College Hoops

I’ll save most of my thoughts for a post later in the week. It is always a bit of a relief when we reach this point in the season and have a few days off.

November and December are usually a mix of big games and ones that KU should win easily. I’m always left wanting more from that part of the schedule, as the Jayhawks often have week-long gaps between games.

The Big 12 schedule wears me down. I don’t know if it is just getting older and it’s harder for me to stay up for a late start and then have my normal struggles to come down afterward, or it’s still some remaining DNA from my youth when the Big 8 only played on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but two months of Saturday-Monday/Tuesday turnarounds make me feel like I’m playing and not watching. I want more time to savor those Saturday wins, or recover from the losses.

So when we hit conference tournament week and everyone takes a few days off, it is a nice break before the real stress of March kicks in.

Naturally in a few weeks I’ll be missing basketball. Such is life as a sports fan.


Kid Hoops

L’s winter league team wrapped up their season Sunday. They were supposed to play a semifinal Thursday and would have likely lost. But that team was unavailable for the weekend’s championship, so they forfeited.

Which left us playing a team that beat us by 41 three weeks ago. Fun.

The championship game got moved to Sunday morning. We were the only game in the building, which was weird. It gave our girls an opportunity to go through a real warmup instead of the three minutes of rushed layup lines on normal game day. I think that pregame shooting paid off.

We lost by 8 but played tough the entire game. We had the lead until just before halftime, dug a 12-point hole in the second half, and trimmed that down to four late.

It helped us that they were missing one good player and another girl who sucks but is super physical and fouls all the time and scares our girls.

Also L played her ass off.

She had a season-high 16 points, a couple assists, more rebounds than she’s had all season, and a couple steals. Those points didn’t come from just getting to the rim. She hit one 3, another just inside the arc, and two baseline jumpers.

Several of her teammates played their best games of the year as well. It wasn’t enough, but it sure was better than getting embarrassed.

We went straight from there to a meeting for her travel team. The program director brought in all the 7th–8th grade teams to talk about organization-wide goals, show them some sets they want all teams to run, and then watch the high level high school teams go through a workout. Not sure they got much out of it, but L was happy to see most of her teammates again. They begin practice next week with their first tournament the weekend of the 18th.


HS Hoops

Both Cathedral sectional games were on TV, and we watched each of them. Friday they played their typical sloppy ball and nearly blew an 11-point lead in the last 90 seconds, but held on to win by 4.

Then Saturday they took on one of the two Indiana teams they lost to during the regular season, a 10-point loss in the City championship game in January.

The Irish were ready for revenge. They jumped out to a 14–2 lead before play was stopped for 45 minutes because of a rim malfunction. After play resumed they didn’t lose any of their momentum and led by 25 at half, gave ten of that back early in the third, then went on a 16–0 run and cruised to a 43 point win. FORTY-THREE!!! Crazily it was the school’s first back-to-back sectional titles in 25 years.

They advance to regionals where they will face the other Indiana team that beat them this year: undefeated, #1 Ben Davis. BD beat them by 12 in December. Revenge game #2? If Cathedral takes care of the ball they can beat anyone. But they love to throw it/kick it/hand it away.


More Faux Spring

It was nearly 80 one day last week. It’s been in the low 60s several other days. We had heavy, spring-like rains Friday. A cold snap is coming, but it’s been nice to pretend it is spring for a few days.

We got all our spring garden trimmings done Saturday. Some years I’m all bundled up and taking regular breaks to get those knocked out. This year I was sweating.


An Old Friend

For the first time in several years, I found Boulevard’s Irish Ale at a local liquor store. It bums me out that Boulevard has scaled back their national distribution and eliminated a couple of my favorite beers in recent years. I wondered if it would take a trip back to KC this time of year to ever drink Irish Ale, my very favorite BLVD beer, again.

But I found two six packs and bought them both. I’m going to run back to that store later and see if they got any more that I can nab before it disappears for the season.