Week in Review 12.11.09

Every Friday I'll break down the week that was in Flyers basketball, as well as whatever is else is on my mind at the time. It'll be my chance to overreact to the UD's most recent game as well as renege on everything I said in the podcast earlier in the given week. Or, at the very least, it will give you something distracting to read when you should be working on a Friday.

One half at a time
Somebody should feel free to tell these Flyers that they're allowed to put together two good halves in a row. It's not against the rules or anything. Just when you thought Dayton was a "second half team," the Flyers come out and put a hurting on George Mason in the first frame in Fairfax to the tune of a 16-point lead at intermission. I won't get into the second half because we could argue all day about who's to blame for UD's poor performance there. Bottom line: When you shoot 5-20 in a half (0-7 from downtown), you're going to let a lot of teams come back on you. For the game, though, UD shot better than and outrebounded the Patriots. Hell, the Flyers even made 70% of their free throws. Six assists versus sixteen turnovers is a little worrisome, but road wins always seem to be a premium so I'll keep my griping to a minimum.

While I'm on the George Mason game, did anyone else catch the small roar that went up from the home crowd when GMU hit that meaningless 3-pointer at the buzzer on Tuesday? "Wooooo we only lost by one!" Way to know the score and situation, Patriots fans ... Unless, of course, that 3-ball covered the spread in which case I can't blame people for getting nuts.

Earlier in the week, Dayton played Lehigh and won.

ODU
In one of the podcasts I predicted UD would lose both at Miami and tonight's game at home to Old Dominion. When that happened I think I was still hung over from Puerto Rico and bitter about the Towson game. Four straight wins upon return from San Juan have me singing a different tune, but I do think this will be a tough, hard-fought game.

Old Dominion returns all five starters from a team that went 25-10 last season and is favored to win the Colonial. George Mason, as a point of reference, is picked to finish fourth in that same league. According to its web site, ODU captured the inaugural CollegeInsider.com Tournament title last year. What is that? Did they change the name of the CBI and nobody told me? Or is this a fourth postseason college basketball tournament?

Anyway, the Monarchs are supposed to be pretty good and they're led by Gerald Lee, a preseason co-player of the year pick in the CAA. Further, ODU has been tested playing at Richmond and getting games against Missouri and Mississippi State in some preseason tourney. Granted, they lost all three of those games, so I'm changing my mind and picking the Flyers to win by six.

TV or not TV
As a Dayton fan, one of my favorite pastimes is complaining about the fact that the Flyers are never on TV and that the team gets no national exposure whatsoever. Seriously, how ridiculous is that I live 50 miles from campus and have to watch almost all of the games on a tiny laptop screen with grainy video? BUT let me just say what a blessing this has been through the first eight games of this season. I'm so glad no one outside the Miami Valley got to see the Towson game (or even the games against Miami and Mason, for that matter).

If you've got a vote in one of the polls, all you know is that Dayton is 6-2 with a win over Georgia Tech, and the two teams it lost to are a combined 17-1 right now. Filling out my ballot, hmmmmm, I'd say they're about 35th in the country. Sounds like a winner.

MJ Injured?
During the Mason game, Hartsock busted out the ol' "Oh, Marcus Johnson's been playing with a wrist injury" nugget and did it real casual-like. I'm not one to speculate (okay, that's pretty much all I'm qualified to do), but does anyone else think something's fishy here? If I'm a senior guard and one of the guys expected to lead this team back to the NCAA Tournament and I'm shooting 36% from the field, 13% from three, and 40% from the foul line, I might suddenly develop a mysterious "wrist injury" too. Seriously, read those numbers again. 40% FREE THROWS and 13% from the arc. Yeesh. I hope your head, errr I mean wrist, gets right soon, MJ.

Coming up big down low
The Huelsman versus Searcy debate continues, and it will likely go on all season long. I'm taking a different tact though and just treating them as one player. They/it needs a sweet nickname though if I'm going to track them as one person for the rest of the year. Suggestions welcome. Right now, they (he?) are averaging 8.5 and 5.5 a game. I'll take that all season long.

A scheduling question
How does putting together a D-I men's college basketball schedule work? I feel like I should know more about this, but I find myself almost completely in the dark. When fans think a schedule isn't up to snuff, I hear the AD get criticized more than anyone, but doesn't the coach have a lot to do with it? I thought I read somewhere that coaches had as much influence, if not more in some cases, as to who their team played and where. Am I way off base here? If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be much obliged.

John Wall
Ready for the off-topic rants? Good, because I know I am. Growing up in Northern Kentucky (Cincitucky, if you will) I came to love all, at least most, things Cincinnati and hate a lot of things Kentucky. One of the things I hated most during my formative years was University of Kentucky basketball. It just didn't make that much sense to root for a team who played its games 90 minutes away when there were not one but two Division I college basketball programs within a ten minute drive from my house. I rooted for Cincinnati and hated Kentucky as a kid.

Having said that, watching John Wall play so far this year has been awesome. The kid is sick and will almost certainly be the #1 overall pick in this spring's NBA Draft. (I have Derrick Favors two and Chris Wright three, in case you were wondering.) The UK-UConn game ended after my bed time, so I didn't see the finish, but it's been talked about all day today. If you can escape the Brian Kelly media blitz that's taken Cincinnati by storm, you'll find a lot of people talking about UK and John Wall. Seeing as this will be his only season in college, I really feel the need to get to Lexington and watch the kid play in person. Who's coming with me?

Tiger Woods y'all
I don't know how the whole Tiger saga is going to play out and, frankly, I don't particularly care. I do find it amusing that women are suddenly tripping over each other to come out and say they slept with him, but that's about where my interest ends. Nothing earth shattering is going to come out of this anyway. Nobody's getting arrested. His wife is either going to divorce him and get tens of millions of dollars or "reconcile" with him and get to spend half of his billions of dollars. Big deal.

I will say this, though, and you can bank on it. Tiger Woods will at some point go into rehab for sex addiction like that dude from the X-Files did. Think about it: If you cheat on your wife with one chick, you just made a mistake and maybe she gets over it, maybe not. If you're having dozens of ongoing affairs with women all over the country, if not the world, it's a little tougher to backpedal your way out of that. So does he admit he's a scum bag and a downright despicable human being? No way, he's Tiger; his image can't take that hit. But if you're addicted to something, if you physically and psychologically have to have it, if you've lost all control of yourself, it makes it easier for us, the public, to stomach. Some time in 2010 Tiger Woods tackles his "addiction to sex."

Social Networking
I'm about to turn 26 and never in my life I have felt older and less cool. Well, I probably felt less cool when I was about 14 maybe. (Note to any middle schoolers reading this: Getting straight A's in high school and junior high is the least important thing you'll ever do and a complete waste of your time. Try to figure out ways to make out with chicks instead - or at least work up the courage to talk to them - and you won't be such a d-bag in high school. You're welcome.)

Back to the present, can someone get me up to speed on what's cool and what's not in social networking? I mean, we can all agree that being on Facebook is cool, yes? As long as you're not a big enough tool that you play Farmville and Mafia Wars, you're fine. And I'm pretty sure MySpace is only for 14-year-old girls and creepy internet pervs who want to stalk 14-year-old girls, right?

Recently I find myself getting more and more hooked on Twitter (UDFlyers). I tweet more frequently and check the site multiple times per day. Does this make more of a loser, less of a loser, or about the same? What about LinkedIn? Does anyone know what that even is? Is there other social networking stuff out there that's so cool I don't even know about it? (Tim just renewed his eharmony membership, but that's another subject for another post.)

Twitter baby with a capital T!
And finally, while I'm on the topic of Twitter, I have started following Dick Vitale on there. No matter if you love Dickie V or hate him (put me in the "don't like him but think he's harmless" camp), I think it's hilarious that he tweets. If Twitter was ever targeted specifically toward one person, it would be Dick Vitale. Hell, you could make the case that he practically invented Twitter. Vitale has been speaking in sentence fragments and 140-character exclamations for almost 40 years now. Plus, it's great to get his dining out tips as well as his thoughts on the Heisman. You know, stuff on which Dick Vitale is in no way qualified to give an expert opinion.