Thoughts from Games: (1)Indiana at Butler (12/15/12)

Derek DeNote

I know you’re thinking (or perhaps bitching) that I haven’t written a blog in while, but hey. Give me a break…apparently being a basketball manager at a DI school doesn’t mean that I get someone that does all of my schoolwork for me. Needless to say, I have been swamped with work, but luckily I got back from my 4^th final of the week for the final 9 minutes left in the Indiana vs. Butler game on Saturday.

Goddamn, Brad Stevens is a great coach. If I was in charge at Butler, I’d literally give this man whatever he wanted to stay here for eternity (I’d even give up of being in charge and let him be in charge if that’s what he wanted). I’d venture to say that when I kick the can, Brad Stevens will be considered the best coach in college basketball history. He’s doing all this at some small school with a historic arena but not nearly the amount of resources that some of these other schools have. Stevens turned down millions and a private jet from Illinois, so I’m certain that he is either at Butler for a lifetime, meaning they would have to improve their facilities even more, or Stevens has his eyes set on one singular goal and that will be the only place he leaves for. My co-blogger, Hoov Daddy, suspects that Duke may be this destination, and I also believe that this seems awfully plausible considering Stevens’ brilliance may be the only one comparable to Coach K’s basketball IQ. He is an absolute basketball genius. I feel as if he’s cheating this year too because he has an ESPN top 100 recruit in Kellen Dunham. Stevens is sort of handicapped by the fact that he has a shooting guard running his offense, Rotnei Clarke though, so perhaps it balances out overall. (Now is a great time to discuss his awesome name. Rotnei… how cool is that? I’m fan of Derek because I always say no one has it, but let’s face it: one of the greatest baseball players of lifetime has Derek. But Rotnei Clarke can say, without question, no one else has the name Rotnei. Also, to piggyback off that, I cannot wait to hear Bill Raftery, my favorite college basketball analyst, scream, “Rotnei!” followed by “ONIONS!”)

Basketball isn't the only sport thriving at Marquette.
Just ask Michael "Da Captain" Kiely.

The vastly superior team athletically is obviously Indiana, and don’t get me wrong, Tom Crean is no slouch himself. Crean turning that Marquette program (shout out to da Captain if he reads this…) was great for college basketball, but him resurrecting this Indiana program from the flaming pile of dog poop (he called the shit poop) that Kelvin Sampson left it in, sanctions and all, is something else entirely. Calipari may be the face of illegal things in college athletics (and probably justifiably given his paying of 40 G’s and all the cocaine and strippers [the last two are just a guess] Marcus Camby wanted at UMASS), but at least he has won and has been successful. WHAT THE HELL WAS KELVIN SAMPSON DOING?! To put this into perspective, Kelvin Sampson can’t even coach in college because he did so many screwed up things that his sanctions actually follow him, and the school was persecuted too. He truly must have lived by the saying “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”

Back to the game. To put it simply, this was Rotnei versus Yogi. (Well okay, maybe it wasn’t, but let’s take a moment to appreciate two of the greatest names in college basketball this year.) Just when I was about to happily take my nap knowing a good mid major just knocked off the number one team in the country, Indiana’s Yogi Ferrell (sadly not Berra because this would be funny since he’s like 90/not exactly known for his jump shot) hits a three to send it into OT. In OT, just when it looked like big bad Indiana was pulling away, Rotnei Clark hits back-to-back threes giving life to the Bulldogs! And to once again emphasize Stevens’s badass coaching… What does he do…? He draws up the winning play for a former walk-on, Alex Barlow. It was a simple isolation, in which Stevens picked the most unathletic guy on the court for Indiana (the white kid not named Zeller) and let Barlow gradually move him into the paint and then hoist up a nice floater, letting it rattle around the rim before going through the cylinder.

Yogi Berra isn't exactly spillin aces on his
sick J's at the ripe old age of 90 something.

Obviously Butler is very good this year. I was skeptical of them after their poor showing against Xavier to open the season, but that may speak to how good this year’s young Xavier team is. The most important thing about this Butler team besides Steven’s brilliance is Rotnei Clarke’s official status as a member of my club of favorite college basketball shooters. He joins the esteemed company of Kyle McAlarney, J.J. Reddick, Colin Falls, Matt Carroll, Gerry McNamara and TJ Sorrentine (mainly because of Gus Johnson’s call when he drains it from way down town against Syrauce). Clarke has one of the quickest realizes I’ve ever seen and it appears that Stevens has given him the green light as soon as he passes over half court, which fair because that’s where his range starts.

You may be reading and complaining that I didn’t cover Indiana enough, but, quite frankly, I do not care, you BCS homer. Everyone has seen them enough on TV this year and if you haven’t… well that’s your fault. If you want to know more about Indiana go to any major sports media outlet and you can read their BCS writings. This year the non-BCS may be stronger than ever, do not be the slightest bit surprised to see someone holding the National Championship trophy not from a BCS conference for the first time since UNLV in 1990, when Tark the Shark roamed the sidelines.

I Wasn’t Tolkien to You: The Fellowship of the Sports

Matt Hoover

The two most important things in my life this week have both shaped this post. Firstly, it’s the end of the semester, so I have exams and papers and what not, so I’m not going to do anything too long or detailed. Secondly, the first installment of The Hobbit trilogy comes out on Friday, and I have been waiting for this for a very long time. So in honor of The Hobbit’s release, we’re going to take a brief trip to Middle Earth today. I’m going to play the role of Elrond and choose a company of nine companions to set out from Rivendell with the perilous task of destroying the One Ring. Instead of choosing hobbits, dwarves, elves, and wizards, though, I’m going to choose sports figures. I’ll briefly explain why I chose whom I did. So, without further adieu, here is my Sports Fellowship of the Ring:

Balrogs and Bronx Bombers beware. He's coming for you.

• Usain Bolt as Frodo. You think orcs or Nazgul are gonna be able to catch up with this motherfucker? Didn’t think so. He’ll have no problem getting the Ring to Mordor.

• Rudy Ruettiger as Sam. They’re already vaguely connected characters in movies whose fans like it way out of proportionately to how good the movie objectively is. Plus it would be hot if he and Rosie Cotton got together.

• Buck Showalter as Gandalf. The embodiment of all that is good. Relentlessly pursuing his goal of dismantling the evil powers that reside in the (AL) East.

I would shit myself if this SOB
attacked me with an axe.

• Aaron Rodgers as Aragorn. I don’t have an elaborate explanation for this one. It just feels right. They’re both bearded, traditional heroes from the North. I don’t know if there is anyone else I’d rather have leading my company. He is Brett Favre’s heir, not Brett Favre himself.

• J.J. Redick as Legolas. I almost went with Clay Matthews because of his hair, but I figured one Packer was enough. Hopefully J.J.’s deadly accuracy shooting a basketball translates into deadly accuracy shooting an arrow. They’ve also probably both been mistaken for having a vagina at multiple points in their lives.

• James Harden as Gimli. Mainly because of the spectacular beard. But seriously, is there anyone else you’d be more scared of if they were screaming at the top of their lungs angrily running at you full speed with an axe in hand?

As I've always said, Dick Vitale
would look best with three arrows
painfully lodged in his body.

• Dick Vitale as Boromir. No one likes him, but he’s the first significant person to die. We’ll let the Uruk-hai take care of our Dickie V problem. Also, he needs to hop off Gondor's/Notre Dame's/Duke's/North Carolina's jock.

• Rory McIlroy as Merry. There’s definitely something hobbitesque about Rory. He has the hair. Also, both Rory and Merry end in y. That’s all I got.

• Brian Wilson as Pippin. He already has a knack for providing slightly annoying comedic relief, so why not? After all, you need people of intelligence on this sort of mission… quest… thing.

BONUS ROUND: VILLIANS

• Ben Roethlisberger as Gollum: They’ve both probably raped someone at some point. They also have a similar IQ. I hope I didn’t offend Gollum too much with that last statement.

• John Calipari as Sauron: Pure evil. He pays a tremendous amount of money to rally Easterlings, Southrons, and high school seniors to his cause.

So there you have it, folks. I’d love to hear any suggestions to improve my fellowship that you might have in the comments. Good luck on exams, college readers. And don’t forget to see The Hobbit this weekend!

One more... Just thought of this one...

• Manti Te'o as Treebeard

Cutting to the Chase: The Triumphs and Tragedies of Chase Utley

Matt Hoover

There are some things in the world that give me so much joy that I can’t really explain to you how much I like them. I’d normally give you a drawn out list of examples of these things right now, but I’m trying to keep this thing short. You’ll recall the monstrously long Tim Duncan thing I posted last week. If anyone has finished reading that yet, I’d like to take up just another minute of your time and apologize for the length there. But anyway, yeah… I like some things a lot. Chase Utley is one of them. I’m going to talk about why and just how good Utley was/is (but mostly was).

As a perennial Philadelphia Phillies fan, it hardly seems appropriate or possible for me to attempt to place Chase Utley’s career into context in an unbiased way. I’m a giant Chase Utley fan. The late, great Harry Kalas was right; Chase Utley is the man. Not only is he the greatest second baseman I have ever seen play baseball, but also he could beat the shit out of everybody that you love. Keep that in mind going forward. He is also the perennial hit-by-pitch king of baseball, and has the all time best stolen base success rate in the history of Major League Baseball. The dude is a “straight G,” as the kids say. But yes. I have a pro-Utley bias. I still don’t think anything I’m about to say is unwarranted, though.

A few years ago when Jason Werth was still a Phillie, there
was a rumor that Chase Utley's wife was having an affair with
Werth. I'm pretty sure it ended up being false, but I was really
hoping that it would end up being true just so I could have
seen Utley beat every last ounce of shit out of that
long haired, poor fielding punk.

In his peak, Chase Utley, along with Joe Morgan and Jackie Robinson, was one of the three best second basemen to play his entire career in the live ball era (1920 onward). Utley’s bad knees cost us an opportunity to witness a career that could have been literally one of the greatest ever in Major League Baseball. These may seem like absurd claims, but I have two ways of basking them up. The first way involves me going on and on comparing Utley’s yearly statistics with various hall of fame second basemen, but no one wants to read that. Instead, I’m going to choose option number two: talking about wins above replacement, or WAR. I’m strongly pro sabermetrics; if you’re not on the sabermetrics bandwagon yet, it may interest you to know that science has recently proven that the Earth is, in fact, not flat. GET WITH THE TIMES, MAN! My purpose here isn’t to explain or argue about sabermetrics with you, though, but if you want to know more about them, start here.

Firstly, some stats on Utley. During the five seasons from 2005 to 2009, Utley accumulated a WAR of 38.8. That’s an average of about 7.7 WAR per season. Utley peaked in 2008 with an 8.8 WAR. That all sounds nice, but what does it mean? The only player in all of baseball that accumulated a higher WAR than Utley during this five-year period was Albert Pujols, who also happens to be considered by almost everyone that knows anything about baseball the best position player of the last decade. The WAR gap between Pujols (43.1) and Utley (38.8) is small, but the gap between Utley and Alex Rodriguez (32.7), number three on the list, is a bit larger. The gap between Utley and Brian Roberts (23.7), the next second basemen on the list, is immense. Utley was easily the best second baseman in baseball and was probably one of the two best players during the five-year period from 2005 to 2009. Other stats point to all of this being true as well; I only focus on WAR because it’s all encompassing and fairly easy to understand.

Clearly, Utley was one of the most dominant players in the game during his prime, but how does his prime compare to those of the great second basemen of MLB’s past? In short, very, very well. The primes of the twelve hall of fame live ball era second basemen ranged from two years to seven years. The only two players that averaged a higher WAR than Utley during their primes were Joe Morgan and Jackie Robinson. At his best, Utley was better than players like Ryne Sandberg and Charlie Gehringer. Certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Utley’s prime is as good as or better than an average hall of fame live ball era second basemen. Where his hall of fame resume suffers is longevity. As I mentioned before, his knees continue to hamper him from becoming one of the all time greats. This tragedy stings me whenever I begin to dwell upon it, but it’s tough to complain too much about Utley, seeing as I was still given the opportunity to enjoy the primes of one of the best players in the league at the time. We currently may be witnessing the rise of a second baseman who could become one of the all time greats in Robinson Cano (Apologies Red Sox people; Pedroia isn’t as good.), but it is too early in Cano’s career to know this for sure. As for the man, though, it will be interesting to see whether his fantastic prime will be enough to propel him all the way to Cooperstown when the time comes. Crazier things have happened. My heart tells me that he has a case, but my head is less sure. Maybe if he can put a few more solid years together, my head will change its mind.

Statistics from Baseball-Reference.

Rasheed SULAIMON: He’s Better than You

Derek DeNote

I don’t think I have ever seen a freshman (excluding Calipari’s guys from last year) in college basketball come in and dominate games like Duke’s Rasheed SULAIMON. The kid can just flat out play. Whether it’s his size, court vision, or stroke from deep, SUILAMON can beat his opponent in endless ways. There are just so many things I love about his game, and I’ll be the first to admit that my basketball crush on this guy is getting downright creepy. Coach K has, for whatever reason, felt the need to bring in one-and-done guys for the past 3 seasons, but SULAIMON is the best. If Kyrie Irving wasn’t ailed with a toe injury, limiting his time in a Duke uniform to eleven games, then this discussion may be a little different, but what’s done is done, and SULAIMON it is.

State Champ Anthony D'Orazio got the best of
Austin Rivers's Duke squad last year.
Cheer, cheer for old Catholic High.

Don’t even try to tell me that Austin Rivers was better than SULAIMON because I will have to get you drug tested. All Austin Rivers wanted was to “get his;” he didn’t truly care about the success of the team because he constantly played out of the system. Yes, Rivers cemented himself in Duke history with his game-winning shot over the outreached arms of Zeller (who was terrible defense, by the way) but other than that he didn’t really impress me. There are two main reasons for Duke’s early exit in the tournament last year. One was Austin Rivers, two was they had to face the Anthony D’Orazio (shout out to the 2010 Non-Public Group A State Champions and runner-up in the TOC from Camden Catholic High School) led Mountain Hawks of Lehigh. Don’t get me wrong, Rivers is an unbelievable talent…he just didn’t belong at Duke. Rivers should’ve honored his original commitment to Billy Donovan and the Florida Gators, where Donovan could’ve constructed an offense around him and Bradley Beal. Damn, imagine that backcourt. I’m sure Donovan was just as angry in Rivers’s commitment to Duke as I was, seeing that that team very well could’ve been a final four-esque team.  That would’ve easily been Donovan’s best team since the years of Horford, Noah, Green, and Brewer.

Speaking of that Florida team, I guess now is as good as of a time as any to time fill everyone in on my most irrational thought in all of sports. I can’t tell you why, but for some reason I will never say those Florida teams were good. I know there are a million reasons why this isn’t true (they won two national championships, were very well coached, returned all 5 starters, had 4 first round draft picks…just to name a few) but in mind I never liked them.

Fun facts: You always have to capitalize
Rasheed SULAIMON's last name.

But back to SULAIMON. My love for his game started in the Kentucky game. He was 0-5 in the first half, but I thought he truly was the most impactful player on the court (he also had 5 boards and 5 assists in that half). And then bam, the second half started and hit a 3 that he shot with such confidence. Typically, freshmen who are 0-for in the game don’t take a 3 that early in the second half with that much confidence. That is when I realized this is a special kid, he plays the game like an upperclassmen. Then the same thing happened in the OSU-Duke game. OSU held him scoreless in the first half, only to watch him explode with 17 in the second half and that is when I made the statement that SULAIMON is the best player on this Duke team. I have since cooled down a bit with that thought (seeing that Mason Plumlee had 20 and 17. Sniff…pretty good stats for a game), but I will say that SULAIMON is the piece that is most important to this Duke team. He’s the engine that gets this team going, the straw that stirs the drink….or whatever other cliché you want to say about a team’s best creator. I’m not nearly as high on Seth Curry (citing his knuckle ball-esque shot as my main reason) as other people across the nation are and I think Quinn Cook can play erratically at times (but I do think he will come into his own at Duke) After those statements, it probably seems pretty obvious that I see SULAIMON as by far the best guard on this team that is missing Andre Dawkins, who is redshirting. So, I’ll go out on a limb right now and say SULAIMON is the best freshmen guard I have ever seen play, which may seem ridiculous and probably is considering I saw John Wall, Derrick (Do you believe he misspells his first name?) Rose, and other great freshman that I can’t think of right now. But, here’s to Rasheed SULAIMON, the straw that stirs the drink!