D's Notebook

Tag: Indiana Pacers (Page 1 of 7)

Weekend Notes

January 27, 2025 /

A lot of hoops to get through. Not looking forward to some of it, though…

HS Hoops

Two games for CHS last week. Wednesday we traveled south to take on Center Grove, ranked #7 in 4A. After our city championship, we had snuck back into the media rankings at #11 in 3A.

Varsity lost by 17. We were down seven at halftime then scored the first seven points of the second half to tie. After that, CG went on an 18–2 run to put us out of our misery.

L didn’t play much in the JV game. Her foot continues to bother her, meaning she can’t practice 100%, meaning the coaches have been sitting her if they think she looks a step slow. Which is fair, but frustrates her. Also, this night she just generally didn’t feel very good. She played the first 90 seconds or so then sat the rest of the first quarter. Same for the second quarter, although she subbed in late in the quarter…and promptly took a shot to the nose and had to leave because she was bleeding everywhere. Fortunately she is simply prone to nosebleeds and the contact was right in the troublesome spot rather than suffering any real damage. Still, she bled all through halftime. But she started the second half so the CG trainer got her sorted out.

We trailed by two at halftime and by the same amount after three. L hadn’t done much, rimming out a couple drives on her only shots. With about four minutes remaining we switched to full court pressure, got a couple steals and buckets, and led 38–30. Then CG broke our press on two straight possessions and turned 2-on–1 drives into wide open 3s. Modern basketball. 38–36 in like 25 seconds. Yeesh.

That’s when L decided she wanted to play some ball. She got fouled on a drive and made both free throws. She found a lane from the left side, drove hard, and converted the layup. CG started fouling to stop the clock and she went to the line two more times, hitting three of the four charities. Seven points and a steal in about 2:30 of game time. Hey, we ended up winning by seven! Our whole team played well late: another guard forced three turnovers, a couple other girls knocked down their free throws. Other than those seven points, L didn’t do much. To cap things off, as we walked out after the varsity game, she tripped on a floor mat and luckily caught herself before she went face first into the linoleum.

Saturday was S’s birthday. Just like for mine last June, we celebrated by watching some high school ball. Instead of staying in the city to watch two summer league games, though, we traveled 100 miles north to take on the school where our varsity head coach played.

JV opened their game with a 13–0 run, gave almost all of it back, leading 16–15 just before halftime, then figured things out and won by 19.

L did not have a good game. She missed a couple contested layups from the left side in the first half. It didn’t look like she had any speed or lift and was more worried about contact than finishing strong. She hit one of two free throws for her only point. She had a couple assists. But she had three turnovers, all of which were bad ones caused by her forcing things that weren’t there. She was very upset when the game ended and took a long time to come out of the locker room. It’s been a hard year for her, and I think it caught up with her in that moment. There’s more to this we’ll get to in a couple weeks.

On the varsity side, HNHS is a 4A school with the same record as us, against a much weaker schedule. In the computer rankings they were about six spots behind us in the all class list.

We didn’t have too much trouble with them. Got a decent margin early and kept stretching it out. We were up around 20 before we got sloppy late but held on for a comfortable 14-point win. And we did it mostly without our leading scorer, who had missed practice Friday and thus only played about 10 minutes. Not sure if she was sick or that was because of a punishment she earned. Good that the other girls saw they can win without her carrying them.

JV is now 15–3, varsity 13–8. Two more games this week to wrap up the regular season.

Brackets

Sunday was the draw for the Indiana state tournament. Remember, this is a blind draw. You get no credit for being the best, or one of the best, teams in your sectional. Nor are you punished for having a bad record. The six teams in our sectional are, in the computer rankings, slotted at numbers 9, 11, 36, 37, 59, and 81 in class 3A.[1] So, of course, the quarterfinal games are #9 (CHS) vs #11, and #59 vs #81, with the two middle ranked teams getting the byes.

Yep, that means CHS will open sectional play against our arch rivals BCHS, who we just beat two weeks ago in the City championship game.

Such a stupid, unserious way to run a tournament. The two best teams get no reward for playing the toughest schedules. Rather, their “reward” is that one of them will end their season before four teams with worse rankings play their first game. CHS has played the 26th toughest schedule in the state across all classes. BCHS the 34th hardest. The teams that get the byes? Their schedules are ranked #190 and #115.

Anyway, should be an interesting game at 6:00 next Tuesday night. I hate to jinx the winner, but they should be an almost certain lock to emerge as sectional champions the following Saturday.

Scorekeeper Weirdness

No, this has nothing to do with the teacher who is constantly messing up, I mean, runs the clock at our home games.

Back in mid-December two good southern Indiana teams (both top 10, one in 1A, the other in 2A) played a close game that went down to the final seconds. The road team led by five with a minute left, and when the final buzzer sounded, thought they had escaped with a one-point victory. However, as the official scorekeeper was tallying up their points, they discovered that the person running the scoreboard had given the home team credit for just two points on a 3-pointer they hit in the final minute. The game was actually tied. The game officials had already left the gym, so the game was officially over.

The schools reached out to the state athletic association asking for guidance, and were given a few options. The schools chose to play a four-minute overtime. They got together Saturday to finish that contest. The team that thought they won a month ago ended up winning 34–33. I’m hoping that there weren’t any scoring errors and this is indeed the final result.

KU Hoops

Nope, nothing here. I’m thankful we were sitting in a gym in northern Indiana and missed the Houston game. As we walked out, Rylan Griffen had just hit a 3-pointer to give KU a five-point lead with 30 seconds left in overtime. I’m just going to assume the Jayhawks held on to win and move on. I had over 70 text messages and a ton of Facebook messages when we got home. Since I was tired I didn’t read them and I’ll assumed they were celebrating a glorious KU win. Weirdest thing, when I tried to watch the game I hit Delete instead of Play and lost the game.

At least we’re not Indiana, I guess.

Pacers

Two games in Paris vs San Antonio. Thursday, the Spurs put the hammer down in the third quarter, mostly courtesy of sublime play by Victor Wembanyama, and crushed the Pacers by 30. Two days later the Pacers returned the favor, getting white hot and turning a one-point deficit midway through the third quarter into a 38-point win. Tyrese Haliburton scored 16 points in a little over 2:00 to key the rally. The NBA is wild! Or, la NBA est folle! Pacers have now won 15 of 20.

NFL

I didn’t watch much of the conference championship games. I’ve been meaning to get to Oppenheimer, so maybe I’ll watch that instead of the Super Bowl, as I have little interest in either team that won yesterday.

Skiing

I used to really enjoy the old NBC Sports Network channel this time of year, as they aired various sports you normally only get to watch in Winter Olympics years. I’ve never skied in my life, but I love watching competitive skiing, especially the downhill. So I was thrilled that I came across this weekend’s downhill race being held in Austria on regular NBC Saturday afternoon.

I don’t recall if they did this during the last Winter games but Saturday they were flying a drone behind/above the skiers, which was a truly incredible perspective. It’s always hard to represent the pitch of the mountain on TV, but the drone cam did the best job of conveying that I’ve ever seen. It was almost like being there. Good stuff. I hope this wasn’t a one-off and they show more Alpine events over the next month.

And NBC never should have killed the NBC Sports Network.

  1. Out of 98 3A schools. The numbers are worse when you look at the all class ratings. CHS is #39, BCHS #51, then the rest of the sectional are numbers 125, 130, 201, and 281.  ↩

Pacers + Health Update

January 14, 2025 /

Two weeks into the New Year and there are a couple posts I’ve been putting off for far too long.

Before I get to a quick health update on your beloved blogger, I can’t believe I forgot to include a blurb about the Pacers yesterday. So…

Pacers

Hey, my Indiana Pacers have won six in a row! Including a comprehensive win Sunday over the Cavaliers, which broke Cleveland’s 12-game winning streak. The Pacers got that dub coming from 13 down and playing the entire second half without Tyrese Haliburton, who tweaked his hamstring for the 800th time. Somehow their defense was the difference. The Indiana Pacers playing defense??? Crazy stuff! They have now won seven of eight, and 13 of 17. Pretty solid run after a slow start.

Now we’ll see how much time Hali has to miss to mend his hammy. The Cavs get a rematch tonight so I would imagine the Pacers’ streak comes to an end.

Ticker Talk

Now for the first of the items I’ve been putting off sharing. For no good reason.

Over the fall I had a couple more episodes where my heart got out of rhythm for lengthy stretches. After some back-and-forth with my cardiologist she had me wear an event monitor for a week and then sent me to an electrophysiologist in her office. The hope was the event monitor would catch something the specialist could use to determine if there was something up with my heart beyond genetics and develop a course of action.

I wasn’t able to get in to see the specialist until right before Christmas. As always happens when I go in, my EKG was fine. And my event monitor didn’t catch anything. So he started from scratch, reviewing my full health history and then the times when I’ve had Afib for 12 hours or more.

The good news is that he still thinks my heart is in fine shape and my stroke score is effectively zero. It’s not actually zero since I have Afib, but as all my other factors are super low he doesn’t think we need to worry about any stroke prevention medications at this time.

He did say that the thinking on how to manage Afib has changed in recent years. Where once physicians began with meds, they now like to put those off as the side effects are so significant. Instead, a surgical option that used to be used after meds is now the first choice. Thus, at some point I will need a heart ablation if my Afib episodes start recurring more often.

He was pretty excited to explain how that would work. After knocking me out, he would run a line into my right femoral artery that would eventually end up in my heart. Over the course of a couple hours he would shock some of the tissue in the back, left of my heart, where the faulty signals that trigger Afib tend to come from. This process causes scar tissue which blocks those electrical impulses. It will not make Afib go away completely, but it does minimize how often it presents.

That seemed kind of wild to me, especially since I don’t have these episodes very often. But he told me he would do it right away if I wanted to, although that was not necessary. Also wild!

I figure I’ll kick that can down the road as long as I can. Unless my Afib starts occurring regularly instead of randomly, that doesn’t seem like something I need to jump into just yet.

Any time I’ve written about my heart issues I’ve noted that most of my Afib spells have occurred when I’ve been drinking. The crazy thing is most of them have started when I have only drank one beer, or in a couple cases, not even finished that beer. Because of that I’ve scaled my drinking back quite a bit. Since my most recent episodes, I’ve pulled back even further. I’m guessing I’ve had less than a dozen beers in the last three months, with a few glasses of wine and mixed drinks sprinkled in there. And when I do drink beer, I’ve mostly switched to Michelob Ultra. I didn’t love that at first, but when I found their Amber Max it turned out to be pretty decent for a watered down beer. And the Amber Max is gluten free, which I guess is a bonus.

Still, I’m not drinking very often or much. It’s become one of those mental blocks like when you eat something and get sick later and you aren’t interested in having that meal again even if it wasn’t what caused your illness. Drinking a beer just doesn’t sound very good most of the time, and I worry that the next one will be the drink that causes my heart to act up.

Those reactions are cranked up even more with liquor, so I have some very nice bourbon sitting in my cabinet I have no interest in drinking at all.

I’m not totally dry or anything, and it isn’t a huge switch since I had scaled back my drinking over the past couple years already. I will still get a nice, mixed drink when we go out to dinner, although I’ve found a second one can truly be a motherfucker. Instead of having a beer every night, though, I’m at maybe a beer a week. Or one every 10 days. It kind of sucks but if it helps keep my heart in rhythm and avoids a trip to the ED or increasing my stroke odds, I suppose it is worth it. Getting old sucks, but I could have worse issues, and I’m happy to do things like this so I keep getting older.

Weekend Notes

January 6, 2025 /

Friday I had an appointment to get C’s iPad looked at. After confirming it needed a new battery, the guy helping me said the replacement would take about a week to arrive, so it would probably be “next Monday.” He paused, we looked at each other for a moment, and then we both started laughing. We both thought Friday was Monday because of the New Year’s holiday. Time and space gets freaky over the holidays!

C and L were supposed to go back to school today, although CHS begins the calendar year with J-Term and this week was not going to be a return to serious classwork. Until the school, like most in central Indiana, called off Monday classes early Sunday evening because of our big snow storm. As I begin this Monday morning, we are sitting on about 6” of snow in our part of town, with another wave blowing through that is expected to add one more inch or so. Worse, the winds are kicking up even any roads that have been plowed will likely get worse over the next few hours. S’s office did not close and she had to go in at the normal time. She arrived safely but said the roads are horrible. I’m not 100% certain our snowblower is functional, so we’ll see how much effort I have to put into clearing the driveway later this morning.

**Update: I measured 8″ of snow in our driveway before I began clearing it. One more squall passed through mid-morning and added another inch. As expected, the snowblower did not cooperate so I had to do it by hand. It took over three total hours, with a little help from L at the end. I am very sore and tired.**

It’s not quite our 2014 snowstorm – that one shut the city down for days and wiped out a whole week of school – but it’s good enough for the girls, who get to sleep in one more day.

We did have a little mishap in the storm. We let C drive to work Sunday, thinking she would be home before the roads got bad. Turns out we miscalculated by about an hour. On her way home she slid through a turn and hit a curb, popping a tire. Luckily she was right next to a gas station and was able to pull into the parking lot and wait for us to come change the tire for her. Given the age of the tire, that probably means we get to buy her a new, full set. Happy New Year!

Some more notes from New Year’s week.

NYE

The girls all had plans to ring in 2025 with friends. M traveled to Columbus, OH to hang out with some sorority pals for a couple days. She had a good time and traveled back-and-forth safely. She has one more week at home before UC classes resume next week.

C got together with her friend group. Seems like they had fun. L was supposed to do the same with a smaller group but started feeling bad Tuesday afternoon and ended up staying in her room all night. C came home Wendesday morning feeling bad, an illness that got worse Thursday. She’s been sick for the better part of a month and Dr. Mom finally called in the antibiotic troops to get her cleared up before the second semester begins. The drugs seem to be working so hopefully she starts ’25 healthier than she ended ’24.

As tends to happen, S was in bed well before midnight and I stayed up until just after the ball dropped. I don’t have any great fondness for New Year’s Eve, but I do like to see the calendar officially flip over to the next year and then sit around for a few minutes to make sure civilization doesn’t start breaking down because of some computer bug or whatever.

Thursday

Thursday was a big day for L. First thing in the morning she went back to sports medicine for a check-up on her foot. She was officially cleared to return to practice, although she’s supposed to take it easy and focus on rehab exercises for the time being. She was back at practice Friday and Saturday, the coaches letting her play in about 50% of the reps. There is still some foot pain, so we’re a little concerned that taking six weeks off did not resolve the issue. Unfortunately, she will not have enough practices to be cleared to play Wednesday night, so her first potential game will be in the City tournament next week.

Immediately after she got back from sports medicine I took her to the BMV where she got her driver’s license. She had passed her driving test nearly three months ago and just needed to wait the 90 days after her birthday to be eligible for her license. We got there as soon as they opened and were out in about 15 minutes. She’s driven herself to practice twice, along with going to a boys basketball game Saturday and run a few errands on her own. It would be nice if my days driving her to practice were over but as she and C share a car, those glory days won’t arrive until next year.

Sunday morning S and I took down all the Christmas decorations and got the house cleaned up. It’s always a little weird and a touch sad to be confronted with a “naked” living room after five weeks of having the tree, lights, and other decorations warm the space. Our house was still aglow last night, but this time because of street and house lights reflecting off the snow pack outside. Seriously, I woke a couple times thinking someone was shining a light into our bedroom it was so bright.

Colts

A mediocre season came to an appropriately mediocre ending with an overtime win over Jacksonville in front of a diminished but surly crowd. Tons of the people who bothered to show up left in the second half as the roads began to slicken and the stands were mostly empty as the game went to the extra frame. They would have been better served playing the game at one of the small, college stadiums in town. Then they could have been out in the elements, too! Kind of a shame that despite this massive snowstorm spreading across the country, not a single NFL game was affected by it because the Chiefs were in Denver, the Colts play in a dome, and the Bengals played Saturday night in Pittsburgh.

Owner Jim Irsay wasted no time in saying that GM Chris Ballard and coach Shane Steichen would return for the 2025 season, a decision that pleased zero Colts fans. Get excited for another year on the mediocre treadmill!

Pacers

Hey, they might actually be playing good ball! They climbed back to .500 with a win Saturday. Throw out the disaster loss in Boston right after Christmas, an L they got revenge for two nights later, and they’ve generally played pretty well for about three weeks now. Tyrese Haliburton’s highs have been higher, his lows not as low. Andrew Nembhard returning seems to have steadied the entire roster. They have back-to-backs with Cleveland in a week, which should go a long way to showing how legit they are.

KU Hoops

Talk about wild mood swings! Last week had such a wide variance I’ll hold off my thoughts until tomorrow.

Christmas Week Notes

December 30, 2024 /

We had a pretty good holiday week. Lots of good times and good food with family. The weather was mostly decent, dreary but unseasonably warm all week. There was some good basketball.

The only bummer was I caught cold #1 of the season last weekend and it wore me down several days. Christmas Day and the day after were when I felt the worst, which kind of sucked. Luckily on the scale of worst colds I’ve ever had, this was maybe a 5, so more annoying that truly debilitating. Adding insult to injury, between cold meds, congestion, and the occasional afternoon caffeine boost, my sleep schedule got all jacked up. Fortunately I don’t have much that I’m required to do in the mornings right now so it’ll work itself out. Just super annoying to have to crawl out of bed after tossing and turning for 90 minutes to read for another hour in an attempt to reset my brain.

Holiday Celebrations

Because of our schedule last week, we upset the biggest of our holiday traditions.

With our Denver family arriving Christmas Eve night, we decided to let our girls open their presents on Christmas Eve. The only catch was S had to work until 3:00 that day, and our Christmas Eve gathering began at 5:00. So the girls had “Christmas” at 4:00 Tuesday afternoon. A little weird but I don’t think the girls minded.

M and L both got new shoes and pants. M got perfume and a fancy purse. L got a makeup mirror and some of her favorite beauty products. C was the tech kid this year, receiving an electric vest, an electric blanket, a new speaker, and an Apple Watch. They all seemed pleased. But they got what they asked for, so it would be dumb if they weren’t happy.

Onto S’s sister’s house for our annual Christmas Eve gathering. This year there was a Mexican theme for the food, which you can never go wrong with. Feliz Navidad! After S was off to the airport to pick up her sister and family.

Christmas morning was kind of chill without presents. As usual we hosted brunch and the day-long gathering that followed. I believe we were around 23 for food, then a few left for other events and one sister-in-law joined later in the day. The kids played games and colored ornaments and there was plenty of general family hanging out.

Thursday was our nephew’s 15th birthday, so much of the family went to Top Golf to celebrate. That was mostly about the kids, as we had way too many people for our space and had to send some of the adults inside so we didn’t get yelled at. The kids had fun, which was all that mattered.

Friday evening was a mom’s night out, so three of my brothers-in-law and I managed the kids at our house. I had a huge box of Joe’s Barbecue from a friend in Kansas City that I shared. I think all the little kids loved the ribs, brisket, and burnt ends as much as the dads. There was a lot of kid-uncle wrestling and general mayhem without the moms around.

The weekend was more chill. Our guests made the rounds visiting some other family then flew back to Denver in the evening. Sunday we took it easy, straightening up a bit but are saving most of the cleaning and taking-down of decorations for next weekend. M had some friends over and L went to a gift exchange party.

We also mixed in some movies and watching sports in there as well.

Probably too many details, but I know a lot of you expect such a breakdown after a big week, even if you don’t know many, or even any, of the other participants in our holiday activities.

HS Hoops

A terrific weekend for the Irish. They played in a holiday tournament in eastern Indiana. I wouldn’t say it was the strongest field of all the various holiday tournaments that ran over the weekend, but there were a few other decent teams, including the host squad, who were undefeated and ranked #2 in 2A. And we opened against the #12 2A team.[1] Remember, we lost to the #9 2A team two weeks ago by 13, so just because we’re 3A doesn’t mean we were the pre-tourney favorites.

In Friday’s first game, we beat the #12 team by 11 in a sloppy game. Later that evening we beat a solid 1A team by 12. As we had company, I was not able to go, but the games were streamed and I watched most of them. It was funny to blow my eight-year-old niece’s mind by saying the names of the players. “Wait, you know their names? How?!?!”

Saturday I did drive over for the championship game against, as expected, the 15–0 host Knights. They had a very poor strength of schedule rating, but 15–0 is 15–0. And they were ranked ahead of the team that beat us, so they must be good, right?

Well…

We were up 16–11 after one period and seemed to be getting a nice rhythm going. A few minutes into the second quarter their big girl, who was their only hope on offense, got her second foul and had to sit. Next thing you knew it was halftime and we were up by 21. We just destroyed those girls, carving up their zone and absolutely shutting down their offense. It was fun to watch.

In the second half, NHS stayed in their sagging zone and our girls were actually patient for the first time maybe ever. Our first three possessions of the third quarter took nearly four minutes off the clock as we passed and cut and waited for the defense to come out before getting open drives to the rim.

I think NHS might have gotten the lead down to 17 once, or maybe just 18, but for most of the second half it was between 25–30. We ended up winning by 31. If I’m looking at the records right, it was CHS’ first holiday tournament championship since December 2016. Good times and made for a happy bus ride home!

A true bonus was that L was included in the travel squad. The girls that traveled bussed over Thursday evening and spent the night at a hotel since their first game Friday was in the morning. They bussed back to Indy that night, then over again for the championship game Saturday evening. L thought she was included because she would have been on the travel roster if she was healthy. I thought it was a reward for her going to every practice and being the loudest girl on the bench during her six week absence. Or it could have just been because they only took two JV players and had room for one more girl in the hotel rooms. Or maybe a combination of all that. Regardless, it was fun she got to travel with the team, sit on the bench, and be in the postgame celebration and pictures. Varsity is now 9–6 with a week off before their next game.

Colts

Jesus…

I think it’s time for big changes in this organization. Playing against the worst team in the NFL, the New York Giants, losers of nine-straight, the Colts looked uninterested and unprepared. They gave up more points than the Giants had scored in their previous three games combined. They gave up big play after big play, including a kickoff return for a touchdown immediately after halftime. The defense missed easy tackles. Jonathan Taylor racked up a lot of yards again, but also made a few more grievous errors you just don’t make if you’re a professional who cares about the result of the game. There was even controversy about Anthony Richardson despite him not playing. After the game it was revealed that the true nature of his back injury hadn’t been shared, which led to questions about whether he was as injured as the team suggested.

It seems like everyone on this team has checked out. It’s time to pull the plug and start over. Clean out the front office and coaching staff. Trade some pieces to try to move up and grab a quarterback again, or begin the tanking process to land a high pick in the 2026 draft. Nothing they are trying is working and there’s no need to stay on the current path.

I moved to Indy in Peyton Manning’s sixth season. That year they made the playoffs for what turned out to be the second time in a nine-year span they did not miss the post season. Following the bridge year between Manning and Andrew Luck, they made the playoffs three straight times, capping that run with a loss to New England in the AFC title game. It seemed like the Colts would always be great.

Then Luck got hurt for the first time and, well, you know what happened next.

Amazingly the franchise has reached the playoffs just twice in the last decade. That doesn’t seem possible in the modern NFL, where teams go from drafting in the top ten to making the playoffs constantly. Especially playing in the AFC South. There have only been two truly bad seasons in there, both four win campaigns. Even this year the Colts could end up with eight wins.

What was once one of the most well-run and successful franchises in the NFL is now thoroughly mediocre on the field and a mess off it. Yes, having an all-time great quarterback papers over a lot of issues. I’m not sure the franchise has had much of a plan since Luck’s sudden, surprise retirement, though. And you still hear his departure as an excuse when the front office is criticized. Luck hasn’t played since 2018. It might be time to move on and figure some shit out.

Pacers

Hey, the Pacers had a nice little run going, sweeping their West Coast trip before coming home and blowing a lead late against Oklahoma City. That was a bummer but OKC is one of the two, three best teams in the league.

Then they got destroyed by the Celtics Friday. Like Colts losing to the Giants bad.

Their reward was getting to stay in Boston and take another crack at the C’s Sunday.

Guess what? They somehow fixed all their issues and led Boston wire-to-wire for a solid win. Andrew Nembhard did not play Friday, he did play Sunday. I’m not sure he’s worth 46 points, but it worked Sunday.

  1. There were teams from all four clases in the bracket.  ↩

Weekend Notes

December 23, 2024 /

Christmas week has finally arrived! The countdown that begins sometime around October 1 in my mind is just about done.

Reading through old posts, I see I often updated you all on my state of holiday spirit. This has been a weird year for me. I’ve listened to less holiday music than anytime this century maybe? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still listened to plenty, probably more than the average person. For the first time in ages, though, I don’t have a radio/speaker in the kitchen that has defaulted to holiday music every day since Thanksgiving. For some reason this year I’ve kept our kitchen music pointed elsewhere. And I haven’t listened to our local Christmas music station once.

I’m not sure why, either.

Weird for a guy who several times a year has a dream that he made it to Christmas day without listening to all his favorite songs.

I also haven’t watched as much Christmas TV as normal. In an average year I’ll watch parts of Elf and Christmas Vacation dozens of time. This year? All the way through each movie once (so far) and then a handful of other times checking in on them. I knocked out A Christmas Story and Die Hard over the weekend. E! is showing an Office Christmas marathon later today that I’ll catch. And I ran through some of my favorite SNL holiday sketches over the weekend.

Still, my spirit seems to be lagging a bit this year and I can’t isolate the cause. Maybe it is the daily reminders that he who shall not be named is already making noise that the next four years will be far worse than his first crack at fucking up the world. Maybe it’s because our kids are older and don’t get excited about the lead-up to the holiday anymore?

Here’s the best way to measure my Christmas spirit: despite understanding how a calendar works, Sunday morning was the first time it hit me that Christmas Eve is Tuesday. For some reason I thought it was Wednesday and I had two full days this week to get ready for our festivities. And I’m the one who does the family advent calendar every day. Yet somehow I was a day behind.

Anyway, today I was off early for a grocery run then hit Costco as soon as it opened. Pro tip: a lot of times during the holidays, Costco will open their doors a few minutes early. I walked in at 9:52 when they weren’t supposed to open until 10. I was out in 25 minutes, which has to be December record. I’ll have to make one more grocery run tomorrow to fill a few holes, grab another dessert, and load up on ice.

We have our first family gathering Tuesday evening. Our guests from Denver will arrive late tomorrow night. Christmas day we will host our annual brunch for about 25. We have plenty of other stuff planned for the week. As usual, you’ll get a full roundup next week.

Now some quick-ish words about the weekend.

CFP

Thanks to our weekend schedule and how the games turned out, I was only able to watch all of the Indiana-Notre Dame CFP game this weekend. The environment in South Bend was amazing; I don’t recall a regular season Notre Dame game seeming like that, although I’m far from an expert on the matter. Irish fans seemed extra fired up and there were just enough IU fans in the crowd to push things to another level. At least until the Irish ran away with the game. It would have been even cooler if the heavy snow that was falling about an hour west of South Bend and drifted to Notre Dame Stadium.

I agree with the snap judgement: not only is having first round games on campus a genius idea, but the quarterfinals really should be on campus as well. This is college sports, though, and things that make total sense rarely happen. Forget what’s best for the game or the fans, or that rewards nearly four months of excellence, the old bowl structure must have final say on where the playoff teams end up.

Of course there was immediate backlash about how IU didn’t deserve to be in the tournament. Which spilled over to SMU and Clemson Saturday. Strangely I didn’t hear nearly as much chatter about Tennessee not being worthy. Wonder why?

I think the big takeaway, if you have to make one based on four games in the first year of the new format, is that 12 teams is too many. The line for where the best team is college football is probably falls in the 5–6–7–8 area most years. That doesn’t mean we will always see blowouts in the first round. I do think they are more likely, though, than classic games.

Again, we shouldn’t burn down the system because of a single year. And also don’t lose three games if you want a shot.

Oh, speaking of how dumb college sports are, opening the transfer portal while there are still games being played might the the dumbest thing yet. College sports always finds a way to drain a little more out of the shallow end of the dumb pool.

HS Hoops

Big games Saturday for the Irish. They took on HCA, the Christian school from around the way. This is the team L and I went to scout a week ago when we watched her buddy play against them. She had shared her thoughts with her coaches, so I guess the result was a measure of her scouting abilities.

Varsity won by nine. The game was close in the first half then we led comfortably almost the entire second half, although we could never stretch it out to blow out territory. We watched HCA lose by nearly 30 a week ago. I think if we had played zone like BCHS did against them, we would have won by more. But we don’t play zone much and I think our coaches were worried since HCA has shooters.

JV got a nice, 17-point win. After the game L announced in the locker room that this was probably her last game to sit out. She said everyone screamed and yelled. Now fingers crossed she gets cleared in a week. JV is 9–3, 7–1 without her, so I joked that maybe they don’t want her back.

Varsity is 6–6. They have a tournament this coming weekend; JV is off until January 8.

KU Hoops

After a sluggish start the Jayhawks got their shit together in the second half and pounded Brown by 34. Not the 70 or 58 point wins the first two times these programs played. But still solid. Eight days until Big 12 play begins. More about the state of the team later.

Colts/Pacers

Both local teams get nice wins Sunday. I only saw part of the Colts game. Fortunately it was the good part.

And don’t look now but the Pacers have won four-straight and five-of-six after blasting Sacramento last night. I had to run to get L from a friends and in about eight minutes of game time the Pacers grew their lead from 12 to 29 at one point. They were cooking! The toughest part of this toughest stretch of the year is still to come, but the team is getting healthy and starting to play much better.

Rickey

The biggest news of the weekend was the death of Rickey Henderson, one of the greatest players in the history of Major League Baseball. He, Jim Rice, and George Brett were my holy trinity of favorite players when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure in my big box of baseball cards in the basement I have whole sheets of his cards in an album, the highest praise from me in the early Eighties.

There was this weird spot in our backyard where someone had let a fishing boat sit upside-down for years so grass didn’t grow, basically turning it into a dirt pit. I used it to practice diving back to first base, as if a pitcher was trying to pick me off, imagining I was Rickey.[1]

There genuinely was no one ever like Rickey with his combination of speed, power, and on-base ability. He along with Bo Jackson were the type of players you had to see to believe, and even then you didn’t fully trust your eyes. He ruffled all kinds of feathers amongst older fans, but for kids of my generation, he was about as cool as it got.

For years there were all kinds of crazy stories about his eccentricities. Later we learned that he was one of the kindest men in the game, someone who remembered where he came from and made sure to take care of those who made his life easier.

Mike Piazza shared this great story of how Rickey responded when voting on playoff shares one year:

“[He] was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people — whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant — Rickey would shout out “Full Share!” We’d argue for a while, and he’d say, “F— that! You can change somebody’s life.”

RIP to one of the greatest.

Not sure what the blog schedule will be for the rest of the week. My Favorite Songs list isn’t quite ready, so I may hold onto it until next week. I may share some links but otherwise this may be it for a few days. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

  1. Remember, I was a geeky, sports-obsessed, only child.  ↩

Weekend Notes

December 16, 2024 /

A slightly quieter weekend. No sitting on the couch for 183 hours watching football. I actually got out of the house both days. Multiple times! Let’s review.

College Girls

I’ll share the biggest, best news up top: C got her acceptance letter from IU on Thursday. That’s the only school she’s really interested in, so I think she’s locked into being a Hoosier.[1] She’s pretty excited. Coincidentally she wore an IU shirt to school Thursday. It’s like she knew the letter was coming.

She found out a full month later than M did two years ago; apparently IU did rolling acceptances two years ago based on when you got your application in and switched to letting most early admission candidates know on the same set of days this year. We kind of wish they had waited another seven days so we can keep C focused for finals this week. Nothing to sap a kid’s motivation like telling her she’s been accepted to the college she wants to attend.

C and L have a review day today, three full days of finals, then a half day on Friday before they begin their holiday break.

M wrapped up her finals Thursday morning and was home by early afternoon. Seems like it was a good semester. Financial accounting was not her bag – is it anyone’s? – and that will be the first B on her college transcript. But she’s in marketing, not the CPA path, so surviving and advancing is the real goal with that class.

HS Hoops

We spent 3+ hours at CHS watching ball Saturday, so I’ll start with a review of last week’s three games.

Tuesday we traveled to ZHS, a big suburban school that tends to be good. Last year they beat us by 19 but we knew they are very young this year. We took advantage, winning by 20 in a game that was not that close. We hit shots, played good D, and made hustle plays. JV also won by 20. A good night.

Thursday we played a fellow Catholic school from the suburbs. We expected them to be trash. They were. Yet we only won by 20. A classic example of playing down to our competition’s level. Seriously, their varsity looked like a JV team, at least on offense. They were a scrappy team on defense but were just atrocious when trying to score. Each time we’d get the lead up to 20 or so, we’d go brain dead and let them cut 8–10 points off the deficit. JV also won easily.

The most exciting part of this night was driving to the game in an evening snow storm. There wasn’t much snow, but it was cold enough that the roads slicked-up quick. Throw in rush hour traffic and it took us 50 minutes to make what would normally have been a 20–22 minute trip. The only time we slipped or slid was pulling into the GCHS parking lot.

Finally, Saturday we took on undefeated #6 2A team EH. They went to Semistate the past two seasons but lost a ton of seniors from last year. We knew they have a truly great guard, but if we could contain her and limit the rest of the team, we’d have a good chance to win.

Until one of our two best players didn’t show up because she was sick. And we decided to let their best player go ahead and score 35. We had to put a JV girl on her for a couple stretches because of the missing player plus foul trouble. We kept digging holes and trying to climb out but let it get out of hand in the second half. The margin got over 15 points a couple times, we ended up losing by 13. JV won by 50. We were kind of incredulous that their varsity can be so good and JV so bad.

Roughly halfway through the season varsity is 5–6. JV is 9–2.

It is finals week so we don’t play again until Saturday.

Friday night L and I went to watch her middle school buddy play for our big rival school. Coincidentally they played the team we face this coming week, so it was a scouting trip, too. L proudly wore her CHS sweatshirt and left her coat in the car. I admired her confidence. There are tons of St P’s families at BCHS, so we got to see a lot of old friends.

Her buddy didn’t play much or very well, which was a bummer. L took mental notes on both teams to share with her coach.

We let her drop her crutches on Saturday. She’s not officially cleared but we also let her go over to the Y and shoot a little without her boot on Sunday afternoon. She said she lost her jump shot. I kept to myself that she didn’t have much of one before she got hurt.

There’s still some pain in her foot, but not like it was before the resting began. Two more weeks in the boot before she gets re-evaluated. Knock on wood, between some more rest, shoe inserts, and tape she’ll be cleared to play in our January 8 game, and then in the City Tournament the next week.

KU Hoops

Well that was better.

Bill Self compared North Carolina State to Missouri in terms of their physical abilities and style of play. I didn’t see much of that Saturday, although maybe it was a representation of the difference in playing at home vs on the road.

Naturally, most of the game took place at the same time as the CHS games, so I was following along and just made it home in time to see the final minutes, then watched the recording.

It is kind of crazy that KU has now beat NC State 13 straight times. That doesn’t seem possible in a non-conference matchup between two power conference teams.

Colts

I only saw the first half, as we went out to dinner Sunday evening. When we got home and I checked the highlights, I was pleased that I missed the second half. What a horrific effort that was! Jonathan Taylor fumbling a touchdown for a touchback for no reason. A completely idiotic trick play that turned into a pick-six for the Broncos. I remain in the You Have To Play Anthony Richardson camp. But days like yesterday make that a very tough place to be. He misses soooooo many throws, often the easiest ones, often badly. I’ve said it multiple times and I’ll say it again: even when he makes a good throw, there’s something about his ball that makes it very difficult to catch. I saw a couple in the first half yesterday that were relatively well-placed and for whatever reason the receivers just couldn’t bring them in. Maybe they’re surprised when the ball actually gets to them?

I don’t exactly have my finger on the pulse of the city, but I gather a lot of impatience with the direction of the franchise. 2023 seemed like a great year to be drafting a quarterback. In retrospect, the Colts may have been smarter to draft a non-QB a year ago, tank last season with a fill-in, and then grab a QB in this year’s draft. As with just about everything else they’ve done since Andrew Luck retired, the Colts managed to mess that up, though.

Pacers

On a bit of an upturn? They’ve looked better over the past week and won three-of-four. Their next nine games are brutal though – at Phoenix, at Sacramento, at Golden State, OKC at home, back-to-backs at Boston, Milwaukee at home, at Miami, and Phoenix at home. Is 3–6 a best-case scenario?

  1. Cincinnati is the only other school she applied to.  ↩

Weekend Notes

December 9, 2024 /

Well, a lot to get caught up on. Not thrilled about all of it…

College Football

I spent the better part of 11 hours on the couch watching the big conference title games Saturday. Literally. I know I got up to eat dinner. Obviously a few restroom runs. Maybe I ran out to get the mail? Those were momentary breaks, though, and I spent the better part of noon-to–11 PM with my ass firmly planted in the same spot.

Arizona State hammering Iowa State was a surprise. That seemed like a very even game to me on paper going in. I’m not sure ASU is a team you would want to play if you were Texas or Clemson. They have some magic to them, like a six seed that goes on a deep run in March. It would somehow be appropriate if ASU raced through the playoff and pulled off the massive upset to win, since college football is now much more like college basketball. At least in the postseason. Also a reminder that Kansas took the lead on ASU with 2:04 left and gave up the winning score with 16 seconds remaining in October. Gah…

Georgia pulling the mild upset and knocking off Texas wasn’t a huge surprise. The game was in Atlanta and Kirby Smart clearly has Texas’ number. However, Texas not being able to get the win despite the Bulldogs playing with a backup quarterback for a half is concerning if you’re a Longhorns fan. The good news for Texas is they wouldn’t have to play Georgia for a third time until the national championship game. And with Carson Beck’s health in question, I wouldn’t put big money on the Dawgs getting there.

The nightcap was the Big 10 game, with a sprinkle of the ACC game late. I really thought Oregon would smack Penn State around. PSU is great against everyone except the elite teams, and the Ducks are elite, sooooo… Early on it looked like that would be the case. But props to PSU for fighting back and making it a game. The Ducks still look like the best team in the country. Which, of course, means nothing now.

Seeing Clemson was up big early I totally forgot about the ACC game. I did switch over to see SMU tie it then Clemson kick that huge-ass field goal to clinch their spot in the playoff.

As for the playoff itself, I don’t have huge problems with how it worked out. I found it interesting that Saturday evening, as Clemson seemed poised to steal a spot, every announcer I heard suggested that was good for Alabama. Which I 1000% did not understand. I guess they assumed SMU would get completely bounced? So I was super glad that Bama was the team that Clemson pushed out of the final bracket. Not that I like Clemson, but at least they earned their way in and didn’t get destroyed by the 13th place school in their conference.

IU having to go to South Bend was super predictable. All year I’ve been hoping it would be some southern team that had to go into South Bend and deal with cold and maybe snow in the first round. Instead it’s another team from the same state. Not very imaginative, CFP committee!

I have a hard time seeing any of the road teams getting a win in round one, although IU might have the best chance.

Assuming chalk holds in the first round, we get an Ohio State – Oregon rematch. Their first meeting seems like a long time ago, and OSU damn near won in Eugene. Now they seem a little Team Turmoil-ish so the gap feels wider than it probably is. Penn State – Boise State is super intriguing, mostly because we don’t know much about BSU. Other than they also played Oregon close early in the season.

It feels like the champion comes out of the top half of the bracket, meaning either Oregon, Texas, or Ohio State. If you tell me Beck is 100% healthy, Georgia is as good as anyone. Even if he somehow, miraculously heals, I still don’t trust him. I doubt UGa fans do, either.

Now we get two weeks of discussions about how the format and method of picking teams should be tweaked for next year. I’m already exhausted.

KU Hoops

Speaking of exhausted, this may have been the worst regular season week in recent KU basketball history.

Going to Creighton and losing by 13, in a game that wasn’t that close, was bad enough. Worse was that half the Bluejays were sick or playing at less than 100% because of injury. Insult to injury is that Pops Isaacs, who dropped 27 on KU, was declared out for the season three days later. Apparently he scored so many points he re-aggravated an injury he had surgery for over the summer and now has to have a second surgery.

Then a whole level of worseness worse than that was basically not showing up Sunday in Columbia and losing to Missouri. Well, I guess we made a run and got a 20-point deficit down to two late, but that came long after I bailed on the game and spent the lovely afternoon outside doing a final round of fall yard work. Let me tell you, ripping a bunch of shit out of the ground by hand does wonders for eliminating anger and angst caused by sports!

What was super concerning to me about both these games was that KU seemed disinterested, slow, unsure of themselves, and soft. Both Creighton and Mizzou were engaged, hustled, confident, and tough. If there was a loose ball in either game, there was about a 5% chance KU was getting it. The offense seems disjointed. The defense half-assed and tentative. The guys brought in to solve KU’s shooting woes suddenly can’t hit anything. Hunter Dickinson seems like a different, worse, player than a year ago.

Now, this is the same team that beat North Carolina, Michigan State, and Duke. Which seems amazing at the moment. There was a lot of anger in the various threads I’m in after Sunday’s game, calling out coaches and players. In the NIL era, there’s way less benefit of the doubt for players we know are making six figures.

There’s a part of me that wonders/hopes that maybe some horrible virus ripped through the team last week, and that explains how lifeless they looked. A friend suggested perhaps they were worn out after an intense slate of games in November.

Still, you can’t get up for the Missouri game, something is wrong with you. Maybe it’s too many transfers who don’t understand the meaning of that game. But Mizzou has a bunch of transfers, too, and they seemed engaged. Of course, two of their transfers are KC kids so they were well aware of the history wrapped up when those schools get together. Bill Self needs to get Christian Braun on the phone to explain the rivalry next year.

I’m going to assume playing time is going to change in the coming weeks. There will be more focus on the 5–6–7 guys who put in effort and do what Bill Self wants them to do and less emphasis on playing nine or ten each night. Again, NIL era. You’re getting paid to play. If you can’t perform, you don’t deserve the opportunity.

I wonder if there will also be tweaks to the offense. Dickinson needs to stay in the low post, or at least start there. Having him roam the perimeter to set screens then post when there are 10 seconds left on the shot clock is not working and bogs everything down. Especially since he can’t attack the rim after setting a screen because he’s so big and slow. Play inside out, which focuses on his strengths: low post scoring and passing. He in particular has taken a lot of heat from the fans. Mostly justified as he’s not playing as well as he did this time last year. But the team is kind of built around him and his skills, so might as well go all-in with the HD experience, flaws and all.

KU should be fine. The shooters are too good to keep shooting this poorly. The new guys who get minutes will continue to get acclimated and some wrinkles will be smoothed out. Self will figure out a way to hide weakness and play to strengths.

That doesn’t make the aftertaste of the past week any less bitter, though.

Pacers

They’ve lost five of their last six. Their defense is truly atrocious. The only positives are that Tyrese Haliburton has shown signs of life, although he was not great last night, and Johnny Furphy has been getting minutes and playing relatively well.

HS Hoops

One game last week, Tuesday night against BD, which entered the game 1–5. We were missing two varsity starters due to injury. Over the course of the game we lost another starter who got hurt. We had three girls in foul trouble. At one point we had two JV girls and another one who is basically the last girl on the regular varsity bench playing at the same time. In the fourth quarter. Of a close game. Things were dicey. Had L been healthy, she probably would have been on the court a lot.

We were down one at the half, built a seven-point lead, then gave it all back and trailed by one going into the fourth quarter. That period was back-and-forth, but we had the ball, tied, with 16 seconds left and inbounding under our own basket. Despite having two timeouts, we didn’t get the ball in. Naturally BD went down and scored with 1.6 seconds left. A lot of dumbness.

I chose to look at the positive: despite three major injuries and foul issues, we scored 60 points. Last year we only scored 60 points twice, one of those in a double overtime game. If we could just tighten a few things up on both offense and defense, this team could be really solid. The loss dropped us to 3–5.

JV won by 20, which was cool.

This week is a tough one. Three games. No idea how many of our injured girls will be available. We play a decent 4A team, a 3A Catholic rival with a better record but who is 40-ish spots below us in the computer rankings, and the undefeated #6 2A team that beat us last year.

So KU is a mess, the Pacers are a bigger mess, and L is injured watching her teammates from the sidelines. Not the most fun week of basketball in our house.

KU Football

KU fans got an early Christmas present when Wisconsin hired offensive co-ordinator Jeff Grimes. I don’t think all the problems with this year’s offense were on him – I mentioned often that Jalon Daniels still appeared to be injured early in the year – but it took him way too long to figure out how to mesh with a team that returned almost everyone on offense. He also made a number of bizarre calls. No one was sad to see him leave.

Jim Zebrowski takes over as new OC. He coached under Andy Kotelnicki. He was also the acting OC in the bowl game last year, when KU was unstoppable. I approve.

Defensive coordinator Brian Borland also retired, to the surprise of few. He had been rumored to be close to calling it quits for a couple years. Not sure if that meant he was half-assing it and helps explain some of KU’s defensive issues, but it will be good to get someone new blood in charge. Lance Leipold also stayed in-house here, elevating D.K. McDonald. I don’t know much about McDonald, so not sure what to think.

There was a lot of chatter about Texas A&M co-DC Jordan Peterson being a target. Peterson had coached at KU for four years and was responsible for recruiting several of KU’s best players, including DJ Warner, the highest rated recruit in school history who announced he was entering the portal last week. McDonald got the job so quickly I don’t know if that meant overtures were made to Peterson and he declined, or Leipold was just more comfortable going with McDonald.

Both new coordinators will need to hit the portal hard to fill a lot of holes left by graduating seniors.

And in news that received decidedly mixed reaction, Daniels announced that he would return for his final year of eligibility. Two years ago he was the savior of the program. Now a lot of people would rather roll with a freshman next year. Most of that is because Daniels has never had a full, healthy season at KU. There’s not much reason to expect he will be healthy for 12 games next year. Aside from health concerns, maybe having Zebrowski in charge of the offense will be better for JD’s game.

I was excited about Isaiah Marshall potentially starting next year. Now I’m hoping he is patient enough to get a few spot starts in ’25 when JD is hurt and then be ready to take over as a sophomore in ’26.

Weekend Notes

December 2, 2024 /

A long, extra-stuffed Thanksgiving weekend is in the books. Let’s run through the highlights.

Thanksgiving

For the first time in ages that we’ve been home for the holiday,[1] we did not host the local gathering on Turkey Day. One of S’s sisters and her husband opened up their house to the family. It was nice to not have to clean before and after, run around wildly the morning of, and hope that we hadn’t forgotten anything as we started serving the food. We provided mashed potatoes, Giada’s dressing, a meat and cheese tray, and pumpkin pie. That took a couple hours of prep, and I had a moment of panic when I wasn’t sure if the potatoes were going to be ready in time. In general, though, a much lower stress Thanksgiving than we’ve had in a long time. And we got to come home, get into comfy clothes, and crash on the couch instead of the hours of dishes afterward. Thumbs up all around.

College Girl

M came home Monday afternoon and was here in time for dinner. She went back mid-day Sunday. It was nice to have her home. She had only visited once this fall, so S and her sisters had barely seen her since summer. She has one week of regular classes before finals begin next week. She’s still not sure of her exam/project schedule, but should be home for Christmas break a week from Friday. Classes are going well. She’s eager to be done with financial accounting and never think about it again. No CPA accreditation in her future.

One of her friends who goes to the College of Charleston begins finals today. That just seems cruel.

College Football

Was this the wildest week of college football ever? Some huge upsets. Some great games. Most importantly, it seemed like there were about 50 games that included some kind of brawl. Fighting in sports is generally stupid, but in this case I approve. Nothing like some good, old fashioned hate to wrap up the holiday weekend.

Regarding the planting of flags on the opponent’s field, I’m 100,000% for it. Rub that shit in. Pettiness is always good. If you don’t like it, don’t lose the game. Take your L like a man instead of starting some punk-ass fight about it. Then go plant your flag on your rival’s field next year.

Of course now we’re going to get all kinds of dumb rules that ban flags on the field, postgame interactions, etc, etc, etc. Sports are dumb. The people that run them are dumber.

KU

I have three games to cover in this section, so I’ll pull them out for their own Jayhawk Talk post.

Colts

I missed most of the Colts game as we were watching a couple of our nephews yesterday. S and I helped the boys with their homework. I had the four-year-old and his pre-K stuff, which involved identifying letters and coloring them a certain way and coloring, cutting, and pasting a series of pictures of puppies so the matching ones went together. S assisted the second grader with his reading and answering questions related to his stories. Some of that was in Spanish, which she does not speak. The rest of us may or may not have laughed at her behind her back.

I was finally able to flip on the Colts game late in the fourth quarter. I saw Anthony Richardson throw three-straight balls that sailed into an area where no one could catch them. It looked like the Colts were going to lose to the lowly Patriots.

Then AR threw three-straight amazing balls. Of course, two were dropped by his receivers. One buried itself into the receiver’s chest so he couldn’t drop it. The Colts tried to screw it up, but converted three different fourth downs on a 19-play drive, including scoring on fourth-and-goal, and then converted the two-point conversion to eek out the win. Although the Pats came up just short on a 68-yard field goal that would have won the game. Not sure if winning is good or bad at this point. Somehow the Colts are still in the playoff picture. I still think getting a top 10 draft pick would be better than chasing the postseason.

SNF

I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve it, but for the second time in a couple weeks we got a prime time NFL game played in snow. Last night’s snow in Buffalo was a proper snow, too, although it looked like it had really dumped earlier in the day. When the Colts played up there in a foot of snow a decade or so ago, that may have been the greatest NFL snow game ever. I didn’t have a ton of interest in the game and was tired after a late night Saturday. But I stayed up deep into the fourth quarter to watch the majesty of football in a driving snowstorm.

Pacers

They might, officially, stink. Losses to Detroit and Memphis, after leading by 19, this weekend.

High School Hoops

Three nights of CHS basketball over the last week.

Tuesday the JV beat WC by seven. This was a wild game full of swings and runs. Lots of horrible calls. One ref was so preoccupied with a WC dad in the stands that he kept screaming at people sitting at the scorer’s table to get him out of the gym. I have no idea what that was about. I hadn’t seen the guy he was yelling about do a thing, and our athletic director didn’t seem super motivated to remove him.

Wednesday was varsity night. For the first three quarters, our girls played the best they had played all season. As the lead jumped up to 23 I leaned over to the dad next to me and said we seemed to have turned a corner, getting tougher and playing smarter since that respectable loss to 4A #2 a week earlier.

Guess what happened next?

That’s right, I jinxed those poor girls.

They lost their minds and blew 17 points of that 23-point lead. Mindless turnovers. Passivity on offense. Missed free throws. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. To top it off, late in the quarter, when our coach really should have been clearing her bench because we were up 15+, there was a loose ball that our freshman starter dove for. Her head cracked against another player’s knee and she went down, not getting up for several minutes. When she was able to walk she looked dazed and had a huge goose egg on her temple. Based on her injury history, we are worried she’s going to miss an extended period.

We held on and won by six but ruined all the good feelings in the process. At practice Friday the girls got to watch film for 90 minutes. All of that film was from the fourth quarter. Which is kind of funny when you’re not the one watching it.

Saturday we drove down to the Louisville area for another boy-girl, JV-varsity doubleheader. These are usually cool, but I was bummed the games were scheduled that way. While I was being a good dad watching the JV girls in the auxiliary gym, there was a terrific boys game in the main gym. In the all-class, coaches poll, JHS was #2, CHS #4. Which would make JHS #2 in 4A, CHS #1 in 3A. We peeked in a couple times and JHS was always up by 6–8, but the Irish made a run and ended up losing by two.

The varsity girls lost by 10. They were down just one at halftime but foul trouble and lack of depth because of the injury killed them in the second half.

The JV girls played really well for three quarters, but like their varsity sisters three nights earlier, fell apart in the fourth quarter and let a 15-point lead get down to two a couple times. We ended up winning by six but it was way too nervy. You know what would have helped? A point guard who takes decent care of the ball. Hopefully we get one of those back in about a month.

Travel

Louisville is two hours away, so we did end up traveling for the weekend. This was my first trip in the Tesla in cold weather. Sub-freezing temps make the battery less efficient and cause charging to take longer. Which meant my brain had been spinning for a couple days on the best way to handle the logistics for this trip.

My plan was to leave home with a 100% charge and then stop at the Supercharger in Columbus, IN, a little over an hour away, on the way down to get back up to 80%. That would give me several options for the return trip.

However, the Supercharger in Columbus was not working. So I drove straight through, arriving at my destination with about 45% charge left. While we ate dinner I explored different options on the Tesla app. It kept trying to send me to Shelbyville, IN, which would involve taking a big right turn on the way back to Indy. It would also have me arrive at the Supercharger with about 5% charge remaining, which was way too low for my tastes with the temps dropping and snow falling. As much as I hated to go the wrong way, it made the most sense to cross the river into Louisville proper and go to a charging station about 10 minutes from where the games were. By the time the game ended, even the Telsa app was sending me that way. I think it was too cold to make it to Shelbyville.

So when the game was over I got L some Chick-Fil-A and we went to Kentucky to grab some electrons. Earlier in the evening the estimate was about a 10 minute charge to get home. By the time we got there, it was cold enough that it took us about 25 minutes. This was a 250 KW charger. Because seven of the eight chargers were being used and the falling temperature, mine maxed out at 85 KW, and was usually much lower than that.[2]

We left the charging station at 10 PM, arrived home just after midnight with about 13% of the charge left. If it had been warmer I would have been comfortable going under 10%, but being new to cold weather EV driving, I wanted as much buffer as I could have.

L didn’t mind. She had her iPad and watched shows both while we charged and on the way home. I was able to pull up the Texas-Texas A&M game on Hulu while we charged. And we lucked out with the snow. Early forecasts had called for 2–3” of snow in Southern Indiana right when we were driving. It was definitely snowing hard while we charged, but still mostly melting. And we drove out of it pretty quickly once we headed back north.

We got the Christmas decorations up across Friday-Saturday-Sunday. The calendar says December. Ten days after pushing 70 we are stuck in the 20s and 30s for most of this week. The holiday season is officially here!

  1. We missed 2021 and 2022 while traveling to Hawaii and Italy.  ↩
  2. Not to get too deep into the details, but you will rarely get the full listed power from a charger. Many elements go into what your car can pull, including how many other cars are charging at that location, weather, the temperature of your battery, and how charged your battery is. In general, you will pull more power early in your charge, and as the battery fills the rate will slow dramatically. The analogy I heard when I was car shopping was a theater filling for a movie. When the seats are all empty, people flow in easily. But as it fills and it’s harder to find an open seat, the people searching for one have to take more time to select one. Same pouring energy into your battery.  ↩

Weekend Notes

November 25, 2024 /

The last weekend update before we dive neck-deep into the holiday season.

KU Football

How ‘bout them Jayhawks?!?!?! Taking the Colorado Buffaloes out to the woodshed on the sturdy legs of Devin Neal. There could not have been a more appropriate day for #4 to go off than the 33rd anniversary of Tony Sands’ record-breaking performance. It was even sweeter after Buffaloes “senior quality control analyst” Warren Sapp trashed pretty much everything about KU in a video he posted last week. Zero respect for Neal or Jalon Daniels or any other Jayhawk. Yet, aside from a couple big plays by Travis Hunter, which will happen no matter what you do, the Jayhawks completely dominated that game.

As was trumpeted often during and after the game, KU became the first school in the entire history of college football to beat three consecutive ranked teams while having a losing record. That’s kind of an odd piece of trivia, since it suggests that you likely either had a hugely disappointing start to the season, had a series of injuries to important players who eventually returned, a lot of bad luck, or a combination of all that. I think option D applies to KU. Regardless, crazy that they are a win away from becoming bowl eligible. Just little, ol’ Baylor stands in the way, which should be easy after going to Provo and beating BYU a week ago, right?

For the record, after the BYU win I told two KU buddies – who both have kids at Baylor – that we were going to beat Colorado then likely blow it in Waco. Going to hate it if I nailed both sides of that prediction.

Once again, major props to the KU coaches and players for hanging in there through all the heartbreak and negatives of the first half of the season and rebounding to become the team we expected back in August. If only they had jumped on that fumble against UNLV, or got one stop against West Virginia or Arizona State, or hung on to the touchdown against K-State…

Oh, and what an amazing day from Devin Neal! I was at that Tony Sands game and remember how KU basically ran the same play over-and-over in the second half and Missouri couldn’t do a thing about it. That’s what happened to Colorado Saturday. Devin put the game on his shoulders and made sure there was no way the Jayhawks were going to lose it. A great final home game for a great, great Jayhawk. Truly one of the greatest ever.

IU

Welp, saw that coming a mile away.

I was kind of in the middle on IU. Yes, they hadn’t played anyone good. Or, better said, they hadn’t played a team that was playing well this year. Michigan and Washington both look like great wins in the media guide. But both teams are also thoroughly mediocre this year. However, IU had also 100% been killing everyone they played other than Michigan. Most notably, they crushed Nebraska a week after the Huskers almost won on the road at Ohio State.

They reminded me a little of the 2007 Jayhawks, who had some great media guide wins (at KSU, at CU, at A&M, at Oklahoma State) but had the immense bad luck of all those teams being down that season. When the Jayhawks got to 11–0 before the Mizzou game, there was a lot of national debate about how good KU truly was.

So I sympathized with IU fans this past week, as so many national writers wrote them off before they had the chance to prove themselves against OSU.

I was always pro-big playoff. As we approach the first 12-team football bracket, I’m re-thinking that stance. It sure seems like it’s going to be the SEC Invitational with Special Guest the Big Ten. Create these giant conferences where only a truly elite team can get through with one or zero losses, then tout the strength of your league as defense for teams losing three games but still deserving a crack at the national title. The politicking is already exhausting.

Is IU one of the eight best teams in the country after the four bye teams? I think so. They might be 11th or 12th, but they’re in there. With one exception they’ve beaten everyone on their schedule, which is all you can ask for.

I think there needs to be room in this expanded system for teams like IU, or ’07 KU, traditional doormats who come out of nowhere with a miracle season. I keep hearing analysts give Alabama, etc. credit for the history of their program. Which is asinine. All that should matter is this year. But if we’re going to the history books to determine this year’s playoff, the teams that have never been there before deserve a boost. Curt Cignetti has done wonders in Bloomington. Honestly, though, this might be the Hoosiers only shot to ever make the playoff. Reward that over a team that is always in the playoffs.

That said, Alabama would probably kill IU. That’s not the point, though.

Determining a division one college football champion has always been an imperfect system. Expanding to a 12-team playoff doesn’t really fix anything the issues that have been there for over 100 years. It will turn the game into more of a mirror of college hoops, where the best team usually does not win the title but rather the team that gets hot for three weeks. And the ultimate benefactors will be the powers that have dominated the game in the modern era, the Bamas, the Georgias, the Ohio States rather than even the second-tier teams in their own conferences.

Colts

Sunday was, maybe, the last nice day of the year here, so S and I did a lot of stuff in and around the house while we had a chance. Thus I only kept a partial eye on the Colts. Losing to the Lions was expected. Anthony Richardson seemed to regress a bit, with several wild-ass throws that had no chance to be caught. But, again, his receivers gave him little help and the offensive line was truly offensive.

Even if Richardson, miraculously, figures some things out between now and next season, this team feels a long way from being a legit contender in the AFC. Too many holes on both sides of the ball, holes that a franchise that doesn’t traditionally go crazy in the free agent market will struggle to fill. Unless Crazy Jim Irsay thinks the end is near and starts spending like a fool.

Pacers

Oh yeah, the Pacers are definitely a mess, too. Fortunately the Sixers are a bigger mess so Indiana is not getting as much national attention for how far they’ve fallen from last spring’s playoff form.

I listen to a bunch of NBA podcasts. I laugh at how, each time the Pacers come up, attention turns to Tyrese Haliburton and how his game has fallen apart. Then, as almost an afterthought, the hosts will close the segment by muttering, “Maybe he’s hurt…”

I legit don’t get why this is in question. He doesn’t move or shoot the way he did last year. Every time he checks out of the game, trainers strap a huge pad to his back and then he sits on one of those giant seat pads like what Joel Embiid sits on. Whether it’s a strain, a pull, a disk issue, or something else, the Pacers and Hali won’t share. But unless/until his back heals, the Pacers have no chance. Even in the weak-as-hell Eastern Conference.

High School Hoops

One week down in L’s stress fracture absence. A couple of good games, both JV and varsity going 1–1.

Tuesday we played the #2 4A team in the state, HSE, a team that has three top 60 recruits. One is the senior who is going to IU next year that L got switched onto twice in summer ball to my great amusement, plus two juniors who have lots of D1 offers. Last year HSE beat us by 35 and returned basically their entire team.

Varsity played their asses off. They held the IU recruit, who was averaging over 30 points a game, to just 19. Which is huge since she’s 6’4” and our tallest girl is 5’11”. Fortunately she prefers to shoot 3’s and didn’t hit one. We trailed by about 15 in the third quarter before making a strong run. We cut the deficit down to four a couple times but just didn’t have the offensive game to make it closer. We ended up losing by 11 but our girls played really well. Our coach usually isn’t into moral victories but was super pleased.

JV lost a very sloppy game. L was convinced had she played the Irish would have won. I like her confidence but that might be stretching it.

Then Friday we played the #9 3A team in the state, JC, who beat us by 17 last year. Their best player from that team is now a freshman at Michigan State, but they return a junior who dropped 28 on us last year and almost single-handedly turned a tie game with 2:00 left into a JC win during a summer tournament game.

We rallied just before halftime to cut a nine-point deficit to six before blowing the game open in the second half. We out-scored them 20–2 in the third quarter, got the lead up to as much as 13 before holding off a few runs and eventually winning by 12. A great, great win for our girls. They have to be scrappy to beat people this year and were definitely that in the second half. The freshman who is the future star of the program had 18 points, five rebounds, and five steals. She runs hot and cold, in pretty much every way, and was the right combo of that most of the night.

JV had no real issues, other than a rough five minute stretch in the third quarter. They are 3–2, varsity 2–3.

This is a tough week, with games against two 4A schools that are both 3–1. However, we are ranked ahead of both of them in the all-class computer rankings, likely thanks to our strength of schedule. Our girls need to stay scrappy.

Weekend Notes

November 18, 2024 /

A Great Weekend To Be A Jayhawk

Saturday, specifically.

First, just before noon Eastern, Bryson Tiller, the #20 recruit in the current senior class, signed to play at KU next year. This was unexpected. KU had chased him hard, but earlier in the week his Overtime Elite teammate Samis Calderon had signed with KU. They are not exactly the same player, but have some overlapping skills and attributes. Most recruiting nerds thought this was an either/or situation. Apparently not.

Now KU has two long, bouncy, NBA-bodied big wings/inside players coming in to join Darryn Peterson, one of the top two or three players in the class. Even before whoever Bill Self adds in the transfer portal later this year, this is going to be one of the very best recruiting classes of his career. As Phog Allen once said, I hope they all try out for basketball when they arrive in Lawrence next year.

Later in the day, this year’s basketball Jayhawks had zero trouble with Oakland. Now this was not the same Oakland roster that beat Kentucky and took Final Four-bound North Carolina State to overtime last March. But they still play a funky style on both ends and are exactly the type of team KU has struggled with the last two years. No struggle at all Saturday evening. KU shot nearly 70% in the first half before cooling off. AJ Storr scored 10 points in about 45 seconds. Shakeel Moore made his debut and looked smooth and comfortable. A solid if unspectacular night.

Finally, to wrap up the day, the football Jayhawks went to Provo, Utah and knocked off the previously undefeated, #7 BYU Cougars. I’m not going to lie: I went to bed when the first quarter ended a little after 11:00 Eastern. If KU entered the game 7–2 or 6–3, I probably would have toughed it out. Or at least tried to. But at 3–6 and having gotten up at 6:00 AM to get L to practice, I was not feeling it. Especially against an undefeated, top ten team.

Shows what I know.

Hey, KU FINALLY GOT A BREAK THIS YEAR! Jalon Daniels’ quick-kick bouncing off two Cougars right to Quentin Skinner to set up the winning score was exactly the kind of flukey play that had gone against the Jayhawks all year. Hell, I’m convinced if that UNLV fumble on their final drive hadn’t bounced off six Jayhawks before the Rebels recovered it, KU would be at least 7–3 right now.

Speaking of that, super props to the coaching staff and players for sticking together. With the K-State loss three weeks ago and a bye week the next, it would have been easy for a lot of dudes to check out for the season. Instead they went out and beat ranked opponents in back-to-back weeks for the first time in school history. Which seems like an impossible thing to not have done in the first 134 years of Kansas football. Anything is always possible at KU, though.

Rock Chalk, bitches.

Colts

It was not pretty, but the Colts got a big win Sunday in New York with Anthony Richardson back behind center. The defense was incredible in the first 29 minutes of the game, forcing the Jets to go three-and-out on their first five possessions. Then they eased up in the final minute of the first half and let the Jets score to cut the Colts’ lead to just 13–7. I was driving at this time and laughed out loud when Colts radio analyst Rick Venturi kind of lost his mind on the scoring play. I’m paraphrasing here but it went something like:

No. No. NO! NO!!!!! (Long pause) Soft ass defense…

I loved it. Because it was true.

The Jets scoring to take the lead quickly after halftime was super predictable.

Guess what? The Colts made some huge plays late, especially Richardson. After taking the lead the defense shut down Aaron Rodgers one last time to seal the win.

All that said, it was another maddening game to watch. The defense was insanely good at times, totally inept at others. The offensive line, which has been erratic all year, was simply terrible Sunday. Richardson played about as consistently well as he’s ever played. It was smart to put him back in. Now let him play out the season.

Pacers

Hammered by Miami in the Emirates Cup Friday. Controlled almost the entire game in getting a revenge, normal win against the Heat on Sunday. That’s how things go in the NBA.

Body Stuff

I had a terrible, random back pain Sunday morning. Like out of nowhere. I was just standing there, not holding anything or twisting or lifting, when suddenly I had this horrible, crippling pain. I had to stagger over to a rug and slowly fall onto my side then roll onto my back. I could barely breathe or even make pained noises it hurt so bad. I’ve had back spasms before but this was waaaaay worse than any of those. After about five minutes it disappeared. I think it may have actually been a cramp rather than a spasm. But I had a big knot in my back the rest of the day. It is still sore this morning. Not fun.

Speaking of not fun, I took L to see the sports medicine doc this morning. I’ll share more about that tomorrow.

« Older posts

Archives

© 2025 D's Notebook

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑