Picks
Hardest year ever to make picks. Because of the parity that college basketball has seen this year? No, because I don’t have a feel for any of these teams. Usually, right or wrong, I can look at the brackets and have a feel for each team. I like this team’s style, dislike that one’s. I think that team is peaking,…
Brackets
If you think I have some thoughts, you thought right. I think. Let’s just get this out of the way: someone at Duke called in some serious favors. It’s one thing if they had earned the top overall seed to be rewarded like that. But there were reasonable voices who said, on Sunday, that Duke was not deserving of a…
Local Hoops Update
A quick update on local basketball. First off, EHS fell one game short of taking their first regional title in 59 years. They won their Saturday morning contest in overtime,* their third straight one-point win, but dropped the championship game by 12 points. Still, a great year for a school that hadn’t had a winning record in ten years. They…
Dear Diary
Periodically we buy the girls spiral notebooks to use however they see fit. Most of the time they turn into sources for paper when they want to draw and color. But, as M. learns to read and write, hers has taken on a new use: her first diary. While she was insistent at first that we were not to read…
Reporter’s Notebook, The Perfect Game
In recent weeks I’ve covered the state swimming and diving finals, a sectional gymnastics meet,* and a few hoops game here and there. Saturday night, though, I may have covered the perfect game. Save this one for lunch or a coffee break; it will take a while to get through. (Awful. I forgot from last year how tedious gymnastics meets…
Reader’s Notebook, February 2010
28 days, three books. Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman – Jon Krakauer. Most of you should know Tillman’s story: an NFL player looking at a lucrative, long-term contract turned his back on professional football and joined the Army Rangers in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. After he died in combat in Afghanistan, he…
Vexing
”Just got back from Kansas-Okla. This KU team fascinates me. I cannot tell yet if they’re good, great or legendary.” That Tweet from Joe Posnanski on Monday night perfectly sums up how I feel about this year’s Jayhawks. The only team in the nation in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency, yet most observers believe they’re capable…
Fun With Spam
One of the hazards of blogging is comment spam. If you’re not careful, your blog can be overrun with crap comments aimed at getting your readers to click on links for things that are, at best, poor marketing schemes or, at worst, nefarious in nature. Fortunately WordPress has some pretty stout anti-spam tools. About once a week I go in…
Miracles
I made it out of L’s room just in time to see the last 11 minutes or so of the US – Canada hockey game Sunday night. That was something else. I think I’m glad I didn’t see the whole thing, because I might have been awake all night after a game that exciting.* (If you missed it, the Americans knocked…
A Few Reporter’s Notebook Extras
It’s been a busy week. I covered games last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and then another on Tuesday night. I already wrote about. Thursday was an uninspiring boys game. Friday, another girls sectional game, this time featuring much maligned EHS, the school that almost never wins.* (At least when I’m around.) Before Friday, three of the six girls teams from…