Tag: basketball

Basketball Jones

/ Derek Mueller / 5 Comments

It’s almost time to fill out your 2009 NCAA bracket, Buster. Now
1–2–3–4–5-6!
years running, the EWM Yahoo! NCAA men’s basketball tournament pick’em welcomes
all who dare to pick against the the savviest basketball futurologists in blogland. Do you tremble at the thought? Then sign up! At no cost to you, join
this year’s group on Yahoo!,

Emarchinal Picktelligence (ID#35873).  If you have questions, dish me a
behind-the-back email: dmueller at earthwidemoth.com. Invite your friends.
Invite your arch-nemeses. The group holds the next forty-nine who sign up.
What’s at stake is more valuable than money: hoops ethos.


Yahoo! Tournament Pick’em
Group: Emarchinal Picktelligence (ID# 35873)
Password: ewm
Firm up your picks after the selection show on Sunday, March 15. The latest you
can sign up is five minutes before the round of 64 tips off on Thursday, March
19.

Reason #7

/ Derek Mueller

Local sports columnist Bud Poliquin shared his “20 Reasons Syracuse Will Make The Sweet 16” in yesterday’s Post-Standard. I’d already picked the Orange to win their first couple of games in this year’s tournament: no surprise, then, that I was nodding along with Poliquin’s twenty reasons.

I paused on No. 7, however:

7.It’s been 1,825 days since SU has won an NCAA Tournament game, which was on March 20, 2004. Or before anybody heard of Hannah Montana, before Alex Rodriguez played a single regular-season contest for the New York Yankees, before that airplane on “Lost” crashed in the South Pacific. That’s a long time.

A long time, indeed. In fact, it’s exactly five years ago, and it’s just about the time (within a couple of weeks, anyway) I committed to SU for a doctoral program of study, just about the time I said “Yes” to Syracuse. A long, long time. Long. Time.

Of course, the latest developments on Lost throw a wrench into this; that Jack et al. are now on the island in 1977 tinkers with time-space decorum ever so slightly, but, alas, it does not change the fact that the Orange have gone 0-for-the-NCAAs since I moved to town.

That will change later today, right?

Hunches

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments

The tournament
pool is up to a record 20 participants. Over the past five years,
participation has gone from 7 to 7 to 11 to 17 to 18. Now 20. It’s still
your option to

fill out a bracket through noon tomorrow.

I have listened to the ESPN gurus tell me who they like: #13 Cleveland State
over #4 Wake Forest, #13 Mississippi State over #4 Washington, #11 Utah
State over #6 Marquette. Surprises, upsets, these. In years past, I
let this chatter seep into my thinking about who to pick. Wake Forest was
awful late in the season; Washington…the only thing I know about Washington is
that they wear purple and yellow; and Marquette is down a senior guard. In other
words, these are upset picks that seem reasonable to me, which means they’ll
probably be wrong.

So, I look for other unexpected teams to advance to the Sweet Sixteen because
1.) I have not noticed them and 2.) I am not picking them in my bracket: #10 USC,
#14 American, #11 Temple. These teams are invisible to me. Are they in the
tournament? Seems so. Thus, even though I have not picked them, I have come to
expect that one such team will arrive in the Sweet Sixteen. Why not
American?

I have eight first-round upset picks and two second-round upset picks. My
hunch is that it would be cowardly to have fewer and reckless to have more.

Trade

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments

Allen Iverson’s a Piston for the season. Huh.

How about that? And Detroit plays Larry Brown’s Bobcats tonight.

I’m not sure whether this puts Detroit in a position to re-take Boston as the East’s elite team. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll give the Pistons some new kick, new spark. But it also gives them a encouraging degree of free agency flexibility next summer if the Iverson-for-Billups/McDyess trade doesn’t pay off in the short term. At the very least, it’s a reason to pay closer attention to the Pistons at a time of year when the Lions are no longer watchable.

Notch for Orange, Notch for the Belt of Verbs

/ Derek Mueller / 1 Comment

Syracuse’s home win over the Hoyas earlier today inspired thoughts of a
verb to add to the belt:

The Orange clowned No. 8 Georgetown, 77-70, in front of a
season-high 31,327
fans at the Carrier Dome.

Clown as verb: to subject to ridicule, to cause another to appear silly, etc.
Unlike evidence and discourse (as verbs), it is improbable that I will ever sneak clown or
clowned into the academic prose.

Nevertheless, in celebration of the upset, go on, add it to your belt of
verbs.

Previously on B.
O.
V.

Garnett Trade

/ Derek Mueller

I won’t lie and tell you I’ve been paying full-on attention to the
after-trade conversations following Kevin Garnett’s hop from Minnesota to
Boston. I’m usually indifferent to the Celtics, but whatever can be said about
the trade, suddenly Boston seems interesting to me. By picking up two
stars from mediocre Western Conference teams in Garnett and Ray Allen, Boston is
back–a contender in what seems to me an opened-up Eastern Conference. The
Pistons have weathered any off-season unraveling (which I expected, to be honest, after the way they tanked against the Cavs). The Bulls are deep with
talent. Cleveland, Toronto, and even New Jersey will likely return to the
playoffs. But Boston? If they realize any chemistry
whatsoever, Boston will be a legitimate contender next season. Tally this
insight in the obvious column.

I mention it because it involves a team for which I have no affinity.
Boston could have floundered for another season, could have remained in a
status quo holding pattern. They didn’t. And I’m drawn to the
shake-up, pulled in by the new set of what-ifs and off-season speculation, the
confusion, the swap-a-roster, a shuffle followed by who’s where?
Who will surprise? Who will be terrible? I enjoy these off-season
questions more than I enjoy the NBA regular season.

Brink

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments

I don’t think Antonio McDyess’ ejection was the determining factor in last
night’s Pistons-Cavs game. It was unfortunate, I thought, that the refs
elected for flagrant two when flagrant one was more appropriate given that 1.)
Andy Veryshow wasn’t injured on the play, 2.) it looked like bad timing on
McDyess’ part more than a deliberate clothes-line, and 3.) McDyess is one of the
classiest (i.e., modest, sporting) players in the league. But you know I’m
a fan of the Pistons, and my affections spill into this stance, no doubt.

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Wreckreation

/ Derek Mueller

I dragged my feet (a dragging not only of reluctance, but of aging joints,
stiffness, soreness), and then I succumbed to pressures to join a recreational
basketball team for the next ten weeks. It’s been
almost a year
since the strange pinch that blossomed into weeks and weeks of appointments,
scans, and eventually a cortisone injection late last spring. I really don’t
know whether the cartilage ulceration will, yet again, ulcerate, but I also
think of this as a last chance to play hoops. If not now, when?

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Coach: Blinky’s In Foul Trouble

/ Derek Mueller

Via

Info Aesthetics, a
basketball
telejersey that doubles as wearable information display: patches light up
according to "fouls, score, and time clock." Although I’m mildly skeptical about
the widespread uptake and implementation, to the idea I can only shake my head
and say wow (i.e., holy mackerel). Something like this would be
especially useful for youth levels of basketball where the emphasis is on
development. When I was coaching the Stampede teams in KC a few years ago,
it was common for us to invent scenarios where two players have four fouls or
where one player on the other practice squad was lighting us up (I know, quite the marvel of coaching ingenuity, yeah?). The information-rich readouts on
a jersey add yet another dimension to this, making it possible, I suppose, to
complicate the number of variables introduced in any practice scenario.

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