Blog Posts

Stealing this idea from Bill Simmons.

Just under 11:38 to go in the first half of the IU v. Minnesota game and I’m gonna try my damnedest to give my impressions as the game progresses. I was distracted for the first 8 minutes by a guy playing an Inspector Gadget?Beverly Hills Cop medley on a flute, so I didn’t get to start right away.

11:38 In the last four plays Erik Suhr has taken two charges and hit a jump shot from just inside the top of the key. The single most exciting play in basketball is a player taking a charge.

11:23 Except when the other team does it. DJ just picked up his second foul on the offensive end

10:22 Suhr deflects a pass. Well played passing lane.

10:11 Lance Stemler takes a charge! That’s four total since I started typing. DJ takes a seat.

9:37 Second possession in a row for Bassett to score on a jumper off the dribble. It’ll be nice to see what he can do when he’s past his Freshman mistakes

9:19 Wilmont 3! I read this morning that Coach Sampson had to tell Wilmont to shoot more 3s, as he’s only take 5 in the last fourr games or something insane like that. That must have been a strange conversation, having to remind someone to do what it is they most like to do in the whole world.

8:00 Laura just reminded me that i should be watching more basketball and 90210 reruns.

7:53 This experiment is the perfect example of why I’m trying to teach my students to type with all ten fingers. I would never be able to do this if I couldn’t watch the game while I type.

5:05 I’m not ready to kill and bury Lance Stemler, like some people I know, but he hasn’t made an open shot in close to two months. He plays very well on Defense and does a lot of the little things it takes to win a game, but he just missed another wide open 3 that was the result of good ball movement, and well you guessed it.

4:16 Did you know that Noble Romans puts over 90 pepperoni’s on it’s stuffed pepperoni pizza? Count your pepperoni’s today.

4:00 IU just ran a play where Lance Stemler and Mike White were supposed to set three different double screens. Neither one of them touched a Minnesota player on any of those screens. Screening and boxing out have got to be the two parts of the game that are the least taught today. I’ll let you know when I see a good screen set.

2:45 Hey, Sam, is it just me or does Earl Calloway remind you of a much less stoned Dre?

Halftime: I have trouble believing the time out Sampson called with :35 left in the half involved these words. Armon, dribble a lot, but don’t go anywhere. Then throw a really bad pass to Wilmont so he can bail you out with a three at the buzzer. If so, nice job boys.

18:05 Minnesota either doesn’t watch tape, or doesn’t have the personnel to make this work, but they are not doubling Dj. If he’s doubled well he has a great deal of trouble getting the ball to the open man. When not doubled he’s a rock star, and if they stick with this and he stays on the court (8 minutes in the first half) he’s gonna kill them.

18:01 I just watched the blind date OSU Michigan commercial for ESPNU. The OSU guy goes from interested in this woman, who he apparently can’t be bothered to pick up in his car (good first impression) to possessed with anger in about .5 seconds. All the acting skill of a young, bald Keanu.
These are the things you notice when you see the same commercial about 500 times. This is our country, after all.

14:01 Very lackluster double team from Minnesota. Still worked

13:54 IU’s only up by 6. Ridiculous.

13:37 Turns out beign closely gaurded doesn’t help Lance’s shooting woes.

13:16 Great. Now it’s a 3 point game

12:48 Wilmont just took a contested jump shot off the dribble. I haven’t seen a good open shot caused by passing or penetration from IU in about 5 minutes.

12:35 Wilmont just took the most slow-motion like charge I’ve ever seen. He was there for about 5 seconds and still the guy plowed into him, very slowly.

11:26 Minnnesota has gone double team on DJ every time he touches the ball. He hasn’t scored since they made this change. It would be nice if we had some other bigs who could double him in practice  so could learn how to either score or pass out of it.

11:07 Third charge of the game for Erik Suhr. That’s fantastic!

10:13 That was the single cheapest positioning offensive foul I’ve ever seen. Dj now has 3

9:22 DJ hard to the bucket. IU up by four. Points of penetration and a pass. Very nice

7:49 NICE! Wilmont penetration kicked out to Joey Shaw. A long possession that saw one made free throws, a tip out on the miss and a three pointer. IU by 6.

7:21 That long defensive possession for Minnesota looks like it took it’s toll. Very sloppy pass, turn over. IU ball after the BIG FLAGS!!!!!

6:59 IU is shooting 26% in the second half and with shots like the one Bassett just got to fall I have no trouble seeing why. The shot selection has been pretty poor.

6:16 DJ from 15. Wide Open 10 point lead

5:40 Horrible! Wilmont drives and takes a horrible shot. Followed up by a foul 90 feet from the basket. Dumber than a bag of hammers

4:50 Third time this half IU has run the double high screen set. This time leaving a wide open lane for Bassett to drive the hole.

4:18 Don’t know what they’ve done with the lighting in Assembly Hall this year, or maybe it’s ESPN regionals fault, but the glare off the court this year is driving me crazy. It’s so bright the floor looks like one huge blur. Am I the only one who is being bothered by this?

2:29 IU by 12. Looks like they got it done. This is the fifth game in a row that I’ve not been overly impressed with how this team is playing. They are winning the games they are supposed to win, but the ones where they can win them if they play well, they are not getting it done. It’s time to turn the pressure up and get a good push these last few conference games.

1:30 This is a team that can be playing for the Big Ten Tourney Title and should be a legit sweet 16 team this year. But it’s gonna take more than they’ve shown in February so far.

:40 Time to run out the clock. Not very pretty, but a much needed win. and Lance Stemler just hit a shot.

End: 71-59. IU is now 18-8 (8-5)

Was this interesting at all? Let me know. It was kind of fun to do and I think I’ll enjoy going back and rereading it, but who knows.

JT

This may come as a terrific "I’m coming to join you, Elizabeth" sized shock to many of you, but sometimes I can be a little thick. There were two separate comments posted to this blog over the past month, one from "c_franz" the other from "m_pelkowski" I was confused by these comments as they had what appeared to be my cousins e-mail address. Most of you won’t know why I was such an r-tard in this instance, but if you know who I am, and who Chuck Franz and Magnus Pelkowski are, you’ll know why this was really stupid of me.

Anyway, Magnus requested that I post on the IU basketball team this season. That seems reasonable as I spend a lot of time thinking about that and I’m certainly not short on opinions.

IU plays Illinois tomorrow at home.  At this time last year, if IU had beaten the conference leader, pulling themselves in 2nd place only one game behind in the loss column and then lost on the road at Iowa I would have thrown up my hands, thinking "well, that figures." And followed that up with a feeling of dread about the next game.

Under the same circumstances this year, I fell pretty good. This is not a great team, but they are a good team, a team that can contend for the conference title, but not one likely to win it. Ohio State and Wisconsin are not likely to lose more than another game or so. We took care of Wisconsin at home, but lost to Ohio State on the road, and we don’t play either team again, so it’s a bit out of our hands at this point.

This team is very well coached. The play a style of basketball that is fun to watch, and more importantly is solid basketball. They rebound well from tough losses and the losses they have, with the exception of the Illinois game, have not played poorly. That game was just atrocious. All the losses have been close, and winning on the road in conference is always very difficult.

Tons more to say about IU basketball, but if I say it all today this will be the longest post in the history of blogging, so I’ll call it here. What do my other IU fans think? As I live in Illinois, where we don’t have real basketball, I don’t get to have this conversation as much as I’d like. Though on the plus side I run into WAAAYYYY fewer Kentucky fans, so that’s a huge plus.

JT