heresrobin

Pretty excited for the Wisconsin and Marquette games tomorrow. The Golden Eagles really need a win right about now. Kenpom has Wisconsin and Marquette both winning, 67-66 and 69-67 respectively. Opening lines for Wisconsin had them as 7.5 underdogs, but that has since dropped to about 6, so a lot of people out there with some faith in the Badgers. Marquette at home is currently a 2.5 favorite over Georgtown.

Yeah, Marquette's losses to Florida St. and West Virginia have been tough to swallow. Winning those 2 games would have gone a long way toward helping their tournament resume. They play so hard too - I hate to see them lose those types of games. Just thinking out loud here too, but does anyone think that if Jon Leuer continues at his current pace, that he becomes a candidate to leave early after his Junior year? He's really stepped it up this year and has become a better player pretty much across the board. It's so nice to see him being more assertive.

For what it's worth, the initial lines I'm seeing in Vegas has Duke favored by 3 for tomorrow night's matchup at the Kohl Center.

jhart05, is Tone Boyle hurt right now? What is his status for the season? The only reason I ask is that I vaguely remember reading something that he could miss some time, but I could easily be mistaken.

I am excited to see what kind of numbers Hayward and Butler are going to put up for Marquette. They have some experience in the backcourt with Acker and Cubillan, but both of them are pretty small and don't shoot well. I like the trio of Hughes/Bohannan/Leuer as well. But as some alluded to already, I'm worried about the rebounding/toughness void left by the departed Landry/Krabbenhoft. Somebody really needs to step up. Vander Blue backing out of his commitment and choosing another school I think is a bit of a blow to the Badger program. But at least he stayed in state, so I get to actively cheer for him. Marquette and WI both sort of look like Bubble teams to me that are going to be fighting to stay within the top half of their respective conferences. Plenty of room for guys to step up and exceed my expectations though.

That is one sweet album cover And That. I haven't heard the whole album, but I've been digging Passion Pit's "Little Secrets" - 93XRT here in Chicago plays this one quite a bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxL9Hod_qCY

Just saw Inglorious Basterds myself last night and I completely agree with RobertR's Hans Landa call. It's hard not to agree based off of the 1st scene in the movie alone. Great movie by the way. Also, Anton Chigurh (No Country For Old Men)

For those of you following along, did you get the sense that Dave Bush intentionally hit Sanchez?

Ray Harryhausen films.

The Ice Man is awesome. It's hard not to smile when he comes in to your section. I've even heard him yell, "The Ice Man Cometh!" a few times. Brian, I think you have to decide if you are going to include people who work at Miller Park and/or work for the Brewers. If you are, then you could include: The Ice Man Bernie and Bonnie Brewer The Barrell Man The racing sausages any of the radio/TV guys Others: The Buckethead Brigade - not technically a fan, but a group of fans, and maybe worth mentioning Bud Selig Bud Selig's mother - there is an article from when she passed away about how she never missed a game

I live and work in Chicago. On Monday I pinned my ratty; old ball and glove logo Brewers pennant up in my cubicle. It gives me small amounts of joy to point out to all my Cubs/White Sox fan co-workers that the glove is an "M" and a "B." This is typically followed by, "Wow, I never noticed that. That's so cool." TracyThom, I too can not stop watching "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." I am also inexplicably compelled to watch Galaxy Quest whenever it is on. Two movie scenes that I am embarrassed to say give me chills every time I see it: The slo-mo popcorn scene to Tears for Fears at the end of "Real Genius." Rodney Dangerfield reciting the Dylan Thomas poem in "Back to School."

JJHardy7, the streak continues: no team that has lost its first conference tourney game (like UConn this year) has ever won the championship. Impressive tourny run for Michigan St. Beating Kansas, Louisville, and UConn in consecutive games is incredible. And just absolutely knocking out Louisville and UConn about midway through the 2nd half of both games.

Michigan St. won 1 game - Minnesota North Carolina won 1 game - Virgina Tech Villanova won 1 game - Marquette Connecticut won 0 games - I believe their first and only game in the Big East tournament was that epic 6 OT loss to Syracuse

Useless observation: None of the Final 4 teams even made it to their own respective conference tournament final. (Although, if UNC had Lawson, it would have obviously been a different story) Nonetheless, that's got to be pretty rare.

Cleveland St. beats Butler to get the automatic bid. If you think that Butler is ahead of Wisconsin in the at-large discussion, then that is not good news for Wisconsin.

I was in Atlanta for work in 2007. I'll second the Stone Mountain recommendation. It was my favorite thing that I did while I was down there - quite a little workout getting to the top of that thing. CNN Tower was alright. I don't exactly remember, but I think the Aquarium was at least $35 and the place was swarming with kids. The whale shark was cool; I liked it, but I'd put a little bit further down on my list of things to see. With the Braves game that I went to, I was struck by the greeters going into the park and how friendly they were.

Penn St. 38 Illinois 33 And that's not a halftime score. The game was @ Illinois. Yuck.

And then this happened in the Wake Forest/Clemson game: http://rivals.yahoo.com/n...t-player?urn=ncaab,135081 Weird day. But a pretty amazing day for basketball yesterday. There were so many great games and matchups. I was overwhelmed. UWM won too - keeping pace for a potential 1 or 2 seed in the Horizon by beating Cleveland State. The two Milwaukee teams winning helped me forget a little bit about the Kohl Center debacle.

Odd scene in the Marquette game yesterday. Providence's Jeff Xavier leaves the game after getting his eye swollen after banging into the elbow of a Marquette player (in my opinion a good no-call, although it could have been a foul, but definitely nothing intentional or shady - just seemed like a freaky bad luck type of thing). On the same possession, Providence is lining up for a free throw and Xavier's brother casually comes on to the court to confront the ref. Nothing bad happens but you can tell that everybody is stunned and nobody really made a move to stop him until he was right in front of the ref. The video for it should be on this link: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=290172507 Anyways, nice comeback win for Marquette to go to 5-0 in the Big East. This team plays really hard. Hopefully they can sustain it and finish stong this year, because they can be a really dangerous team that can be a real pain in the butt to play.

If we are going to give Cody some love, don't we by default have to give Bobby Bramhall some love? Bramhall, a lefty, is 1.5 years younger than Cody and dominated the same league last year in Brevard County. Bramhall's strikeout rate is better and their WHIPs are the same. Although Cody had a significantly better ERA (although Bramhall had a very solid 2.51 ERA) and I'm guessing his frame projects a little bit better (he's 6'1 vs. Bramhall's 5'10). Unless there is something I just don't know about Bramhall. For the record, I had Cody slightly ahead of Bramhall, but based on numbers, shouldn't they be sort of close prospect-wise?

Check out http://www.kentuckyderby.com/2008/. It's for 2008, but if you dig around on the sight, it should answer most of your questions. I'm afraid I accidently misinformed you too. The day before the Derby (it's called the Kentucky Oaks), it is $25 to get in and have general admission access to the infield and the first level grandstands. I think my group paid less than $10 because we arrived so late (like the last 2-3 races) and they were giving discounts to people just to get them in. Going the day before also allowed me to practice my betting as it can be quite confusing initially. Also, some people who work behind the windows get a little testy if you come up there and don't know what you are doing. There will be programs at the races where you can read up on all the horses as well as how to bet - you'll have plenty of time to read these at the races. Unfortunately, I just don't know how to get seats in the grandstands for the Kentucky Derby. I think you may have to apply for seats in advance or something like that. Maybe, closer to the race, seats open up on E-bay. Either way, I have a bad feeling that my "couple hundred bucks" estimate could be a little low. Good luck and have fun. I'm glad I went. I get so wrapped up in my football/basketball/baseball fandom, that it was pretty neat for me to be exposed to something completely different, and at the same time so historic and interesting. Another note: the collectible glasses. People love these things. I'm sure you can buy them at gift stores or local supermarkets or whatnot. But just an FYI, the mint juleps come served in these collectible glasses, so it's totally up to you how many you want to "collect." They do get kind of hard to carry around after a while though.

I went with friends last year, and my friends have been going for the past 3 years. We stay with a buddy who lives close to Louisville. I'm not sure about this, but if you want to sit in the grandstands anywhere, I'm sure it's at least a couple hundred dollars. The nicer sections of the grandstands and the boxseats I would guess start at near $1,000. I can only really speak for the $40 tickets though. And those you DO NOT have to purchase in advance. If I remember correctly, the first race started at around 11-12pm. The main Kentucky Derby race (which is about the 9th or 10th race) started closer to 5pm. We arrived around 10am and had no problem getting a ticket or finding a place to sit down in the infield. As long as you show up before mid-afternoon, I'm sure you'll get a ticket. A few words on the infield. I've heard that turns 1 and 2 are more "family-orientated." The 3rd and 4th turns are generally known as the "party" corners. It's a drunken free-for-all, and is honestly quite disgusting especially if the infield grounds get at all muddy or wet. By about 4:30pm, the port-o-potties are almost unmanageable. There are plenty of betting counters however set up in tents all over the place. My advice would be to get your betting for the 7th-8th-9th etc... races done way ahead of time to avoid standing in line for 30-45 minutes. Also, unless you are near the fence, you will barely see a horse. Watching is mostly done on the Jumbotrons they have set up on the corners. I'm pretty sure that you cannot bring in alcohol. You can bring in chairs/blankets/tarps though to set up your little "station" where you are going to be setting up shop. At least until people get fall-over drunk, they respect your blanket/tarp area. As far as parking, we used the Louisville football stadium parking lot, and from there it was no more than a mile walk to the infield. Another bit of advice. If you can, go to the racing grounds the day before the Derby. There's a bunch of racing. Tickets are less than $10 to get in and you can sit anywhere you want. And you get a "lay of the land" for the next day. I really felt like I was able to soak up more of a horse racing atmosphere the day before the Derby at the grounds. Saturday was just a big party. It's become a tradition with me and my friends to go to the Derby. It's exhausting but it's fun. I can tell that the infield atmosphere is going to eventually wear on me though. Also, the whole thing with Eight Belles last year kind of put me in a funk after the races.

It's Trollkins. Thanks. That cartoon looks pretty awful - there might be a reason I forgot it.

I need help remembering a cartoon from the 1980's (probably early to mid 1980's). This one's just on the fringe of my memory so I'm sorry if the description is a little vague: Tiny troll-like people driving cars in trees. In my head, the people/trolls look almost hippy-ish. And they were very miniature, like bug-size.

Unfortunately, I don't get FSN where I live. I would be grateful to hear what some of you think of the game and how the Badgers stacked up. Great early test for Wisconsin. It's obviously going to be a tough game for the Badgers to win. UConn has very good guards and a great duo at the Power Forward and Center position. I haven't seen the Huskies play this year, but from the looks of it, they don't go very deep in the frontcourt, so maybe if they can get one or both of Thabeet and Adrien in foul trouble or if they can pull them out of the lane as much as possible, they have a chance. I'd just like to see a good game out of it though - build on the good effort against a solid San Diego team - and try to forget about the Iona game.