Random inconsequential arguably interesting bits of irrelevant anecdotia about intercollegiate hoops and pigskin, presented in random and confusing order.
Every once in awhile even an inveterate it-was-better-back-in-the-day guy must admit that some things are sweeter nowadays.
Like how on a whim I can purchase Baskin Robbins Chocolate Chip ice cream at the Dirty Krogers just a couple blocks away. (Which frankly is not good for my waistline or cholesterol count.)
And like, oh, the beginning of the hoops season.
Once upon a time, it always commenced the first Saturday night of December.
There’d be an apéritif the weekend before, the frosh vs varsity game.
So, celebrate with me that the real deal starts this very day. First Monday in November. Which is, no calculation necessary, a whole month ahead of back when.
First up there’s Jeff Walz’s women’s team playing a school situated in Hollywoodland, UCLA, in the City of Lights. Paris. Paris, France. On ESPN. Maybe the Deuce. 2:30. Check your local listings.
Which is pretty darned different unto its own self.
Then there’s this: The real deal reveal of the Pat Kelsey Era debuts this evening in the Yum! against Morehead State.
Thank you, Naismithius. We again pledge our troth.
I have expectations of course, but honestly no firm feel of how good — or not — this total makeover of a Cardinal men’s gang shall turn out to be. The evidence thus far fosters hope, but is what we called in the law biz, anecdotal.
Time will tell.
I have no predictions. Just a firm life long commitment to faith.
At this juncture I have said I’ll personally be pleased with a .500 record, obviously hoping for better. And subject to adjustment based on actual results during the Bataan Death March of November and December.
Buuuuuuuuut, I did a quick run through of the schedule and came up with a fingers-crossed, attempt-to-be-realistic hunch of best case scenario.
21-11.
Again, not a prediction.
Operative descriptor: Hopeful.
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The District Champion JM Atherton HS Rebels finished the regular season 8-2 with another shellacking. This time, 50-0 over Shelby County.
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Back to hoops. (No apologies for the shifts in subject matter.)
Harbinger? Maaaaayyyyyyyybe. We’ll see.
Back in the halcyon days of the mid 70s through mid 80s, my good pals Doc & Bride along with Dough & Mae had boffo seats together in Freedom Hall. Which they lost as many of us did during the money grab switch to U of L’s current home.
Anyhow, the group, along with a few others, scattered during recent seasons.
Doc switched seats for better ones this year. To discover that Dough had also.
And find themselves sitting together by chance.
Harbinger?
May those trips following the Cardinals to Final Fours — with their wannabe scribe pal in tow — be a thing again.
Like that time in New Orleans in ’82 when a couple of U of L grads and I surrounded Joe Dean in the men’s room at a restaurant, while he just wanted to relieve himself at the urinal, imploring him to eschew the SEC for the Metro.
Let’s Get Wack to Where We Once Belonged.
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Gridiron.
The amazin’ Vanderbilt Commodores are bowl eligible. And have beaten Alabama and Auburn in the same season for the first time since 1954. When my older brother was a frosh on West End Avenue.
And I, husko gordo that I was, discovered the sublime joy of a chocolate soda with chocolate chip ice cream, when my parents and I ate at a Howard Johnson’s when driving my brother Michael to college. A gift that keeps on giving a century and a half on.
How is it such insignificant memories are so indelible, while you can’t recognize somebody you went all the way through school with?
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The Flavor of the Season — more than Vandy — Indiana Hoosiers fell behind for the first time all campaign Saturday.
By double digits, 0-10. Then fashioned steady play, 7 sacks, 15 TFLs, and 4 TD passes by their returning QB with a bad thumb to 47 straight points.
9-0.
Which leaves West Point as the only school that hasn’t trailed all year.
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Pigskin Diversion: I was drafting this during Scott Hanson’s RedZone Witching Hour Sunday.
The Bills just kicked a 61 yard FG at the gun to beat Miami.
Drake May scrambled for about 15 seconds before tossing a tying TD at the buzzer to send the Patriots game against the Titans to one of those disgracefully unfair OTs the NFL dictates for regular season games.
Then my Detroit Lions, rain storm be damned, vanquished the Cheeseheads in Green Bay, in their first outdoor game of the season.
Yeah.
* * * * *
Can Ohio State’s defenders get away with holding almost every play, or what?
Or what!!!!
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Fox is staging their own NITish post season tourney after this hoops campaign. Featuring the leagues they have contracts with, Big East, Big Eighteen, Big How Many are ever in the old Big 12 now.
Because, well, more is more.
The N1IT — as the Riddler dubbed the traditional other tourney — has changed its qualifications. Which we don’t care about at all, unless our school’s bubble bursts.
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I feel sorry for Bronny James.
Anyone who had an overbearing Little League dad living vicariously through them should understand. (Fortunately I did not. My father was such a baseball fan, he became commissioner of the league.)
— c d kaplan