LouisEly

BAAHHH!!! I was just going to say how about Geoffrion coming out of the box and jumping on one for a breakaway. Couldn't put it away though.

That was a weak boarding call on Geoffrion. Just like someone feared - they are dominating the shot stat but only up by one.

I can't be the first person to say, "Who???"

From the Bill Simmons article: Bucks GM John Hammond has made three great moves in the past year: the Salmons trade, gambling on Brandon Jennings at No. 10 in the NBA draft and signing Delfino for nothing this past summer. (Not only does Delfino fill up the stat sheet, play both swing spots and give you solid D, but he also has a giant tattoo of a lizard on his left shoulder that looks cool in HD. There's a lot to like.) Meanwhile, Joe Dumars ran the Pistons into the ground in the 18 months after Hammond bolted Detroit for Milwaukee. Were the two events related? Hmmmmmm. Yeah, I think the Salmons trade, drafting Jennings, and the Delfino signing make up for the dud that was Joe Alexander instead of Brook Lopez.

Tis a sad, sad day in the LouisEly house. When you look at the numbers they aren't spectacular, but they are not bad in any way. His first four years were solid, and despite a mediocre second go-around in Huntsville the numbers lie a little - he got off to a rough start, perhaps hiding an injury, but the second half of the year I believe his ERA was around 2.50 and finished with an impressive performance in the World Cup. For his career he gave up fewer hits than innings pitched; not an easy feat when you log over 500 career innings. Take a look at Welch's career stats and compare them to Mike Jones - you'd be surprised how similar they are. I'm guessing it was a numbers game. The needed as close to major league replacement-level depth as they could get at AAA and had too much talent at AA, thus no room at the Inn. Thanks for the jersey, David. Although you didn't get to appear on TV for the Brewers with a jersey on, I proudly did it for you. LouisEly

don't worry about offensive rebounds and get back on defense. That's exactly the opposite of what Cornell did - Cornell sent their guards back but had their forwards crash the offensive boards. Didn't help that the refs seemed to have a problem making the over-the-back call, but perhaps Cornell knew that UW didn't run the fast break so they decided to take the chance and went for the offensive rebounds, and it paid off. A case could certainly be made that the swing offense often doesn't put the forwards in a position to be able to get offensive rebounds. Even if they had done a better job of keeping them off of the offensive boards, when a team shoots that well it is very, very difficult to beat them. It was like watching Davidson all over again.

If you are extremely cautious about what websites you visit and what you click on and download you may be able to get by with AVG free. If you download a lot of stuff, particularly from peer-to-peer networks, or are a generally curious person who clicks on a lot of links or opens everything that gets sent to your email ("hey, check this out..."), or if you have a lot of valuable stuff on your computer, I highly recommend paying for one. Any one. You can get a bunch of them free after rebate with purchase of tax software (what I do every year) - I went with AVG this year. As for "free" antivirus... like many things in life, unless you really know what you're doing you usually get what you pay for.

As for UW next year, I know that "everyone" (meaning the media, not myself) thought they wouldn't be very good this year. But I knew they had a decent trio of guards and Leuer was coming into his own. Next year they will definitely be worse because they will have zero depth at guard. Sure Jordan Taylor is as good as Hughes, but who else will they have? Rob Wilson isn't a good enough shooter at this point to be a real good shooting guard. Jarmusz? Don't know that he's quick enough to play guard, or defend guards. Evans? Same - I think he'll be a really good player, but really a forward, not a good enough outside shot to be a true guard. Gasser? Don't know that you can count on much from a true freshman. Certainly, if Jordan Taylor goes down next year you can pretty much kiss the NCAA tourney goodbye. Funny thing is that Marquette will be the exact opposite - plenty of good guards, not enough height. Gonna get killed on the boards again. I think they have a better shot than UW next year if Otule/Mbao can get healthy/better.

Cornell season averages: FG% - 48.6%, 3-PT FG% - 43.4%. Sunday - 61.1%, 53.3%. When a team shoots that much better than their season averages it is very difficult for anyone to beat them. For reference, when they lost at Penn they shot 43.4% and 34.5% (almost exactly the same when they lost at Kansas). The only chance the Badgers had, which Kentucky has a good chance of doing, was a full-court press to take advantage of better athletes, but UW has neither the athletes nor the depth to do that. As for letting them do that... well, easier said than done. I know what I would do, but it wouldn't win me any friends in the college coaches or ethics circles. When a team is shooting as well as that they are very comfortable; the way to change that is to make them uncomfortable. The first thing that comes to my mind? Hard fouls, particularly on the arm/hand of the hot shooter. A couple of good smacks on that hand to make him feel it. Put their butt on the floor once or twice when they came around those screens. Aside from the physical pain of it, it will get in their head when they shoot - "Am I going to get whacked again?" Like I said, won't win you any friends in the ethics department. But it's about winning. Perhaps the best non-physical way I've seen any coach make another team uncomfortable and get in their head was by Kevin O'Neill when he coached Marquette and they played Kentucky in the tournament, I think in 1993. Kentucky was known for their 3-point shooting, so what did O'Neill do? He put in a 1-3-1 zone, and who did he put at the top of the 3-point circle? All 7'1" of Jim McIllvaine. Kentucky's 3-point shooters suddenly had to think about a 7-footer with a 7-foot wingspan coming at them when they were shooting. Don't know if he blocked that many, but it made them think about it and alter their shot and thus they missed a lot. Then they had Damon Key swinging his big rear end down low to the tune of about 15 boards (still remember Clark Kellogg's call - "Damon Key, eatin' up glass, buffet-style on the boards!"). Don't know if UW could pull that off (or if Ryan would be willing to make that change).

Marquette with a very favorable draw as a 6 seed drawing Washington, possibly one of the last teams in the tourney from a weak Pac-10, and then potentially New Mexico. I'm not afraid of New Mexico; they beat Cal, who I think is overrated, and Dayton but lost at Oral Roberts and lost twice to San Diego State (a good team themselves). New Mexico is not a big team either - tallest player is 6'8" - so this is a really good draw for Marquette. Don't think it could have been any better.

Division winners automatically get 1-3. 4th is the best they can do.

He didn't have a good OBP, he doesn't deserve to be in the hall.

Anyone want to go in on a billboard of that somewhere near AT&T Park?

It ends too late for seeding purposes but not for who is in/out. Look at the ACC tourney - if the Big 10 had a team like Indiana make it to the championship game then if that team lost they would definitely be out. It could easily be, "If Minnesota wins they are the 12 seed in this bracket, if Minnesota loses then it will be Team X as the 12 seed in that bracket."

Hey, how 'bout that guard play by UW today! I wouldn't at all mind if Marquette lost today too. They have a short bench and that would be a lot of minutes for them. They're in, and could use another day of rest.

Congrats on a great career Nomar. Drinks are on me at Petros. See you at the bar.

He routinely shows plus range & a plus arm Not to hijack this thread, but you are right - Gamel does have plus range and a plus arm. He also has a minus glove and minus accuracy with his arm. I saw it when he was up last year. Can he change those two things? Maybe, maybe not; he's still relatively young, but I'm assuming he has been playing baseball for at least 15 years and after playing that much baseball for that long and still doesn't have an accurate arm or good hand/eye coordination with the glove I'm not sure that he ever will. I'm certainly willing to give him the opportunity to change that, however right now I think that is best done at AAA.

The dream scenario would be for New Mexico to somehow choke in their conference tourney and the Badgers make it to the Big 10 Championship game, which would probably cause the two to swap places. I agree that I'd take that bracket in a heartbeat but they would match up with Syracuse in the Elite 8, whereas I would prefer to be on the other side of the bracket from them. Syracuse runs a similar zone defense as Northwestern only with much better and more athletic players; I think that would be a really bad matchup for UW.

Well, Gonzaga beat UW pretty handily on a neutral court so you can argue that they should be seeded higher than UW. Then again, Gonzaga got absolutely destroyed by Duke on a neutral court (lost by 35) whereas UW beat Duke at home. That victory over Duke is starting to look better and better for UW.

I know people who know Zito personally. Let's just say a former college teammate of his, as well as people who work for a service that he is a customer of. They said that when Zito logs on to his laptop it plays a message that says something like, "You are the greatest pitcher of all time." No joke. Asked whether his post-homer theatrics were worth absorbing the impact of Zito's pitch, Fielder said, "Hell yeah. Shoot, that was something with me and my teammates. It had nothing to do with [the Giants]. You're damn right it was worth it." Mark A., back up the Brinks truck. I have a new favorite Brewer.

Salmons with 32 points, 8 boards, 4 assists in the loss. Looking like quite the trade so far. Almost won three in a row on the road with a loss in OT at Atlanta. I think they are peaking very nicely now.

Another nail-biter for Marquette, winning in OT after a bad foul on a 3-point shot gave Seton Hall a 4-point play and then a 3-point shot that went in-and-out for Hall. As they say, any road win is a good win and now with 10 Big East wins they have a very good shot at getting in. Now 5-4 on the road in the Big East.

Point made Peavey, however that was only two years removed from Knight's departure, so the juniors and seniors (and possibly sophomores) were Knight's recruits.

Crean did make a mistage going there. To paraphrase him from his press conference after he was hired, sorry Tom, but Indiana is not Indiana. Indiana was Bob Knight. It hasn't been anything since he left, and I doubt it ever will be. They play in a glorified high school gym in a small town in the middle of nowhere. If you're a recruit and you go to Indiana, and then go see the facilities in Madison or the Breslin Center in Michigan State, you're not going to go to Indiana. Yes, Crean has brought in some recruits, but two of his big recruits from 2008 are already gone - Nick Williams (whom he stole from Marquette) and Malik Story - and his 2010 class wasn't that impressive (only two schollies available though). I have a friend who is from Michigan, and he says the same thing about Michigan. One of the reasons Michigan State has been kicking UM's behind for 15 years is because of the Breslin Center. Michigan, as my friend says, plays in a barn. Granted, Izzo is a very good coach, but if you went to the Breslin Center, the Kohl Center, or even the Bradley Center (playing in an NBA arena), you'll be a lot more impressed by those venues than Assembly Hall or the Crisler Arena. The sell for Purdue is that you're close to Chicago. There's a reason that Indiana hasn't hosted a NCAA tournament game since 1981.

With that said, Buzz has done a great job this year. He's winning in the Big East with no size, and getting scoring out of guys like Acker and Cubillan. Unless Otule gets healthy Mbao gets better, he's going to have to do that again next year. Five schollies available and no one over 6'6" brought in. Hayward will be gone next year, and Butler and Fulce will be seniors. That does not bode well for the future. I know they didn't anticipate Maymon leaving, but I'd rather hold that scholarship for a year than give it to another 6'4" guard. Seton Hall will be tough. They have some beef down low - Pope is averaging 11 boards a game. But they are a two-man team - stop Hazell and keep Pope off the boards and they can be beat.