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Just wanted to mention that "News On The Horizon" has now spawned What's Up In The Valley.

I'm planning on continuing with "News On The Horizon", in case you're curious 

http://wdfn.iheart.com/media/play/27628066/

It's actually about the top 10 players in OU's 50 years, but part-way in he talks about that game from his perspective.

https://twitter.com/jorcubsdan/status/821112619708940289

Apparently I'm not hip to the CBB definition of "true".  Can anyone help me out?  This tweet really hacked me off, but I'm sensing that somehow the one that's off.

http://thosestoriespod.weebly.com/home/episode-101-pilot

I hadn't gotten to hear Homer Drew doing color commentary before and after I tuned into the Valpo-Notre Dame game for about 5 seconds I found Chicago State vs. Illinois and was pleasantly surprised to find the pbp was Wayne Randazzo and Homer Drew.  He's pretty darn good

The game is delicious too (CSU up 14 with 14:18 to go)

... and make me a copy?  Apparently they're not allowed to make it available for purchase on DVD or anything because of MLB rules.

Just askin'

http://www.hoopville.com/2015/03/08/the-place-for-improvement-is-clear-for-james-madison/

Just booked a round-trip flight to Green Bay leaving Friday morning and returning Sunday afternoon (I'd stay till Wednesday, but work intrudes, unfortunately) -- and rented no car.  I'm staying at the Ramada Plaza Hotel Green Bay, 2 miles from the Resch Center, which offers free airport shuttle service, and I'm counting on walking the 2 miles to the Resch Center and then back to the hotel each night.

This will either be a great time or a grand mistake, logistics wise.  Adventure awaits.

And I'll have a bone to pick with William Shatner if it doesn't work out

I'm waiting to purchase my tickets because I'm told that Valpo is going to purchase a block of tickets and I'd rather buy from them than from Green Bay if I can help it.  But here's the most interesting part: even if the unthinkable happens tomorrow night, I'm still going.  That's a feeling I'd rather not experience.  Of course, part of that is that work will also keep me from going to the First Four like I had been planning to.  I need to retire and stat

Did anybody watch this documentary on the 40th anniversary of ND 71 UCLA 70?

For months after that Saturday afternoon game, I could still remember the exact play by play of the final 12-0 run.  It's been years since I could remember any of it.  I like that they showed every play in the final 3 minutes -- every basket by the Irish, every miss by the Bruins, every turnover by UCLA.

Correction: I always remembered that the winning basket was hit by Dwight "The Ice-man" Clay from the right corner.  But that was it.

The only other thing I really learned from the documentary was that John Wooden viewed timeouts as a sign of weakness, which is why he didn't call one (according to the documentary) until they were finally behind with 20+ seconds to go.

Other than that, it was very unsatisfying.  What I really wanted was a strategy-based explanation as to how ND engineered the comeback.  Instead I had to settle for a lot of rah-rah "fire-and-passion" stuff from Digger.  Some of the little anecdotes, like Digger reading Wooden's book and sussing out a weakness, were mildly amusing.  All I have is the standard explanation: the ball bounced the Irish' way time and time again, the crowd got into it and made an impact, blah, blah, blah.  What did Digger change strategy wise in that 3+ minute timeout when it was 70-59?  Ya know, besides telling his players that if they didn't believe, they could hit the showers?

Oh yeah, one other thing, and I just learned this for the first time recently: ND wasn't actually the little guy.  They were ranked #2 in the nation at the time!!!!

Some other things I do remember:

1.  The following week, ND went out to Pauley Pavilion and got their butts kicked.
2.  A couple hours after the game, I stood in Viking Gym (in relative darkness) as Virgil Sweet reminded his players about the game and how it might give some clues as to how the Vikings could beat Lafayette Jeff that night (I was JV manager at the time and attended for free).  Of course, the Vikings went up against the Twin Towers and got pummeled, as I recall.  A couple of months later, we managed to fight them tooth and nail until the final two minutes in Fort Wayne before succumbing 72-62 in the IHSAA elite 8 (Sweet's final game as head coach).
3.  A week or two later, Bill Walton and company lost in OT in the national semifinals to NC State and David "42 foot vertical jump" Thompson.

The only other thing I was hoping to see was some mention of Michael Warren of Hill Street Blues fame, who I was told years ago played for UCLA.  Unfortunately, as I now see, he graduated several years earlier.  I was pleased to see lots of on-screen interview time given to Pete Trgovich, though.

And the home run ball that resulted in a traveling call did ring a bell in my distant memory banks.  There was another one that caused instant recognition too, but I've forgotten already.

I had stuff I was supposed to be doing last night, yet I couldn't tear myself away from the game.  A couple of impressions I got:

1.  Seemed like Detroit is still undisciplined enough that they have trouble holding leads.  They seemed to do a pretty decent job hounding the point guard, but once that phase failed, they had no answer for Petros.

2.  Oakland is not exactly the model of discipline either, but it seems like they match up well with Detroit this year.

The WADL broadcast was pretty decent, I thought.  HL could not have asked for a better launch of this in-state rivalry.

I've been having serious problems with the post-trib website lately.  Anyone else?  A couple of times I was able to visit one article, but if I tried to visit a second one, it timed out on me.  Today, I get a message tell me I should contact my service provider.

Note: this is not behaving like a typical pay-wall situation where I'm not allowed to visit because I don't have a subscription.  This is "we can't find the web page you typed in your browser".  Just googled "post trib" and tried each link and got cryptic results.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/44702352/

This goes back to before my time (just barely), but I heard stories about this guy:

http://www.nwitimes.com/sports/college/coaches-survive-show-cause-orders/article_33c88fb8-95d2-5946-8db3-b0816dae46c8.html

Twelve years after receiving a three-year order for reportedly watching recruits during a pickup game, former Buffalo coach Tim Cohane is suing the NCAA in federal court over what he calls a botched investigation in which his former players were threatened with losing their scholarships if they didn't incriminate their former coach.

Cohane is now associate head coach at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, a Division III school. He's also an adjunct law professor whose online faculty bio says he attended law school to "be able to represent student-athletes and coaches against the (NCAA)."

Once again, just like 4 years ago, GB gets a damn 11 seed down in Baton Rouge against LSU.

https://twitter.com/beauspencer/status/312668974376706049

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d1/d2/dD/d8/dA/12D8A_3.MP3?authtok=5562035608768962583_8r7VSl8nZQhY0EwL1XTa5FeSlEo

http://basketballpredictions.blogspot.com/2013/03/w-2-bp68.html

The only thing that I care about, and the only reason I am posting this, is that I notice he's got a 12-12 and a 13-13 game as two of the play-in games.  If Valpo somehow makes it to a 13 seed (i.e., by winning the auto-bid), is there any chance they would end up in one of these play-in games, or will they only choose the at-large teams (2 in each case)?

Just curious as to what the intentions are.

If anyone wonders what Mark Lazerus is doing now, give this a listen: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d1/d2/d4/dQ/dB/124QB_4.MP3?authtok=5562005610924053255_Rm0SjupoIVVLxh6SZwpz3CRHig

Recently, I started reading this tweet from Ben Boggs: https://twitter.com/B_Boggs12/status/292006224961081344

I only got through the first line:

I got 787882 points while escaping from a

when my feed updated to show me this tweet: https://twitter.com/thesummitleague/status/292010627596165120

and my eyes instantly moved to the second line of that tweet:

while Oakland is at Kansas City.

and I swear to you I did not notice right away that my feed had updated, so for an instant I thought I was reading the same tweet.

If I were more creative and could manipulate screen shots I could have reproduced exactly what my eyes saw for an instant.  Unfortunately, I'm screenshot-challenged and you'll just have to try to imagine what it looked like in my brain

Watching the Bucknell-Purdue game, and it certainly has all the trademarks of a student operation, including the propensity to report results in the future tense (hint: you're not a fortune-teller, you're a historian) and various other signs of inexperience that are understandable, but the one moment that made me sad for the state of education (these are college students) was when the pbp guy said, "me and him made that same point last week" or something like that.  The "me and him" part is 100% accurate.

Really?  College students using "me" and "him as subjects?  Didn't I learn that lesson in grade school?

Loving the game, of course.

Historically at least, you couldn't ask for a more vulnerable high seed to play than Kansas.

Detroit Titans, you've got work to do, time to get started.  I expect a win.

http://eye-on-college-basketball.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/26283066/35003131?source=rss_blogs_NCAAB

The Bulldogs have made two straight improbable appearances in the national title game, but now the odds are stacked against them

And they *didn't* have the odds stacked against them last year?

Sloppy writing, probably rushed out in 5 minutes. 

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/csu/index.ssf/2012/02/cleveland_states_comeback_fail.html

Waters can whine with the best of them, can't he?

I'm seeing a couple of tweets about this that suggest the tweeter is deeply perturbed about the design.  Has anyone seen it yet and can they fill me in?

Curious in twitterland

http://rushthecourt.net/2011/11/03/where-2011-12-happens-reason-4-we-love-college-basketball/

You've seen it live on CBS.  You've seen it ad nauseum in highlight packages on both CBS and ESPN.

Now, Rush The Court brings it to you via a fan-shot video from the 2nd level.

I bring it to your attention because in all the previous recaps of this moment, the camera work has given me the impression that Shelvin Mack and the Pitt player were all alone at the FT line while the other 8 players were huddled around their respective coaches or something.  From this perspective, all 10 players were pretty close to their final positions on the lane or just behind the circle when Mack was trash talking the shooter.

I don't know that this is significant at all, but I found it very interesting.

Milo Stovall recently winced...

The guy who drained a 3 against him in 2001 to win the Fiesta Bowl Classic (unless I'm remembering wrong) just became an assistant at Loyola.

P.S. he even drew a foul and made it a 4-pt play.  Talk about heartbreaker; I was there.  At least he won't be draining any 3s against us, but the name brought back a bad memory for me nonetheless.

http://www.horizonleague.org/blog/img-horizon-league-form-multimedia-rights-partnership.html

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BKC_NCAA_BASKETBALL_RULES_?SITE=MIPON&SECTION=BASKETBALL&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-05-26-12-51-38

http://www.detnews.com/article/20110518/SPORTS0203/105180330/1019/sports02/Oakland-hoops-coach-Greg-Kampe-gets-double-knee-replacement

One word: OUCH

Who is the demonstrative Dick Vitale-type on the panel, can't remember his name (He's always waving his hands, his mouth moves faster than his brain does)?

Yesterday in the lead-up to the semifinal, he was talking about how Butler's really bad losses.  He mentioned Youngstown State and in the same breath he mentioned Valpa-RYE-so.

Really felt that was a sign of someone who didn't do his homework.  Butler's loss to Valpo was hardly a really bad loss.  I'm not sure bad loss is even fair.

Just really rubbed me the wrong way.

http://www.basketballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=683

So far, unless I am missing something, I am extremely underwhelmed by the on-line viewer.

I've seen nothing yet to warrant the designation "On Demand".  Nothing available on games already played except for highlights.

I also have a question: is there some way that I'm missing to watch more than one game at a time?

I ask here because the on-line help is atrocious (again, unless I'm missing something).

From me to support@b2-networks.com:

Buffalo vs. Quinnipiac (CollegeInsider.com tournament).

Wasn't able to watch it at work, want to try it on demand at home (in case there were firewall issues).  I assume it will be available on demand?

Reply:

You must download the following to be able to access the Flash Video Player

(WINDOWS)
http://b2support.com/bband/octosetup.exe
http://b2support.com/bband/flashplayer.exe
http://b2support.com/bband/java.exe

(MAC)
http://support.apple.com/downloads/Java_for_Mac_OS_X_10_6_Update_3
http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html
http://www.b2support.com/bband/octoshapemac.dmg (mac users only)


•         If using Internet Explorer, you must have cookies enabled. If you are unsure of whether or not cookies are enabled, please use Mozilla Firefox as your web browser.



If prompted on whether or not to allow these programs to access your computer, you will need to allow it.  Certain types Anti-Virus, Firewall, or Intrusion Detection software may attempt to interrupt or block the operation of the Flash video player.  Please check the settings of these software types to verify that the Flash/Octoshape player is not being blocked. 



If you have just installed any of the programs above, close out of your player and log back in here: http://www.b2tv.com/


If you continue to experience trouble please let us know.

My reply back:

I already had the flashplayer, but for some reason, my McAfee Antivirus software thinks the octoshape plug-in is a trojan horse, and it removed it without asking me.

I can't see how to stop McAfee from doing that.

I wasn't having trouble with the player at home, just at work (and there's probably good reasons why it shouldn't work there).  I may have to reinstall it again, but I wanted to know if the events for the CollegeInsider.com tournament will be available on demand or not.

Their response:

At this time they will not be available.

Thank you,

My last reply:

Just a question: my pass says "Live + VOD".  Why does it say that if VOD is not going to be available for this tournament?

Their last response:

They are available for the duration of the pass you have purchased.

Thank you,

Um.....


Huh??  Pick a lane, folks.  Either they will be available or they won't be?

Can anybody by any chance decipher this for me?  I'm afraid if I reply again I'm going to sound pissy and just get nowhere, but I'm sorely tempted to start with "Take me to your leader."

It is free after all, so I'm not pissed if they're not available on demand, but I am kinda perplexed that a simple inquiry brings back such a confusing set of responses.

At any rate, I had to go online and download and install the octoshape plugin.  This time, McAfee left it alone.

I'll try to access the Buffalo game tomorrow and report back if I can watch it.  Otherwise, I'm thinking I have to watch the Valpo game live or not at all.