point

Back to this subject. I am really, really hoping that having a true point guard (maybe two of them) makes the difference next year. I really liked Brandon Patterson, and he was a real player for us, but I don't think he was a true point guard. We should be in a rebuilding year, but a really good point guard can help make things come together quickly. Here's hoping.

WKU

I think there is a pretty good chance that WKU will not be the SBC's NCAA representative this season, but I certainly am not going to pick anyone else with them having four starters returning.

The 4 spot, again

It is interesting how different people have different concepts of the 4 position. Usually the point, SG, small forward and center positions are pretty uniform. Not so, at least among the Trojan family, about the 4. First off, we don’t even call it by the usual terminology. We call the 4 “small forward,” in contrast to the almost universal “power forward” designation. I suppose it follows that a “small forward” is supposed to be small and play small, and we don’t have a “power” position. Historically, at least as far as I have been able to determine, the power forward was the rebounding specialist and did his work on the low block. With our view of it, anyone over 6-5 is in the 4 spot.

don't miss the fun

So many people miss the object of sports, I think, and miss out on what it provides. For the people involved, it is work: to the coaches it is employment and to the students it is an education. But to the rest of us it is just entertainment. Entertainment is supposed to be fun. If you cannot get fun out of entertainment, then why do it?

If your team has to win the national championship for you to get enjoyment from them, or even have a winning season, then just go pick out the team most likely to do that and root for them. No problem. Jump on the bandwagon. A lot of folks do that, and that is their privilege if that is what it takes for them to get enjoyment from sports.

I pick out teams that I like and root for them through hard times and good. For some of them, there is little but hard times, but I root for them anyway, and I get a lot of enjoyment thinking about “maybe one of these days.”

Offseason is one of the most enjoyable times, because in the offseason you are undefeated. You can think about what might happen IF everything came together in an optimum way. What is the best case scenario. BCS’s do not happen very often, but occasionally they do. That is why they call them Dream Seasons – season you dream about. And the point is that you CAN dream about them in the offseason, and enjoy them even if they don’t come to pass. A lot of fans seem to refuse to hope, because they have had those hopes dashed so often. So what? Go ahead and hope, and dream. It might come true, and even if it doesn’t, it is fun to dream. After all, this is entertainment.

Washington State 1917

http://wsucougars.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/022507aag.html

Because I have a friend in the administration at Washington State, I follow their basketball team pretty closely. Linked above is an interesting article about the 1917 WSU national championship basketball team and their entry into World War I.

Neighbour

I absolutely do not expect Will Neighbour to redshirt next season because he may be one of our best recruits ever and Shields is under pressure to win - now. However, if they are planning on using him at the post, it would be best for the team if they would redshirt him. He obviously needs to mature physically and grow into his frame. He probably played at less than the optimum competitive level, so he would have an extra year to get used to D1 competition. Classic case where, from the team's standpoint, it would be best to redshirt him - but I doubt they will.

Arkansas sports

For all our self-contratulatory noise, Arkansas is a poor sports state. We are a good Razorback football state, and maybe a good high school and college football state, but that is about all. Folks here do not follow sports in general closely enough to be really knowledgeable about it.

good fit

IF going to the NCAA is the only thing that matters in college basketball (and to many fans, it seems like that must be true), then get your school in the lowest-ranked conference you can find. Then you can go to the NCAA every year. IF being in a prestige conference is all that matters, then do that, but you might never go to postseason if you are perpetually outclassed. Neither of those things is true for me.

I think the SBC is a very good fit for us. Should UNO drop athletics and Denver leaves the conference, I don't know how that will affect us, not having football, but we shall see. For now, I like where we are.

Offseason

It is a long six months from the end of the tournaments to the time when the preseason magazines come out. I try to keep up with recruiting and general NCAA info. And I study a lot of stat sheets of different teams. You can learn a lot about the game just by doing that.

points and coaches

Coaches and point guards are the two factors that often make a team better than it is, i.e., they can make the sum of the parts be greater than the whole. We have seen Shields do that in the past. Here is hoping Bozeman is that sort of a point guard.

Perfect practice

My old music teacher used to tell me, “Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. If you repeat the same mistake, you are only reinforcing your errors.”

Good practice habits make good teams. Good coaches enforce good practice habits.

Big money, low-life

Of all the things in sports that I despise, I suppose taunting by bandwagon-jumpers is at the top of the list. Fans of big-money programs that jeer at players from smaller schools, who are playing their hearts out and doing the best they can. Only truly low-life individuals would do that. There are a lot of them out there.

Neighbour

So we signed Will Neighbour. How good is he? How good can he be? Can he be that player that helps us move up a step? Time will tell. Certainly his signing gives us the tallest lineup I can recall.

slower pace

One of the Pac-10 players gave this logical reason for why so many coaches have their teams play a more deliberate place, despite the fact that many fans (who are into entertainment, not good basketball) prefer run-and-gun. The slower the pace, the lower the fatigue factor. Presumably you start your best five players, and the slower the pace the bigger the percentage of the minutes your best players can be on the floor.

We need a break

This will be a down year for Little Rock. The question is, "How down is 'down'?" Past down years were losing seasons. We just had one of our highest win totals ever. Good job. Now the task it to make sure the down side isn't too far down. We do not need to have a losing season next year. That will be a tough task with all we are losing. Maybe, maybe, or incoming players are as good as we hope they are. We need a break.

focus and concentration

Sustained focus and concentration are such a big part of basketball (and hockey and soccer). In baseball and football the action is strictly segmented. You act, and then you get a break to clear your mind and get focused once again. The batter steps out of the box and sets his mind. In basketball there is much less chance to do that, and a lot of bad things happen because players take mental “break” while the action is going on.

Preseason picks next year

I would not expect us to be picked any higher than 5th, maybe even lower than that.

Basketball traditions? Sure!

In this era when basketball “fans” only follow the sport during the NCAA tournament and get all their information from ESPN, here are a few facts that might have escaped them. Basketball traditions? Sure – but you might not have thought of them in that regard.

Dartmouth has been to the finals of the NCAA twice – 1942 and 1944.
San Fransisco has two NCAA titles and went to the Final Four three consecutive years in the 1950’s.
Before the NCAA tournament, these teams has multiple national championships (as determined by the Helms Foundation): Columbia, Yale, Chicago, Penn.
Wyoming won the Helms title in 1934 and the tournament in 1943.
Navy was undefeated in 1913.

Cali-who-pari?

Who cares, one way or the other!

Cardinals

Some readers have asked me to post about the Cardinals on this blog. We'll see. I frankly have not followed them much the last couple of years. I am so disgusted with the mega-money and the steroids that I have about given up on major league baseball.