What I learned off the old Information Please radio show

A quiz show from back in the 1930's and 1940's.

If the Commissioner of baseball had to be replaced, and the owners were deadlocked, the deciding vote would be cast by the President of the United States. I do not know if that is true, but that is what they said.

Bob Gibson - workhorse

For the six years incompassing his first 20-win season through his last 20-win season, Bob Gibson pitched in 200 games and 1667 innings, or an average of 8 1/3 innings per start. Imagine someone doing that today! In that stretch he started 198 games and completed 129 of them, or 65% of his starts!

Although Gibson was known as a fierce competitor who did not hesitate to brush back hitters, his control was such that he hit only 102 batters in the 528 games in which he appeared.

Buzz Williams on establishing a culture

Marquette coach Buzz Williams:

"Culture is everything. . . . When what you say is schoed throughout, whether it be a manager of a guy off the bench or a starter, that's when it's working."

Which is a better recruiting pitch?

1. You ought to be able to play right away.

2. You are going to be on a team that is good enough that you probably are not going to play much right away.

Next year will tell

I am not surprised that we did not run off a lot of players this past year. Shields had a young team and thus had the luxury of playing a lot of people to see what they could do. Next year the pressure will be higher, however, and so he is going to have to keep his better players on the court a lot more of the time, so I expect the minutes/game of the top five to go up considerably. That could mean that we will lose some of those who end up on the short end.

Where do we hang our hat?

What has been the defining qualilty of Little Rock basketball under Steve Shields? The only thing I can think of at which we have been good consistently has been perimeter defense.

I like the new Belt tournament format

It goes a good way toward rewarding teams for quality regular seasons. Only eight teams going to the conference tournament, and four teams getting byes, the top two all the way to the semis. Good move!