D's Notebook

Month: January 2024 (Page 1 of 3)

High School Hoops Chronicles, S1V11

January 31, 2024 /

After 23 games over three months, Cathedral’s regular season is complete. Sectionals officially started Tuesday with CHS set to play their opening game tonight. I’ll wrap up the regular season in this post and save whatever happens in the playoffs for a separate entry(-ies).

The Irish opened their final week of the schedule traveling to neighboring Carmel. That 20 minute bus ride must have really gotten to the JV girls because they played like crap. We trailed 11–2 after the first quarter and 30–5 at halftime. Yeesh. Obviously not much went right for our girls in that first half. L scored all five of our points but she balanced that with three turnovers, two of them just brutal throw it to no one passes against the press.[1]

The Greyhounds looked like a team that actually practices offense as a JV team. Their girls cut and screened with purpose while our girls just kind of meandered around.

The second half was a little better. We out-scored the other CHS 21–18. I can’t say we did anything super great. Well, one thing went well: L got pissed off and decided to drive the ball. She was nearly perfect shooting in the second half, connecting on four of five shots and making two free throws. She finished with 15 points – a new career high – playing all 28 minutes, going 6–9 from the field and a perfect 3–3 from the line, adding a rebound, a steal, and five total turnovers. Carmel has a scoreboard that shows the points and fouls for every player on the court. It was pretty cool to see her with the game’s highest scoring total. Since I’m an idiot I didn’t get a picture of it before they wiped it out for the varsity game.

Her two long jumpers – both in the first half – were bad misses so I wouldn’t say she’s suddenly fixed her shot, but it was great to see her cleanly swish all three free throws.

Our good friends Mr. and Mrs. Coach H came to watch L play, which was nice of them and fun to briefly catch up.

The loss snapped a five-game winning streak for the JV Irish.

The varsity game was strange. Both teams were patient on offense creating lots of long, slow possessions. The game was tied 4-all after the first quarter, the Greyhounds up 15–11 at the half, then by ten at the end of the third quarter. It was old school, deliberate basketball. The lead was still ten as we moved into the final minute when our 6’1” senior center hit her first 3 of the year. Moments later she hit another one. Those two 3s and an exchange of free throws cut the final margin to a much more respectable four points. We never had the ball with a chance to tie or go ahead, but it was nice to see the girls keep playing until the final whistle on a frustrating night.

Thursday night we closed out the regular season against Columbus East. We had heard both their JV and varsity teams were bad, so settled in for what we hoped were two easy wins.

Jinx!

We jumped out 8–2 in the JV game. L was giving their guards fits, grabbing two steals and forcing three other turnovers in the first seven minutes.

Then CE switched to a zone and proceeded to ruin the game. Our girls had no idea what to do. The game was tied at 11 at halftime, we trailed by three going into the fourth quarter, and fell behind by seven a few minutes later. The dads that sit together were grumbling about playing zone in a JV game, but the biggest factor was CE kept hitting timely 3s where our girls weren’t even looking to take open shots.[2]

Something flipped, though, and we hit a couple threes, and closed the quarter on a big run to force overtime.

Great, overtime in a JV game, just what everyone in the gym wanted. Especially on senior night when the varsity game will already be delayed for festivities celebrating the seniors.

We got the lead early in OT and hung on despite missing about 100 free throws to win 39–37. Aside from that defensive flurry early, L didn’t do much. She shot just 1–4 from the field and 1–3 from the line to finish with three points, an assist, two steals, and two turnovers. A bit of a bummer end to her season after playing so well against Carmel. The JV team finished the season 11–12.

On to varsity, where we were missing a starter due to illness. With the JV game being so close and their starters having to play the entire game – L subbed out briefly once – that meant each of the dual-rostered players only had one quarter left to play. Fortunately the varsity six held their own and we only had to sub in girls for brief spells. L gave the starting point guard two different one-minute breaks but didn’t tick any scorebook boxes. Varsity won 40–26 to finish the year at 12–11. Oh, the CE varsity played zone just a handful of possessions, which annoyed our dad group even more.

The lead-up to sectionals has been dicey. The girl who was sick last week remained sick into this week, although she was back at practice Tuesday. Our best inside player got the flu and missed Monday’s practice. Who knows if either/both of them will be at full strength tonight. We’ll need them.

The first opponent is #9 Lawrence North. They are 17–5 on the season against the toughest schedule in the state. They’ve lost to the #1 team twice by a combined five points. Last year they fell to the eventual state champions in the semi-state championship game.

In the local paper’s breakdown of our sectional, the writer just assumed that LN will win and pushed them into the semis against that #1 squad without even mentioning they had to play CHS first. Our coach did not like that and let our girls know about it. I would love if that lit a fire under them and they came out and played the games of their lives to pull the upset. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I’m not going to spend much energy considering it. I’ve watched them play 23 times and they’ve yet to stay close to a good team. Who knows, maybe LN is dealing with illness and that levels the playing field a little. We are the sectional hosts; perhaps home court will mean something.

I’ll let you know what happens tomorrow.

  1. In her defense I think she expected teammates to cut to those spots, but she made bad passes regardless.  ↩
  2. Unwritten rule of high school basketball: you should never play zone in JV unless your varsity plays it often. And, yes, I know, unwritten rules are dumb. But so are zone defenses.  ↩

Belated Weekend Notes

January 30, 2024 /

I’m still battling a cold. It’s one of those shitty ones that isn’t crazy bad during the day, more annoying than debilitating. But at night between the coughing and sneezing and body aches manages to keep me from sleeping. Each of the last two nights I’ve given up and gone into M’s room to toss and turn so I don’t keep S awake with my nonsense. She did the same thing last week when she had the same cold. Remind me to wash M’s sheets before her next visit home so she doesn’t have to sleep in her parents’ dried snot.

Jayhawk Talk

Another week, another road loss. And another one that KU had every opportunity to win. Other than Johnny Furphy, they shot poorly from outside. They missed some layups and blew some opportunities on the break. They had some huge turnovers in important spots. Yet they scored 75 points on 45% shooting on the road against a top five defense, so I’m not sure you can criticize the offense too much.

Once again a team shot out of their minds against the Kansas defense. Iowa State hit their most 3 pointers in a Big 12 game in five years. Coincidentally it was the most 3 pointers KU has given up in a conference game in five years.

Is that flukey/unsustainable or a flaw in the system? After the game Bill Self said they wanted to sag off certain shooters, specifically Tre King who had only hit three 3s all year. Naturally he went 4–7.

I put this loss directly on Self, and not just because of his defensive choices. He decided to go for a 2-for–1 opportunity late in the first half when KU led by one. KU’s offense had been struggling so I don’t know why you decide to suddenly speed things up to force a shot, just so you can maybe get two shots. Dajuan Harris went entirely too fast, turned the ball over, which became a run-out for Iowa State and resulted in a flagrant foul on Parker Braun after a review. For some reason Self decided to argue the point and got hit with a technical. Fortunately ISU only hit 2–4 free throws, but then hit a 3 to end the half and went into the locker room up four. It felt like that 3 opened up the floodgates for the Cyclones in the second half, when they countered every KU run with a big 3. The 3 wasn’t Self’s fault, but getting the T in that moment was dumb (mostly because the flagrant foul call was 100% correct) and he was lucky the deficit wasn’t six. Coaches preach knowing time and score to their players. It felt like Self needed to look at the scoreboard before he got that T.

While the details kind of hid it, I think this game clearly showed how it is the defensive side that is holding the Jayhawks back. Self’s system has always been to take away drives rather than 3s. He’s had to lean on that more this year partially because of Hunter Dickinson’s immobility inside. I also think KU’s three best defenders – Kevin McCullar, Dajuan Harris, and KJ Adams – all play solid D, but they don’t make the other team feel them. Watch KU’s defense then watch a Houston game and you’ll see a dramatic difference. KU gets to spots and tries to force passes. All five Houston players get in their man’s jersey and don’t stop until there’s a whistle. It is a grinding, exhausting experience to play against Houston. Against KU I think teams always know if they move the ball enough, there will be a lapse that leads to an open shot. Because of that, they play with confidence rather than fear.

I think some of that is related to KU’s short bench. The five starters can’t play at 100% intensity on defense because they rarely come out of the game and need to save something for the other end.

With Furphy’s rapid ascension into the team’s best shooter, that fixes some of the offensive issues this team has. Elmarko Jackson, Nic Timberlake, and Braun might better serve the team by figuring out how to guard people than score the ball. Jackson specifically had a rough time Saturday, getting lost on that ISU 3 right before halftime then getting beat and fouling his man on a backdoor cut when KU was making a run late.

Seven games into the conference season the Jayhawks sit at 4–3. I don’t think it’s time to panic. I do think, though, that the team is going to regret not taking advantage of this part of the schedule. After tonight’s game against Oklahoma State, there are no easy ones left. KU might play significantly better in the back half of the schedule and still drop 3–4 games.

BTW, I forgot how much I hate unbalanced schedules. I know this is a weird year where the conference transitioned from 10 teams to 14 before going to 16 next year. It does not feel right that KU and Iowa State won’t play again in Lawrence.

NFL Conference Championship Games

I didn’t get to see much of the Chiefs-Ravens game, but I guess those of us who doubted the Chiefs should have known better. A dominant defensive performance while the offense did just enough to win on the road. I should have known that a team that lost to the Colts on their home field wasn’t good enough to win the AFC championship game on the same field.

I watched almost all of the Lions-Niners game, which was a wild, exhilarating experience. A huge first run by the Lions put them on the verge of their first ever Super Bowl, only to end in an epic collapse.

In the moment I was pretty critical of Dan Campbell’s decisions to go for it on fourth down in the second half. But knowing that was their MO all year and their kicker’s numbers fall in the shaky zone where I’m not sure you totally trust him in the playoffs, I’m more comfortable with them after the fact.

Besides, the Lions dropped passes and flukey-as-hell Brandon Aiyuk reception that bounced off the Lions’ defender’s face mask were bigger factors in the loss.

The anti-analytics folks love to make those choices THE factors when a team loses a winnable game. In this case you can’t bitch about Campbell’s calls without acknowledging the Niners benefited from one of the craziest plays in NFL playoff history, and Lions receivers dropped three balls that were in their hands and would have extended drives. Change one or two of those plays and it doesn’t matter whether the Lions still go for it and fail or miss field goals.

I’m not all-in on analytics. I think they need to be applied within the context of each game rather than be viewed as definitive guides. And I will generally a trust a coach like Campbell, who has a clear philosophy on their use and is consistent in their application.

Sucks for the Lions, though. They are young and can get better, but you just never know how long these windows will be open.

Which, flipping this back to the first game, makes Baltimore’s loss even worse. They had home field, a dominant defense, an offense that was as good as it has been in the Lamar Jackson era and couldn’t get it done. All in a year when the Chiefs were, relatively speaking, down. When Joe Burrow was injured. You expect the Chiefs to be back in the mix for home field next year, Burrow to be healthy, maybe the Bills will finally plug their holes, and Houston has a ton of money to build around CJ Stroud with. This might have been the Ravens best chance at a Super Bowl in the Jackson era.

Early thoughts on the Super Bowl? They’ve made it this far so I can’t doubt the Chiefs.

I guess anyone who watched football on Fox this year has to have an opinion about the seeming inevitable bumping of Greg Olsen from the #1 analyst spot for Tom Brady next season.

I’m in line with main-line opinion that Olsen is terrific and it’s a real bummer that he will lose his spot because Fox owes Brady so much money. Unlike some folks, I still enjoy Tony Romo, although he can be a little much. I described Olsen as similar to Romo except where Romo sometimes comes off as overly impressed with himself or excited to show how smart he is, Olsen seems excited to share his knowledge. Romo can grate because he is a lot to deal with. Olsen is a joy to listen to break down the games.

Maybe Tom Brady is going to be awesome. There is some evidence that if he relaxes and is willing to be critical, he could be a good addition. It’s just a bummer that Olsen was basically a place holder and will no longer get to do the biggest games. Hopefully he lands in a spot where we get to hear him each week.

Reader’s Notebook, 1/29/24

January 29, 2024 /

I have started 2024 on a huge reading run; I finished my seventh book of the year early this morning. It helps that I’ve been sick the past couple days and unable to sleep, so I’ve stayed up deep into the night knocking out the final book in this list.

Said illness and lack of sleep will also push my sports notes entry to Tuesday this week.

Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel
I read, and loved, Mandel’s Station Eleven nearly nine years ago. Then I watched, and also loved, the seres based on it exactly two years ago.

When her next novel arrived, it came with great critical praise, and it immediately went on my reading list. However, since I knew it was about time travel and spanned hundreds of years, I assumed it would be sprawling and I kept putting it off. So I was very surprised when I finally added it to my Kindle and was able to knock it out in a single day. I was dumb for putting it off so long.

Mandel’s story indeed jumps from the early 1900s to the 2400s, with several stops between. She doesn’t linger in any age too long which is one of the novel’s true strengths. Despite the 500-year span the story feels tight and intimate. She wrote it during the worst days of the Covid 19 pandemic, and you can feel the anxiety and fear of those months in her words.

That said, did it all work? I’m not sure. Time travel stories always require some suspension of belief. Even allowing for that, there were some pretty big holes in Mandel’s plotting. The resolution is a bit of a letdown as it felt too easy. If I were a bigger fan of sci-fi/speculative fiction, I might be even more disappointed in how it all worked out. Since I am not, the quality Mandel’s words helped smooth some of the story’s flaws.


Kennedy 35 – Charles Cumming
Book three in Cumming’s Box 88 series. Where the first two flipped back and forth between the past and current times, this one kept those two halves largely separate. It began a year after the Rwandan genocide ended, when young agent Lachlan Kite is tasked with assisting a Box 88 team as they attempt to capture one of the key figured behind the genocide. Their operation goes awry and 25 years later Kite sets out to bring the figures who survived that mission to justice.

Meets the standard Cumming set in the first two editions, with the added bonus of this being a little tighter of a novel.


The Breakaway – Jennifer Weiner
I doubt I would have read this under normal circumstances. Weiner, as much as she hates the term, gets shoved into the Chick Lit genre. And this book is certainly built around a romance that, at times, seems crafted so it could be transferred effortlessly from the page to the screen. She throws in just enough Big Issues, though, that this can appeal to non-Chick Lit readers. That’s probably why it showed up on so many Best Of lists and got my attention.

Abby is a struggling 30-something that can’t quite get her life on track. While on a bachelorette party in New York, she hooks up with a guy and has an unforgettable night with him. She sneaks out the next morning without saying goodbye, fearing that he would not be interested in her in the light of day and sober, and returns to her life in Philadelphia.

Two years later she is leading a bicycle trip from New York City to Buffalo when who should show up in her group than Mr One Night, Sebastian! What were the odds?!?! Guess who else shows up? Her mom, who she has a tense relationship with. Naturally Abby and Sebastian have some moments along the trip. Which leads to moments of conflict and romance.

There’s a lot more going on in the story and it’s more fun to discover it for yourself. As I said, Weiner attacks some large issues. Body image and societal expectations of women. Relationships between mothers and daughters. Internet fame/infamy. The different tolerances for how men and woman behave sexually. Oh, and this is a good one, teenage pregnancy and abortion! Good times.

I shouldn’t be so cheeky. This was a good enough story to stick with it even for someone like me who doesn’t usually read stuff like this.

It also got me thinking about what the male equivalent of Chick Lit is. Westerns? Mysteries? Pulpy fiction with violence and sex? The espionage novels I read far too many of? I don’t think there is a true equivalent but that’s probably something best left for a separate post.


The Seventh Girl – Andy Maslen
Finally, another book I would not have normally read. From time to time Amazon offers free Kindle books to Prime users. I’ve explored these in the past and they often end up sucking. Something about this book’s description struck me, though, so I grabbed it.

It is a pretty standard detective mystery, set in southern England. Detective Kat Ballantyne is obsessed with a serial killer who had plagued her city ten years earlier without being caught. His final victim was her best friend, and she’s been haunted by ditching her on the night of her murder.

When a new series of deaths that mimic the previous series begins, Ballantyne is assigned as head investigator. What follows is a harrowing series of weeks as she attempts to put the few clues they have together while new bodies are discovered with increasing frequency. Along the way her family life gets complicated (of course), she faces obstacles within her detective unit, and discovers something new and shocking about her best friend’s death.

I don’t know if it’s the deepest mystery I’ve ever read, but it kept me turning virtual pages.

Friday Playlist

January 26, 2024 /

“Train Full of Gasoline” – Ducks Ltd.
Not sure it’s possible to write a catchier song about an ecological disaster than these guys have done. Believe it or not, this band is not Australian. They are from Toronto. I bet they listened to a lot of Aussie pop, though.

“So Nice” – Finnoguns Wake
This band, however, is Australian.

“Shadow of a Doubt” – SPRINTS
I really like this group, but in small amounts. I tried to listen to their new album and it was a bit overwhelming.

“Lunar Eclipse” – The Vaccines
Way back when this year began, our local NBC affiliate ran a promo highlighting all the big things they would be covering in the coming year. The NBA All Star game. The Indy 500. The Olympics. The Colts. And so on. They also threw in a few seconds about April’s solar eclipse, which I found so very Local News. “Hey! The sun is going to disappear for four minutes! No one will cover those four minutes like us!”

“The Train From Kansas City” – The Shangri-Las
Mary Weiss, lead singer of the Shangri-Las, died this week at 75. Most folks will remember the band, which had a huge influence on American punk and new wave acts, for their biggest hit, “Leader of the Pack,” which hit #1 in 1964. I’m kind of partial to this lesser-known track.

“True Trans Soul Rebel” – Against Me!
This week also marked the 10th anniversary of the release of Against Me!’s magnificent Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Laura Jane Grace made some great music before this album, and has made some great music since it. This, though, has to be her artistic peak so far.

“New Moon On Monday” – Duran Duran
In just its third week in the Hot 100, this track cracked the Top 40 at #37 this week in 1984. It is also DD’s best song. By far. Light your torch and wave it.

Wednesday Notes

January 24, 2024 /

NFL

Because of basketball (KU and CHS) and some other activities, I didn’t get to see much of the four playoff games last weekend. San Francisco is very lucky to advance, and does not seem like the same team that ran roughshod through their opponents during stretches of the regular season. Jordan Love’s final pass for Green Bay might have been the worst choice/throw in a big moment in a long time.

Good for Detroit for advancing again. A damn shame the NFC title game won’t be at Ford Field. That scene would have been wild.

I’ve written many times that no team, player, coach, or fanbase deserves success because they’ve had years of bad luck and tough breaks. That’s not how sports work. You can play hard, follow the rules, be a good teammate, etc and sometimes the other team is just better and/or luckier.

But, man, Buffalo losing because their kicker pushed a field goal wide right seemed like an especially cruel ending to their game. That wasn’t the real reason the Bills lost – they lost because of a couple bad throws, a terrible drop, and their defense wilting – but it was the final gut punch you kind of knew was coming.

Of course I, like about a million other people, said even if the Bills made that kick, the Chiefs still would have found a way to win, either in regulation or overtime. As cruel as having to watch a postseason game end on a kick sailing wide-right again, maybe it was better than losing at the final gun, or in overtime.

Poor Buffalo.

Pacers

Hey, the Pacers made a trade! And it was a big one, grabbing Pascal Siakam from Toronto for a bench player and three first round picks. At first glance three picks seemed like a lot for a player on an expiring contract. Those picks – two this year, the third in two years – will likely be in the 20s, though, so the Pacers likely aren’t giving up franchise-changing draft opportunities. And most NBA insiders suggest that Siakam is open to re-signing with the Pacers this summer.

It’s tough to gauge the trade since Tyrese Haliburton has only played one, injury-affected game with Siakam so far. While he isn’t perfect, and isn’t playing quite as well as he did three years ago, Siakam is a terrific match for what the Pacers do on offense, and a big upgrade on the defensive end.

It’s tough to get top tier players to come to Indiana. In the last three winters they have traded for Haliburton and Siakam. That’s pretty good.

Even after that trade the Pacers remain in good position to make another move, should the right opportunity arise. Or just play out this season, re-sign Siakam, and tweak the roster over the summer to make a real run next season.

Now Haliburton just needs to get healthy again.

Media

A rough week for people who write for a living.

First, Pitchfork got absorbed into the GQ brand. No one is sure what that means short term, but long term you have to think it signals the end of one of the most important music journalism outlets of the internet era. I’ve always been more of a Stereogum fan, but I’ve read plenty of pieces on Pitchfork over the years.

The next day it was announced that all of Sports Illustrated’s staff had been laid off. SI has been a joke for a long time, and hasn’t covered itself in glory recently. People of my generation longed for it to return to its prime, when it was a vital element of being a fully-informed fan of sports. That was never going to happen. With the NFL exploring buying into ESPN, and the NBA and MLB likely to do so soon after, SI could have carved out a new niche as an alternative to ESPN’s online presence, a home for sports journalism that was free of constraints put in place by one league or another. Instead the private equity ghouls that run it chose to strip it to the bone and let it fade into obscurity.

Finally, the Los Angeles Times laid off a large chunk of its workforce, including some great sports writers with national reputations. The Times seemed like one of the last big papers that would be able to thrive in the current climate. Once again, ownership is more interested in squeezing profit from the paper than viewing it as a public necessity.

As a former member of the media this is just more very sad news. There are fewer and fewer independent media outlets that create original and interesting content. Major media outlets are focused on conflict and who is winning/losing. Local media often seems more like advertising than informative news. AI is going to dramatically change news in the next decade.

I never had great illusions about being able to match the money I made in the corporate world as a journalist, not that that was all that much. As the avenues to make a reasonable wage writing dry up and more and more experienced journalists get thrown out of their traditional jobs, I don’t think there is any chance I could ever get back into the semi- or fully employed writing game.

Which I guess means more blogging, so good for my loyal readers I guess?

Jayhawk Talk: Here’s Johnny!

January 23, 2024 /

Fans can be overly dramatic about tiny moments in a long season, both good and bad. Keep that in mind when I tell you that Johnny Furphy has saved KU’s season.

He certainly saved the game Monday against Cincinnati, the only KU player who seemed to be locked in and engaged for every minute he was on the court. He had a career-high 23 points on 7–8 shooting, grabbed 11 rebounds (also a career high), kept several other balls alive until teammates could grab them, and hit the biggest shot of the night, a 3 as the shot clock expired to put KU up 10 with about four minutes to play in what ended up as a five-point win.

Crazy that a kid I doubt any KU fan knew about and wasn’t on anyone’s recruiting radar for the current season until late in July has become exactly the piece the Bill Self was looking for to fill the gaping hole in his lineup.

Furphy is a freshman, so there will be regression as defenses focus on him. He can get bullied on the defensive end because of his slight build. He’s not going to continue to average 17 & 8. However, the threat he presents can open up space for his teammates and he is long enough that he can still be disruptive on defense and on the boards even when physically overmatched.

Despite Johnny’s emergence, this team remains maddening.

Monday both Hunter Dickinson and Kevin McCullar seemed to be laboring with their mysterious “knee issues.” It didn’t help that for the first time this year Dickinson was in foul trouble. KJ Adams also seemed off. Since it is January, I wondered if those three were all sick, as their energy levels seemed lower than normal. More likely it’s just that they are asked to play 35+ minutes a night and are already getting worn down with seven weeks of Big 12 basketball in front of them.

Sigh.

The most concerning performance of the night, though, was Dajuan Harris’. He missed two wide-open layups. Three of his turnovers were brain-dead mistakes, throwing the ball directly to a UC player. Plus he forgot to catch a pass from Furphy that hit him in the hands. Dajuan has always been polarizing simply because there are nights where his shit doesn’t work, generally against more physical opponents. Yet there are also games when he punishes bigger, faster, stronger players. You would think by year five of a player’s career those lows wouldn’t be as low, even if we’ve accepted his highs can only be so high. He’s been in a bit of a funk all year.

Self defends Harris, saying that sometimes when you are trying a little harder to share the ball, you are also going to turn it over more. I don’t buy that. Harris was always hyper efficient. He might have Meh games, but rarely was he guilty of the unforced errors he’s been routinely making this year.

I don’t have an explanation, and thus no solution. He needs to get his shit together, since this team has a very narrow margin of error each night. A steady, boring point guard will be just fine.

Monday’s game was entirely too close. Cincinnati did not play well – mostly a function of KU’s defense – but the Jayhawks could not shake them. If you take away all those unforced errors by Harris, and 80%+ free throw shooter McCullar missing four freebies, the final margin is much more comfortable. There aren’t many opportunities for comfy wins in the Big 12, and Monday seemed like a chance to get one. Instead it went to the final minutes with the result still in doubt.

Self, and this team, need to find a way to manage the stretches when all five starters are not on the court. They’ve been starting games well, only to fall apart when a couple starters check out 5–6 minutes into the first half. After the game Self preached that depth is overrated in March, which is very true. But you have to get to March in a good place to maximize the opportunity for your starters to rip off wins. Right now I’m not super confident KU is going to win any Big 12 road games, and several of the home games frighten me. No matter how good the starting five is, or how much the Big 12’s strength helps KU’s analytical rankings, going in as a 3–4–5 seed means the path to the second and third weekends of the tournament is incredibly difficult no matter how talented the starting five is.

M and I didn’t have any contact before or during the game Monday. I wasn’t happy enough with the result to reach out after the game. She did text me about 10 minutes later, saying she heard someone on her floor yell “What the fuck is a Jayhawk, anyway?”

Naturally I replied with a very patronizing explanation of how Jayhawkers were anti-slavery forces dedicated to keeping Kansas a Free State and saving America. Then we started exchanging GIFs, me sending ones of Big Jay and Baby Jay, she sending me ones of the Bearcat. She is a big fan of the Bearcat.

Good times.

I was only able to watch the first half of Saturday’s game against West Virginia, a loss that seemed really bad in the moment but that I think will be respectable when the season ends. West Virginia had won just six games going into that contest, which seemed shitty. What people don’t factor in, or the Mountaineers’ BPI rating reflects, is that they got multiple starters eligible less than a month ago and are still missing one starter because of injury.

Don’t get me wrong, KU should have won that game. They scored 85 points and had just seven turnovers in a road game. 95% of the time that means a W. For some reason a 30% shooting team hit everything they threw up in the first half, often when well guarded, and carried that confidence over to the second half when they refused to fade even when the 3’s stopped dropping. Apparently there were a few maddening missed shots, defensive closeouts, and horrible missed block-outs that were huge factors in KU’s loss. I’m glad I didn’t see those, I might not have slept.

As I said, though, West Virginia has almost all their expected starters in the lineup now. They’ve beaten KU and Texas in consecutive weeks. RaeQuan Battle is going to score 35 on someone. You can’t say anything with certainty in this Big 12 schedule. I would bet that not many teams are going into Morgantown and winning, though. Which will make KU’s loss seem less bad and more of a missed opportunity.

I missed the second half of that game because of L’s games. I believe I’ve shared before that there is another KU dad on her squad, although he was a graduate and law student there.[1] S loves watching this dad and I during games because we see the game in very similar ways. He usually sits a few rows in front of us and will get agitated about something – sometimes a call/no call, other times something one of our girls does – and start looking around for support. Eventually he’ll find me and I’ll say, “I saw it too, C!” and he gets this relieved look on his face, like “I’m not crazy, right?” Then S laughs.

Anyway, Saturday CHS started as KU was wrapping up. We both had our phones balanced on our knees while we watched our daughters. Each dead ball we’d check the KU score then look at each other and shake our heads or pump our fists.

The funniest part, though, came at halftime of the CHS game. He came up to sit by me and we broke the KU game down. Keep in mind, we didn’t see any of the second half. But based on what ESPN, Twitter, and text messages told us, we were still analyzing how it went. I thought about that later and laughed at us.

It is much easier to take these losses when you don’t see them. Maybe instead of clearing the family calendar in March for the last 19 years, I should have made sure we had things scheduled when KU played. My blood pressure might be a lot lower.

Also Saturday, M called me right when the KU-WVU game got to the under–4:00 timeout in the first half. I paused the ESPN app on my TV and talked to her for about 20 minutes so she could tell me all about going to the UC game earlier. When we finished talking, I hit play on my remote. Instead of picking up at the moment I had paused it, the app skipped to live TV, which was in the middle of halftime.

What the fuck?

I needed to eat something before we left so I paused it just to test if I had done something wrong. I ate my sandwich then pressed play. Again the feed jumped to live action, this time as play had just begun in the second half.

I don’t know if this is an Amazon issue – we use a FireStick on this TV – or an ESPN issue. Whoever designed this function, though, obviously has no idea how pausing a live program is supposed to work. Truly maddening.

Finally, this is Jayhawk related, so I’ll throw it in as well.

  1. His daughter is also a freshman and is probably the most physically gifted player on the team. She has moments where she makes jaw-dropping plays. She falls onto the spectrum, though, and really struggles with the mental part of the game. She can be totally unaware of what is going on at times. She makes maddening decisions with the ball or forget who she is guarding and will get subbed out. Fortunately she’s a super sweet girl and once she relaxed and opened up, her teammates fell in love with her.  ↩

High School Hoops Chronicles, S1V10

January 22, 2024 /

As we had a pretty quiet weekend and KU plays tonight, I’m going to flip my normal routine and cover high school hoops today.

Two more games last week – both wins for JV and varsity – but L was a little off.

In Tuesday’s practice she rolled her troublesome ankle when she landed on a teammate’s foot. She complained about it when I picked her up, but later in the evening and Wednesday morning seemed to be walking normally so I didn’t put too much worry into it.

After their game Wednesday the trainer told us that L was still experiencing pain, and that she had switched L from the brace she normally wears into a heavy wrap. She said they would do some rehab in practice the next two days but she wasn’t super worried about it.

Then Friday after practice the trainer texted me saying L’s pain hadn’t decreased but she also wasn’t seeing any evidence of a serious sprain. She added for Saturday’s games she would tape the ankle.

She didn’t seem slow or tentative to me in games, although she complained after each about how bad she played. She was on the court all but 15 seconds of the JV game Wednesday so it wasn’t forcing her to the bench.

In that Wednesday game we faced Avon, a west-side school whose varsity team was rated slightly higher than ours in the computer rankings. Their JV team was almost all sophomores and juniors, and that showed. They were tougher and smarter than us. AHS held a lead most of the game, but couldn’t stretch the lead beyond a basket or two.

This was a triple-header night, so the freshman teams were playing at the same time as JV in the upstairs gym. Our JV also had a girl who was out sick and began with only seven players on the bench. That became problematic when one of our starters hit the ground hard and had to come out with a head injury.[1] At halftime two girls came running down from the freshman game to join JV. This was an important development.[2]

Late in the fourth quarter we finally grabbed the lead, taking it on two free throws by one of the girls who came down from the freshman game. We were up three with about six seconds left when we let AHS’ one shooter get wide open. She swished a 3 to tie the game. We called time out and the JV coach lit into our girls, “What happened last week? What did we talk about all week?” referring to varsity not covering the shooter in City tournament championship game.

I admit, I actually started laughing, because I said the same thing as the ball dropped through the net. “Only girl that has hit a 3 the entire game and no one is within 10 feet of her?!?!” Like a lot of JV teams, we tend to get confused about who is guarding who, especially on breaks.

The girls shook it off, though. After the time out we ran a great inbounds play. That same girl who hit the free throws moments earlier took off long, grabbed a perfect pass, and laid the ball in to give us the lead. AHS couldn’t get a shot off before the final buzzer and we won by two.

L was 3–9 (0–2) for six points with 2 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 turnovers.

Later she dressed but did not play in the varsity game, which was also a two-point Irish win.

Saturday was another triple header night, this time against the school our varsity coach attended back in the day. We would not normally play them – they are from up near Ft. Wayne – but she added them to the schedule last year so she could take the team to her hometown every other year. The HN varsity was ranked two spots ahead of us in the computer rankings. Neither game was close.

The JV game started with us up 11–1 after the first quarter. The girls held HNHS to a single field goal until late in the fourth quarter. The Vikings did shoot like 80% from the line, though. The dad I sit by and I were joking they should just drive and try to get fouled since that seemed to be the only way they could score. The Irish won 37–14. I believe ten of those 14 points were free throws.

L was 2–4 (0–1) for four points, with 2 rebounds, 2 steals, and 2 turnovers in three quarters. I swear she hasn’t hit a shot from outside five feet in a month.

Varsity won by 26. We led comfortably the entire game but couldn’t put it away until the final minutes, so L and the other swing players only got in for the final minute.

Varsity is now 11–10. After five straight wins, JV is 10–11. The regular season wraps up with games Tuesday and Thursday.

L spent almost all of Sunday at CHS. The team helped out with a CYO jamboree for most of the afternoon, then stuck around to watch the state tournament brackets come out.

I’m pleased to report that the Indiana high school pairings show is even more maddening than how CBS doles out the NCAA bracket every March.

The show started with the hosts talking about absolute nonsense for a good two minutes before they broke for commercials. Then they interviewed the state athletic commissioner for about five minutes. Making this segment more infuriating was that his microphone wasn’t working properly so you could barely hear whatever he was saying. After each commercial break they showed pictures of teams watching around the state. One of the hosts, who is an older gentleman, commented on how comfortable some of the furniture teams were sitting in looked, or how nice some of the coaches’ houses were.

I was not a fan of how this was all playing out.

When it was finally time for them to unveil the 60-some sectional brackets, they started in class 1A and worked their way up to 4A, where CHS plays. Rather than just rip through them, they analyzed each bracket as they revealed it. There were commercial breaks in the middle of each class segment, and they brought in an assistant state commissioner for an interview between classes 2A and 3A.

The show started at 5:00. We finally saw Cathedral’s bracket at 6:40. At least I could keep one eye on football during all of this.

As a reminder, Indiana high school sports do not seed their playoff brackets, so they are always dumb. In Cathedral’s sectional, the #5 and #6 teams in the entire state should meet in the semifinals. Unfortunately CHS has to play the #6 team in the quarters. Meanwhile the #335 team in the state gets an opening round bye.

If common sense prevailed and the computer ratings were used to make the bracket, #65 CHS would be playing #51 North Central with the winner moving on to play #6, while #5 would be working through the opposite half of the sectional.

Despite how much Indiana politicians love to talk about common sense, it is clearly lacking amongst Hoosiers, at least when it comes to high school sports.

  1. It ended up being this girl’s second concussion of the year. L claims she’s had at least six total concussions. The poor girl’s career may be over and she’s talking about being a manager next year.  ↩

  2. Our freshman team is undefeated and were up big in their game. Those two girls were straight JV players Saturday.  ↩

Friday Playlist

January 19, 2024 /

“Blue Tuesday” – Francis of Delirium
Spotify has been spitting a lot of FoD tracks at me lately. I’ve yet to hear one I did not like. I don’t think I realized, when I’ve shared songs from them in the past, that they are based in Luxembourg. That might be a new pin on our musical map.

“Mother Mary” – Late Bloomer
The first song of 2024 that has grabbed me and won’t let go. Also an entry in the Country or Not bucket. Two birds, one stone!

“Terrible News” – Middle Kids
We’ve now heard five songs from the next MK album. All are good to very good. Makes me a little nervous if anything is left to delight me on album release day next month.

“Coping” – LAYMAN
Can you tell these kid are from Australia?

“This Is Not America” – David Bowie, Pat Matheny
I watched the 1985 flick The Falcon and The Snowman last week. Pretty good. The movie was a bit of a box office dud, and this, the de facto theme, barely cracked the Top 40. Not sure that’s the impact the creators behind each were going for.

“USA” – The Orwells
‘Merica. Also mentions Kansas prominently and I just read a retelling of an Orwell story. I had to play this. Props to my people who have made it out of Kansas.

“Listen, The Snow Is Falling” – Galaxie 500 covering Yoko Ono
I don’t get many chances to play this these days, but it is snowing this morning. Not a lot, but enough that I’m going to drive the girls to school.

“Jump” – Van Halen
As promised, most videos this year will be from 1984. This song debuted on the Billboard Top 40 in only its second week in the Hot 100 the week of January 21. It would eventually spend five weeks at number one. Not Van Halen’s best song, but certainly their biggest. It took a few weeks but in late February I was scrounging together my allowance money to buy the 1984 album, which opened a whole new world to me.

Reader’s Notebook, 1/18/24

January 18, 2024 /


Julia – Sandra Newman
My first book of the year was a real uplifter!

Officially sanctioned by the estate of George Orwell, it is labeled as a re-telling of his classic 1984. Newman flips the script, and instead of focusing on Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith, she uses Smith’s lover, Julia, to explore Oceania.

It’s been a decade or so since I last re-read 1984. As I processed Julia I wished I had done another review of the original just to better compare the books. Julia stands up on its own, but I think having a fresher memory of Orwell’s work would have helped me compare and contrast.

Many critics have called Julia a feminist re-telling of Orwell’s story. I didn’t get those vibes. Julia the character certainly wasn’t a pushover, and found ways to subvert Big Brother’s society and express her individualism. But to earn her path to what she hopes will be freedom, she does the bidding of men in power, including a form of sexual slavery. I guess she’s making her own decisions, but being forced to sleep with people to incriminate them doesn’t seem very feminist to me.

Newman does expand the story, giving Julia a chance to escape the inner workings of London and learn that big changes are coming to a power structure that has been in place for fifty years. As she sees the old order begin to crumble she learns that the new boss may not be that different from the old boss.


Democracy Awakening – Heather Cox Richardson
I’ve avoided books like this is recent years. While they speak to my political point of view, they also end up frustrating and angering me. Which isn’t good for my mental health.

Still, this book was recommended by many people/sources that I respect so I gave it a shot.

Guess what? It frustrated and angered me.

It traces all the worst impulses of the modern Republican Party to subvert democracy back to their earliest days. Believe it or not, some of their tactics go back to before the Civil War. They’ve just been updated and adjusted for modern needs. And, of course, switched parties, since it was the Southern Democrats of the 19th century who asserted that society should be hierarchical with power concentrated amongst the elite and that government power was best left to the states. All hallmarks of the current political right.

I keep saying it and I truly believe it: the next 12 months are going to be an awful time for our country. Our democratic institutions are teetering and one side of our political divide is highly invested in pushing them to tipping point rather than finding ways to repair them. I should have known that this book would just piss me off more rather than help me find hope that our situation can be salvaged.


When The Game Was War – Rich Cohen
A very clear change in subject matter and tone here. It is fun look at the 1987–88 NBA season and the four teams/stars that defined the season.

The Lakers, led by Magic Johnson, were about to win their fifth title of the decade, completing a back-to-back campaign coach Pat Riley had guaranteed. The Boston Celtics, featuring Larry Bird, were beginning their slow slide to mediocrity. The Detroit Pistons and Isiah Thomas were on the ascent, pushing the Lakers to the brink (they probably should have won the title that year if not for a key call and a horribly-timed injury to Thomas) before winning their own back-to-back titles. Finally, Michael Jordan was gaining competent teammates like Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, setting up the Bulls to become the team of the 90s.

Cohen uses a single game for each franchise in the regular season to explore how they reached their ’87–88 state. Then he dives deep into the playoffs and Finals. The book closes with the obligatory update on where each franchise and player went after 1988.

I found the book a bit light, both in content and tone. He argues that this is the greatest season in NBA history both because of the status of those four franchises, but also because of the massive collection of Hall of Fame talent present across the league. These discussions are hard to decide definitively, and nothing about his work undermines his assertion.

As a Chicago native, Cohen does a lot to rehabilitate the image of fellow Chicagoan Thomas. He argues effectively that Zeke’s prickly relationships with Jordan and Johnson, many failures in coaching/management, and a general dislike of the Bad Boys era Pistons have led people to ignore what a singular player he was. I’m on board with this. When you look at his numbers, his biggest performances, how he molded his game to fit his teammates’ strengths and weaknesses, and remember he wasn’t close to six feet tall, it is a little ridiculous that so many of us who saw him play have pushed him out of the conversation for greatest player of his time. He wasn’t as good as either of the MJs. But he wasn’t too far behind. I still hate the dude, but I’ll give him his roses.

One big quibble I have is that Cohen ignored the All-Star Weekend in Chicago, which was a major part of Jordan becoming THE star in the league.

Not the most in-depth NBA book I’ve read. It was still a good way to spend a couple days revisiting some sports memories.

Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 96

January 17, 2024 /

Chart Week: January 5, 1985
Song: “Centipede” – Rebbie Jackson
Chart Position: #24, 14th week on the chart. This was its peak.

This is at least the third entry in the RFTS series that is as much about the massive cultural impact of Michael Jackson as the highlighted song or artist.[1] This time we will see how Michael helped pull the least known of his siblings into the spotlight.

By 1984, eight of the nine surviving children of Joe and Katherine Jackson had achieved some measure of stardom. The boys had all been in The Jackson 5/The Jacksons, ruling the charts in the early Seventies. Jermaine had split off to build a solid solo career. Tito would become a key part of a famous Eddie Murphy bit. LaToya tried hard to make a name for herself as a singer, but was better known as tabloid fodder. Janet, the youngest, had a budding acting career and a couple albums to her name, with much more soon to come. Michael was the biggest musical star in the world.

The only outlier was the eldest child, 34-year-old Rebbie. Although she had appeared on The Jacksons’ variety show and served as a studio backup singer in the late Seventies, she was content to be a wife and mother rather than follow her siblings’ show business leads.

Once her daughters had all started school, Rebbie finally took the plunge, releasing her debut album in late 1984. Five of her brothers helped her record it. Marlon, Randy, Tito, and Jackie all helped write and produce several cuts.

It was the title track, though, that got the biggest assist.

Michael wrote, arranged, produced, and joined The Weather Girls on background vocals for “Centipede.” It was the obvious lead single and only Top 40 hit from the Centipede album.

It has always blown my mind that this was a Michael song. It sounds way closer to music Prince was making at the time than anything from MJ’s catalog. Or, rather, it sounded like a record Prince would write and produce for another artist.[2] “Centipede” is in the ballpark of what Prince-controlled groups like Vanity 6 were releasing in the mid-Eighties. Just as with Vanity (Or Apollonia. Or Sheena Easton. Or Sheila E. Or…), the slinky sexuality embedded in “Centipede” hides the fact that Rebbie did not have off-the-charts vocal talent.

Rebbie wasn’t parading around in lingerie like Prince’s many female protégés, and Michael’s lyrics weren’t nearly as overt as Prince’s. Still, there’s no mistaking that “Centipede” is about sex.

The percussion seems more of Paisley Park than the Quincy Jones camp. They might be different drum machines than Prince’s beloved Linn LM–1, but their staccato sharpness recalls his preferred sound.

The pre-chorus – “In the quiet of the night…” – is all Michael, though. It sounds straight off of Thriller, especially with the soft horns in the background.

I also have to give attention to those brittle keyboard runs throughout the song. Maybe it’s just me, but I think of Toto’s “Africa” every time I hear them.

If you dive into the lyrics they are truly baffling. There is a snake, which is clearly a phallic reference. I guess the titular arthropod is supposed to represent female sexuality? Which seems like an odd choice. Especially when Rebbie sings, “Like a centipede you’ve got, a lot of lovin’ to touch.” That comes across as pretty phallic to me. And I don’t get why the person Rebbie is singing about is going to be crying so many tears after a visit from the snake and/or centipede. Are tears of joy? Is something very wrong going on in this relationship? Some of the other lyrics are so clumsy that they seem written by a person with no actual sexual experience. I keep thinking of Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Insert your own Michael Jackson joke here.

Michael dedicated “Centipede” to his “mannequin friends,” which doesn’t make the lyrics any clearer, but might help the listener understand why they are so odd.

The video is a delightful mess. There’s an animatronic snake. A fluorescent centipede. And a tiger.[3] Where the fuck does the tiger come from??? None of the visuals clear up any of the bizarre lyrics.

I’ve always thought that “Centipede” was a bit of a jam. It does still sound cool. Rebbie could have done far worse than this for her one mainstream hit. It was an interesting writing exercise for Michael, both in penning lyrics for someone else and taking a different approach from his previous songs. I don’t know whether he intentionally followed Prince’s sound or it was an accident, something that was in the air when he was writing. Once you get that connection in your head, you can’t shake it, and the record suffers for it. 6/10

  1. One and two.  ↩
  2. Rebbie also covered Prince’s “I Feel For You” on Centipede. Chaka Khan’s version, which hit #1, was released as a single a week before the Centipede album hit record stores.  ↩
  3. The same tiger from the “Billie Jean” video?  ↩
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