Category: Uncategorized (Page 7 of 362)

Weekend Notes

A weekend mostly filled with basketball, the last time I’ll say that until late next fall.


Jayhawk Talk

What an appropriate ending.

KU had a three-point lead over Arkansas Thursday with just over 3:00 remaining in the game. In the following 90 or so seconds:
AJ Storr forced a bad shot early in the shot clock, missing. This came after a time out. As usual with Storr, Bill Self threw up his hands in disgust/disappointment after the play.

After an Arkansas miss, KJ Adams grabbed the rebound, turned to head up court, and crumbled to the ground, losing the ball. After another Arkansas miss, Hunter Dickinson threw a pass literally to no one. It might be the worst pass I’ve ever seen a third team All American make. Arkansas turned it into a layup that cut the lead to one.

Then DaJuan Harris tried to enter a bounce pass to Dickinson. Two pet peeves before we get to the result. For some reason this team insisted on throwing bounce passes into Dickinson all season, despite the fact he is 7’2” and not flexible or mobile. Then, Dickinson was posted up outside the lane rather than inside the paint. Despite being a massive human being, he rarely buried people deep into the restricted area.

Anyway, Arkansas already had two defenders on Hunter, and one easily slipped around him to intercept the ball.

And that, my friends, was pretty much the game. In the final 3:00+, KU turned the ball over five times. The game was right there to win with one or two decent passes or smarter shots. Instead, it was Arkansas who made the big plays late and ended the game on a 15–5 run. They went on to upset #2 St. John’s Saturday and are now one of THE stories of the tournament.

As infuriating as that long sequence was, it was probably an apt ending for a team that was a poor match in too many ways to ever to find a comfortable center. Every player had at least one major flaw. Several of them had a whole bag of flaws. Throw them together and there was never a strength on either end of the court that they could consistently play to. While in the moment what anger I could conjure up – and I have to admit if not for those last three minutes, I would have had zero anger about this loss – was aimed mostly at Harris and Dickinson, as I’ve said before this all falls on Self.

He coached a hell of a game. Switching to a zone against a young team with suspect shooters when the Jayhawks couldn’t stay in front of the Arkansas guards and wings changed the game. I completely believe that had KU made one more bucket to get the lead to 5 or 6, they would have won. Arkansas was flailing and frustrated. Other than Adams’ turnover, which was a result of him apparently blowing out his achilles, KU’s last miscues were more on their actions than anything the defense did to force them.

Like I said a week or two back, I was ready for this season and this mini era to be over. This team never earned any strong affection from me. They were too flawed, too mercurial, too emotionally flat. I’m not going to look back on a single moment this season and think, “That was awesome,” or dig through YouTube highlights late some night.

Of course, when you get what you want, sometimes the reality that follows is scarier. KU needs a big influx of talent to put around Darryn Peterson, Elmarko Jackson, and (please, Hoops Gods, please), Flory Bidunga. You would hope that Peterson would be a huge selling point, especially for shooters who can capitalize from him driving the lane and drawing defenders. But Self and his staff are batting around .200 in the portal the past four years. They need to hit a home run this spring, finding guys who can get to the hoop, fit in with the talent already in Lawrence, and, most importantly, mesh with Self.

And, you know what? Self might need to dial it back a touch with the transfers. They are going to fuck up, they will come in with bad habits, they will chafe at being corrected. Self doesn’t need to meet them halfway, necessarily. But relaxing a little so guys can figure out where they fit in and gain confidence in the process could go a long way for them actually having a clue what to do when conference and NCAA play rolls around. Maybe roll with their mistakes in November and December so they are fully integrated in February and March.

Self was once the king of spring, always finding ways to plug holes in his roster with leftovers and cast-offs. That mojo has gotten tarnished in the portal era. He needs to rediscover it and not miss on anyone he signs in the next couple months.

There have also been rumors that at least one assistant coach will not be back next year. We all know that Self is in the final years of his career, so he’s not going to add a young dude(s). I say bring Danny Manning back for one more run, turn him loose with Bidunga all summer, and watch Flory blossom in the fall.


Swings And Misses

It was hard not to watch players who could have been Jayhawks this year perform for other teams.

Zuby Ejiofor was fantastic in St. John’s loss to Arkansas on Saturday.

KU just missed getting Liam McNeely in his first recruitment, then there were rumors that Self passed on him after he de-committed from Indiana last spring, opting to focus on transfers. His size and shooting were exactly what KU was missing.

Riley Kugel was the first commit Self got last spring, but had academic issues that kept him from getting into KU. Mississippi State accepted him, and he scored 11 in a loss to Baylor. He didn’t have a great season, but he possessed a size and athleticism that was lacking among KU’s wings.

Labaron Philon had signed with KU, but the sides mutually agreed to part last spring. He struggled in Alabama’s two tournament games, but has so much talent his name is popping up in the lottery range in some mock drafts.

KU was a finalist for Derik Queen, although with Dickinson already on campus and Bidunga already committed, odds were never high he was going to be a Jayhawk. Still, one of his last visits was to KU so there was a chance. Hard to see where minutes would have come for him and Bidunga if they were both on the same team with two seniors also in the frontcourt.

Sports are full of What Ifs, especially after disappointing seasons. And they are generally dumb because you never know, right? Maybe McNeely blows out his knee if he comes to KU, or Philon never gets off the bench and is into the portal this week. But maybe McNeely is the perfect compliment to Dickinson by pulling the defense out to the perimeter, or Kugel has moments where he can’t be guarded and creates space for Zeke Mayo as the defense tries to pinch off his drives.


General Tourney Talk

This was, for the most part, a garbage-ass first week. Especially the first couple days, most games turned into blowouts early, or had 10-point margins going into the final TV timeout with no drama in getting to the end.

Sunday rewarded viewers for sticking with it. UConn battled Florida to the closing seconds, in what was the game of the tournament for about five hours. I have zero love for UConn, but that team plays its ass off, and Florida needed everything they had to get by the Huskies.

Later Sunday evening Colorado State and Maryland took that drama to a different level. In what was a great, back-and-forth game to begin with, CSU took the lead on a 3-pointer with just under four seconds to play. Then Derik Queen banked in a runner at the buzzer to give the Terps the win. Amazing finish to an amazing game.

Colorado State, man. They’ve put guys into the NBA in recent years, have a couple high transfers playing for other teams. And they were still one of the most fun teams to watch this weekend. If Nique Clifford had any eligibility left he would be getting a big bag from a Power 5 school. I hope he gets drafted and a chance to play at the next level. That’s a good ass program.

I loved Stan Van Gundy screaming about teams who insist on throwing bounce passes to big men. Maybe Self should bring him in as a special consultant. Or should have brought him in this year.

The Sunday schedule always sucks. Three games with exclusive windows to start the day, and Duke is always in one of these games. Then five games crammed into the evening, with one always starting super late. Seems like there’s a better way to stagger games and not have them lasting until midnight Eastern.

Every March there’s a batch of commercials that drive dedicated watchers of the tournament crazy. I DON’T FUCKING UNDERSTAND WHY GEICO BROUGHT BACK THE ‘LITTLE PIGGY WHO CRIED WHEEEE ALL THE WAY HOME’ COMMERCIAL. It is one of the worst ads ever made, forcing me to either mute or switch the channel the moment it comes on. Geico has tons of clever, funny ads. Why would they bring this one back and throw it in high rotation during the NCAA tournament?

I hate pretty much every Buffalo Wild Wings ad, too. The giant, doofus buffalo pisses me off.

I do like the Justin Bateman – Will Arnett ads for State Farm.

There sure are a lot of insurance ads, aren’t there?

My brackets stink. I have 11 of the Sweet 16 but did so poorly on day one I don’t think I can get into the money even if the rest of my picks work out. I’m 22/58 in one pool, 22/46 in another. At least I’m consistent.

I vaulted into first place in my player pool, and have six of eight players remaining. That lead is tight, though, so I need my players to keep winning and racking up the points.

Sports are dumb, by the way.


Weekend Visitor

M flew back to Cincinnati, a much easier journey than her trip down, Friday evening after a good week on Anna Maria island. She drove home Saturday for her first visit home since Christmas. It was good to see her. We took her out for sushi Saturday, she requested chicken white chili Sunday. The crappy, wet, chilly weather was perfect for a final round of chili for the season. She has five weeks of classes left.

And now we have four days until we fly to Florida for our week in the sun.

NCAA Picks

I hate my picks.

That’s how I’ll sum up this year’s NCAA tournament. Which seems perfect for a college basketball season I have mostly hated.

Spoiled KU fan, I know.

As hard as I tried not to, I ended up going with all four #1 seeds to reach the Final Four. Which is an idiotic way to fill your bracket since it has happened exactly one time.[1]

Some people think Auburn is creaky and vulnerable based on their late-season lull. I see a team that was focused on one thing – winning it all – getting complacent late. Some people are screaming the “It’s March, that’s Tom Izzo time!” nonsense but I still don’t think Michigan State is Final Four good. Auburn is, frankly, more Michigan State than Michigan State is this year.

Houston has some injury issues, but if J’wan Roberts can survive this weekend, I think the Cougars roll into San Antonio.

Duke? Come on. They just blitzed the ACC tournament without Cooper Flagg in the last two games, and he’s coming back. Although the ACC kind of stunk, so we should maybe tamp the excitement down a notch or two. And they got the easiest, by far, route to the Final Four. As usual.

I really wanted to pick St. John’s out of the West. In fact at first I did. But I think Florida is the best team in the country, and as fearsome as the Johnnies are on defense, they can’t shoot, which will kill you in 2025. Seriously, a KU-SJU game Saturday could be an all-time brickfest.

I found it hard to pick upsets, too. I have BYU in the Elite 8, for some reason. I could also see them losing their opening game and blowing up my bracket.

I have Clemson and Illinois in the Sweet 16 in the Midwest, but those only require mild upsets. Otherwise my Sweet 16 is pretty chalky.

Yuck.

As for my Jayhawks, they should beat Arkansas tonight. Doesn’t mean they will, but they should. The Hogs will be missing their leading scorer and rebounder, but I believe he didn’t play in the exhibition game between these two teams, either. Freshman sensation Boogie Fland returns, but he’s missed two full months of action with a serious hand injury. He’s probably still fast enough, rust and all, to cook DaJuan Harris. But will he have the ball/finishing skills to match his performance back in October? The Hogs will be quicker on the perimeter, and have a mobile big man that can put Hunter Dickinson in bad spots.

But I think the Jayhawks will come together for two hours and dispatch the Razorbacks. KU 75, Arkansas 70.

That will bring Zuby Ejiofor and the Johnnies on Saturday. Like Arkansas, St. John will be much more athletic at every position than the Jayhawks. There is also that defense, the best in the country, which isn’t exactly an ideal opponent for a team that has clicked offensively only a handful of times across 33 games. This is not the KU team to pull the upset.

However, I did take Ejiofor in my player draft. It would somehow be appropriate if he played like ass and KU knocked off SJU.

Nah, the Hoops Gods are more about punishing my real team for whatever reason than my fantasy team. St. John’s 83, KU 70.

Florida over Houston in the championship game.


  1. That was a pretty good Final Four, with a fantastic ending.  ↩

Early NCAA Thoughts

Here we are, NCAA tournament time. The time of some of my favorite, non-family of course, moments of my life. And also some of my least favorite. I suppose that’s the good thing about KU’s relative mediocrity this year: if I genuinely have no expectations, there is only opportunity for good memories this week. I expect them to shit the bed, so anything other than that will be a pleasant surprise.

The Jayhawks didn’t do a thing in the Big 12 tournament to change how I think about them. Moments of brain-dead play, often from the most experienced players, against Colorado. Then the Arizona game was the exact opposite of when the teams played a week before in Lawrence. Instead of the Jayhawks controlling the game and the Wildcats making constant runs, even briefly taking the lead in the second half, this time it was Arizona in front and KU rallying. KU made the big plays late in Lawrence; Arizona was clutch in KC. Two pretty even teams playing two pretty even games over six days. Not that long ago this was a game that KU 100% would have won in Kansas City. This year’s team is on a different, worse, level, though.

Crazy that the Arizona game was the first time KU had worn blue in the Big 12 tournament since the 2008 championship game. And even then they only wore blue because of losing the regular season game vs Texas, and thus the tiebreaker when determining who the home team was for the regular season co-champs. This has been a truly glorious era of KU hoops, and this was just another bitter reminder of how the last two years have brought all that to a screeching stop.

As for this coming week, playing Arkansas might be the ideal draw for this team. But not for the reasons you think. The Razorbacks blew out the preseason #1 Jayhawks in an exhibition game back in October in John Calipari’s first game in Fayetteville. Hunter Dickinson didn’t play, and KU clearly didn’t run anything serious on offense. But that game pointed out flaws early, like the lack of shooting and athleticism, that were masked in early wins over Michigan State and Duke. Arkansas has their own issues between injuries and inconsistencies and perhaps some general weird vibes in the program. But losing to them, likely because the Hogs are more athletic and can exploit KU’s deficiencies, would be a perfect bookend to the year. I’m already fearing DaJuan Harris going 2–11 from 3 as Calipari happily leaves him wide open to shoot all night.

But beating them sure would be fun, and I think KU is the better team if focused. Do they have one good game in them?

Should the Jayhawks survive the Hogs another near-perfect storyline opponent likely awaits in St. John’s. I say perfect because that game will shine a bright light on the choices Self made two springs ago. He sacrificed freshmen Ernest Udeh and Zuby Ejiofor for Hunter Dickinson. I contend that was a decent gamble. He had Kevin McCullar coming back, Dickinson was an All American big, and you build around those two established players instead of two raw, rising sophomore bigs.

Udeh has struggled with inconsistency at TCU, although I contend he would have developed better had he stayed at KU.

Ejiofor, however, has been a true revelation this year. His offensive stats aren’t as good as Dickinson’s (17.6 ppg, 10.0 rpg vs 14.6/8.0) but he’s been red hot late in the season. Zuby shoots better from the field and is a better defender. He is a perfect match for Rick Pitino’s style and his teammates, where Hunter is clearly not a good match for the talent around him.[1] None of us know for sure if Hunter is a good teammate or not, but there always seems to be some cloud over the team that might lead back to him. Zuby seems like a guy everyone would love to play with.

Who knows, Hunter may dominate Zuby if the teams play on Saturday. And that may not matter as St. John’s is genuinely the better team. I’m kind of laughing at the thought of KU’s guards facing the Johnnies’ pressure. We have dinner plans Friday and I considered moving them to Saturday so I could avoid the KU game. Then again, it may be a cathartic end to this mini-run and worth my time even if it is ugly.

I’m sure there are some KU fans talking themselves into things finally clicking and the team making a run. I can’t do that. Even in this team’s best wins this season – Duke, Michigan State, Iowa State, Arizona – the team has never been fully locked in. When it doesn’t happen over four-plus months, it’s not suddenly going to happen when the tournament begins. A shame.

Please, never rank KU #1 in the preseason again.

As for the broader tournament, I’m really struggling to come up with interesting picks. It feels like the top 4–6 teams are CLEARLY the best teams in the country. I watched more of the SEC tournament last weekend than any other, and kind of fell in love with one seeds Auburn and Florida, and two seed Tennessee.[2] Those three teams are all loaded with talent and athletes and shooters and can guard. But each also has these awful lulls because they get out of control or play too fast or can’t create in the halfcourt or take ten terrible shots in a row. Then I look to try to find an upset over them and think of how bad Michigan State looked when they lost to KU in November, or how many injuries Iowa State is fighting, or how young Texas Tech is, etc.

I love Houston, but that team also seems to be lacking something that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe because they are a true program team, totally bought into their coach’s philosophies rather than loaded with obvious talent? Which probably means they’re going to race through the bracket with ease.

Naturally Duke got the easiest draw of any of the #1 seeds. Amazing how often that happens. Maybe Cooper Flagg will re-tweak his ankle this weekend and that will doom their efforts to get out of the east. I think that’s something America can get behind in this divided age.[3]

At the moment I lean towards picking all four #1 seeds, which is dumb. I feel like Florida might be the most talented roster in the country, but St. John’s is the most complete #2 seed. Naturally they are together. If KU wasn’t the #7 seed I would complain more about how the west is, by far, the stoutest region. But it doesn’t matter to us.

I’m going to sit on this a couple more days and offer my picks on Thursday.


  1. Bill Self’s fault, not his.  ↩

  2. Side note, why did ESPN used C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” so prominently in their coverage? The song is 34 years old. It was perfect for the 1991 tournament. A year which, coincidentally, Kansas and Arkansas played. But in 2025 seems weird to use it almost every commercial break.  ↩

  3. You know that you know who is pulling for Duke.  ↩

Weekend Notes

As I said Friday, last week was a very odd one around here, at least in terms of our daily schedules.

Monday was a normal day, although one third of L’s classmates were gone on their retreat. She did go in late after getting her stitches removed and new cast put on.

Tuesday had the same schedule, although this was her day to go on retreat. As it involved A LOT of walking, we excused her and she stayed home. We got in a good 30-minute, seated shooting session before the winds kicked up in the afternoon. Trying to lock that upper body form in.

Wednesday was SAT day for juniors. Seniors were excused, so C was home. Freshmen and sophomores had “unity days,” so L did dumb stuff with her classmates all day. They went in 20 minutes late and got out 75 minutes early. I guess that’s enough to count it as a full school day even if they weren’t actually in class.

Thursday? Normal day for all four grades!

Then Friday, for some reason, was the Indy St. Patrick’s Day parade.[1] Which CHS always takes the day off for so the band and several teams and student groups can march in it. Despite being a gorgeous day, C wasn’t interested in going to watch. And L wanted nothing to do with crutching around in the crowds.

Back to a normal, five-day week this week. However, after that, the next five weeks include one off for spring break and three four-day weeks. Weird times. A lot of days off when we’re paying tuition, too.

Last week was the most glorious weather week you could imagine, especially for this time of year. Every day it at least touched 70, Friday it rubbed up against 80. While it was breezy, the sun was out each day, making it feel more like late April. L spent her day home trying to get some sun. I certainly got some over the five days. Shorts and t-shirts every day.

I wrapped up the last of our late winter yard work. All the hydrangeas have been trimmed back, all the ornamental grasses cut down to the earth, any other stragglers cleaned up so the growing season can begin.

Then our first thunderstorms of the year Friday night/Saturday morning. I guess we had a severe thunderstorm warning sometime around 3:00 AM. The thunder certainly woke me up. There were even three tornadoes in southern Indiana. Then rain off-and-on Saturday and Sunday as the temperatures dropped. It actually spit snow several times yesterday.

This week will be your March typical rollercoaster. It is 26° as I type this Monday morning. It will be in the 70s tomorrow, then barely 40° on Thursday. Good times.


Kid Hoops

This weekend was the kickoff of travel ball season. There is always a huge event here in Indy that is normally spread across several venues in the suburb of Westfield. I think all the high school teams are confined to the Pacers Athletic Center, so L and I were able to go watch her team play twice as well as all of her CHS teammates, plus girls she’s played with in the past now on other teams. We spent five hours up there Saturday evening watching games. I had to tell the story of what was up with the cast on her foot at least 10 times.

Her coach let her sit on the bench during games. There are five new girls this year and it was funny to watch the ones she’s played with in the past kind of shuffle the new additions to the side so they could sit by L at the end of the bench when they came out of the game. She did a good job cheering and help coach.

Her team went 1–1 Saturday, then lost in the knockout round Sunday. It seemed like all the new girls fit in, from a basketball perspective. They all understand how to play as a team. Hopefully the coach can get them some gym time so they develop some chemistry. We’ll probably go watch them again, but I’m not going to spend $40+ every week so I can sit and watch my daughter sit on the bench in a cast. L might even go on a road trip with one of her best friends on the team and her mom.


Spring Breaker

M flew down to Florida yesterday for a week in the sun. It was quite a process to get there.

She and her friends boarded their plane on time in Cincinnati, then had to get back off a few minutes later. Airspace in Florida had basically been shut down because of a line of heavy storms moving through the state. After an hour or so they re-boarded, sat on the ground for a bit, then finally departed.

Once in the air, there was some adjustment of route but eventually they made it to Sarasota. She texted us and told us that no planes were being allowed to take off, leaving all the gates full. They were going to have to sit and wait until flights were either cleared to start taking off again, they were cancelled and planes moved from gates, or the storms passed so they could wheel out a portable jetway.

They sat for an hour until the storms fell apart and were finally able to deplane via the portable stairs. Stressful and aggravating but at least they made it. M said some friends were on a different flight that made it into Florida airspace before turning around and flying back to Cincy because there was no where to land safely. That would be awful. Not sure if those girls made it in later in the evening or are scrambling for a flight today. Looking at M’s flight route, it appears they may have been contemplating doing the same turn around, but luckily found a gap in the storms to get into Sarasota.

Hopefully the rest of her week is less stressful than the flight down.

I’ll get to college hoops tomorrow.


  1. Turned out to be a great decision, though, as it was 30–35° warmer Friday than today.  ↩

Reader’s Notebook, 3/11/25

I just read a remarkable book that demands its own post.

The Real Hoosiers – Jack McCallum
McCallum, the longtime NBA writer for Sports Illustrated, dove into the history of the Indianapolis Crispus Attucks high school basketball teams of the mid–1950s, when Oscar Robertson starred there. Famously, Attucks lost to Milan in the first game of the State Finals in 1954. Milan beat Muncie Central that night for the championship. Their tournament run inspired the movie Hoosiers.[1]

The next two seasons, Attucks lost just a single game on their way to back-to-back state championships.

McCallum begins the book exploring that famous 1954 tournament, pointing out how many elements of the movie were only loosely based on fact, and showing how the historical record has been colored both by the movie and by misperceptions based on the movie. He spoke to Bobby Plump, the Milan star who hit the game winning shot in the championship game and upon who the character Jimmy Chitwood was somewhat based. Plump is a terrific interview and has never been shy about pointing out some of the inconsistencies of both the movie and how people consider those real teams.

The title has a double meaning, though. It’s not just about correcting some of the story about 1954, showing how Attucks was as big of an underdog story as Milan in some ways and that the Tigers upheld many of the hoary principles of Hoosier basketball as well as the rural, white teams did. It is also about examining what Indiana was like in the 1950s, particularly in how African Americans were treated. I had never heard this description before, but McCallum says that Indiana was/is sometimes called the “northern-most southern state, or southern-most northern state,” because of its record of race relations. In diving into that history, McCallum shows us that the “real Hoosiers” were people who were not only reluctant to give African Americans their inalienable rights as US citizens, but even deep into the 20th Century these same “Real Hoosiers” were working hard to keep laws on the books that were insanely racist. As McCallum sadly points out, some behaviors which were common 70 years ago and seem hopelessly retrograde are becoming common again today.[2]

Attucks was built to be the only Indianapolis high school open to Black students, ending what had been integrated schools in the city. It was constructed – and still stands – on the old west side of downtown, an area sometimes called Frog City or Frog Island, that was known for its extreme poverty and lack of basic services. Until the land was cleared for a massive building project in the late 1940s, and continues to today, there were regular outbreaks of cholera and more occasional ones of malaria in this part of town. Guess what demographic group was overwhelmingly forced into this area?

As the city began to clear out Frog Island, the Black families of the area were forced to move elsewhere.[3] But Attucks was still the only high school that their kids could attend. Of course, while the city promised a bussing service for these kids, the money was never allocated for it. Oscar Robertson, for one example, had to walk 24 blocks to school each day despite there being several public schools between his family’s new home and Attucks.[4]

I had never realized this, but McCallum points out how much of the physical history of Black people in Indianapolis has been wiped away. There is no 18th and Vine area, as in Kansas City, where the historical contributions of the Black community are celebrated. Any monuments to African Americans in Indy are scattered around town, just as the people they honor were forced to scatter.

Attucks was one of the few things Black Indianapolis residents could rally around. McCallum both begins and ends the book with a long list of Attucks graduates who went on to do great things, often as the first African Americans to penetrate a particular field. And for a few years in the 1950s, thanks to being home of one of the greatest players to ever step on a court, the Flying Tigers basketball team put Attucks on the map for the entire state.

The 1955 team was the first Indianapolis school to ever win the state championship. Remember, this was in the old, single class system. It only took 44 years for the biggest city in the state to conquer the tournament, which seems crazy. It was also the first all-Black team to win a state championship anywhere in the US.

And the 1956 team was the first Indiana team to ever go undefeated.[5] Ray Crowe, the Attucks coach, was a remarkable man who taught his players both to play basketball better than anyone else and how to comport themselves in a way that wouldn’t cause the team trouble given the era they played in. This book just came out last year, but McCallum was still able to talk to a large number of players on that team, teachers and administrators at the school, and several prominent players who faced the Tigers.

He did not speak with Robertson, who declined his requests. The Big O is a complex, sometimes difficult man, and he still holds a lot of painful memories of his time at Attucks. He was far ahead of his time, a huge guard that the offense ran through but who could also defend every spot on the court and still be the best rebounder. He was LeBron James 50 years before LeBron. Oscar also was arguably the most important player in leading NBA players to gain the right to free agency and control their own careers. He did this before Curt Flood sacrificed his career to challenge Major League Baseball’s reserve clause. For some reason, despite being a much better player, Robertson doesn’t get celebrated for this the way Flood does. Perhaps it is because Robertson was so good that the NBA couldn’t blackball him, thus his career didn’t end when he stood up for players’ rights.

Robertson’s history with the city and state remains strained. He is very much like Michael Jordan in that he never forgets or forgives a slight. He has bitter memories of how Attucks was treated after they won their first championship, which he believes was much more reserved compared to how the general public had celebrated Milan a year earlier. Several of his teammates say his memories aren’t accurate of what actually happened, and the newspaper record from the time shows that some of the things Robertson complained about were based on choices made within the Attucks/Black communities, not things that were forced upon them by the racist city council or governor.

It is hard to blame him, though, given the environment and age he grew up in. Because of all of this, while his name is still held in high esteem here, it always pops up a little later than you would expect when Hoosiers talk about great, local players. Some of that is because he left the state for Cincinnati when he went to college, shunning a recruiting pitch from IU, and stayed in Cincy after retiring from the NBA. When his name does come up, though, no one forgets what a unique and dominating player he was.

McCallum’s story is equal parts delightful, illuminating, engrossing, and maddening. Despite understanding our collective history, it is still depressing and deflating to know that the pre-Civil Rights era really wasn’t that long ago. My father-in-law is two years younger than Robertson, going to high school just a couple miles from Attucks. They are both in their mid–80s, but still, are alive and can speak to that era. And in many states, including northern states like Indiana, it was deep into the 1970s before real change came about. And, of course, our issues with race in this country never really go away, and in fact are being used more-and-more to inflame parts of the population and keep us divided.

Sports don’t solve these problems. But they can give people hope, something to ignore the realities they face daily for a little while, and create a shared pride for a community. That is exactly what Crispus Attucks did for African Americans in Indianapolis in the 1950s.


  1. The tournament format back in the single days was Sectionals, Regionals (two games), Semi-State (two games), and then the State Finals (two games). This year there were 400+ schools divided into four classes. In the ‘50s, there were over 700 schools playing in a single bracket. Milan had to win nine games, three times playing day-night doubleheaders, to capture their state title. Teams now have to win six or seven, with only Semi-State being a two game day, depending on the size of their sectional and whether they get a first round bye.  ↩
  2. The Indianapolis News newspaper had a section called “News of Colored Folk” in the 1950s. Seriously.  ↩
  3. Today that area is the home of the IU-Methodist medical campus and the university complex formerly known as IUPUI.  ↩
  4. A totally different situation, obviously, but around the same time my father-in-law hitchhiked home each day from old Cathedral downtown to his Broad Ripple area, a roughly five mile trek. Drivers were willing to pick up white, Catholic kids and get them home from school safely. I doubt many of the Attucks kids had that same opportunity.  ↩
  5. South Bend Central became the second undefeated champion a year later, when they beat an Attucks team that still made the finals after Robertson’s graduation. Attucks would win another championship in 1959. In 1986 it was converted into a middle school, then given a second life as a high school beginning in 2006. The Tigers won the 3A state title in 2017. Last week they knocked off #1 Cathedral in sectionals and now have the second-best odds to win the 3A title.  ↩

Weekend Notes

I had a busy morning, so will blow through a few items from another rather laid-back weekend.


Jayhawk Talk

Saturday’s regular season finale with Arizona summed up the season for KU.

Nice start, only to fell apart when Hunter Dickinson went to the bench. Another solid run in the last 6–7 minutes of the first half on the verge of going up 16, only to give up a seven-point swing in the final minute to destroy their momentum.

Then, in the second half, letting Arizona tie the game, stretching another nice lead out, then falling behind, and finally playing great in the last three minutes to win.

All about wild mood swings, but at least they finally won a game against a good team by being the better side in the closing minutes.

Dickinson was spectacular. KJ Adams’ energy early carried the team. His lob dunk that put KU up by 7 late was the loudest I’ve yelled all year.[1] And Zeke Mayo found his mojo again.

I’m not going to get too excited about this game, thinking they’ve fixed their issues and are now dangerous in the NCAA tournament. I’m just glad they figured it out and gave fans a fun game against a name opponent for the first time since November. More on that next week. A nice win to a frustrating regular season.

By the way, it drove me INSANE that ESPN said multiple times that this was the eighth straight year KU wore red uniforms on senior night. I was 1000% sure that was wrong, not because I remember every year clearly,[2] but because I DID clearly recall the crazy Texas game in 2022, a game that I knew KU wore white for.

So I spent the first three timeouts of the game digging back through the six senior night games since this “tradition” allegedly began. KU indeed wore red in 2018. But then they wore white in 2019 and 2020. Red returned in 2021. White, as noted, in 2022. Then red the past two years. So, rather than an eight year streak, it was only three, and then five of eight.

Yet another sign of the dumbing down of ESPN. This is basic shit.

I was also a little bummed that the Lawrence Journal-World finally slapped a paywall on their KU coverage. I’ve been reading their coverage since I was a student. It was a big deal to get an apartment and be able to have the city paper delivered, staying up on all the latest KU news that the campus paper didn’t report. I’ve been following their online coverage since whenever they first started posting on the web. Once upon a time I would have gladly paid for their coverage. But, like so much of print media, it has gotten dramatically worse in recent years. Where once a minimum of three writers covered each KU game, now it is one guy doing it all. And he’s a young dude who tries hard but isn’t all that great at his job.

Worse, with just one writer at games, the old “notebook” stories that were a staple of postgame coverage have disappeared. Every sports fan knows the glory of the notebook pieces, a collection of blurbs no where important or deep enough for entire stories, but of high interest to the serious fan. These were the tidbits that insane people like me loved to digest. Hell, I (eventually) named this website after that concept!

In recent years the LJW started putting video of KU press conferences on YouTube. I’ve found watching those are often more illuminating than one writer boiling them down to their basics. So the only thing I really garnered from them was looking at their photo galleries. A lot of their pictures have enhanced my posts over the years. I guess I’ll have to search harder for those going forward.


HS Hoops

This was sectional weekend on the boys side of basketball. To honor the occasion, I read a fantastic book about a key moment in Indiana high school basketball history. I’ll get to that later this week or next.

The biggest upset in the state came in 3A, where #1 Cathedral lost in Friday’s semifinals to their in-city rivals Crispus Attucks. It just so happened the book I read was about Attucks as well. Apparently the Irish were up 11 going into the fourth quarter and totally fell apart to lose by six. L was not super upset; she was glad the girls went further than the boys.


Big 10 Tournament

L was not at that game Friday. Instead she went with some friends and sat in a suite at the Big 10 tournament to watch the night games, which included eventual tournament champs UCLA.

She’s a big fan of USC’s JuJu Watkins, so was disappointed the Trojans had played during the afternoon session. She asked me if she could buy a shirt, and suggested it would be a tournament shirt. Then she arrived home with a nice, pretty expensive USC shirt. When the Trojans blew a 13 point lead and lost to UCLA in Sunday’s championship game, I told her she had to burn the shirt. Those are the rules.

Super dumb that UCLA and USC traveled to Indianapolis to play for their conference championship. Can we fast forward 5–10 years when we go to two conferences with multiple, regional divisions and return some sanity to the games?


Weather

This winter has sucked. And by that I mean it’s been pretty normal, which is mostly cold and dreary. A few really cold weeks but mostly just two months of temps in the 20s and 30s.

That finally broke on Sunday. It was only 60, but the sun was so warm it felt at least 10 degrees warmer. L actually got a little pink from sitting outside. The coming week will be in the 60s and 70s. Mother Nature surely has some tricks up her sleeves for the next eight weeks, but we’re getting close, people, to shorts and t-shirts weather. Hang in there.


Kid Notes

We’re approaching the final countdown for C’s senior year. She’s trying to find a prom dress, which is turning out to be harder than last year for some reason. We just bought her senior ad for the yearbook. We’re finalizing plans for which of her friends will be hanging out with us on spring break at the end of the month. And we’re trying to figure out grad party plans. I believe she has eight weeks of classes left.

M accepted the offer for a summer internship in Cincinnati. She’ll be working for a company that makes a variety of products, mostly in the hardware/construction space. It’s a marketing position but I’m guessing she’s going to have to learn way more about hardware than she knows now. And it pays pretty well, which is a bonus. She’ll be home for two weeks in early May then head back to Cincy. Timing worked out perfectly and she was able to claim a sublease at a friend’s apartment before another girl could.

L had her second post-op visit this morning. They cut off her first cast, removed her stitches, then re-casted her. Everything looked good and she’s not feeling any pain. Seventeen days in this cast and then she’ll switch to a boot.

We took advantage of the nice weather Sunday and did a seated shooting workout. She got about 180 shots up from various distances and rim-heights. She threw in some ball handling drills, as much as she could do around her chair.


  1. Later, during dinner, C asked me what happened when KU was ahead 79–72. She had heard my screams from two floors above and looked at the score to see what happened. A couple of my KU buddies and I have a long-time saying of “WAKE THE KIDS!!!” when we are yelling during an evening game. We haven’t had too many of those moments this year. It was nice to have one. Also a reminder that C was my one kid who was awake and aware of what was going on when I was losing my mind during the 2022 national championship game.  ↩
  2. You damn well know once upon a time I could remember that kind of shit, though.  ↩

Reader’s Notebook, 3/6/25

Beirut Station – Paul Vidich
I’ve read a couple of Vidich’s books and was luke warm on both, so had largely written his work off. His spy stories seemed reserved, dry, and emotionally complex in a way that I did not connect with. But I heard him on a podcast where his personality seemed the opposite of that, and read some good press for this book, so decided it was worth the shot.

I’m glad I didn’t give up on him.

The earlier books I read were both set during the early days of the Cold War, and I think that threat of nuclear apocalypse affected their tone. Here he sets his story in Beirut during the Israeli bombing campaign against Hezbollah in 2006. A joint US-Israeli group is working to assassinate a Hezbollah leader, but a young CIA agent calls off a near perfect shot at him when she sees that his young son is in the car with him. She is then tasked with finding a new way to target him, leveraging her relationship with his kids as their teacher. As a Lebanese-American she constantly feels unsure of where she belongs and who truly trusts her. She’s surrounded by representatives from various sides who have their own dueling interests. Soon she is in the midst of a battle between Hezbollah, Israel, and the US, never certain if any of them are interested in keeping her alive.

This book had some common elements to Vidich’s earlier ones. It was dark and complicated at times. The drama is carried more by internal strife and ruptured relationships than by raging gun battles. And we get deep inside his protagonist’s head. So perhaps it was just the more modern setting that helped me connect with it better. Maybe it was focusing on a modern woman that allowed him to add some heft to the story that was lacking in his severe, closed-off 1950s Cold War men.

Whatever it was, I really liked this book.


Saturday Night – Doug Hill & Jeff Weingrad
I’ve read James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’ Live From New York oral history of Saturday Night Live that came out in 2015. Twice it was so good. There is also a new book about Lorne Michaels out that I am on the waitlist for.

But I had never read this book, originally published in 1985, about the early years of the show. I had heard about it often, but I believe it was out of print for several years. Fortunately my library not only had it, but had an ebook edition. I put it on hold the week of SNL50 and it came in this week.

This book is pretty exhaustive, most notably about the lead up to season one and then the first five seasons of the show, aka the first Michaels era. It does cover the disastrous 1980–81 season, then Dick Ebersol taking over and letting the considerable talents of Eddie Murphy carry it into the mid–80s. These next two eras get brushed over relatively quickly. And it ends with Michaels set to take over for the 1985–86 season.

There are tons of great stories in here. If you’re an SNL head you’ll know a lot of them, but as the original cast first took the air over 50 years ago, many of them have faded. Almost none of the stars or producers come out looking great. Everyone had their own ego and personality issues, which were often exacerbated by drug use. Really it was a reminder that TV stars are just like us, in that they have flaws and hangups and having fame and fortune doesn’t make those disappear. Especially in the pressure cooker of live television.

Also, this book answered some of my questions about the accuracy of the movie Saturday Night. There were clearly a lot of moments from throughout season one, and even beyond, that were rolled into that story about the show’s first night for effect.

Wednesday Links

Heavy on James Bond content today, as there was some major news regarding the series’ future along with two other tidbits that haven’t received nearly as much attention.

First, Amazon threw another billion dollars at Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to take over full control of the Bond series. Broccoli especially has not been thrilled with what she believes Amazon’s plans for the series are – she assumes they will milk it for content the way Disney has mined the Star Wars brand and dilute its quality and value – which has prevented any progress in either selecting Daniel Craig’s successor or even developing a script for the next 007 film.

James Bond’s long-serving producers give control to Amazon

I also think it’s strange that after initially making all the Bond films available on Prime Video following Amazon’s aquisition of MGM, almost all of them have disappeared. I’m not sure if that had something to do with this battle, but perhaps they begin to cycle through Prime again.

One internet author takes the obvious, hilarious swing at what an Amazon Bond script might look like.

Exclusive: Amazon’s new James Bond script

An Austrian developer is challenging the trademark of the James Bond name in Europe that could lead to businesses being able to slap it on just about any product.

James Bond in battle to keep hold of 007 super spy’s name

Finally, the UK and European copyrights on Ian Fleming’s original works are about to expire, which could lead to some very interesting possibilities.

Licence to kill: could a James Bond horror emerge when book copyrights expire?


Here’s an assessment of Jon Krakaeur’s battle with a YouTube troll I linked to a week or so back.

Also, as the internet demonstrates over and over again, we just love picking a villain, then doubling down on the choice until we’ve transformed them into an absurd caricature of wickedness. Whatever need this impulse serves, it’s never a desire to know the truth.

Climbing Mt. YouTube


Finally, a fun internet list. I’ve seen about 30% of these.

The 100 Greatest TV Performances of the 21st Century

Jayhawk Talk: Checking Out

What a stupid, unserious team.

That was one of my biggest thoughts after KU lost to Texas Tech Saturday.

There’s no shame in losing to Tech; they are a hell of a team and now have wins at KU, at Houston, at K-State, and at BYU. They are very much like Iowa State in that they have a terrific coach who recruited players that fit his style of play and have the mentality he wanted, so they blend seamlessly. Hell, they reminded me of those classic Villanova teams in that they always play at their own pace and never seem rattled by the moment.

It was the final three minutes that pushed me over the edge, though. After trailing by 14, KU came all the way back to tie the game twice and eventually take a one-point lead. Naturally they gave up another open 3 – Tech had open looks all day from beyond the arc – immediately after that effectively won the game for the Red Raiders. On that three, DaJuan Harris and KJ Adams, both seniors with a combined nine years of college experience, stood there and watched as the shot was taken, one or both of them having made the wrong decision on a switch. The two best defenders on the team failed to cover a shooter in the closing minutes. 🤦‍♂️

It got worse from there. Zeke Mayo had three brutal turnovers. Once he failed to catch an easy pass that hit him in the hands, and watched helplessly as the ball careened out of bounds. Harris threw a pass to where he expected a player to be. Although that player, likely a wing who was supposed to come off a Hunter Dickinson screen, was not there, and Dickinson had already cut away. The pass sailed into the stands without being touched. And would you believe that Dickinson missed a couple shots right at the rim when it was a single possession game?

Yet somehow KU had a chance, but Bill Self did not use his last remaining time out in the closing minute to help a team that was clearly out of sorts settle down and set something up to extend the game. There was a part of me that genuinely thought Self had given up on this team when he didn’t call the time out. They had fucked everything up for 90 seconds, perhaps he believed stopping the clock and drawing up a play was a pointless exercise. It was bizarre.

Anyway, again a team filled with experienced players fell apart when they faced some adversity. Meanwhile Tech had a sophomore and freshman who made some of the biggest plays of the game.

This was probably the maddest I’ve been at a KU team in a long, long time. So mad that I saw no reason to stay up and watch them surely get blown out at Houston last night.

They did lose to the Cougars, but they kept it close all night, apparently playing some of their best defense of the year. However, they gave up about a million offensive rebounds to UH, Dickinson and Mayo combined for 13 turnovers and 11 missed shots, and neither Harris nor Rylan Griffen did much to impact the game on offense. All that would have made me toss and turn for hours had I watched.[1]

I’m done trying to diagnose the cause for this team’s issues. But something that had been subtly bugging me for weeks finally jumped out at me on Saturday.

With a couple exceptions, Self’s teams have never been great outside shooting squads. This year was supposed to address that, but it hasn’t worked out that way.

While the lazy analyst says that Self’s teams are focused on playing through a big man, in fact his best offenses have always been built around creating easy shots at the rim for everyone.

Take the 2020 team, which was ranked #1 in the country when Covid struck and the tournament was cancelled. That team had maybe one reliable shooter in Isaiah Moss, and he had struggled to acclimate all season after transferring in (sound familiar?). Ochai Agbaji was capable of shooting from outside, but not very reliable at that point. Devon Doston and Marcus Garrett were even more suspect.

But that team destroyed people because the entire offense was built around getting Udoka Azubuike dunks and lobs, and Dotson, Garrett, and Agbaji open lanes to drive.

Same for the 2012 team that lost in the national championship game. Its best shooter was a walk-on who came off the bench, with three upper classmen who could hit a 3 but you wouldn’t want to bet your mortgage on them making a shot to win a game. That offense was all about getting Thomas Robinson and Jeff Withey the ball inside, with Tyshawn Taylor, Elijah Johnson, and Travis Releford attacking the lane from the perimeter.

Even the 2024 national championship team, despite starting three NBA players, was built more in attacking the rim from angles than beating teams from outside.

Saturday KU had stretches in the second half where they played some gorgeous basketball. Guys were cutting, the ball was zipping around the perimeter, dribble handoffs were exchanged. The weird thing was that it rarely produced those open drives. It was 25–30 seconds of beauty, and then someone who is not a good driver putting their head down and getting into trouble. Griffen tried hard to make something happen a few times, but he’s not explosive enough to get by the defense or beat bigger defenders at the rim. Harris misses two shots for every one he makes inside. Mayo turned it over too often. Adams played his ass off Saturday, one of the best games he’s ever had. But for all of his explosiveness, he’s a two-footed jumper who either needs a clear lane or a lob to finish. He can’t drive, jump off one foot, and still get to the rim.

The staple of the Bill Self offense, the open look at the rim, has disappeared. And I don’t really understand why. For years he was able to scheme around personnel deficiencies to ensure his guards always got layups and his bigs buried people in the low block. This team can’t do that for more than a couple of possessions.

Even if we somehow pull it together and beat Arizona this weekend, and/or win a couple games in Kansas City, that’s not enough to fix the many issues with this team. I’m just ready for this season to be over with. KU should join the SEC because right now I’m way more interested in spring football than how this dumpster fire is going to wrap up its season.


  1. Coincidentally, as I continue to review blog posts that are 20 years old, Sunday I read my entry from March 1, 2005, in which I detailed how I had stopped watching college hoops for a week to try to settle down. Times change but people don’t.  ↩

Weekend Notes

A kid-focused notes post to kick off this week. I’ll save the sad, angry, frustrated hoops thoughts for tomorrow.


Foot Girl

L continues her healing process after surgery. Actually, things are going great. She went back to school last Monday and other than leaving early one afternoon because her splint was causing her pain, survived the week. She tried the knee scooter one day, but it was also rubbing against the splint so she decided to crutch around instead. She stopped taking her potent pain meds early last week. I think she made it through the weekend without any Tylenol. So that side of things has gone well.

As for that splint pain, we think her swelling had basically disappeared, which was causing the splint to move and rub against her incision. Which is obviously pretty tender. That pain was getting worse than her surgical pain, so I took her in Friday to get it checked. I figured they would just put a new splint on. They indeed took the post-op splint off, giving us a good look at her foot. No irritation on the incision from the rubbing. Way less swelling and discoloration than I expected. I thought her foot would look like mine when I tore my ankle up and my entire leg was a horrific combination of purples, yellows, and greens for a couple weeks. She just had a tiny bit of yellow around the incision.

However, rather than re-splinting her, they went ahead and put a cast on. When the PA said that was the plan, L gave me an excited look thinking the entire process was going to be pushed forward. Sadly, that’s not the case. She’ll still go in next Monday to have this cast removed, the stitches taken out, and then get a new cast that will stay on for three more weeks. The important thing is with her pain under control and her foot looking pretty good, she seems to be healing as expected.

I had never seen a cast put on before. That is a fascinating process. And way simpler than I expected.

The new bummer is that L is very itchy under the cast. Every time she complains I remind her that at least she isn’t in a splint that is rubbing the incision.

Some friends picked her up Friday and they went out to dinner, then all came back to our house after. The girls decided they wanted ice cream so L drove them, her first time driving since surgery. I was a little nervous about that, but with five passengers at least she had support if she fell or needed help getting in-and-out. I’m not sure I ever clearly identified it, but the surgery was on her left foot so actual driving isn’t an issue.


Retreat Girl

C was on her senior retreat last week. Each senior class is divided into five different groups that go to a retreat center for three days over the course of the year. They leave after school Tuesday and return Friday evening. CHS students aren’t required to go, but are highly encouraged to attend. Afterward, there are always kids who say they really didn’t want to go but ended up enjoying it.

There is obviously a religious component. But it is as much about figuring out who you are and how you interact with others as you prepare to go off to college. The organizers try to mix up friend groups across the retreats, and then put people in small groups with people they don’t know very well. There are lots of long talks where people reveal things they have never talked about at school. I think it gets pretty intense and emotional. It definitely creates some bonds that, if not quite friendships, at least get kids interacting with classmates they had no previous relationships with.

This retreat also had way more boys, since football and soccer players can’t go in the fall. S C was one of 14 girls on this trip. One of those girls was an old buddy from St P’s that C hadn’t really had much of a relationship with in high school. Apparently they got along well, which is cool since that girl and her family are staying near us over spring break. It was cool to see all the Instagram posts from the kids once they got home.

Anyway, C seemed to have a great time. She’s been through some stuff the last four years, a lot of it I’ve never shared here and likely never will. She opened up about some of that to her small group, which I think is a good thing. When she was relating her health history, mostly about her weird-ass back that is missing parts, one of her small group members looked at her and said, “Damn! You’re an alien!” which made everyone laugh. She also really bonded with several of the teachers who were there as group leaders and guides. She tends to be very quiet at school, and I think it was an ego boost to have teachers tell her how much they enjoyed really getting to know her.

Of course one of the bonuses of retreat is that the kids come home grateful for what their parents have done for them. Our kids are usually pretty thankful and express that to us. It does make you think you did something right as a parent when they reiterate that rather than come home with a list of things we did wrong as we were raising them.

We had several long talks Friday and Saturday. I told her I was no where near mature enough to share with others as she did, nor as empathetic as she is when I was her age. To be fair, I also hadn’t been through as much as she has. And she’s been through A LOT less than some of the kids she spent the week with. She has multiple friends who have already had parents die, and there were at least three kids in the big group of 45 that have had a siblings die. Which is utterly tragic.

When I was a senior my parents had been divorced for eight years, but that didn’t really bother me. We went through a few years where my mom had almost no money and we came close to moving back in with her parents. But I didn’t realize that until years later. And my stepdad had just survived his first round of cancer, but I was an idiot and thought there was no chance he would die even when the first doctor he went to gave him six months to live. Throw social media nonsense in, and today’s kids have been through exponentially more than I ever went through as a high schooler.


Interviewing Girl

I mentioned last week that M was working hard on finding an internship for the summer but not having much luck. This past week she had four interviews, two of them second rounders.

Thursday she got her first offer. It’s with a home construction group in Cincinnati as a marketing intern. She called us as soon as she found out and was very excited. I believe they gave her seven days to make a decision.

Friday she had a second interview for a position in Dayton, which she isn’t crazy about but apparently she has impressed the people there. Then she had an interview with an ad agency here in Indy. She hasn’t told us if she would hold out for the Indy job if she thought she might get it. I’m also not sure if it pays, where the one in Cincy does. I guess she has a couple days to figure all that out.

So good news, although it might mean that she just spends a couple weeks here before she heads back to Cincy for most of the summer. And we have to find her a place to live for a couple months.

I also don’t believe that I’ve shared a change in her plans for this time next year. Originally she was going to spend the spring ’26 semester in Verona, Italy. Then she heard something like nine other girls in her sorority were going to do that same program. She really didn’t want to go to another country and have to spend time with that many girls from her house. After talking to the study abroad folks about her options, they recommended programs in Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. It’s not official yet as the paperwork is still working through the system, but she will most likely do the Lisbon program. Just one of her good friends will be going, too.

So our spring break in a year may well be a trip to see her. Which would be incredible. I’m already re-discovering the various YouTube travel advice channels I was obsessed with before our trip to Italy two years ago.

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