D's Notebook

Tag: high school sports (Page 1 of 12)

Weekend Notes

September 16, 2024 /

As has become standard so far this fall, Friday night was jam-packed with sports action from the couch. Things were ratcheted up a notch this weekend, as KU was playing, meaning I couldn’t casually watch tennis, baseball, or basketball while listening to high school football. No, this week I would be yelling at the TV while listening to the radio. Sadly, more yelling than I expected. For the most part that worked out ok, although there were moments that big things were happening in each game at the same time and it was tough to keep track of what was going on where. It was also very confusing for S, who was facing away from the TV and didn’t always understand what was causing my outburst when the radio announcers were fairly quiet.

There was plenty of dumbness over the weekend, with some cool stuff sprinkled in. Let’s get to it.

HS Football

On the radio was Cathedral’s visit to arch rival Bishop Chatard, ranked either #1 or #2 in 4A, depending on the poll. CHS had won eight of the last ten in the series, but last year was one of those losses in the weird, split game that started on Friday (and CHS led 21–0 early) then ended with BC making a comeback Saturday morning after the game was halted because of a power outage Friday.

No worries this year. CHS jumped out 14–0 and never let up, winning 30–7. It could/should have been an even bigger win. The Irish had three touchdowns, including a 66-yard pass, called back because of penalties. Two of those turned into 10 points anyway. The kicker missed a makable field goal, then put what would have been a school-record 51-yard field goal off the crossbar at the halftime horn. Still, always satisfying to beat the rival, especially for the girls who have friends there. L went to the JV game on Saturday, another W for the Irish.

The CHS radio guys were hilarious. Both analysts played for the Irish, one graduating about 20 years ago, the other over 50 years ago. They were a little fired up for the rivalry game. They thought each penalty that wiped out a TD was garbage. They show more uncalled holds than usual. By the fourth quarter they were screaming at the refs from the press box. And this was in a game their team was winning! I was entertained.

KU

Welp, so much for all the big plans for this year.

I would have written a lot more about this game had I taken a crack at it Friday. Some seriously dumb coaching decisions. Any hopes that Jeff Grimes would step right in for Andy Kotelnicki have been dashed. I mean, how you don’t give Devin Neal, who averaged almost six yards a carry on the night and is averaging nine yards a carry for the season, the ball on second and two and instead throw a pass that has not worked all night when another touchdown likely wins the game is beyond me. The KU offense, which would get all kinds of run on football Twitter the past couple years for how innovative and fun it was, is now boring and can’t adjust. Hiring Grimes is the first big mistake of Lance Leipold’s time in Lawrence. I feel like he could have grabbed some OC from a Texas high school and got better results.

Aside from one exceptionally dumb play by the defense that could have ended the game – the fumble they kicked around for 30 seconds before UNLV fell on it – they were, mostly, amazing. Especially the front seven, which was not expected to be a strength. Two weeks in a row they’ve controlled the game and been let down by the offense/coaches.

Losing a contest that, after the game, the analytics gave the Jayhawks an 83% chance to win seems dumb even for a program with as much dumbness in its history as KU has. Something about the entire team seems off. The last two years it seemed more like a Mangino-era team that rarely did things to beat themselves. Through three games they seem sloppier and less disciplined than the past two years. That is true from the coaches through the players. Not what I expected from a head coach wound as tight as Leipold.

The headline has to be Jalon Daniels, though. Clearly he’s compromised. Whether it is physical, mental, a matter of meshing with Grimes, or some combination of those three, it’s not working. Bad throw after bad throw. Terrible decisions. Seeming confused rather than playing with the joy he used to take the field with. Maybe he can be fixed/salvaged/cajoled into better football, but it needs to happen quick if that is a genuine possibility.

There was a lot of call on Twitter to bring in Cole Ballard. Friday didn’t seem like the time to do that. If things go sideways in Morgantown this week, it might be time to give JD a break.

You would have thought it was a KU basketball loss for how long the angry, post-game texts flew around after this one.

Technically, a lot of the big goals for this season are still possible. They could still make the Big 12 championship game if the offense gets fixed in the next, gulp, five days. At this point I’m more worried about finding five more wins and going to another crappy bowl than any of that. After blowing two winnable games, I don’t have a lot of confidence those W’s are on the remaining schedule. Playing the Big 12 home games at Arrowhead always had a measure of risk. If this team falls apart and no one is there – aside from the entire state of Iowa when the Clones come to town – it will make this season seem even worse. Remember, with Kansas football, things can always get worse.

We all know timeouts in college are too long. But KU called a timeout with under 2:00 to play in the game Friday just to stop the clock. It was a standard, FOUR MINUTE time out. Just fucking terrible. Even in the NFL, which will cram as many ads into a game as they can, they limit those late game TOs to 30 seconds or a minute.

College Football

I didn’t watch much ball on Saturday as I found few of the games compelling. The game I watched most was Cincinnati-Miami. M made the 45 minute trip to Oxford to hang out with friends but did not have a ticket. She did get to go to a party with one of her best friends and said she had a great time and enjoyed all Oxford has to offer. Nice win for her Bearcats.

The Victory Bell rivalry is tied for the oldest non-conference rivalry in the country, but this was the last game scheduled to be played on campus, and the 2026 game at the Bengals’ stadium is the last one currently scheduled. When I talked to M on Sunday I tried to explain why – UC wants the games at the Bengals’ field instead of having to go to Oxford, Miami wanted to hang onto those home games, joining the Big 12 changed UC’s scheduling priorities, etc – but she thought most of those reasons were dumb. I’m with her.

S and I went out for an early dinner and got to see part of Notre Dame’s destruction of Purdue. I guess the Irish got re-focused after the Northern Illinois loss.

Colts

So the Colts might be a bad team. A really bad team. GM Chris Ballard insisted the defense would be solid this year, especially against the run. Then the Colts gave up over 250 yards rushing in the first half against a team starting a backup QB that was only going to pass if he had to. Seems dumb not to load up the box and force him to pass. And that was before two defensive linemen got hurt. I refuse to hold Anthony Richardson’s dumbness against him until next year. But something about his passes seems hard to catch, because his receivers dropped a ton of balls that hit their hands. Weird. Those drops make his poor decision making on other passes hurt even worse. And still the Colts had a chance until the final gun. They were fortunate the final score wasn’t more indicative how big a beat down this was.

The Cowboys, Lions, and Ravens all lost at home. The Niners lost. Aside from the Chiefs, who nearly lost at home, do you trust a single team in this league? I’m starting to think the uneven play is a function of teams barely playing starters in the preseason and the added week to the regular season making teams/players more cautious in how they handle injuries. But that’s crazy talk, right?

Twitter During Games

It is funny to look back on your feed at how people react to specific plays. When KU ran that stupid screen pass on second and two in the fourth quarter? People were pissed. And remained pissed well after the game ended. Same in the Colts game. There was a rather curious play call on a third down – something that happened several times during the game – and Colts Twitter, to the extent I follow it, blew up. My favorite was one of our young, local weather ladies getting involved. “What was that play call????” It shows how far we’ve come as a society where it’s not a surprise at all when a young woman has a football take, and it’s 100% legit.

Royals

The R’s took two of three in Pittsburgh, and really should have swept the woeful Pirates. Five games up for the final Wild Card spot with 12 games left. A better record over the last 10 games than both the team ahead of them and behind them in the WC race. 97% playoff odds. A clinched winning season. All summer I’ve been waiting for them to fall apart. It would really suck if they finally did it during this closing stretch.

Fever

Another Friday-Sunday weekend for the Fever. Friday they lost their second game in three nights to Las Vegas, this one much more competitive than the first. I checked on that game periodically but there was too much else going on for me to really follow it.

Sunday they closed their home schedule against Dallas. For some reason the game was only on locally on some third-tier station. One that, even on cable, looked piped in on some terrible, over-the-air antenna. The picture was all fuzzy and blurry. It was like trying to watch European soccer in the 1980s. Pretty sure this wouldn’t happen to the Pacers.

Anyway, for the third time this season the Fever and Wings played a tremendously exciting game, with the Fever winning by one, although Dallas hit an unguarded 3 at the buzzer. These teams tend to not play defense against each other, so it is back-and-forth, up-and-down the entire game. That win clinched sixth place for the Fever, and also guaranteed them at least a .500 season. Twenty wins two years after winning five. Not bad. Caitlin had a career-high 35 points Sunday, and broke the WNBA single season assist record Friday.[1] She also collected her sixth technical foul of the year Friday. Her teammates were keeping her away from the refs Sunday so she doesn’t get magic #7, which brings a one-game suspension with it. Maybe just stop complaining.

Weather

Still hot and dry here. I’ve been watering the grass a couple times a week for about a month. Despite that, our lawn got pretty crunchy over the past few days. We were hoping the hurricane remnants would bring us some rain last week, but that fizzled out in southern Indiana. No rain in the forecast, every day in the upper 80s. At least the pool is still open, and staying warm on its own.

  1. The WNBA schedule expanded to 40 games last year, so a lot of season records have been falling. They may add another four games next year, so throw out your record books.  ↩

Weekend Notes

September 9, 2024 /

Another weekend jam-packed with sports dominating my attention.

Personally, it was a tough weekend for football. Cathedral lost Friday night against Cincinnati St. Xavier in the closing seconds of their game, 35–31. KU lost to Illinois despite dominating on defense and having an unstoppable running game they, for some reason, went away from. M’s Bearcats blew a big lead and lost. And the Colts failed to get a win on opening day for the 11th consecutive season.

Well, S’s Hoosiers did put up 77 points Friday. But she doesn’t follow them, so she doesn’t get any credit for the W.

Amazingly the CHS game got my most attention out of all of those games. I listened to the entire thing on the radio. It was back-and-forth all night until the Irish let the Bombers go 65 yards in about a minute with no timeouts to get the win. St. X’s quarterback in Chase Herbstreit, son of a certain media personality. I didn’t get the impression he’s a big time recruit, but he played great in the biggest moments Friday.

We had people over Saturday evening so I was only able to sneak peeks at the KU game rather than give it my full attention. Every time I looked up it seemed like something was going wrong for the Jayhawks. A penalty that wiped out a touchdown. An interception. Giving up a big completion on third down. It was a super bummer to lose. Diving into the numbers, this was a game they could have easily won, probably should have won, with lots of areas to build on. The defense was very good. The O-line great. Devin Neal and Daniel Hishaw nearly unstoppable.

It is definitely concerning that Jalon Daniels made so many mistakes. Not sure if he’s pressing, his body is compromised and will never be what it once was, he’s struggling to mesh with the new offensive coordinator, or something else is going on. I also think it’s too early to bail on the OC. It sure seems like he wasn’t taking advantage of a clear advantage he had, though.

Hey, being bummed about KU losing a close road game to a Power 4 team is new territory. I’m not going to get too worked up over it. I don’t think the ceiling is as high as we were hoping, though.

Hey, that Northern Illinois win over Notre Dame was fun! Not just because Notre Dame lost, although that is always amusing. Nor because we watched the closing minutes with a friend who went to Notre Dame. No, the way NIU coach Thomas Hammock reacted to the win was the greatest sporting moment of the weekend. Sports are awesome.

And Sunday was a gorgeous day so I watched the Colts game on the outside TV while doing various clean-up tasks from our Saturday gathering. It was pretty much what I expected from the Colts. Anthony Richardson made three or four straight ridiculous throws. He made about as many terrible/confusing/infuriating throws, including missing a wide-open AD Mitchell for a sure touchdown. That is who he is right now. I don’t know that he’s ever going to be a great pro, but he will always be interesting. The offensive line, which rebounded last year from a poor ’22, looked old and slow. The run D, allegedly a strength, got gouged all day. And the thing Colts fans have been complaining about all summer, the defensive backfield, confirmed all those concerns.

Eleven straight years without a win on opening day seems impossible, right?

I know it’s early, and we shouldn’t make too many snap judgements. But I did not like the new NFL kickoff rules. Of course, in the three games I watched, nothing much happened on kickoffs. I know returns were way up around the league, including one touchdown. Some analysts remain bullish on the dynamic kickoff concept. It seems to me like, after giving up a few big returns, coaches will start kicking the ball into/out of the end zone and willingly let the opponent start at the 30 instead of risking the long return.

Just like last week, I also sprinkled in a lot of US Open action, following the Royals big sweep of the Twins online, and watching parts of the Fever games both Friday and Sunday. The Royals have a six-game cushion for the final playoff spot! The Fever’s five-game winning streak came to an end Friday, but they rebounded with an overtime win Sunday. Caitlin Clark had 23 and 8 assists Friday, 26 and 12 Sunday.

Saturday morning I ran L over to CHS so she could go to the JV football game. I ran some errands and then hung out in the parking lot rather than go in. I had left my season sports pass at home and didn’t want to pay $5 for a game I didn’t care about. She had fun, although the JV also took an L to St. X.

About that gathering, we had several of S’s high school pals over Saturday evening. It was a fantastic fall evening, in the low 60s/high 50s. Perfect for sitting outside with a fire going while enjoying beverages, food, and good company. We had the pool heated and open, but that was mostly for looks. We were hoping someone might get nutty and jump in but no one drank enough to try it out. I’m sure our neighbors appreciated that. I actually felt pretty good Sunday morning, which was not my expectation.

Football is fully back. The baseball playoffs are close. The US Open, a marker of seasonal transition, is complete. This morning is our third straight with temps in the 40s. I actually wore pants a couple times over the weekend. It will be close to 90 in another 48 hours, so fall is not fully here yet. But it is close.

Holiday Weekend Notes

September 3, 2024 /

It was an action-packed weekend. At least for watching sports from the comfort of my house. Friday night in particular was kind of crazy. High school football on the radio. Indiana Fever and US Open on the TV. Royals-Astros Gameday coverage on the Mac. With bonus weather monitoring on every screen. I guess I’ll break things down by subject rather than day.

KU Football

A slow start turned into the blowout it was supposed to be Thursday night for KU. Not sure you can make any great assessments of the team given the opponent. I thought Jalon Daniels looked a little rusty, but I also don’t know how open the playbook was. It seemed like the coaching staff was doing some experimenting with the offensive line. A pick-six for Mello Dotson, likely not the last for this defensive backfield this season. Devin Neal scoring touchdowns, Luke Grimm catching passes. We’ll find out a lot more about the Jayhawks next week when they go to Illinois.

The first game at Children’s Mercy Park seemed to go just fine. Word from people who went is that it was a great atmosphere. The replay system not working early and likely costing KU two scores was kind of a bummer.

HS Football

A week after beating preseason #1 Ben Davis, #3 Cathedral got a reminder their schedule is still brutal, losing to #6 Brownsburg 30–14. They got there a rather odd way.

BHS jumped out to a 17–7 lead Friday night before lightning was spotted. Although the storm was 10 miles away, and moving away from the stadium, the game was delayed over an hour before a second series of storms popped up and officials decided to postpone the game until Saturday afternoon.

Things didn’t get much better in the resumed game. CHS was playing with their primary running back – who ran for 168 yards week one – hobbled Friday, then without him completely Saturday. L heard Sunday he’s probably having surgery and out for the year. Not sure if he was worth 16 points but I think he would have helped. If he is indeed out for an extended stretch, the Irish’s already brutal schedule looks even more formidable.

Weather

Last week was hot, sticky, and nasty. The heat index was up around 110 a couple days. Friday night three rounds of storms came through, and torrential rains and heavy winds blew the heat away. The humidity stuck around through Saturday. Then Sunday morning it was 52 and 100% pleasant. The extended forecast has a bunch of mornings like that, with a few even colder, and daytime highs mostly in the mid–70s with a few mid–80s sprinkled in. September is a truly glorious month.

US Open

I watched a ton of tennis last week and into the weekend. Week one of the Open might be the best week of tennis of the year, hell one of the best sports weeks of the entire year, with great matches in progress just about any time you turn on your TV from noon to midnight.

Weekend highlights were Frances Tiafoe’s two wins and both Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic losing early. It was a bummer that Coco Gauff went out early, but at least she lost to another American. In general it’s great to have several decent American players in both the women’s and men’s game at the moment. It sure makes for better crowds in New York.

Royals

Crap on a stick.

Last Wednesday afternoon the Royals were tied for first place and were up on co-leaders Cleveland going into the seventh inning, nine outs away from a four-game sweep of the Guardians. Then the Royals melted down a little and they’ve yet to recover, losing six straight games. Three injuries during that span have not helped. At least they still have a cushion in the wild card race for the time being.

It’s been a bit of a charmed summer for the Royals, totally unexpected and built on out-of-nowhere quality starting pitching. The pitching has still been fine, at least the starters; it’s been the bats that have let them down over the past week. They were nearly no-hit Friday and have gone deep into other games with just one or two hits. Maybe, hopefully, surely the hitters can lock back in and they can hold on to one of those wild card spots to complete this surprise season.

Fever

I know I’m not alone in having watched more WNBA games this year than in the rest of my life combined. I now know exactly when the Fever are playing, and on what channel. Unlike other sports, which S doesn’t really pay attention to, for the Fever she gets kind of locked in. Ironically our basketball playing daughter will still just breeze through and watch a few minutes, but rarely sits down and watches long stretches with us.

Two more wins over the weekend for the hottest team in the league. The Fever are now over .500 for the first time in five years. Which sounds made up. Have they really been that bad, for that long? Again, since I never watched I don’t know if that is a real stat or not.

It’s been fun watching this team figure each other out since their disastrous start. Kelsey Mitchell is a revelation, and a perfect backcourt partner for Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston finally settled down and started playing like the former #1 pick she is. Lexi Hull is one of the most fun players to watch, and seemingly can’t miss a 3 since the Olympic break.

And, of course, there’s Clark. She was starting to get comfortable before the break, but has looked like a first team all league player since getting some time to both rest and work on her game. In those seven games she’s averaging 24.6 points, 5 rebounds, and nine assists. And that’s with her teammates still booting 3–4 passes a night, or blowing open layups.[1]

She’s added a floater. Her teammates are getting better at anticipating her crazy passes. She’s handling the physicality of the league better. She still makes a few horrible passes a game, but when she’s averaging almost nine assists a game, you’ll take those. And her outside shot still isn’t locked in. That will come next year. Any questions about her transition to the pro game have been answered.

The only real bummer to the Fever turning the corner is it has kept us from going to a game. Tickets were crazy expensive at the beginning of the season, as you would expect. I planned on waiting until the hype died down and the team fell deep into the bottom of the standings before trying to grab some for a weeknight game. So much for that. I was looking at tickets for tomorrow’s game and even upper level seats were going for $200 each. That seems excessive, especially when L isn’t super into watching. Although she would go if given the chance.

Oh, one other WNBA note. The yammering idiots on TV need to drop the whole Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese thing and focus on the real issue: how stupid are the four teams other than Indiana and Chicago who passed on drafting Reese? She’s getting 20 boards a night over the past three weeks and leads the league in rebounding for the season. From watching Chicago Friday, it’s obvious that some of those numbers come because her coach leaves her on the court deep into blowouts to pad her numbers. But 20 rebounds is 20 rebounds.

The rookie of the year argument is pretty much over, as CC is both having a better and more impactful year while Chicago is dropping like a rock despite Reese’s play. That shouldn’t hide the fact that Reese is having a phenomenal rookie year of her own.

College Football

It’s always hard for me to dive in this first week of real college football action. There’s so much other stuff going on, both on TV and in real life, that it’s hard to lock in. I had plenty of games on but other than Notre Dame – Texas A&M didn’t get super focused on any of them.

That was a big win for the Irish. Notre Dame’s defense looks incredible. They have a cake schedule. They will be one of the top four teams in the playoff. The obvious joke is they will then lose to Alabama or whatever SEC runner-up they play in the first round. But that game will be in South Bend. In December. Surely Touchdown Jesus will scare up some lake effect snow, or at least nasty windchills, to aid the Irish.

Family Time

We didn’t do anything big family-wise for the holiday weekend. M stayed in Cincinnati. C and L went to the CHS game with friends Friday, but neither went back to the resumption on Saturday. L went to the gym with basketball friends Sunday. C went to the Pitbull concert Sunday night. We had the in-laws over for dinner Sunday, and three of the nephews over to swim on Monday. S and I went to dinner with friends Saturday.

I also found a little project for myself over the weekend. It scratches one of my biggest itches and will have a direct effect on some of my blog posts. I doubt most of you will be as interested in it as I am, but I’ll still share more details about it soon.

And with that, summer is over. Preseason training for school basketball started for L today, and I was up at 5:15 to get her to school on time. A perfect way for her to knock out some of her driving in the dark time!

  1. As the father of a lady baller, I will say the most frustrating part of the women’s game is how many layups are missed. That, more than any other area, is where the difference between men and women is glaring. It’s a lot harder to make a layup in traffic when you release the ball a foot/foot-and-a-half below the rim than within a few inches of it.  ↩

Weekend Notes

August 26, 2024 /

This weekend seemed pretty chill to me. There were enough things going on to justify a blog post, though. Let’s see how many words I can stretch this alleged slow weekend into.

Friday Night Lights

High school football started in Indiana last week. In a shocking upset, it was a perfectly pleasant night. That will change this week, though.

That wasn’t the only upset of the night. Number 10 Cathedral pounded #1 and defending 6A state champs Ben Davis 24–6.

I did not have high hopes for CHS coming into the season. They remain in class 6A, two up from their natural class. While they have some really good skill players – mostly the starting running back and a couple receivers – along with a much improved offensive line and solid defense, they have one glaring hole: quarterback. For the first time in seven years they do not have a kid who is one of the best QBs in the city behind center. This year’s starter is a junior from St. P’s who was listed as 5’7”, 150 on last year’s roster. I think both of those measurements might have been stretches, too. When he got in for mop-up duty as a sophomore, he mostly handed off.

Throw that kid against a schedule that features the pre-season #1, #2, #3, and #4 teams in 6A, along with #2 and #10 in 4A, plus a top 15 team overall in Ohio, and you understand why I had some reservations.

Naturally the Irish were up 24–0 before the Giants ran a tipped pass back 100 yards for their only score of the game.

I was only able to listen to the second half, when CHS was already up 17–0, but they sounded pretty solid, controlling the game on both sides of the ball.

Both of our girls went. They both left early.

The Irish’s reward for breaking a 15-game losing streak to Ben Davis?[1] A game against Brownsburg, the likely new #1 team after both Ben Davis and Center Grove lost in week one. BHS beat CHS convincingly the past two regular seasons on very hot nights, so we’ll see.

Greek Fest

Why wasn’t I either at the game or listening during the first half? S and I went to Indy Greek Fest for the first time in 15 years or so. It was an annual outing the first few years we lived here, but once we had more than two kids, we decided it was too much of a hassle.

Good food and people watching. One of S’s partners is Greek and was working the dessert hall, so we got to harass him a bit.

Other highlights were watching some dude in front of us get fed up with the slow traffic to get to the parking lot and literally drive through someone’s yard to turn around. I’m not talking about a couple wheels up on the curb that kind of slipped into the grass. I’m talking about driving his entire car through the middle of this yard to get to their driveway and spin around. Ass.

Also, when we were leaving we noticed the car next to us had a club on their steering wheel. You remember The Club, right?

To be clear, Greek Fest was at a huge, fancy, relatively new church in one of the highest income zip codes of the entire area. After we left we drove through one of the neighborhoods where many of the homes go for high seven and even eight figures. But this person was worried someone was going to steal their car. And it wasn’t like a nice car, it was some ‘90s Oldsmo-buick.

I probably just answered the mystery: this was clearly some super old Greek lady who has been locking her car up for 40 years and doesn’t see any reason to stop because her friend Nikki’s car got stolen once at a church event and you never know…

Girls Nights Out

C and L had big weekends, at least on the social tip. They each had sleepovers both nights, C hosting one and going out for the other, while L slept away from home both nights.

Astute readers might recall that L had a long period where the only two things that caused anxiety in her were thunderstorms and sleepovers. So she didn’t successfully sleepover anywhere, not even with family, for like seven years or something. She made a conscious effort to host a couple in 8th grade, and finally worked up the courage to try a few at other friends’ homes. And now she did two in two nights! Of course she was totally wrecked when she got home Sunday, so I don’t know if she actually sleeps or not. She doesn’t call home at 2:00 AM asking to get picked up, which is the key to S and me.

Rush

As for daughter #1, last week was rush at UC. M was very busy all week long, as this was a huge class of prospective new members, or whatever they call them these days. She told us mid-week there were two girls she was “obsessed with,” which made us both laugh and roll our eyes. She is such a sorority girl sometimes…

Anyway, we talked Saturday and she said both of those girls made the house’s final cut, and she was hoping they would both end up being her Littles.

She ended up going one-for-two. One girl picked another sorority, but the other committed/signed/pledged to M’s house. Her new little is from California, at UC to study interior design, which seems pretty interesting.

The best part of all of this was reading captions on M’s various posts and watching S’s reactions. If you know S, you know that despite being in a sorority when she was in college, she is kind of the opposite of a sorority girl. I think it horrifies her a little how into it M is. There’s been talk of screenshotting some of these posts to mock M with later.

All in good fun, of course. We are thrilled that M has found a community that she loves being a part of so much, and that fits her personality so well.

Classes at UC start today.

Weather

I mocked people last week who were already talking about fall. It was indeed truly gorgeous here. We had the air turned off and the windows open all week. A few nights it was so chilly we had to close the windows. The pool never got below 87, so on a few of my swims the water was 20 degrees warmer than the air temp.

As I knew would happen, summer is roaring back. It got above 90 both days this weekend. We already have heat warnings in place for Tuesday, with the heat index expected to approach 110°. Yowsa.

Better Tuesday than Monday. Fingers crossed, candles lit, rabbit feet rubbed, doing everything I can to avoid jinxing it, I will hopefully be spending tonight doing something very cool that I can share tomorrow.

  1. Tied for longest consecutive loss streak to a team in school history. The last CHS win against BD was in 1987.  ↩

Basketball Notes

June 12, 2024 /

Let’s talk basketball for a few minutes.

Kid Hoops

L has been busy with her high school teammates.

They have activities on the calendar four days a week for most of June. Three weight training sessions, one two-hour open gym, then two different nights with two games. She’s also volunteering at the boys camp this week and will work the girls camp in two weeks. And she has three lessons scheduled with a private trainer with four of her travel teammates. We’ve also gone to the Y a few of her off mornings to get shooting time in.

Girl is working.

When the CHS coach sent out the summer rosters two weeks ago, she did so with a clear disclaimer that these were for summer only, they would likely change week-to-week, and we shouldn’t read anything into where girls will end up in the fall.

Still, L is a varsity player for the summer, and she’s started two of their six games. Again, the rotations have been all over the place. When L has started, she’s been on the court with four upperclassmen. In the second halves of the same games she’s been on the court with two other sophomores and two freshmen. The coach is clearly trying to see how different girls work together, how they handle being asked to do more or just fill specific roles, etc.

I’ve enjoyed watching them play through the first two weeks. While we lost our two tallest girls to graduation, and our only girl over 5’8” is a freshman, it seems like we are a lot faster and more athletic than last year. I expect to see more pressure defense, and more defensive adjustments in general compared to last year. The key will be getting girls to shoot. Beyond our two best players, we have a lot of girls who are hesitant to shoot. They need to figure out when you are undersized and fast, if you get an open look you have to take it.

That’s true for L. She doesn’t have the same aggressiveness she had in her last week of travel ball. I know she wants to fit in as a sophomore and run the offense correctly because she doesn’t want to get yelled at. I’ve talked to her about understanding that after the ball has been swung side-to-side, if she gets it back and is open, that’s a good shot her coach will be fine with. She did hit an NBA-range 3 at the end of the first quarter in one of our games Tuesday night. I told her it looked pure and that she needs to relax and shoot like that when she gets the ball in the offense.

She is both very excited about the coming year – she really gets along with the older girls and hangs out with them more than the younger girls – and nervous about where she fits in. She said she’d rather come off the bench and play 10 minutes a game for varsity than play nearly every minute for JV like she did last year.

We talked through the roster one night and I think she’s in a good position to make varsity, but there’s always the chance the coach will want her to play a lot to keep getting better. Or swing between the rosters. It helps her cause that she’s the only true point guard among the bench players, which means she is the best player’s backup. But the offense isn’t really set up for a pure point guard to run the offense, so anyone can bring the ball up and initiate.

We’ve had 11 or 12 girls on the bench for varsity games so far. I’m pretty confident L is in the top 8 or 9, which puts her on the varsity roster for the fall. That’s a long way away, though, and plenty of time for both L to improve her game and solidify a spot or some of her teammates to get better and pass her up.

They play games on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Last week they broke open two close games late for wins, gave up a big lead to get tied late and then won the last two minutes to get the W, and then blew out a small school by 50 points when we basically did not shoot in the fourth quarter.

This Tuesday we got a comfortable win in game one, then came from eight down to beat a team that crushed us in both JV and varsity last season. You can’t put a lot of stock into these games, but that seemed like a big win. Our girls were very excited. One mom of a senior was super pumped, saying this was the first time in her daughter’s four summers that CHS had started 6–0.

That will likely change tomorrow. We play two of the best 4A teams in the state, Lawrence Central and Lawrence North. LC went 30–1 and won state last year, but is playing without most their top players. One of them is on a national team and I think the rest are playing in higher level leagues than the Indianapolis high school summer circuit. LN, who lost to the state champs three times and beat CHS by 32 in sectionals, is playing all their best players. They have one girl who is 6’5”. That should be fun.

CHS is also playing in a showcase over the weekend, four games in two days. This is an open event for recruiting, so there will be college coaches watching. Not sure if that will affect how our coach plays people or not.

Caitlin

Oh Lord, I guess I should have known that Caitlin Clark’s rookie year would turn into a whole thing. Can people just shut up and let the woman play?

I’m hesitant to dive into all of it as the discourse is out of control. Each week seems to bring some new “controversy,” that people tack 50 things that have nothing to do with basketball onto.

It should be no surprise that Clark has struggled in the transition to the WNBA. It’s a higher level of ball than college, and it will take some time for her to figure things out while getting stronger to deal with the higher level of physicality.

People are also forgetting that the Fever were an exceptionally bad team last year. While they drafted Aliyah Boston with the #1 pick in 2023, they still had the worst record in the league. The excitement about the future of the team with a Boston-Clark pairing was appropriate. They weren’t going to turn into a playoff team overnight, though.

Which is clear from watching them. The biggest issue I see is that most of Clark’s teammates have no idea how to play with her. She’ll set the defense up perfectly, zip a ball to a spot, and it goes flying out of bounds because her teammate either didn’t cut or stopped because they didn’t expect her to throw the ball to a wide open spot. So many times she’s made a gorgeous pass only to have it bounce off a Fever player’s hands because they weren’t looking or didn’t trust the ball to get through. Stuff like that will get better with both more time together and, likely, higher level teammates.

There there’s – waves hand at everything – all the other stuff. The physical play and officials looking the other way at some of it. The idiot Indiana congressman who demanded an explanation from the WNBA for why Clark is getting the same treatment pretty much every rookie in every sport has ever received.[1] The Olympic team “snub.” The exhausting, constant discourse in sports media. The assigning of political stances held by outside observers to Clark, her teammates, and her opponents when they’ve never said a word about non-basketball matters.

It’s almost enough that I wonder if Caitlin wishes she had stayed at Iowa for another year. Or taken the Big 3 money and played in a league that no one cares about without all this nonsense.

At the risk of making the mistake others have made by trying to guess what she is thinking, I bet that’s not the case, though. I know she’s pissed that her team sucks. I know she’s frustrated in both her play and that she and her teammates can’t get on the same page. I’m sure she’s sick of getting beaten up every game with defenders often getting away with it. I guarantee she’s disappointed by not making the Olympic team. I’m also 100% sure she understands the logic behind the decision, knowing that roster spot has to earned and not assumed, and will use it as fuel to make sure there’s no way they can leave her off the roster next time.[2]

I don’t know, and don’t care, what she thinks about racial politics, about alleged gay vs straight divide in women’s sports, or anything else that is extraneous to putting the ball through the hoop. In fact, I bet while she has opinions on all of these subjects, her primary focus is getting better, making her team better, and finding a way to win games. She would be perfectly fine being the only straight, white girl, Midwesterner on the team if it meant the Fever made the playoffs.

For some reason the Olympic roster was still a hot topic on ESPN this morning, so I don’t think any of this is going away.

  1. There is no grandstander who grandstands as much as a Republican when they can exploit even the tiniest racial angle in any debate. If it was two white guys involved, I bet this jackass would have applauded their old school toughness. “Nothing given, everything earned!”  ↩
  2. Her press conference after she got the news was tremendous. All the idiots screaming about the decision on cable TV could learn a lot from how she handled it. Also, let’s not forget the Olympic tryouts were during the Final Four, so the process seemed stacked against any college player that was playing for the national championship.  ↩

Weekend Notes

May 20, 2024 /

Lots of notes from the past several days.

Travel Hoops

Pretty good weekend of hoops in Louisville. For the first time ever, we went 3–0 in pool play at a national event. We won our first game Friday by 11. It was a very tough, defensive contest that we controlled pretty much from the opening tip. However we only scored 28 points for the game, so it wasn’t the smoothest of performances. Giving up only 17 is decent, though.

Saturday we had two games, eight hours apart, which was not ideal for planning the day. We won game one by 10. Again controlled it pretty much the entire time. Our final game we won by 19, but led by just five early in the second half before we finally got things figured out. Both games we were in the mid–40s so a little more typical performances.

None of these teams were great, but we also could have lost any of those games just a year ago. It helps having some more size and for our returning girls to really be locked in.

Sunday morning we had a semifinal game against a team from Southeast Missouri. We watched part of one of their games Saturday and knew they were basically one girl on offense and really tough, pressure D. We figured it would be a good game we could win if we handled the pressure.

That was exactly how it worked out. We did not handle their pressure for about a five minute stretch in the first half and they ran out to an 11-point lead. On consecutive possessions we turned it over in the backcourt and they scored, which is just a killer.

Their one girl was exactly what we thought. She’s probably 6’1” but super fast. Most of her game is just grabbing a rebound and taking off, daring anyone to stop her. She killed us either beating our defense up the court, overwhelming whoever was guarding her, or making a great move to get by the primary defender and then no one was there to help. She hit one three and a couple free throws, but everything else was on a drive to the basket.

We were down nine at the half. Midway through the second half we finally started getting some stops. We got it the lead down to four points three times, but kept stalling there. Then L hit a 3 to bring us to within three. In the final 90 seconds L scored three times – once on a drive when she was also fouled but didn’t get the call,[1] once on a long two, and once when she hit two free throws after her shot barely rimmed out – to cut it to one. But each time we either gave up a basket or they hit two free throws when we fouled to put them on the line. We never had the ball down one or two.

Their best player hit a free throw with one second left to put them up two, then intentionally missed her second attempt. L got the rebound and made a full-court heave that only went about 60 feet. Worth noting we were playing on a college court, which is 10 feet longer than where the girls normally play. So her shot would have only been 20 feet short had we been on a high school court.

Bummer to lose, but a really good game. If we could have just weathered those five minutes – L was on the bench for that entire stretch, by the way – it could have been a different result.

Playing for the championship at a national tournament would have been cool,[2] but it was nice to leave Louisville at 10:00 AM and not have to hang around for a 1:00 game.

LB was fantastic all weekend. It was the best she’s ever played over multiple games. Friday she only scored four points, but finally hit a 3, her first in a real game since December! Seriously, it had been since before Christmas, nearly five full months. Sure, there weren’t any games from the last week of January until the first week of April, but you figure she would have made one in there somewhere.

She scored 12 and 11 on Saturday, hitting another 3 in each game. Then she had 14 on Sunday, hitting two threes and both of her free throws while getting three rebounds, two assists, and three steals. I was pumped afterwards, she was pissed that they lost. Perfect.

Overall she was 16–31 from the field, 5–12 from 3, 4–6 from the line. Again, likely the best she’s ever shot.

She had told me she thought the training she’s doing three nights a week had been helping, making her both stronger and more confident. For this weekend, at least, that seemed to be absolutely true.

Now travel takes a pause for a month, although she still has a week or two of training left. High school ball will start the first week of June. Right now it looks like they’ll lift weights 2–3 times a week, have one basketball workout, then, assuming she gets pulled into the varsity group for summer, play two nights a week in different leagues. I think it’s a good assumption she will be varsity for the summer since A) she deserves it and B) one of the varsity starting guards is a D1 soccer recruit and is usually traveling for soccer and skips basketball over the summer. Then two more out-of-town tournaments in July before this travel cycle wraps up.

Louisville

A few non-hoops stories from the weekend.

We stayed at an Econo Lodge downtown. This was again a tournament where you are required to stay at an “approved” hotel. And the PGA Championship was also in Louisville. So pickins was slim. I read good reviews of the Econo Lodge and figured it was better to take a chance, be downtown for activities, and less than ten minutes from the Expo Center as opposed to staying 30–40 minutes away as a lot of other teams were doing.

They must have paid someone to do those reviews because they were not accurate.

Our hotel was old, it smelled, and it was surrounded by homeless people. Our room smelled like people had been smoking weed in it for years. Friday night starting around 11–11:30 a bunch of kids showed up for what seems to have been a post-party. They ran around screaming and yelling for hours. I guess the cops finally came flying into the parking lot at 3:00 AM and cleared them all out. I think I had finally passed out about 2:45 so missed that excitement. I had Sentry Mode engaged on my Tesla and never got any alerts, so hoped all was well. Some of our other families said they saw kids taking pictures around it. I haven’t gone back to review the footage yet, mostly because I can’t figure out how to pull it up, but there weren’t any scratches, dents, or dings, so I figured it’s all good. I’m glad I could contribute to their fun.

Despite the smell, our room seemed clean, which is more important than dodging homeless men and dealing with hours of teenage noise. The AC worked sporadically so I went from sweaty to freezing every 30 minutes or so as it debated what temperature air to pump out.

So qualified success? We have some good stories!

There was actually a good pizza place across the street. We went there Friday after our game to eat and watch the Pacers game.

A bonus of the PGA being in town was the parking for that event was at the Expo center, too. Thus, for some reason, they weren’t charging parking. Two years ago when we played in the same event it was $35 to park for the weekend. I’m sure they’ll get us when we go back in July. It was $70 to get in the door for the weekend, though.

We had a very bougey breakfast Saturday. L and I grabbed some Starbucks and ate/drank it while charging the Tesla.

That evening we had a good team dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place. Not sure how, but they brought meals for 19 people out at the same time. A team of French Canadian girls rolled in while we were eating. One of their coaches saw our shirts and asked if we knew Jennifer Mathurin, sister of injured Pacer Bennedict Mathurin. She has done some work with girls youth programs in Indy, but isn’t directly associated with ours. He said she had played in his program when she was growing up in Montreal. Nice coincidence.

The Dreaded Procedure

I kicked off the weekend Thursday by having my second colonoscopy, seven years after #1. I put off the second because I’m lazy, justifying it by thinking since I was a little early with the first, I could be late with the second. All seems to have gone well. They did remove a couple polyps, like last time. Thankfully the biopsies came back clean.

The prep always sucks. I don’t mind the “stool time,” for lack of a better phrase. It’s the hunger and headaches that come with that bother me. Wednesday kind of sucked as I dealt with that. But Thursday was fine. Pro tip: pick a flavor of Gatorade you can tolerate but don’t love for your Metamucil dosing. After you suck down those two 32 ounce servings the night before and morning of, the taste is kind of disgusting. You don’t want to ruin your preference for a good flavor.

After my first scope, it took me hours to shake the anesthesia. I only vaguely remember leaving the facility and riding home. My first real memory was saying something at the dinner table and everyone laughing at me because it was, apparently, the third time I had said the same thing.

This time I bounced back pretty quickly. There were some hazy moments in the recovery room, but I clearly remember it being like someone flipped a switch and I was suddenly awake and talking to my nurse. We had a real good conversation, as I recall. It didn’t hurt that she was nice to look at.[3] But later I realized I have no memory of getting dressed. I’m pretty sure I did it on my own. If a pretty nurse helped me get dressed I sure hope I would remember it. Don’t tell S.

Before my scope seven years ago, a friend who had already been through it told me to plan on stopping for some kind of good food on my way home to reward myself for two days of fasting. Which I obviously couldn’t do since I was still sleepy. Thursday, though, I was wide awake, ordered Culver’s from my phone and had S stop there on the way home to pick up a shake, burger, and fries. Which tasted amazing!

I took a couple brief naps in the afternoon but otherwise seemed pretty normal. I slept like a baby Thursday night and was pretty much normal again on Friday for the drive south.

When I weighed in before we left for the surgery center, I was down six pounds! Just in time for pool season!

PACERS!!!!!!!

I’ll admit, I was totally prepared to be let down Sunday. Especially since we made it home in time to watch Pacers-Knicks game seven. Even when the Pacers jumped out to an early lead, shooting nearly 80% in the first quarter, I figured it wouldn’t last. Surely they would start tossing up bricks, Jalen Brunson would score 50, every close call would go against the Pacers, the Nova Knicks would shove with impunity, and the Pacers would slink back home for the off-season.

I was kind of right: the Pacers cooled off to shoot just 67.1% for the game, an NBA Playoffs record. They answered every Knicks run. Tyrese Haliburton turned into the Hali from before his January injuries. The bench was gigantic. The Knicks ran out of steam, other than Donte DiVincenzo, and Brunson’s body finally let him down, his left hand breaking when he tried to prevent a Haliburton break-away layup.

Massive win for the Pacers. This was supposed to be a year to just get back into the playoffs. Instead they are four wins from the NBA Finals. The #1 seed Boston Celtics block their path. It feels like a Celtics in five pick. However, a non-Pacers friend texted me Sunday evening saying he fully expects whatever voodoo magic the Pacers are working with to cause Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown to get hurt in the next week. Giannis didn’t play in round one and Dame missed two games. The Knicks started the series with a ton of injuries and seemingly added another each game along the way. I would be worried if I was a Celtics fan.

I felt terrible for Brunson. You can’t help but respect that dude, even with all his flopping. He works so damn hard and takes on such a huge role for that team, and makes tough bucket after tough bucket. And as much as I hate Jason Hart and DiVincenzo, I give them grudging respect for how hard they play. Granted, they foul on every possession and somehow never get called for it. This series generated flashbacks to the KU-Villanova Elite 8 game I went to in, coincidentally, Louisville, when the Wildcats somehow ran through every KU screen and were never called for a foul. It’s like the refs let it go the first time because they can’t believe anyone would be so brazen, then realize they can’t call it later in the game because they didn’t in the first half. Not that I’m still bitter about a game that was eight years ago…[4]

And how about Minnesota ripping off a 54–24 run in the second half to come from 20 down to knock out the defending champs? I never expect the Nuggets to be the team to fall apart in their season’s biggest moments.

PGA

I guess it was a good tournament. I saw bits and pieces here and there over the weekend. It was a little weird to be so close to the tournament without seeing much of it.

But, HOLY SHIT, the Scottie Scheffler kerfuffle! Obviously this in no way compares to another Louisville Police Department fuck up. Or others if you want to dig into their history. Still, what an absolute shit-show. Saturday when we were navigating to the parking lot there were a bunch of LPD officers directing traffic. You can be damn-sure I followed their instructions to the letter.

Obviously this is going to get “fixed” soon. Major props to Scheffler for handling it with absolute aplomb. Shooting a 65 after spending a few hours in jail is one of the most impressive things he’s ever done. He fell apart Saturday and you have to wonder if the stress of Friday caught up with him. He finished eight shots behind winner Xander Schauffele, so I doubt it cost him the tournament. But you never know how things would have turned out if he had been in the final group, or simply closer to Schauffele, and able to put pressure on him Sunday.

I also had to laugh at how many people were screaming “Free Scottie!” Friday who probably have performative Blue Lives Matter stickers on their vehicles, think George Floyd got what he deserved, and that Black Lives Matters is a terrorist group without legitimate complaints. And how a lot of these people suddenly took eye witness accounts that were completely different than the official police report very seriously when an affluent, white golfer was involved. America, baby!

  1. One of our other parents got a video and you can hear me yelling “AND ONE!!!” I’m generally more laid back at games than I have been in recent years, but for a moment I was That Dad again.  ↩
  2. That sounds cooler than it actually is. There are literally hundreds of teams in every age group at these tournaments. To win the “championship,” L’s team had to win their pool, win a semifinal game against another pool winner, then beat a team that won their semifinal. So this represented just four pools out of eight. And this was just in our division within the 2027 age bracket. There were four different ’27 divisions. I’m not sure if all the others had eight pools but assuming they did, that means there were eight champions just for current freshmen this weekend. I think there are even more teams in the middle school divisions. Wild.  ↩
  3. I’m sorry.  ↩
  4. As you well know I can get all fired up about games from way longer ago than eight years.  ↩

Weekend Notes

May 6, 2024 /

Kid Hoops

Teenagers are funny. One day they are on top of the world, the next everything is shit.

That might be a little dramatic but it kind of sums up the weekend for L’s travel team. Saturday they played great, winning their two games by a combined 22 points. They should have one the first by 20+ – they got to a running clock midway through the second half – but turned sloppy and let the lead slip to single digits before stretching it out in the end. We had a girl score 22 points in this game.

In the second game was the third against this team this season. Game one was a one-point win. Game two was a two-point loss. Saturday our gurls controlled most of the game. They had a 10-point lead midway through the second half. Again, they got sloppy and let the other team come all the way back to tie. But then we controlled the last 3–4 minutes of the game to win comfortably by eight.

Things were clicking Saturday. L wasn’t great scoring – 0 in the first game, 4 in the second – but had four rebounds and three assists in game one despite battling some light headedness that caused her to miss much of the second half. In game two she played great defense, was getting to the rim, and was a little unlucky to miss two makable layups while making two tough ones.

Then, Sunday, in the game to make bracket play, our girls just looked lost. We played another slow-ish, patient, tough defensive team. And we shrunk from the challenge. They let the other team get soooo many rebounds and loose balls. We got a tough whistle in the first half and it seemed to make about half the team afraid to dig in on defense.

We trailed by ten about five minutes into the second half. Each time we tried to mount a comeback it was undone by a missed blockout, a failure to get back on the break, or a missed layup. We strung a few shots together and finally got a real rally together, getting it to four with the ball with about 5:00 left. Then we fell apart, losing by 14. In the closing minutes we gave up at four completely uncontested layups when they broke our pressure and the girls who were playing the back line didn’t stop the ball.

On the ride home L was pissed. I saw her yelling at people after one of those unguarded layups. She said she was mad because only four or five girls play hard on every play. She was mad because we have two or three girls who are almost guaranteed to turn the ball over if they end up with it. And she was mad that our tall girls don’t rebound. “That’s the only reason they are on the team and they just stand there and watch.”

It was kind of awesome. She had a decent game, scoring six but not doing anything else in the boxscore. She played really good defense, again, and was solid when she was running the offense. I think she was also frustrated because she knows if she scored 10–15 points, she could really lay into people.

Weird that they were so good Saturday, and so bad Sunday. I know the other team had something to do with it but our girls just did not seem engaged or willing to fight. Again, teenagers.

Kid Tennis

C got to play her three matches of the high school tennis season over the past 10 days. They went about as well as you would expect for a kid who never practices.

They lost match one a week ago, 6–1, and I have no idea how they won that single game. The other team must have felt bad and given them a game on the scorecard because I don’t remember them dropping one. Then she played two matches last Wednesday at the school across the street from us. These were eight game, single set matches and she and her teammate lost 8–3 and 8–6. They should have won that second match but C’s partner seemed checked out, totally ignoring balls that were hit right at her. I was ready to yell at her but since it is JV tennis just quietly fumed and asked C, “What was up her ass?” when we got home.

Oh well. Not sure C enjoys it as much as M, but I’m glad her back condition has improved enough where she can get out and move around without complaining about pain.

Pacers

Hey, they did it! After dropping a massive turd in game five – getting crushed by the Bucks who were playing without Dame and Giannis – the Pacers controlled almost all of game six, blowing out the Bucks in the last 14 minutes or so of the game, to advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals for the first time in six years.

Kind of crazy how consistently good the Pacers were the first 10–12 years I lived here, brawl years excepted, and then how mediocre they’ve been since that. Nice to have them winning playoff series again. The Knicks aren’t in the best of health, which makes them a decent matchup if the Pacers remember to play defense.

I missed almost all of game six, although I was about a mile from Gainbridge Fieldhouse. We went to a fundraiser for a program a friend of ours is on the board for, hosted at Victory Field during an Indianapolis Indians game. We were up in a terrace, so spent more time socializing and eating than watching baseball. That was a bummer because it was a nearly perfect night for baseball. We also missed the top pitching prospect in the minors by two nights.

I did try to keep my eye on the big TV out in the lobby that showed the Pacers game. It got a little awkward when they brought all the attendees into the lobby to hear the spiel for the program, which supports a trio of Catholic schools that serve kids from some of the worst economic parts of the city, and the muted TV was directly behind all the speakers. You could tell who the hoops fans were by how we shifted our bodies to follow the action.

A Trip to Miami

M and two of her high school friends jumped in a car and traveled to Oxford, OH to visit two of their buddies who attend Miami. Miami still has another week of school, so it was the perfect chance for people to visit. M said she saw several friends from high and middle school who were also visiting Miami pals.

She had fun. She still thinks Oxford is too small. But she was impressed with how it has more bars than the area of Cincinnati around UC. Glad she’s focused on the important things.

Pool

Our pool is scheduled to be opened today. Probably two weeks too late given how the weather has been. We’ll see if the heavy rain holds off long enough for our guys to show up and get it cranking.

I did the second power wash of the season to get all the pollen and crap off of the cover yesterday. The water didn’t seem super cold, so I’ll be interested to see what the temperature starts at when they turn the heater on. Last year it was 57. As warm as it’s been lately, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s in the mid–60s. Which means the heater might get the water to a swimmable temperature before the filter cleans out all the crap that has settled into the water over the winter.

Weekend Notes

April 29, 2024 /

Some quick weekend notes. I’m going to try to really let the content flow this week. So be prepared either to read a lot or be disappointed if I only crank out a couple posts.

Home For The Summer

I went down to Cincinnati Friday morning to pack up M for the summer. She had called me Thursday night to let me know that in addition to being the day a lot of the dorm kids were leaving, UC was hosting two big graduation events Friday.

Urban campus + limited parking + people moving out of dorms + thousands of extra people on campus for graduation = ???

It ended up being not as bad as I feared. I thought I was going to have to park well away from her dorm and then we’d have to huff it several blocks to drag all her crap to the car. Right when I got to the front of her dorm, though, a police officer directed me to a spot right across the street. He even held traffic so I could spin around and pull in! The only downside was once we were done, we had to wait about 20 minutes for traffic to clear to get out of our spot. But at least we didn’t have to walk blocks.

Move-out was pretty easy. Her roommate had gone home the previous weekend, and I had taken a load of stuff home from L’s basketball games last week, so her room was fairly empty. Thursday night S suggested I take her Telluride so I had plenty of room to load everything. I scoffed at that, saying she didn’t realize how much cargo space the Model Y has. I admit there was a moment Friday when I wasn’t convinced we were going to squeeze everything in. But we managed.

We stopped for her last lunch in Ohio for four months then headed home.

She’s been submitting job applications online for several weeks without any bites. She was scheduled for jury duty starting today. When she called last night to get her status, she was cleared. So her task for this week is to complete some applications in person. S gave me instructions not to complete getting M a car until she’s got a job. I told her C has first dibs on the Mazda if we don’t have a fourth car when the Audi goes back, so hopefully that lights a fire under her ass. She already helped one of her aunts do some stuff, but she needs a real job.

She was the first of her high school friends to get home for the summer. A friend who goes to Pepperdine got home Saturday night. One who went to the College of Charleston arrived Sunday. The bulk of the kids who went to public schools will trickle in over the next 10 days.

Strangely, as we were waiting for traffic to clear Friday, I got notifications from CHS that both C and L had earned High Honors for the year. With a month of school left. Bizarre. Not sure if this was an error and was supposed to just cover the third quarter. The certificates in the emails clearly noted the entire academic year. We told them this doesn’t mean they can slack off for the last month.

Pacers

What a weekend!

Friday night’s game three could not have been more exciting. The Pacers jumped out to an early 19-point lead, hitting just about everything they shot. They were up 12 at the half before a 5–0 run extended that to back to 17. The Bucks methodically sliced into that margin, finally taking the lead late in the fourth quarter. Some back-and-forth, including a ridiculous Khris Middleton shot to send the game to overtime. Another crazy Middleton 3 with about five seconds left in OT tied it again. Then Tyrese Haliburton torched Patrick Beverly for the game-winning shot.

Sunday, no Dame Lillard, Beverly got injured early, and Bobby Portis was ejected in the first half. Yet the Bucks played their asses off and stayed in it until a couple huge Pacers runs after halftime broke the game open. Even then, the Bucks trimmed a 17-point lead to six at one point. Myles Turner might have played his two best games as a Pacer over the weekend to key the wins. And now the Pacers are one win away from advancing, with both Giannis’ and Dame’s status in doubt going forward.

HS Hoops

L didn’t have any games this weekend. But she did go to the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony with several of her teammates Saturday to watch their head coach get put into the hall. That was kind of cool. L and her teammates all snuck out after about 90 minutes as there were A LOT of speeches and they were more interested in doing silly high school girl stuff than listen to old people talk.

Weather

Man, it suddenly got really nice. We kicked the air on Sunday because it was warm and muggy. The forecast ahead looks great. We are opening the pool next Monday. I probably should have scheduled that a week earlier.

Weekend Notes

April 22, 2024 /

A super busy weekend, with plenty of time in the car.

Kid Hoops

L had her first, big, out-of-town tournament as a high schooler in Cincinnati. It was a three-day deal, and we had booked two nights in a hotel. Then we got the schedule which had our first game at 12:30 Friday and our second at 6:30 Saturday night. Our team agreed it was easier to drive back-and-forth than try to kill approximately 30 hours between games.

So we headed down Friday morning, played, ran to UC and had lunch with M and grabbed a bunch of her stuff to move home, and headed back to Indy. Saturday afternoon we returned to the Queen City, checked into our hotel, and got to the gym for two evening games.

The hoops were decent. We went 2–2, three of the games were very close, which made it fun.

We won our first game 50–9, starting the game on a 19–2 run. That was a far cry from our first travel tournament two years ago when we lost by approximately the same score.

Saturday we fell behind by 14 in the first half of our first game. We steadily worked our way back into the game and tied it with just under a minute left. But we gave up an and-one, couldn’t get a shot, and the game seemed to be over. I was talking to a dad next to me when we somehow picked off an entry pass, threw the ball ahead, and got an open-look from 3 to tie. It rimmed out and we lost by 3. Good game, though.

Our second game Saturday was against a team that beat the girls we beat Friday by four, so we figured we had this one in the bag. Jinx! We gave up a 9–0 run to start the game, and the girls kept trying to make the 6–8 point play to erase most of the deficit in one shot. We finally answered with a 7–0 run but were still down five at the half.

We started the second half much better and finally took the lead about four minutes in. We stretched that out to a seven-point margin and seemed to have the game in hand. Cue the 8–0 run by the other girls. Fortunately we rallied again and held on to win by four.

Then Sunday we had a single game. This was a “live” event for recruiting, so there was no bracket play. This one was good, too. It was against a team we beat by one in Indy while we were on spring break. We did our usual dig a hole early thing and played from behind all day. Never more than five points down, but each time we got it to one or two, we couldn’t get over the top. I believe we took the lead once briefly in the second half, but couldn’t stretch it out. We had it tied twice in the final 90 seconds but never had the ball with a chance to lead. We ended up losing by two.

Both the parents and kids agreed at our post-game meal that even though we lost two of them, we much prefer these close games. L told me she thinks it makes her better because she has to stay focused. And while it’s more tense, it is a lot more interesting to care about the result until the final buzzer.

L played decent. She didn’t score much, only eight total points for the weekend. She did have 13 rebounds and seven assists with just 3 turnovers. In that last game, especially, she was great moving the ball and playing defense. She got isolated in the post against a big girl on one possession and did a terrific job battling, making the girl pass out twice before she finally took a bad shot and L got the board. Her jumper still is a mess so she was reluctant to take any. In the last game she also had two beautiful drives she couldn’t finish, which would have helped in a two-point game. And her biggest mistake was in the last game when she got caught on a screen and bumped a 3-point shooter as she tried to fight through. That girl hit two of three free throws which, again, were kind of important. That was my one coaching point for the weekend: when you get caught on those screens, you have to let the shooter go because the refs will always call that foul when you try to block them from behind.

I took over reserving the team hotel rooms this year, in hopes of avoiding some of the bad places we got last year. This tournament is “stay to play,” meaning you are supposed to use the official travel site to book your rooms and do so only at hotels on the list. Even though we booked in February, all the decent hotels were taken, so I booked at a Quality Inn that seemed to be in a good area and got good reviews.

Well, it wasn’t as bad as the hotel we stayed at last year that literally had people doing crack near the dumpsters, but it wasn’t great either. I don’t think it had been renovated in 40 years. The entire place smelled like a combination of weed and Indian food. The girls found what they claimed to be a heroin needle outside. L said she heard people fighting in the hall in the middle of the night, which I somehow slept through despite not sleeping very well. For the after-game hang, we went to the much nicer hotel across the street where two teammates who booked late were staying.

So not great. But our room was clean and we only stayed one night. I have another iffy place lined up for our next trip to Louisville next month. Fingers crossed…

This whole Stay to Play thing is such a scam. I think the majority of the time they don’t really care where you stay, especially for a team at our level. But as travel organizer I didn’t want us to get denied entry because we couldn’t prove we’re in an approved hotel. And I wanted us to be less than 20 minutes from the buildings we are playing in plus stay for a reasonable rate since our families are spread across a fairly wide swath of the economic spectrum. Feels like you have to come up short in at least one of those three areas – quality of hotel, location, or price – to find a hotel at these big tournaments.

Prom

While I was doing the Good Dad thing and watching my youngest kid play basketball out-of-town, I was missing my middle kid’s prom night. Which I think qualifies as a Bad Dad thing, right? 😬

Fortunately things seemed to go fairly well here for C on her big night. She had a date who is just a friend, which ended up being a good thing because he acted like a bit of a douche from what I was told. There was some stress getting ready, which is almost required on prom night, right? But she recovered and it was like a 98% great night. Good weather, she avoided the assholes she wanted to avoid and most of her friends got through the night without drama.

When we were at lunch with M on Friday she said C had told her she just wanted it to all be over. That’s the sad thing about events like prom: there’s so much prep and pressure on the night that it can be hard for kids to relax and actually enjoy the evening because they are so wound up about 50 different things.

Pacers

Yeesh. After a week of hearing almost every national writer pick the Pacers to upset the Bucks, mostly due to Giannis being unavailable for at least the beginning of the series, the Pacers clearly were not ready for the big lights of the playoffs. It was like a five point game when I muted it when C came down to tell me her prom details. Next thing I knew the Bucks were up by 20 and Dame Lillard was hitting everything. That’s not the way to start a series at all. The Pacers looked like a team that hadn’t been in the playoffs in four years. The Bucks looked like a team that was laser-focused on erasing all the negativity and mediocrity of their regular season. It’s only one game of seven, but the Pacers at least needed to be competitive in game one.

Tyrese Haliburton continues to look like a shell of the player he was pre-injury. This might be the most destructive hamstring pull in NBA history. I believe the Pacers missed their first 14 3-pointers. We’ll see if Rick Carlisle can get this shit fixed for game two.

PJ

Hey, that new Pearl Jam album is, indeed, very good!

Weekend Notes

April 15, 2024 /

A pretty solid weekend around our house. Enough went on that I will divide this into two parts. Smaller items in this post, a bigger post to come tomorrow.

After a crappy four days of rain and steadily decreasing temps, the weekend was gorgeous here in Indy. Sunday it got into the 80s for the first time this year. We took advantage by doing phase one of pool opening prep, power washing all the crap that had collected on the cover since last October. Actually pool opening isn’t until three weeks from today. S half-mentioned getting the patio furniture out yesterday, but I told her if we did that it would 100% snow sometime in the next three weeks so we decided to hold off a little longer.

Kid Hoops

L played in the same gym as a week ago, once again three games.

Saturday we played her middle school buddy’s team, a higher ranked team from her program. Her buddy and two other girls were missing, so they only had six. It didn’t look like that would matter at first as they got a quick 10–2 lead. We answered with our own 10–2 run to tie and trailed by just two at halftime. Midway through the second half we were up five. Our girls were playing really well on both ends. The other team was down to five girls as one girl rolled her ankle and missed a big chunk of the first half, although she returned in the second half.

We couldn’t hang on, though, and lost by four. Too many second-chance opportunities because we couldn’t grab any rebounds and way too many unforced turnovers.

An hour later we were back on the court against a team that didn’t look very good in warmups. Our girls came out focused and led 23–8 just before halftime. Then we started missing layups. After halftime we kept missing layups. Then we started missing jumpers. Then girls started taking bad shots as soon as they got the ball. Our coach, who isn’t a big yeller, was screaming at the girls to stop taking dumb shots.

Next thing you knew it was 23–21 six minutes into the second half before L hit a free throw to break the run. After one more basket by the other girls we ripped off a 10–0 stretch that put the game away.

That win kept us out of fourth place, which meant we had to go back at 9:05 Sunday instead of 8:00. In the bracket game we played a higher level team from the program we beat on Saturday. These girls also didn’t look like anything special in warmups. No super tall girls, or girls that looked super athletic, and they weren’t lighting it up as they shot.

But this team was one of the best coached teams I’ve ever seen. They ran a really good motion offense, but their goal was to get one of their big girls posted on a smaller defender, and then both of those girls could finish over either shoulder. Old school basketball! It was impressive. They were tough as hell, too, something our girls don’t always handle well. Their defense was perfect for AAU where refs let you get away with just about anything. Bob Huggins probably loves the defensive rules in summer ball.

It turned out to be a really good game. We trailed by six early, by seven later in the first half, before getting it to 19–17 at halftime.

Second half was the same story. We trailed by seven, came back to take a five point lead, trailed by five late, and then our only shooter hit four 3’s in the final 90 seconds to force overtime.

Overtime sucked. We didn’t score. L had two turnovers in the final minute. We lost by six.

At least that meant we got out of the gym to enjoy the beautiful day.

L was mixed for the weekend. She scored seven in the first game, hitting her first three shots before missing a couple when she got fouled and there was no call. She hit a free throw on an and-one. Otherwise she didn’t do much good or bad. In game two she was one of the girls who missed layups in our bad stretch. She grabbed four rebounds, which is good for her, but only scored three points. Then Sunday she just scored one point and had those two huge turnovers late.

The good news was she went 4–5 on free throws, and all five looked great, The main trainer at her weekly workouts adjusted L’s mechanics last week. It’s going to be a process to get those integrated but at least from the free throw line the changes seemed to be working.

We are off to Cincinnati Friday for a weekend of games.

Big Kid Props

We talked to M twice on Sunday. She called us after she had her final house meeting of the year for her sorority. They gave out awards and she won one of the Founders awards for her “positive attitude and impact on the house even as a freshman.” We laughed because she said they read the things that people said about the winners before they announced the winner’s names, and she had kind of tuned out whoever was talking when they got to her award. So she doesn’t remember what specific nice things they said about her. Hilarious! She was probably talking to whoever was sitting next to her.

Later she texted us and said she got selected to go to her sorority’s national office this summer to take part in a leadership conference. They pay for it, so we said she should absolutely do it. The only bummer is it is in St. Louis in July, so she’ll have to deal with that fun humidity in the Lou.

Masters

Between the PGA-LIV stupidity and my old-man arthritis that has kept me from playing golf for two years, I rarely watch golf anymore. I did catch a lot of the Masters over the weekend, still one of the best four days in sports.

Brilliant stuff from Scottie Scheffler. That dude is really fucking good. My guy Max Homa had his shots, but two bad holes Sunday ruined his chances.

Mostly it was fun to see weather really affect how the course played. Heavy winds all week made it damn near impossible to know where your ball would end up. That Scheffler ran away on the back nine Sunday was even more impressive as pretty much everyone close to him fell apart.

Masters week also meant it was time for the return of one of the best sports bits of the year.

Masters Update

NBA Playoffs

The Pacers ended the regular season in style, blowing out the Hawks once again, winning 157–115. It was the second time this season the Pacers have set a new franchise scoring record, both times coming against the Hawks.

It’s back to the playoffs for the first time in four years, with the Milwaukee Bucks waiting. There’s some bad blood in the matchup from games back in December and January. There was the weird “Ballgame” confrontation. There was the Pacers knocking the Bucks out of the IST, and then winning again a couple weeks later. Malik Beasley went on record back then as wanting the Pacers in the playoffs so the Bucks could put them in their proper place.

Giannis Anteotkounmpo missed the end of the regular season and there’s no concrete word on his status for round one. That would be a pretty big bonus for the Pacers if he either can’t play or is limited. Tyrese Haliburton gets to go back to his hometown. Should be a great series.

A Boston-Denver Finals is the smart bet. The West, especially, is going to be a slog for whoever comes out of that conference.

College Hoops

Kentucky hiring Mark Pope was unexpected, but it may end up being genius. He’s a really good coach, runs a modern offense, and is much more laid back than John Calipari. Being a former UK player he’ll get a longer honeymoon than pretty much any other hire if there are early struggles. I would also expect him to moderate recruiting a little, focusing more on getting players who fit his system and maybe want to play in Lexington for a couple years rather than trying to get the five best freshmen he can get every year. To be sure UK will still have great recruiting classes. I think he knows that you win in college by having experience, and his offense works better with guys who have been in it more than three months.

I find the transfer portal, and the rumors surrounding it, exhausting. But I still pay attention because KU is in the market. I laughed out loud this morning when I saw that Colby Rogers, a former Wichita Sate player, had committed to Memphis. Yesterday a top-notch recruiting site said he was down to KU, Michigan, and Alabama. I’ve been trying to back off on the college hoops rumor monitoring because of situations exactly like this. No one really knows until the kid makes an announcement.

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