch above Indiana this year, but who knows--maybe Iowa will squeak out an game or two more than I thought. Last night sure came as a surprise.

As always, a few nots on things that I saw:

1) Kevin Gullikson started the game? This may be the first time that I’ve ever seen Bo Ryan change his starting lineup for non-injury related reasons. Next thing you know, the Badgers are going to be testing out a 1-3-1 zone.

2) I'm not sure which aspect of last night made me feel more sorry for Matt Gatens--the fact that Wayne Larrivee kept jinxing his free throw shooting (a 97% shooter coming in according to Larivee, Gatens missed three of them last night), or the fact that he seemed to be continually getting called for fouling Joe Krabbenhoft by thrusting his face into Krabbenhoft's elbow. The glazed and astounded look on Gatens face every time he hit the deck after a whistle told the story. Here's hoping that after some of the doubt raised during the game, all of his teeth are still in place.

3) In his limited time, I thought Keaton Nankivil looked pretty good offensively, showing some of his solid post moves and impressive shooting range for a big man.

4) Jake Kelly had a nice game, but his shoulder tattoo on his smallish arms is what stood out to me most, as it gave him the physical appearance of one of my favorite silly-looking basketball sights: the scrawny, tattooed division three backup guard who's a lot less bad-ass than he thinks.

5) The announcing crew clearly had their minds on Mike Kelley, the former Badger guard and occasional ESPN regional color commentator last night, referring to both Iowa’s Jake Kelly and sideline reporter Mike Hall as “Mike Kelley” at different times during last night’s broadcast.

6) I’m hoping that this is the first and last time that Jason Bohannon gives the introductions of the team’s starting lineup for the Big Ten Network broadcast. Bohannon is just such an awkward looking guy when you see him up close that’s it’s hard to believe that he’s an athlete. I’m sure that in person he seems much bigger and more athletic (athletes always seem strangely more impressive when you have to stand next to them and confront your own shortcomings), but in isolation or among other athletes, I just find myself thinking that he’s lucky he’s good at basketball, because otherwise I suspect he’d be picked on a lot.

7) I’m not going to blame the broadcast team for giving more camera time to Bohannon’s parents than they did to some of the actual players in the game. Normally I’d be annoyed by this, but I’m willing to concede that the fact that Bohannon’s dad was the quarterback for one of Iowa’s better football teams remains a pretty interesting dynamic.

8) Obviously I’d be remiss if I didn’t touch on the fact that Jordan Taylor’s crazy shot to tie the game at the end of regulation and subsequent excellent play in overtime made him the star of the night for Wisconsin. Taylor probably should have been rattled more by the breakaway layup that he had blocked by Aaron Fuller just minutes prior, but he just kept on pushing through. That’s what I’ve loved about Taylor all season long–the fact that he operates at a higher maturity level than any freshman has a right to. It didn’t hurt that he started hitting three-pointers last night, either.

9) Speaking of Aaron Fuller’s block of Jordan Taylor’s layup, that was pretty clearly the turning point in the game, and is one of the things that made me think I’d be cheering for Iowa were I just a disinterested fan who happened upon the game. Taylor’s steal on the perimeter looked like it was going to put Wisconsin up by four points with the clock winding down. This would have been a huge advantage at that juncture in the game. Instead, Fuller refused to give up on the play, made a spectacular (and totally clean) block from behind. Not only did his block prevent Wisconsin from scoring, but it directly led to Bo Ryan drawing a technical foul for complaining about the play (I’m just assuming that’s what the technical was for, but I think it’s a pretty safe assumption). Fuller’s hustle play basically led to a four-point swing, which turned out to be huge down the stretch for the Hawkeyes. I hated to see that play, but still must admit that it was a thing of beauty.

10) Devan Bawinkel may have the most fun name in the entire Big Ten.

11) I’m not as overly concerned about Trevon Hughes taking a seat on the bench during overtime and ceding his minutes to Jordan Taylor. It’s no secret that Hughes is in a bit of a slump, but I’m fully expecting Hughes to come out it at some point. Taylor played excellent basketball last night, and I was glad to see him on the floor. But if March comes around and the Badgers are in overtime again, I’d be pretty shocked if Hughes isn’t out there. Perhaps Taylor will be out there next to him in crunch time by that point...

12) Kudos to the Iowa band for closing out the win by playing "In Heaven There Is No Beer" immediately after the final buzzer went off. Perhaps they close out every victory in this manner, but I’d say that when you’re playing Wisconsin, playing that particular song is a nice, subtle way of twisting the knife in further after your team has beaten them.

So, the Badgers fell in overtime and made last night’s shocking Northwestern win at Michigan State a lot less exciting to Wisconsin fans. Here’s hoping that the Badgers can get back on track against Illinois this weekend. It’s pretty clear that there are no more games that they can take for granted (well, except those against Indiana).

Ouch, and Other Random Thoughts

2009-01-16T07:38:00.002-06:00

A few quick thoughts on a bunch of things on this, the day after a soul-crushing Wisconsin loss:

1) There’s not much that I can say after a loss like the Badgers had last night. That was about as hard a loss to take as I can think of. At the four minute time-out I was sitting at a bar with my friend Gus (thankfully, I had abandoned a crazy idea that I had come up with earlier to drive to Madison and try to take advantage of scalpers who wanted to get out of the -40 degree weather) gathering up my coat and thinking about how I wanted to go home and go to sleep as soon as Wisconsin ran the clock out on the Gophers. The next thing I knew, it was 10:20 and Minnesota was capping its comeback at the end of overtime. Unreal, and not in a good way.

2) As for the comeback itself last night, I give a lot of credit to Minnesota. The Gophers executed their pressure defense and hit a bunch of huge shots, not the least of which was the semi-off balance three-pointer by Lawrence Westbrook that sent the game to overtime. If I’m a coach trying to drive home the point that you should never give up, I’m showing my team a tape of the Gophers in the last three minutes of this game. All that said, stellar as Minnesota played at the end, there’s no way they win that game without several miscues by Wisconsin. I’ve never seen the Badgers look totally unprepared before, but that’s exactly how they looked when Minnesota broke out its full-court press near the end of the game. The first three attempts to break the press made the Badgers look flat out silly. And even once Wisconsin did figure out how to break the press, they continued to try to score on quick shots rather than pulling the ball out and trying to slow things down (Actually, Jason Bohannon did slow things down...while shooting a layup that was wide-open before his slowness allowed a Minnesota defender to catch up to him. Ugh.). Again, Minnesota did everything right to steal that game at the end, but they still don’t steal it with some help from Wisconsin.

3) Prior to the Wisconsin game last night, I kicked off the evening by watching Northwestern and Purdue square off. Much like Wisconsin, Northwestern maintained a healthy lead over Purdue for the entire game until the very end (which I missed, due to the changeover of every television at the tavern I was at to the Wisconsin-Minnesota game). I can’t help but contemplate how different things in the Big Ten would be today if both Northwestern and Wisconsin had closed out their games (or for that matter, if Purdue and Minnesota had just given up).

4) Much as Wisconsin’s loss hurt last night, I suppose I can take some consolation in the fact that they didn’t end up losing by 14 points in overtime, like Notre Dame did earlier in the week. That collapse was tough to watch, even if I was rooting for Louisville.

5) Some day I hope to have the patience and discipline to take a count of the total number of ads shown during a Big Ten basketball game that are for something other than the Big Ten or the Big Ten Network. It amazes me how little advertising that channel is able to sell.

6) Color me excited that a) UWM is playing well in the Horizon League and b) James Eayrs is becoming this year’s breakout player for the Panthers. It wasn’t that long ago that I was at the Wisconsin-UWM game lamenting the fact that everyone at the Kohl Center thought that the oversized Eayrs was some sort of joke. While it is novel to have a man of Eayrs size on one’s roster, he’s finally showing that he’s no joke, putting up solid numbers and logging nearly 30 minutes per night these days. How do you not root for a guy that, as my friend T.J. once noted, bears a resemblance to Rudy’s friend Peter on The Cosby Show?

7) I didn’t get the chance to mention my trip to Whitewater last weekend, but the UW-Whitewater vs. UW-Eau Claire game turned out to be better than it had any right to be. Whitewater looked like they were going to run away with things, taking just 15 minutes to build a 26-point lead at the start of the game (when Whitewater’s on, I have a tough time imagining another division 3 team that can stop them). Slowly but surely, though, Eau Claire battled its way back in the second half to put the game in doubt during the final 3-4 minutes. In the end, Whitewater righted its ship and hung on for the win, but it was not without a fight from the Bluegolds. I still think that Whitewater’s admission price of $7 is a tad on the high side, but it’s essentially worth it when a) you see a game this entertaining, and b) you realize that there’s not really anything else that you could be doing in Whitewater.

8) I don’t want to jinx things, but even without a credible big man, Marquette is playing as well as I’ve seen them play since a guy by the name of Dwyane Wade was on the roster (and, of course, a guy by the name of Robert Jackson, who I’m always happy to argue was at least as important as Wade to that team, if not moreso). The Big East is a meat grinder, but the Golden Eagles have done a nice job of piling up early wins against the teams just outside of the top tier (and, of course, lowly Cincinnati).

9) After a week’s layoff, I think someone around the Marquette athletic department had some time on their hands prior to last weekend’s West Virginia game. New wrinkles added to the entertainment experience were a clock counting down the number of seconds before people realize that they’re on the Jumbotron, and a question and answer segment where the MU players answer random, wacky questions (much like the “ask the Badgers” segment done during Wisconsin football games). Despite a few things needing to be refined with each addition, I liked both, and liked even more that the Marquette staff is constantly trying to find ways to make games more entertaining.

10) I haven’t seen a high school game in weeks, and it looks like that’s not going to change tonight, seeing as all of the schools are closed for another day due to the extreme cold temperatures in Wisconsin today. But seeing as the last prep hoops game that I saw took place in the state of New York, I’m itching to take one in, so it’s a good bet that you’ll be able to find me in a high school gym somewhere in the greater Milwaukee area next Tuesday.

11) It’s going to be weird at the end of the year seeing both the Big Ten and Big East champs with 4-5 losses, given that the former will be due to the fact that there are no great teams in the Big Ten this year, and the latter is due to the presence of too many excellent teams in the Big East this year. And I think my view on this topic is probably going to get me into a few fights with several of my friends who, like me, are more Big Ten-oriented.

Enjoy your weekend. I’ll enjoy mine, assuming that my doors don’t freeze and leave me stuck in my home...

A Night That Did Not Disappoint

2009-01-08T08:28:00.000-06:00

Well, the greatest night of televised basketball in my lifetime did not disappoint. Indiana put up a far better effort against Michigan than anyone expected, leading the entire game (well, except for that end part) and taking the Wolverines to overtime. Rutgers, beaten down by the most difficult five-game stretch ever, failed to give up down the stretch against Marquette, even when they had every reason to. Wisconsin, to my delight, pounded Northwestern. Stephen Curry got his points, despite a rough shooting night, but Duke still handled Davidson without much trouble. Louisville...well, I don’t know much about what Louisville did, since I really didn’t see more than 2 minutes of their game. And to end the evening, Gonzaga prevailed in overtime against Tennessee, and scored plenty of points in doing so. Outstanding night all around. (And this doesn’t even take into account that I found the North Carolina-College of Charleston game on a random sports channel. As if I didn’t need more to watch, C of C actually hung around for most of the first half.)

A few random things that I noticed during the evening’s festivities:

1) I have no idea who the color commentator was for the Marquette-Rutgers game, but he was perhaps the most annoying commentator that I’ve ever endured. And that’s saying something, because during the Wisconsin-Penn State game this past weekend, I actually thought Spencer Tollackson had some potential (even though apparently no one told Tollackson that it’s typically a good idea to shave sometime in the three days prior to appearing on TV).

2) Laval Lucas-Perry’s three-pointer for Michigan to tie the game near the end of regulation was one that I found particularly amusing, since it was from the exact same spot that Brian Butch banked one for Wisconsin in for a last-second win at Bloomington last year. Perhaps the Hoosiers should replace that section of the floor to exercise some demons.

3) When Tom Crean called time-out while his team had the ball with the game tied and just over seven seconds to play, I knew the game was going to overtime. Obviously Crean should be commended (wow, that hurt to say) for having his severely undermanned team even in last night’s game. But after years of watching Crean at Marquette, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Tom Crean’s not the guy you want drawing up a play for a quick score. Usually that just ends with a guard running the clock down too far and losing his handle on the ball at halfcourt as the clock runs out.

4) Last night I got confirmation that channel 41 in Milwaukee transmits the worst picture of any station around. In the middle of the game, I found the Marquette-Rutgers game on MSG and immediately noticed that the picture on the random sports channel that I had found was undeniably more crisp than that of channel 41. That sort of hurt, because I like watching my local stations. But if WMLW’s going to keep things looking blurry, there’s not enough Pat McCurdy promos in the world to keep me tuning in when there’s another alternative. I mean, it was bad enough that this was the only game (other than the surprise UNC game) that wasn’t on in HD last night.

5) Was there an extra crush for press credentials last night at Duke, or have I just never noticed how close to the court photographers are sitting? I think as a rule, if you have your school’s name spelled out on the baseline, no one should be sitting on top of that name. Because it sort of bothered me to see players tripping over the photographers sitting on the top half of the letters in “Duke.”

6) I finally figured out why I irrationally dislike Gonzaga’s Matt Bouldin. I’ve never seen any childish on-court displays from Bouldin, he plays the game hard, and I’ve not read any salacious tales about him. Nonetheless, for reasons that I have never understood, I’ve hated him ever since he first set foot on the court. Then last night, out of nowhere, it hit me–Bouldin looks an awful lot like Jim Breuer. So the way I figure it, for the last three years, I’ve been subconsciously associating Bouldin with unfunny comedy bits like “Goat Boy.” So my apologies to you, Mr. Bouldin. I promise in the next year and a half not to think of bad Saturday Night Live sketches when I see you on TV.

7) Gutty move by Tyler Smith coming back into the game after going down with what appeared to be a knee injury. Also a stupid move. Gonzaga had nearly locked up the game when Smith re-entered late in the overtime period, so Tennessee had little to gain by throwing Smith back out there. Though he scored on a tip-in on his first play back, he sure didn’t look to be moving normally. I hope Smith’s okay, because I was cringing every time he jumped or cut in the closing minute of last night’s game.

8) Finally, in the game I wish had been televised last night, congrats to Harvard for knocking off Boston College. I forget if Harvard eventually backed off of Tommy Amaker’s idea of lowering academic standards, but assuming it didn’t, things seem to be working out nicely (either that or we have to assume what history tells us is not true–that Amaker is some sort of genius). On the flip side, it’s quite the roller coaster week for Boston College, knocking off perhaps the best college basketball team that I’ve ever seen, and then falling to an Ivy League team. Sort of makes you look forward to the NCAA tournament, doesn’t it?

Nothing on the docket tonight, but there’s plenty going on this weekend as I travel to Whitewater for perhaps my only division three game of the year, and get ready for Sunday’s much anticipated Wisconsin-Purdue game. Things are finally getting exciting...

The Greatest Night of Televised Basketball Ever

2009-01-07T12:21:00.000-06:00

I’m not sure if I’ve ever encountered a night like tonight in terms of the volume of televised basketball that I want to watch being played. There are no less than five games on tonight that I would normally plan my night around, and a sixth that I would seriously consider watching on an average night. My viewing habits are obviously biased toward watching the teams of my home state (tonight that would be Marquette and Wisconsin, as UWM thankfully takes a break), and I have a few pet teams that I tend to watch more than others (Duke, Louisville, Gonzaga, Tennessee). Almost all seem to have converged on this one night. I clearly won’t be able to watch all 12 hours of basketball during the five waking hours that I’m at home tonight. But here’s what I’ll be switching between during possibly the greatest non-tournament night ever:

Michigan vs. Indiana (5:30pm, Big Ten Network): On a normal night, I might check this one out for a bit. Tonight? Very little chance that I’ll watch any of it, and that’s a shame, because I loved it when Tom Crean and John Beilein met when they were in the Big East, and I suspect that it would be even more fun for me to watch now that Crean has virtually no talent on his roster. I know that Indiana getting constantly pummeled is expected and necessary this year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still enjoy it.

Duke vs. Davidson (6pm, ESPN): In the most obvious storyline of the night, Davidson’s Stephen Curry gets to show if he can keep scoring points and dishing out assists at record pace against one of college basketball’s most well-known teams. It should be a great show, assuming that Coach K doesn't go all Loyola on us and concede the game so that he can hold Curry scoreless with a triangle-and-two.

Louisville vs. South Florida (6pm, ESPN2): I tune into Louisville games a lot because I like watching former Wisconsin high school players, and Jerry Smith gets plenty of playing time for the Cardinals. But every time I watch Louisville, I find myself loving other players, with Earl Clark being the guy that usually catches my eye. So the Cardinals are one of my pet teams this year. On any normal night, I’d be blocking out two hours to watch them.

Marquette vs. Rutgers (6:30pm, WMLW): Watching the local teams is always a top priority, and it’s always more fun when they’re playing well. I was sitting in the stands as Marquette took a 40-point lead over Cincinnati on Sunday and I think it’s safe to say that things are pretty fun to watch these days. Rutgers, on the other hand, is looking to get back on track after losing three straight to North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and UConn, arguably the three toughest teams in the country. So the Scarlet Knights should be pretty excited that they “only” have to play the 15th ranked team in the country, even if that team is red hot right now.

Wisconsin vs. Northwestern (7:30pm, Big Ten Network): My favorite team plays host to the team that always seems to give them trouble no matter where they are in the standings. Much as I hate Northwestern, I’m always guaranteed to shriek with delight at least 3 times during any given Wildcat game after seeing outstanding back-door passes. Not that Northwestern’s play really matters in luring me to watch the game–there are few non-biological necessities that take priority over a Wisconsin basketball game for me. I would even consider heading to Madison for this game, if not for the ridiculous slate of additional games on TV to tonight.

Gonzaga vs. Tennessee (8pm, ESPN2): A rematch of the finals of the Old Spice Classic back in late November, this one features two of the most intriguing teams in the country. Gonzaga has lost four of its last five, but is said by many to have their most talented team ever. Tennessee never ceases to be entertaining with their up-tempo style, which allows them to beat teams that they have no business beating, and occasionally lose to teams that they have no business losing to. Gonzaga prevailed the last time these two teams met, but who knows how it will go this time. Either way, there’s a good chance one team will score 90 points, and that will be good enough to keep me glued to the screen.

Hope you enjoy the evening as much as I do. And apologies to ESPNU on leaving you out of things, but after seeing Cincinnati this weekend, I’m going to be staying far, far away from the Cincy-Providence game.

(Finally, apologies on not writing much lately. I blame 15% of it on holiday stress, and 85% of it on general laziness.)

Backing Up A Week: A Snowy Night In Germantown

2008-12-26T22:02:00.003-06:00

Last Saturday my friend T.J., one of my favorite basketball watching pals, flew into Milwaukee from his North Carolina home and we set forth on one of the longest days of basketball watching that I've done in some time. He arrived at my place just before 2pm, and the basketball didn't stop until around 11pm. Most of it involved watching an array of surprisingly good non-conference college games on TV. Another friend had sold me tickets to the Wisconsin-Coppin State game that evening, which was to be the centerpiece of the day. However, with over a foot of snow on the ground from the prior day and 5-7 more predicted for the evening, a trip to Madison was out of the question. I'm happy to burn two-and-a-half hours of travel time to get to and from a random Wisconsin non-conference game, but risking my life on snowy roads to see Coppin State head to town is where I draw the line.

So our live event of the evening boiled down to two options: UWM vs. Bradley at the MECCA, or a high school game pitting Menomonee Falls against Germantown. High school action won out because a) the Milwaukee Bucks game going on across the street from the UWM game would have made parking more annoying and expensive than it should be, b) T.J.'s fondness for Wisconsin high school hoops has intensified after his experiences with North Carolina high school hoops, and c) there were some great players and subplots involved in the Falls-Germantown game.

So we set off on a snowy drive from a sports bar in downtown Milwaukee to Germantown High School. The roads and roadside accidents along the way made me happy that we'd nixed the trip to Madison, and a bit confused at why we thought driving all the way to Germantown would be a better idea. But we lived, and to my knowledge, my car didn't hit anything. Notes from the game below (and notes from our earlier experiences will contribute to a gigantic hodgepodge of thoughts that I'll toss out this weekend):

1) To my surprise, apparently Germantown and Menomonee Falls are rivals. This obviously makes sense geographically, as the municipalities are located right next to one another, but the two schools aren’t in the same conference, and to my knowledge, have not been in the same conference as long as I’ve been alive. So it simply never occurred to me that this could be a rivalry game. Nonetheless, the rivalry factor made for a packed gym on a night that I suspect otherwise would have had folks staying home and drinking hot apple cider. And instead of a JV game preceding the varsity game, we were treated a varsity girls game. This didn't exactly make T.J. happy, as he has a bizarre hatred of high school girls basketball. As we sat down, we immediately began taking count of the number of traveling calls.

2) While the excellent attendance at the game helped the atmosphere, it did little to help me find some elbow room. My original seats for the evening were in the Germantown adult section near mid-court. This seemed an excellent place to sit until about the fourth quarter of the girls’ game, when things began to fill up. One particular mother began saving every seat that she could around us. Not wanting to be in the midst of the Germantown booster section, we changed sides during the break between games and sat anonymously on the Falls side. Unfortunately, things had begun to fill up quickly on that side as well, and the most reasonable seats that we could find were right on the edge of the Falls student section. T.J. and I found ourselves wedged between three old guy basketball junkies on our right, and three teenage girls on our left. It’s a mighty weird night when you have the option of turning to one side and striking up a conversation about Menomonee Falls legend Bob Wolf, or turning to the other side and talking about the Jonas Brothers.

3) In a down economy, I can’t think of any better deal than the 50 cent small bag of popcorn that I purchased at the Germantown concession stand. Presuming of course, that after all of the salt involved you can lay off of buying a $1.50 can of soda (which I was able to).

4) I’m not sure if the refs thought that they were getting paid by the hour, but Saturday night was the closest that I’ve ever seen to a team making it to the double bonus prior to the end of the first quarter.

5) For all the fouls that were called early on, Falls took the biggest hit, as three players from their deep stable of big men found themselves saddled with two fouls apiece. Meanwhile, stellar Germantown big man Ben Averkamp came through the first half nearly unscathed. While Falls was clearly frustrated as the refs continually gave Averkamp the benefit of the doubt, it was at least nice to see Luke Russell, the normally docile Falls big man, show some fire on the court as he was called for a quick two fouls during his early battles with Averkamp.

6) Maybe the best thing about seeing a game at Germantown is the use the chime sound effect, like at Milwaukee Bucks’ games, following a made foul shot. I still can’t decide whether it’s so cheesy that it’s cool, or if it’s just cheesy (like most things taken from the NBA). Either way, it led to the most entertaining pair of foul shots that I’ve ever seen, when Germantown forward Bryan Keys banked in his first foul shot, garnering the chimes, and then had his second shot get trapped between the backboard and the rim. I’m almost wondering if the second shot may have been a piece of well-played strategy by Keys, though, as Germantown got the ball back via the possession arrow and scored in the subsequent possession.

7) I give credit to the staff at Germantown, as they put forth a great deal of effort with their sound system, playing sound cues like the chimes, and piping in popular music during time-outs to keep the crowd excited. I rarely see things like that at the high school level, and find myself much more likely to see such displays at division three games. All that said, the sound work still can't fix the fact that Germantown's gym seems to be one of the most bland spaces to watch a high school basketball game. Perhaps I'm biased due to my unfortunate incident there as a high school freshman, but Germantown is one of the few gyms that I've been to that just feels like there's nothing special about it, no matter how good the team is, or how much effort the staff puts into making the game itself entertaining (which it certainly was).

8) Obviously people know that Ben Averkamp is one of the top post players in the state, but I was surprised at how capable Germantown’s other 6'8" player, Michael Laubenheimer was. Averkamp and Laubenheimer were able to find each other several times using a nice high-low game. Menomonee Falls isn’t exactly a small team, with four talented players 6'5" or taller in its rotation, so I can only imagine how Germantown’s twin towers must do against normally-sized squads.

9_ I’ve only seen J.P. Tokoto play twice, but I’m officially sold on him after this game. T.J. and I spent part of the game trying to figure out if he which was his dominant hand (I hadn’t come to a definitive conclusion after the first time that I’d seen him), which is sort of a nice thing to be confused about with a high school freshmen. Right now, my highly untrained eye is as excited about Tokoto as any freshman that I can recall seeing. In another year or so, I assume we'll start to hear some interesting recruiting talk.

And with Germantown eeking out a hard fought win in a game that was in doubt nearly to the end, T.J. and I headed back to the car to brush off the snow and head home to watch more hoops. After all, isn't that the best way to end a great evening? (We may or may not have also enjoyed an episode of Hurl!, a TV show that's guaranteed to drop one's IQ by 40 points after only one viewing.)

More to share in the next day or two as I gather my general thoughts on the various things that I've seen and not commented on this year (lots of random college thoughts), and as I hopefully attend my first set of high school basketball games in the state of New York.

On The Road...

2008-12-26T14:07:00.002-06:00

Prepping for the holidays has made life pretty crazy for me over the past few weeks, hence no recent updates. Floating around my computer somewhere are some thoughts on last Saturday, one of the most basketball-centric days that I've ever had. So I hope to post some belated thoughts soon. I swear I've been watching and writing--I just haven't been posting.

Currently, though, I'm lamenting the fact that visiting the New York branch of my family for Christmas means that I'm not at this year's Wisconsin Basketball Yearbook Shootout. In its brief history, the Shootout has rapidly become one of my favorite events. So I'm deeply saddened that I won't be meeting up with my group of friends that gathers annually to watch basketball until we're nearly blind. The boys will have a good time at the McGuire Center tomorrow, and a couple of friends have promised to send me key scores via text message.

There is some good news in all of this, however. As luck would have it, the city that I'm in happens to have a pretty big holiday tournament of its own. So while I'll be missing the WBY Shootout, I'd say there's a pretty good chance that I'll find my way over to the Stop DWI Holiday Classic here in lovely Binghamton, NY. I won't know the team histories, and I'll be watching lots of players that I'll never see again, but assuming that I can talk my sports-nut grandfather into heading over to the tourney with me, I'm sure I'll find something there that amuses me. After all, sometimes you need to step out of your usual routine in order to learn something new. And here's hoping that I learn something new at the Broome County Memorial Arena...

Oops...

2008-12-12T09:04:00.002-06:00

Not sure where I was getting my info from, as I'd thought the UWM game was starting one hour later than it did. Thus, planning my night around heading out to watch the second half on TV turned out to be a poor move. On the bright side, I instead got to watch the final 10 minutes of the Villanova-St. Joseph's game. It had a thrilling finish and was actually the first glimpse that I've ever gotten of a game that's part of the Philadelpha Big 5, an idea that I totally love. So I guess not all was lost...

Back Monday with thoughts on whatever I happen to watch. Hopefully I can find someone to scalp Marquette-IPFW tickets with me, as things are always more fun when Dane Fife comes to town.

Tosa East vs. Menomonee Falls: Battling Through the Snow

2008-12-10T07:38:00.001-06:00

It was a busy night for me tonight–first I shoveled snow. Then I changed clothes. Then I headed to the Tosa East-Menomonee Falls game at Tosa East. Then I went home and shoveled some more snow. Then I watched the Wisconsin-Idaho State game. Then I went to bed. Below are my thoughts about the high school game, mostly written during the brief time between those final two parts of my night:

1) Part of my attendance last evening was due to my desire to learn more about what’s going on with the Larry Bradley eligibility situation, and I did just that just moments after walking in the door and talking to my friend Gus. The news with regard to basketball was good, and is reported more fully in a Journal Sentinel piece this morning. The long and the short of it is that Bradley will be eligible for varsity play once his uncle is appointed as his guardian. I suspect that it will still be at least a few weeks until Bradley suits up for competition, though, as the process of appointing a guardian isn’t something that takes place overnight. It’s sort of a bittersweet victory, because while it’s nice that Bradley will get to play basketball this year, you sort of wish he wasn’t in a life situation that even makes this an issue. But I suppose you take the victories that you can get. (Update--thanks to Gus for passing along a link to the WIAA Ruling on this matter.)

2) Big off the court news last night, as Tosa East unveiled a new pirate-themed mascot costume at last night’s game. I’ve got mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, I’m glad to see another live mascot at a high school game, as we have too few of them right now. I also like that there’s another step towards the pirate theme at Tosa East. And in general, I thought the student wearing the costume put forth a nice effort for his first time in the suit. On the other hand, I’m not crazy about the design of the costume itself, and perhaps more importantly, I now have to stop referring to my older brother as the last man to ever don the Tosa East mascot attire for his stint as the Raider back in 1988.

3) I came away from the evening impressed with not only the hard-nosed play of Menomonee Falls guard John Cording, but the fact that he played the game in a sportsman-like manner. I actually question whether he and Tosa East’s Barrett Powell have some sort of prior friendship, because at multiple times I saw those two players pat each other on the back after or help one another up after a whistle.

4) Aside from the Bradley eligibility question, one of the other key reasons that I wanted to check out this particular game was to get a look at Falls freshman J.P. Tokoto. I can’t say that I got a great read on his game, as his minutes were slightly limited due to foul trouble, but I can say that I’ve only seen one or two freshmen throw down a dunk as impressively as he did in the final seconds of the game.

5) Typically when I go to games at Tosa East, I try to sit in the section for the visiting team’s fans. Aside from it being the first section there when you walk into the gym, it’s usually less crowded, and allows me and people that I’m with to feel a bit more anonymous. Last night was sort of an exception to the crowd issue, as for the first time in my memory, the visiting adult section appeared more full than the home adult section. I found this particularly impressive, given that the day’s snowstorm would have made a drive from Menomonee Falls less attractive last night.

6) Just a thought for the folks at Tosa East–you’ve retired the jerseys of Tony Smith and Devin Harris and hung them over one of the entry ways. That’s a great gesture. It would be an even better thing, though, if you put their names somewhere near their jerseys to identify who’s being honored. Because sitting amongst visiting fans last night, it became apparent to me that not everyone was sure of whose jerseys were hanging in the gym. Actually, it can be confusing to the home crowd, too, as not everyone remembers that Devin Harris wore the number 20 in high school, rather than his college and pro number of 34, and anyone who can remember back to the Tony Smith era knows that the style of jersey that’s currently hung in the gym is one that Tosa East didn’t start wearing until roughly five years after Smith’s graduation. All I’m asking for is a little clarity here.

7) I’m sure a point of some sort was being made, but I wish that Menomonee Falls hadn’t called time out while down 15 points with a minute and a half to go. I didn’t mind seeing Falls press Tosa East’s deep reserves at the end of the game, as it provided as least something interesting to watch during garbage time, but given that I had to get home and shovel to close out the night, tacking one more minute onto the game felt like punishment.

8) I actually came away intrigued by Menomonee Falls last night. Even though Tosa East blasted past them in the third quarter, the Indians defend well, and are the rare high school team that has four decent players listed at 6'5" or above. If they develop a bit more toughness inside, their re-match with Tosa East could be a classic.

9) Special thanks to the two young men who helped me push my car out of the snow after the game last night. Though I go to lots of high school basketball games around the area, I seldom actually interact with high school students. So when a young man in a Tosa East letter jacket saw me struggling to pull my car away from the curb last night offered to help me out, it sort of made me feel good about today’s youth. We might constantly read about drugs and violence in schools, but it’s nice to know that there’s still a couple of guys out there happy to push a random stranger’s car out of a snow bank.

With my car back on the road, I used it to get home and finish up shoveling. I also took in the Wisconsin-Idaho State game, but those are thoughts for another time, assuming I don’t try to forget about the Badgers having to squeak out a tough win against the third most recognizable institution of higher learning in Idaho.

Marquette-Wisconsin: My Belated Rivalry Thoughts

2008-12-09T08:12:00.000-06:00

The Marquette-Wisconsin game is always one of my favorites, as there’s nothing more fun than an in-state rivalry. This year was a bit more intriguing to me, due to the dynamics of the season so far. Back two weeks ago when Marquette was regularly dropping 100 points on opponents, most people I knew were of the belief that Wisconsin didn’t stand much of a chance. Then after Marquette lost to Dayton and Wisconsin pulled out a tough win at Virginia Tech, I had a tough time finding anyone who believed Marquette could win this one. Of course, it ended up being a reasonably close game, with both teams going on a big runs at different points. And as always, it was lots of fun, even if my Badgers ended up on the losing end. My severely belated thoughts below:

1) If I’d had the opportunity to share some pre-game thoughts about the Marquette-Wisconsin game, the first thing that I would have said is that Jon Leuer is going to be the one guy that Marquette has no answer for and will have a huge game. It didn’t happen (Leuer had a merely solid game), but it was a logical thought, considering that Leuer has been on an outstanding run to start the season, he’s 6'10" and athletic, Marquette currently has only two healthy players over 6'7", and Marquette needed to use someone big to account for Marcus Landry before even thinking about Leuer. On the bright side for Leuer, while he didn’t break the game open, he did notch eight points and four rebounds in limited minutes.

2) Another thing that I’d have said prior to the game if I’d had the chance is that concerns about Marquette’s defense heading into this game were a bit overblown. From what I’ve seen of Marquette, their biggest issue is an inability to stop dribble penetration. And Wisconsin’s offense simply isn’t one that’s built on dribble penetration. Thus, Marquette’s biggest weakness wasn’t as likely to be exploited against Bo Ryan’s vaunted swing offense. In fact, Marquette’s athletic guards were able to extend the defense and contest passes on the perimeter, a move that over the years has tended to be the one thing that causes some difficulty for the Badgers.

3) Piggybacking on that point about dribble penetration, I don’t think that it’s any coincidence that Rob Wilson logged his most minutes in a game for the Badgers this season against Marquette. Wilson is one of the few Badgers that can get into the lane, and seemed to do so nearly every time he touched the ball on Saturday night. Nice to know that if things break down, Trevon Hughes isn’t the only guy who can create something out of nothing for Wisconsin.

4) Marquette introduces its student section by billing it as “the best student section in the country.” I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but it has got a distinct edge over the Wisconsin student section, which has been sort of disjointed over the past few years.

5) I heard a radio interview on Friday night with Dominic James where he discussed many aspects of the Wisconsin game. One of the points that I found most interesting was his mentioning that Buzz Williams had come to the team and asked the players how they would feel most comfortable guarding the swing. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I thought much of that collaborative approach, but after seeing the game, I can’t help but think that they players must have had some idea what they were talking about. And Williams must have known what he was doing, too, as some coaches wouldn’t have recognized the incredible resource that a bunch of players who’d played against Wisconsin three prior times could be.

6) I’ve heard lots of talk about how little red there was in the Bradley Center on Saturday night. I actually thought that there was a pretty impressive number of Wisconsin fans in attendance, though I suppose it’s all relative. Seeing a smattering of Wisconsin fans sprinkled liberally throughout the arena is a far cry from when I was a kid, and the crowd was much closer to 50/50. Though I’m one of those bastard Wisconsin fans that made it into the game, I still have plenty of respect for Marquette’s recent efforts to secure their home court advantage. That’s what a school should seek to do.

7) While I was clearly in the minority as a Wisconsin fan during the game, and beforehand downtown, I’m happy to report that I found it to be a remarkably cordial crowd. Some of this was probably helped by me watching the game with a Marquette fan. Sure, I was randomly sworn at by a couple of people while on my way to the bathroom, but those folks were the exception, and not the rule. Besides, that’s just something that you have to expect in another team’s arena. On the whole, I felt safe the entire time, and saw virtually no post-game gloating. That’s all you can ask for.

8) The Jumbotron messages from players pumping up the crowd just keep getting better and better as the years go on. What seemed like a non-sensical, cheesy interlude a few years ago has truly become an entertaining aside. My compliments to the video team.

9) Three years ago, Marquette inexplicably had Chris Grimm guard Alando Tucker, and even more inexplicably, Grimm (and his teammates) virtually shut Tucker down. Last year, Dwight Burke somehow turned into a clutch foul shooter for the Wisconsin game and the Wisconsin game only. This year Burke put forth a tremendous effort and effectively slowed down Marcus Landry, Wisconsin’s biggest offensive threat. So I’m calling it right now–next year’s key to the Wisconsin game for Marquette is having a mediocre big man put forth an excellent effort.

10) I’ll be honest–I didn’t expect Jerel McNeal to take over scoring like he did for Marquette on Saturday night (defensive kudos to him as well, as he drew some awkward assignments at times). And that’s what’s so dangerous about Marquette–they’ve literally got four different guys capable of scoring 25 points on any given night, and no one knows which one (or more) is going to go off.

And with another installment of my favorite rivalry game in the books, I made the cold walk back to my car and headed to catch the tail end of one of the three holiday parties that I had to miss in order to make the game. It was a solid end to what usually ends up being one of my favorite nights of the year.

I should make it to a high school game tonight, weather permitting, so thoughts tomorrow on that, or in alternate, the Wisconsin-Idaho State game on TV.

...And I Give Another Excuse For My Incompetence

2008-12-08T07:49:00.000-06:00

No Marquette-Wisconsin thoughts today. No, it’s not because I’m bitter that Wisconsin lost. Of course, I’d have rather seen Wisconsin steal a road win from Marquette, but even I have to concede that it’s entertaining to watch a team with only two semi-competent healthy players over 6'7" (yes, I recognize that Dwight Burke inexplicably goes from “semi-competent” to “stellar” anytime he faces Wisconsin) grab offensive rebounds like Marquette did.

The real reason that I have no update today is that I fell asleep on my couch around 9pm last night. Typically I finish off my weekend by jotting down my basketball thoughts, and when I pass out while watching TV, nothing gets written. While this end to my weekend does leave me somewhat frightened that I’m becoming my father, I undoubtedly did need the sleep, following an extra-long week. So I can’t say I’m too upset with myself.

So fear not–I’ll have some final thoughts on the game tomorrow, when no one will care anymore. And I promise to start sleeping more during the week so that this never happens again.

Big Ten 1, ACC 0: Wisconsin vs. Virginia Tech

2008-12-02T08:11:00.000-06:00

We've got an early leader for game of the year. Yesterday I predicted a possible overtime finish for the Wisconsin-Virginia Tech game, showing that on rare occasions, I can come close to the truth. I’m glad that Trevon Hughes kept things from heading to an extra period, though. This was an important game, though, as it marked the first time that I spent the night yelling like an idiot at my television as a game unfolded. Yep, all it took was one fantastic game to start tugging at my emotions again. Thoughts on what I saw below:

1) Currently, Keaton Nankivil isn't exactly performing as the pure power player that he is. Last night's game was seemingly the fourth or fifth game in a row where Nankivil botched a scoring opportunity by failing to go up as strongly with a shot as he should have. You need to go strong when finesse isn’t your game. I've still got extremely high hopes for Nankivil, though, so I'm hoping that this is just a temporary bump in the road.

2) Virginia Tech freshman Victor Davila looked dominant during the brief stretch during which he scored 6 straight points in the post. And it's a good thing that he's really good at basketball, because otherwise people would just know him as "that dude without a chin."

3) While it normally irks me when people complain about foul differential in Wisconsin games, I have to admit that it sure didn't seem like the refs were doing any favors for Virginia Tech last evening. I can't help but feel sorry for forward Jeff Allen, who managed to foul out on three questionable fouls and one infraction (the final one) that came about only because he tripped. i can't recall the last time I saw a guy foul out without getting at least one good hack or charge, but Allen managed to pick up nothing but weird fouls.

4) One of Allen's fouls came as he readied himself to challenge a Rob Wilson drive down the lane, and Wilson grazed Allen as he leapt to take a shot. Color commentator Bill Raftery praised Wilson for his presence of mind in drawing a key foul on Allen to send him to the bench. However, based on what I've seen of Wilson, I suspect that this play was more reflective of his always-attacking mentality than any sort of crafty plan that he had in mind. Either way, it worked out just fine for the Badgers.

5) It's not basketball-related, but since it was constantly on the ESPN2 crawl at the bottom of the screen I have to ask--is there anyone having a worse week than Plaxico Burress? I can't fathom what it would be like to not only shoot myself, but to get arrested and charged with a crime because I shot myself, and have that story running non-stop on ESPN.

6) The announcers praised it ad nauseum, but since it was so right and so important, it bears noting that Wisconsin was remarkably patient in their offense last evening. Virginia Tech is not an easy team to break down on the defensive end, and Wisconsin needed nearly every second to find a shot on most of their trips down the court. Undoubtedly the biggest factor in the Badgers taking home the win was the fact that no one on their team panicked when they saw 10 seconds left on the shot clock. (Okay, Trevon Hughes occassionally forced something with 8-10 seconds left, but that's also sort of his job.)

7) Did anyone else have tons of video hiccups during the broadcast of the game, or do I just need to get the position of my dish checked out?

8) Virginia Tech's trapping 1-3-1 defense that they broke out on a few occasions during the game was pretty scary to watch as a Wisconsin fan. I'm very thankful that the energy required to run that defense would have had Virginia Tech's guards collapsing with heart attacks if they had to run it all game, becuase on the few defensive stands when the Hokies pulled the 1-3-1 out of their bag of tricks, it was apparent that Wisconsin was working even harder than the Hokies just to avoid a turnover.

9) I can't heap enough superlatives on Virginia Tech's A.D. Vassello and his performance last night. Simply awesome. As if his being nearly automatic from three-point range down the stretch wasn't enough, he also made a number of key plays on the defensive end. I can't imagine that we'll see a better performance in the next two days of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. I’ve seen few better in the last few years.

10) Deep into the second half, I thought Virginia Tech just did a nice job of screening for Vassello and finding ways to get open, but I do have to admit that earlier in the evening it looked like Joe Krabbenhoft had a few moments with Vassello and otherwise where he was a step slow on defense. Fortunately, Krabbenhoft came through when it mattered, but it appears that not even my favorite player is infalable.

11) I know that A.D. Vassello pretty clearly earned the respect of Wisconsin, and that he also came away with some respect for the Badgers. How do I know this? Very simple--lots of man hugs during the post-game handshake line. You don't go the extra mile and lean in for the one-armed hug unless you really appreciate your opponent.

And with that, the Big Ten put themselves up 1-0 in the Challenge, and I went to shovel some snow and test out my new roof rake. This Big Ten lead shouldn’t last, assuming history is any sort of guide. In the meantime, here are my picks for the next two nights of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge (winners in bold):

Wake Forest vs. Indiana: Is there really any question here? Indiana nearly lost to Chaminade in the last place game of the Maui Invite. I'm putting the over-under on Indiana players that transfer at the end of the year at three. On the plus side, I can only assume that Tom Crean already has players recruited to fill those spots.

Clemson vs. Illinois: I don’t know enough about either team to talk intelligently, so I’ll fall back to my old crutches and pick Clemson both because I have a cousin that went there, and because Champaign is maybe the most disappointing Big Ten city that I’ve had the opportunity to visit.

North Carolina vs. Michigan State: Michigan State is a pretty good team. So was Notre Dame. North Carolina is a great team, and they destroy good teams. But at least the fact that this one's being played at Ford Field should make things interesting.

Duke vs. Purdue: I'll take Purdue. As a Wisconsin fan, I feel a kinship with Purdue, the Big Ten's other team that's successful, but not flashy. Wisconsin couldn't get the job done last year, but Purdue wins this one for all the boring teams out there.

Boston College vs. Iowa: I'm still waiting for Todd Lickliter to get some more talent into his programs, so for now, I have to take BC.

Ohio State vs. Miami: Miami destroyed a decent San Diego team and B.J. Mullens has yet to start following in Greg Oden and Kosta Koufos’s footsteps for OSU.

Virginia vs. Minnesota: Minnesota stays unbeaten as Tubby Smith continues to make the Gophers relevant again.

Maryland vs. Michigan: Michigan comes into this one extra motivated, wanting to steal some bragging rights after Maryland beat their in-state rival, Michigan State, and takes the win.

Florida State vs. Northwestern: You know, I feel like having Northwestern in this thing every year really puts the Big Ten at a disadvantage.

Georgia Tech vs. Penn State: You know, I feel like having Penn State in this thing every year really puts the Big Ten at a disadvantage.

So I've got the ACC taking yet another year of the Challenge 7-4. I'm hoping that the Big Ten can prove me wrong, though, and finally steal some measure of respect from the ACC. We'll see how things turn out...

Feast Weekend In Madison: Wisconsin vs. UWM

2008-12-01T07:53:00.002-06:00

I saw a lot of basketball over Thanksgiving weekend, though not as much as I had anticipated. I found myself amused by Michigan State, disappointed by Marquette, amazed by North Carolina, and impressed by Gonzaga. And in the midst of all the TV watching, I had the opportunity to make it to Saturday’s Wisconsin-UWM game. After a solid start by UWM, Wisconsin adjusted, UWM got out of its game, and the Badgers rolled to victory. It was a similar story to the Panther's trip to Marquette last week. Thoughts on Saturday's game below:

1) I made the trip to Saturday’s game with my good friend Samip, who lived next door to me when I was a freshman in college and probably sat next to me during more Badger games during my academic career than anyone else I know. This fact is well documented by a prominent clip of us being included in a Big Ten commercial that ran for three years, and a random photo that we found our way into that appeared in a couple of Wisconsin media guides. The lesson here? If you want to appear in promotional materials for the University of Wisconsin, it’s helpful if one of your friends is a non-white student that doesn’t need to be Photoshopped into being at the event.

2) It was a quick offensive start on the day for Joe Krabbenhoft, who took advantage of the fact that he was being guarded by players much smaller than him. I’d be okay if Krabbenhoft decided at this point in his career that he wanted to altogether abandon shooting three-pointers, but in general, he finally looks to be shooting the ball with confidence.

3) I was sort of disappointed that UWM big man James Eayrs didn’t have a better day. Eayrs is always noticeable when he comes into games due to the 300+ pounds that he packs onto his 6'7" frame. However, Eayrs does have some skill, and shoots the ball much better than he showed in three horrific attempts from the perimeter. So unfortunately, after Eayrs rough shooting day, Wisconsin fans who only see him once this year will just think of him as a big goon who tossed up crazy outside shots whenever he had the chance. Hopefully a handful of people will see UWM play a game or two later this season and realize that Eayrs is something other than a big joke.

4) After finally getting a close look at him this season, I’m not a big fan of UWM’s Deonte Roberts. UWM was shorthanded at guard after Ricky Franklin’s drunk driving arrest earlier in the week, but Roberts looked like he was trying to take all of Franklin’s responsibilities and put them on his shoulders. Rather than letting the game come to him, he was constantly forcing action, and looked to be playing a different game than his teammates. In short, he looked like the entire UWM squad did in the second half against Marquette, when they seemed to immediately forget that they had played almost even during the first half and decided to abandon their game plan and play one-on-one for stretches.

5) I know holiday games aren’t usually well attended, but I was really disappointed with the crowd on Saturday for a non-televised game against an in-state rival. Wisconsin sells out every game before the season even begins, so it’s sort of annoying when there’s several thousand empty seats that can’t seem to find their way into anyone’s hands.

6) It was nice to see Trevon Hughes and Jordan Taylor getting into the lane at will against UWM’s defense, though it was a bit upsetting early in the game when that penetration seemed to be Wisconsin’s only way of setting up a decent shot.

7) I’m still sort of torn on how I feel about Jon Leuer. On one hand, it always sort of bothers me to watch his super-mechanical way of shooting a jump shot. On the other hand, there are few things that I enjoy more than seeing him shoot a reverse lay-up. As the story goes, Leuer wasn’t even close to being 6'10" until a sudden growth spurt late in high school, and you can really see that when he shoots the reverse, since he attacks the lane like a 6'1" guard, but then you suddenly notice that he has ridiculously long arms.

8) Was there really nowhere else that they could find to stash the visiting UWM cheerleaders on Saturday? Because I can’t think of a more awkward place for them to be than sharing the half of the baseline that the Wisconsin cheerleaders usually use, right in front of the Wisconsin student section. Fortunately, despite the opposing squads being separated by only about 4 inches of air, a cheerleader fight didn’t break out. I can’t imagine the insults that must have been hurled by the student section, though.

9) I used to laugh at Marquette halftime fan shooting contests for how absurdly difficult they were to win (they’ve since become remarkably more reasonable), but I got a similar chuckle out of the underwhelming value of the prizes in the contests at the half of the Wisconsin game yesterday. The first contest offered up to $50 in Quaker Steak & Lube gift cards if the contestant could make five shots, and the second offered $200 in cash if the contestant could sink one of two three-point shots. Sure, the $200 prize was part of some promotion where the jackpot doubled at the next game if the shot wasn’t made, but the fact remains–there was a grand total of $250 at stake on Saturday, which feels like sort of a lowball offer in a sold-out 18,000 seat arena.

10) The only player not to see the floor for the Badgers on Saturday was J.P. Gavinski (Jared Berggren also didn’t take off the warm-ups, but the assumption would be that he’s still likely to redshirt). I felt sort of bad for the big fellow, as it had to be sort of frustrating to watch every one of his teammates log a couple of garbage minutes while he kept his seat on the bench. Garbage time’s got to be a bit difficult for Bo Ryan to manage, though, with two guys on the squad who see limited minutes during games (Kevin Gullikson and Rob Wilson) and four guys who don’t see the floor at all (Ian Markolf and the three walk ons, Morris Cain, Brett Valentyn and Wquinton Smith). If you factor in Gavinski, that’s seven guys. Tough to get time for seven guys in two minutes.

11) Being at a game with Samip and knowing some of his favorite Madison spots, I figured that it would be tough to get out of town without a quick stop for a slice at the ever popular Ian’s Pizza, just up the street from the Kohl Center. I was happy to make the stop, though. I was always more of a Casa Bianca man during my days in school, but with its downtown location since closed, Ian’s macaroni and cheese pizza is the best thing going and is an adequate substitute in the absence of Casa’s spinach slice. An added bonus is that a crew trained to handle the rush of students at bar time was more than up to the task of handling a sudden rush of fully sober basketball fans in prompt fashion.

12) The most amusing sight of the day came as I was leaving Ian’s and saw Ian Markolf (no relation) heading away from the Kohl Center on his moped. It’s not every day that you see a 7'1" guy riding a moped, and it was the most amusing moped sighting that I’ve had since about 10 years ago, when I happened upon 400-pound Badger football player Aaron Gibson working his way up a hill on a moped that sounded as if it wished it was dead.

So that’s one more game in the books. As always, the ACC-Big Ten Challenge has snuck up on me, but I will have predictions up tomorrow morning. As for tonight’s first game between Wisconsin and Virginia Tech, I think it should be about as close as they come, but see Wisconsin eeking out the victory in the end, perhaps in overtime. This would be a helpful way to start things, as the Big Ten isn’t exactly known for its great performances in this annual throwdown.

Back tomorrow with my predictions and some game thoughts.

The Tournament That Wouldn't End

2008-11-27T11:24:00.004-06:00

It was 11:07pm last night when I saw one of the most upsetting things I'd seen all night. I glanced at the scoreboard in the Wisconsin Lutheran College fieldhouse and saw that there were about two and a half minutes left in a close game between Milwaukee Bradley Tech and Wauwatosa East, and that between them, both teams had 7 timeouts remaining. An already long night was about to get longer. I left the gymnasium about 10 minutes later, after Tech pulled themselves within 7 points of Tosa East (who had gone on a run in the previous two minutes) with 15 seconds left on the clock, and promptly called time out. I assumed that Tosa East wouldn't find a way to give three possessions to Tech in the ensuing 15 seconds and that it was safe to exit early.

I love holiday tournaments, and think that the City/Suburban Holiday Classic is a particularly brilliant idea, but here's a memo to the prospective organizers of any future high school tournament--games don't fit as neatly as you think into that one and a half hour time period that you've blocked off for each game. The games themselves might last that long, but when you factor in warm-ups for each game, it would be shocking to see four back to back games start and finish within a 6-hour window. Case in point--last night's festivities featured four games (and keep in mind that warm-up periods, at least for the two games that I saw, were abbreviated from 20 minutes to 15 minutes) that started at 4:30pm and ended just before 11:30pm. 11:30pm was my weekend curfew until my senior year of high school. Here's a good rule of thumb--if a sophomore couldn't sit through the entire game without asking special permission from his/her parents, you're starting the game too late.

So the final game of the night tipped at 9:55pm, predictably almost an hour late. I got to sit through two and a half games (half of Milwaukee King-Kettle Moraine, and all of Milwaukee Custer-Hartland Arrowhead and the aforementioned Tech-Tosa East). Afterward, despite the entertainment, I was more than happy to head home. Some notes on the tourney below:

1) It's tough to get a good program put together for an early season tournament, since up until about a week ago, most rosters probably weren't set. The program handed out at the tournament last night was no exception. There was some guessing to be done on player identities for Milwaukee Custer, as only half of their players had numbers listed. This was still better than Arrowhead's profile, which simply read "Roster to be determined..."

2) During the King-Kettle Moraine game, I immediately tried to identify Ed Reed and Silas Mills, the two King players that I remembered from last season. The impressive Reed was easy to identify, but Mills was a tougher find. It was only later in the half that I would notice him sitting on the bench without shoes on, implying an ankle injury. Seems this must have been the case, as Mills hopped on one foot through the line to shake hands at the end of the game. I can't imagine how awful it must be to wait for the season to arrive, and then injure yourself in the first game of the year. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery for Mr. Mills.

3) I'll admit that I knew nothing of Kettle Moraine coming into the night, nor did I expect to see more than 2 minutes of their game against King, given when I arrived. But since things were running behind and I did get to see most of the second half, I definitely came away impressed with their backcourt. Upon returning home I saw that they were picked by the Wisconsin Basketball Yearbook to finish second behind Arrowhead in the Classic Eight Conference. King was the stronger team last night, but then again, there are few teams in the state that King isn't generally stronger than.

4) The word on Arrowhead is that they're supposed to be young (for some reason, it seems like Arrowhead is always young). Despite their youth, there is some talent there. In fact, the player that stood out the most to me, Charlie Fischer, is only a sophomore (according to the box score in this morning's paper, I somehow missed Arrowhead's Russ Finco dropping 35 points on the Custer, so my observation skills might have been off a bit last night). So look for some good times for the Warhawks in coming years. As it was, they notched a nice victory over Custer last night.

5) During the announcements before each game, the PA announcer read a statement that noted that one of the goals of the tournament was for everyone to conduct themselves in a manner that "doesn't offend anyone." Isn't that kind of a high bar to set? I mean, I was sitting quietly in the corner of the gym, but I even I can't be totally sure that I wasn't offending anyone by the way I was sitting, or with my shoddy-looking clothing for the evening, or even with the smell of the soap I'd used that day. The lawyer in me wants the tournament to change their goal to having everyone conduct themselves in a manner that could not reasonably be expected to offend others in their proximate vicinity. I'm not holding my breath for that change.

6) Forgotten by me until last night is that the three-point distance change in college basketball also affects the division three level, as Wisconsin Lutheran's court had the new line in place. I would guess that high school coaches aren't going to be real excited to play on college courts this season, as about 75% of the three pointers that I saw attempted last night came from behind the college arc, even though the other arc just inside is the standard for high school.

7) The real intrigue of last night was seeing if Wauwatosa East's Larry Bradley, a transfer from Milwaukee Vincent and the top sophomore in the state, would play for the Red Raiders. While I had seen nothing in the media beforehand about any potential issues with Bradley's eligibility to play for Tosa East, I've heard plenty of rumors flying around Tosa for the past few weeks. Bradley was with the Tosa East team last night, but was not in uniform, leaving plenty of questions to be answered about the situation. Fortunately, the Journal Sentinel finally picked up on this story this morning, giving some insight into the situation. We'll see how things work out, but based on my read of the story, it doesn't sound good for Mr. Bradley.

8) Other than the late end to the evening, the most annoying aspect of the night had to be when Milwaukee Tech held the ball for a final shot with two and a half minutes to go in the first half. I doubt that Tech was actually trying to hold the ball for a final shot. More likely, they were holding the ball to try and get Tosa East to come out of its zone, which made no sense at that juncture of the game. With Tosa East holding a 6 point lead and another half of basketball to be played, the Red Raiders didn't have much motivation to let Tech choose how they wanted to be defended. So the crowd was treated to nearly three minutes of 10 guys standing around. Then Tech failed to score. Not a fun way to end the half.

9) Lots of credit to Tech for a nice rebounding effort last evening. Second chances against the Trojans were tough to come by for Tosa East, even though they had a very capable player with a distinct height advantage over the Trojan big men.

10) Besides Bradley being out for Tosa East, returing starting point guard Michael Cupertino was suited up, but did not play last evening. While the Red Raiders looked good without Cupertino, once can only imagine that they'll look even better once their most consistent returning player returns to the floor from whatever issue was keeping him out.

11) In Cupertino's absence, Tosa East starting point guard Eric Neal was nothing short of spectacular, throwing a pair of jaw-dropping assists through traffic to big man Frazier Reiland, and stealing the ball from Tech's guards with impressive regularity. Neal has some of the quickest hands that I can remember seeing on a high school player.

With my first pair (and another half) of high school games in the books, it was time to call it a night. I was able to keep my eyes open long enough to check my DVR and see North Carolina show how ridiculously good it is this year by dismantling a tough Notre Dame team. Some people associate Thanksgiving with football, but those of us in the know realize that the weekend is really about basketball. Here's hoping your Thanksgiving is as happy as mine.

Holiday Delay

2008-11-25T07:49:00.001-06:00

Yes, it's true--I've only seen the first half of the Connecticut-Wisconsin game. While Thanksgiving week brings with it an obscene amount of basketball (I'll be upset if I've not sat through at least 8 games on TV or in person by Saturday night), it also brings meetings with old friends. So last night I let my DVR do the work for me, and hung out with my friend Brooks, in town from New Mexico, and a few other longtime pals. I'll finish up the game tonight. Not sure if I'll register my thoughts tomorrow, but there should be some residual ramblings over the holiday weekend, as I hopefully get to sit through some of the oodles of games going on. And if I'm not back before then, have a happy Thanksgiving.

Marquette-UWM: The Game I've Waited Years For

2008-11-24T08:09:00.000-06:00

This past weekend was a rare gift–a few days of compelling basketball well before the middle of the season. Normally, the start of the season features teams from the big conferences beating up on hapless opponents to pad their win totals prior to the start of meaningful games. But this weekend, Wisconsin played a surprise overtime game against Iona in the Paradise Jam, and advanced to play San Diego, a team that would not have shocked me had they upset the Badgers. I’ll talk about the Badgers’ run at the Paradise Jam as a whole tomorrow, after I see tonight’s game against UConn in the finals. Today’s topic of choice, though, is the Marquette-UWM game.

The Marquette-UWM game this past weekend was another oasis of interesting basketball in the vast abyss of November hoops. After a few years of bad blood as a resurgent, Bruce Pearl-led UWM demanded a game against the Tom Crean-led Marquette squad, this game finally came to be last year. Though UWM was going through a decidedly down year last year, last year’s contest was a game that I was disproportionately excited to attend. Unfortunately, I never got to attend that game. The night beforehand, I was stricken with the worst bout of food poisoning that I’ve ever had. To top things off, my furnace went out on the same night, leaving me to wonder after I had collapsed for the night face down in my hallway whether I was shivering because of my illness, or because the temperature in my home was 57 degrees. Thus, instead of actually going to last year’s big game, I fell asleep while watching it on TV and sipping ginger ale.

So yes, you could say I was even more disproportionately excited to actually attend this year’s Marquette-UWM game. My friend Dez found some decent tickets on Craigslist, and we were on our way. My notes below:

1) The hate surrounding this game in past years seems to have officially worn off. Gone are the primary combatants creating the bad blood between the two teams, Bruce Pearl and Tom Crean. And UWM, while certainly a credible threat these days, isn’t the back-to-back tournament team that they were a few years back.

2) Two events of Saturday evening confirmed to me how much less tense things have gotten between Marquette and UWM. First, while meeting up with my friend Nate prior to the game, he indicated that he hoped the bad blood was over. While this may not seem like much coming from a normal fan, Nate is my insane UWM fan friend who once semi-seriously suggested that if he won the lottery, he’d like to buy the Bradley Center and tear it down so that Marquette wouldn’t have a place to play. So if Nate’s largely over the whole Marquette-UWM, every human being on the planet should be. The second event that made things seem more okay was the pre-game moment of silence to honor Rob Jeter’s recently deceased father. That’s a very big move to show that type of respect to an opposing coach. I don’t doubt that had Jeter’s father passed last fall there would have been a similar moment of silence, but I suspect that last year it would have felt a lot more like a manufactured public relations ploy than a genuine move to honor Jeter’s father.

3) The biggest surprise of the night for me was UWM’s Tone Boyle, who shot the ball well, and was able to get by any and all of Marquette’s perimeter defenders with ease (to be fair, it seemed on Saturday like anyone could have gotten penetration on Marquette, though). Boyle’s one weakness was an amazing inability to finish layups once he got to the hoop. He tallied 23 points, but I suspect he’d have easily had over 30 points if he’d have put in any reasonable number of the inside 4-foot shots that he took.

4) It’s weird how things seem to be working at Marquette with regard to its best players. For two years, Dominic James was the man. Then last year, Jerel McNeal took over as the player to talk about. This year, Wesley Matthews is doing his best Tony Smith impression, and Lazar Hayward continues to improve as rapidly as almost anyone that I’ve ever seen. So it’s genuinely in doubt as to who’s Marquette’s top guy is this year (put me down as believing it will by Hayward by the time all’s said and done). Hopefully opponents have as tough a time figuring this out as I do.

5) At one point early in the second half, I looked over at my buddy Dez and noted that Marquette’s aforementioned top four players, had all but one of the 55 (or near that) points on the board. I then considered lamenting to Dez about how Marquette would be in trouble if they only had four guys capable of scoring big points, before I realized how ridiculous it was to be upset about only having four legit scoring threats.

6) The halftime competition on Saturday was truly inspired. The standard Marquette musical chairs contest with a handful of MU students went on until the final four. At that point, the emcee announced a special promotion whereby the first of the final four contestants to agree to immediately receive a “Buzz Williams buzz cut” would receive a Nintendo Wii from Sportclips. That was a welcome curveball. The fastest contestant was then taken to a chair where he had his head shaved. It actually ended up being a pretty good look for the kid, and he’ll at least have an amusing tale later this week when he shows up at home for Thanksgiving and his mother is outraged that he’s shaved his head. Major kudos to the promotions team for thinking this one up, though. There are few things more amusing than getting a college kid to shave his head. Let’s just hope that next time they can speed things up enough that it allows for the finish of the musical chairs contest, which was basically abandoned because the cut took too long.

7) It’s pretty clear that James Eayrs is going to be a UWM fan favorite, because even the opposing fans at the Bradley Center seemed to enjoy him on Saturday. How do you not love a 300+ pound guy that shoots 3-pointers and has the feat of a dancer, despite the fact that he looks more like an offensive lineman than a basketball player?

8) While UWM really pushed Marquette in the first half and should have been able to maintain that level of play, things completely changed when Marquette went on an early run to start the second half. Marquette quickly adding an extra 8-or so points onto its five point halftime lead seemed to completely take UWM out of its game. The offense ran differently, and gone was the solid first-half team that gave Marquette fits. Instead, it looked like UWM had been replaced by a haphazard team just throwing up shots. If not for the first three minutes of the second half, I suspect this would have been a much different game.

So finally, I got to see a Marquette-UWM game in person. The results were encouraging. It’s pretty clear that we’re going to see Marquette break some scoring records this year, and if UWM plays as they showed they’re capable of in the first half, they’re going to make some waves in the Horizon League and give fits to whoever they play. It still sort of embarrasses me that it took me this long to see both local teams play in person, but both acquitted themselves nicely and gave me reason to be excited for the season. Here’s looking forward to my next trip downtown...