February 2007 - Posts
Barring winning the Big Ten tournament, the Iowa men's basketball team is headed to the NIT. If its record is good enough to get an NIT berth, that is.
What does this mean? It means that Iowa lost to Penn State, a dubious achievement it shares in the Big Ten with Northwestern and only Northwestern. Not good.
It means this will mark the sixth-straight season the Hawkeyes haven't won an NCAA tournament game. Six years. Not good.
It means those nonconference losses to 7th-place Missouri Valley Conference team Drake and last-place Pacific-10 Conference team Arizona State weren't aberrations. Not when you lose to the team that had been alone in last in the Big Ten, a team with a 13-game losing streak coming into the game. Not good.
Oh, but Iowa is a young team. Uh huh. Ohio State is a young team. "Young'' Iowa is led by a senior, Adam Haluska, who deserved to be surrounded by better play from his "young" teammates Wednesday than he was. They're called rebounds, Hawkeyes. Grab some.
It's easy to pile on after a game like this, but let's face it. The Big Ten was set up this season for Iowa to squeeze out an NCAA berth. Minnesota, Northwestern and Penn State are lousy. Purdue, Michigan, Illinois -- nothing special. Only Wisconsin and Ohio State are anything special. While Iowa can still finish 9-7 in the conference with a home win over Illinois Saturday in Carver-Hawkeye, it would still be just 17-13 overall.
If the Hawkeyes lose to the Illini and bungle their Big Ten tourney first-round game, they end up 16-15 and the NIT would probably skip right past them. Wouldn't that be something? Something not good.
They won the Big Ten football title last fall, and now they've won the league's men's and women's basketball championships. They are The Ohio State University Buckeyes, and they are dominant.
If you've ever been to the Ohio State campus, you'd say they should be. Mammoth football stadium, state-of-the-art basketball arena, huge population in Ohio, and Columbus isn't exactly a West Lafayette or Champaign or Iowa City. The Rolling Stones play Columbus. The National Hockey League has a franchise in Columbus, and had a crowd of 16,220 for its game Sunday against Nashville. (Nashville-Columbus. Nothing says hockey tradition more, does it?)
Some think the Buckeyes can win the national-title. Not me. I think defending champ Florida is better. And UCLA. And North Carolina. And Kansas. And Texas A&M. And Big Ten runner-up Wisconsin. That's if big man Brian Butch's elbow isn't hurt badly enough to keep him from playing some more this season.
Last week in the Gazette, Hlastradamus correctly predicted Wisconsin's losses at Michigan State and Ohio State. Neither was the most daring pick possible. But now he has the whole Big Ten finish doped out. Knowing the top two teams and the bottom three, what's left to worry about is the middle six. They are:
3rd place: Indiana 10-6
4th place: Iowa 10-6
5th place: Purdue 9-7
6th place: Illinois 9-7
7th place: Michigan State 8-8
8th place: Michigan 8-8
Ties go to the Big Ten's criteria. Since Indiana and Iowa split, Indiana gets the duke because it beat Wisconsin and Iowa didn't. Likewise Michigan State over Michigan.
Oh, these predictions are made on the premise that Michigan beats Michigan State in Ann Arbor Tuesday, Iowa wins at Penn State Wednesday and defeats Illinois in Iowa City Saturday, and everyone else winnng the games they're supposed to win.
Should this scenario all become reality (and it will, because Hlastradamus hasn't been wrong since he said the Chicago Cubs' 1908 world championship was just the first of many to come in the next century), it means Iowa would play Purdue in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tourney, with the winner undoubtedly facing Ohio State in the semifinals.
That's all the prophet has for today. He's still a little hung over from attending those Oscar parties in Hollywood. That Helen Mirren can really put away the Red Bull-and-vodkas.
No Iowa State men's basketball starter scored more than seven points at Kansas Saturday. Guess who won by 37 points.
If Interstate 35 High School had won the Class 1A wrestling team title Saturday night, where would they have held the victory parade?
Had a power outage at my house Saturday night. But I was calm and brave. Then the power came back on 15 minutes later and I returned to my jittery, cowardly ways.
Gerald Swindle had his Saturday catch in the Bassmaster Classic disqualified after he sped
recklessly close to other boats on Lay Lake. "He shouldn't have done that," competitor Randy Howell said. So true, Randy. So true.
It's Geoff Ogilvy against Henrik Stenson for 36 holes in Sunday's final of the World Golf Championship-Accenture Match Play Championship. Somebody pinch me.
Tennessee Titans cornerback Pacman Jones has retained the
Atlanta-based law firm that successfully defended Baltimore Ravens
linebacker Ray Lewis on a double murder charges after a post-Super Bowl
incident in 2000. Jones hasn't been charged with anything yet, and claims to be only a witness to the triple shooting in the parking lot of a Las Vegas strip club. One question that needs to be answered before this matter proceeds. Why would someone himself "Pacman?"
We need to know more about Anna Nicole Smith. So very, very, very much more.
The Iowa State starters scored 7, 7, 7 , 6 and 6 points today at Kansas. You could call that balanced scoring. Or you could call it something less kind.
Time makes the memory hazy, but over two decades later I can still see Barry Stevens knocking down those corner jumpers.
What a fine, fine basketball player he was for Iowa State. And based on what I've heard and read, he was a straight-up good guy, a genuine family man, the kind of person you'd love to be your neighbor and friend.
That he would die at age 43 of an apparent heart attack when he was a non-smoker, non-drinker, non-drug user ... that he would die while working out at a health center ... it makes no sense. But we're all hooked up differently.
Stevens didn't single-handedly pull Iowa State out of a long span of basketball mediocrity, but his hand was a big one. Of everything Johnny Orr did to make Cyclone basketball competitive and exciting, recruiting Stevens out of Flint, Mich., may have been the most important. After Stevens signed on, more good players followed.
Stevens could and did score points by the bushel. He did so with grace and without self-promotion. Such claims are very subjective, but I think he was one of the 10 best college basketball players in our state's history.
When Cedar Rapids got a team in the Continental Basketball Association toward the end of the 1980s, Stevens was a perfect fit for an enterprise billing itself as family entertainment. He was a good ambassador for the team in public, and made scoring 20 points a game seem easy.
"I felt that Barry, although a native Michigander, was an Iowan down deep,'' said Kevin Krause, who owned the Cedar Rapids Silver Bullets. "He really enjoyed his time at Iowa State and in Cedar Rapids playing basketball. I think our fans liked his accessibility. He was willing and eager to talk with fans and sign autographs. Our world is a little less cheery without Barry Stevens.''
For a good story with more details on Stevens' life after Iowa State and Cedar Rapids, check out the Gary Post-Tribune's piece at http://www.post-trib.com/sports/268338,stevens.article
NASCAR isn't immune to popular phrases of the day that mean absolutely nothing.
"It is what it is" has plagued America for the last year, and it dashed across Daytona over the last week.
"This is what it is, and that's it," Mark Martin said after he lost the Daytona 500 by not very many inches to Kevin Harvick.
"I think it's a good way to end a nice winter snooze,'' NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton said of the 500. "It is what it is for us."
Toyota had cars in a Nextel Cup event for the first time. Of the four, Dale Jarrett's 22nd-place finish was the best.
"OK, it is what is, and we keep working on our stuff,'' said Lee White, senior vice president of Toyota Racing Development.
The race had a rather insane ending. Harvick beat Martin by about a slim a margin as you ever see in a NASCAR event. Clint Bowyer's car skidded across the finish line on its roof after flipping over on the wild final lap. The car was on fire, too.
Poor Bowyer finished 18th. "If we were going to end up on our lid,'' he said, "we better end up better than that."
Since the driver wasn't hurt, I can say this about the car sliding down the straightaway while ablaze:
That was great. You didn't anything anywhere near that interesting at the NBA All-Star Game, though Wayne Newton's pre-game lip-synching of "Viva Las Vegas" and "Danke Schoen" were mighty bizarre.
Oh brother.
March Madness doesn't look like a concept that will apply to any Division I basketball team from Iowa this winter. February Fiascoes, however, is an applicable term.
Michigan State 81, Iowa 49
Kansas State 65, Iowa State 47
Nevada 79, Northern Iowa 64
That was all within a six-hour stretch Saturday, for your viewing displeasure. At least UNI held a one-point halftime lead, and Iowa State was only down by two at intermission. Iowa trailed 44-17 after the first 20 minutes at East Lansing. What a debacle for a team that wanted us to believe it was in the hunt for an NCAA tournament bid.
Here's what Iowa needs to do to get to the NCAAs: Not lose again, at least not until the finals of the Big Ten tournament. The Hawkeyes do not get all the way to Sunday in the Big Ten tourney every year, though it may seem that way.
Kansas State Coach Bob Huggins clearly did a great job of recruiting in the offseason. He actually began recruiting before he even had an employer after getting fired by Cincinnati. K-State wanted a basketball winner so badly that it hired Hugs. It got what it wanted. Down the road, the piper will probably be paid.
Nevada is ranked 10th in the nation. Nevada. When was the last time Iowa was ranked in the Top Ten in mid-February?
If Hawkeye fans are lukewarm about this team now, what will they be if the Hawkeyes don't play their best ball of the year in the next three weeks and land in the NIT? Should they get a home game in the NIT, you'll be able to drive a forklift on Carver-Hawkeye Arena's main concourse without hitting anyone. Unless their opponent is UNI. But that would mean the Panthers had pulled out a few wins themselves between now and mini-March Madness.
Better times are coming in years to come at Iowa and Iowa State, we're told. But we all live in the here and now. With global warming, the 2007-08 season isn't a given. Nevada understands this and is playing great ball right now. Ditto Kansas State. Even Michigan State has awakened to the threat of the polar ice cap melting and leaving us underwater.
But here in Iowa, the three state-school teams act like everything is still frozen. OK, it is, but that's still no excuse to lose three games in one day by a total of 65 points.
The University of Iowa field hockey team announced Monday that it had signed five prep standouts for the 2007 season. Maggie Neill, Sarah Pergine, and Amy Baxter all hail from Pennsylvania. Chelsea Miller is from Texas, while Paige Lowrey is from Colorado.
What is the problem with high school field hockey programs in Iowa? They just can't seem to elevate their play enough to send girls to university field hockey programs. The Hawkeyes' 2006 roster had six players from Pennsylvania, two from New Hampshire and New Jersey, and one apiece from California, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, New York and Delaware.
What's the world coming to when Delaware and New Hampshire crank out more college field hockey players than Iowa?
Oh, wait. Iowa doesn't have high school field hockey and never has.
Never mind.
A couple days ago, I guested on WMT-AM's Bob Bruce Radio Experience as I do each Monday afternoon. The Bob Bruce Radio Experience is the modern-day version of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but with more of a focus on issues of the day and less on wizardry with the electric guitar.
Bob said we can get excited because pitchers and catchers are about to report to major-league baseball training camps. I begged to differ. Grown men playing catch in Florida and Arizona aren't going to better my mood when a projected snow storm is on the way. It came. I shoveled.
I understand Bob's optimism. He's a big baseball fan. Plus, it's February, the shortest month, meaning March is around the corner, meaning spring can't be too far away. His attitude is healthy. Happier weather days will get here.
But when high school and even Big Ten basketball games are getting postponed because the Midwest is getting pounded by snow, and when the Northeast U.S. has taken more of a winter beating than we Midwesterners have, I don't care to hear about anything that involves the Cactus or Grapefruit leagues just yet. It's the same reason I didn't want to know about whatever revelry they had at Super Bowl week in Miami, nor do I want to know about the hoopla leading this week in Las Vegas in the lead-up to the NBA All-Star Game.
In my world, I'm risking life and limb in Cedar Rapids just dodging ice in my own garage, let alone the cold, slippery, heartless landscape outside it. And I'm supposed to get excited about Red Sox pitchers are running wind sprints in Winter Haven? Just the thought of a place called Winter Haven disgusts me right now.
Well, Adam Haluska will still be first-team All-Big Ten.
But going 10-for-38 in two games against Wisconsin not only bookended Haluska's 67 points in wins over Indiana and Minneosta, but cemented the league's Most Valuable Player award for Badger forward Alando Tucker.
Tucker killed the Hawkeyes for a second time in two weeks Saturday with his 21 points in Wisconsin's 74-62 home win.
If it's any consolation, Haluska had just one fewer point (16) than the imminent National Player of the Year, Texas freshman Kevin Durant, had in 38 minutes against Iowa State Saturday. But it isn't any consolation, of course, so why did I even bring it up?
The Pro Bowl was on Saturday. Didn't watch it. Don't feel bad about it.
But back to Wisconsin. It's 24-2. You know what it's like to root for a team that's 24-2? It's fun. That's what it is. Fun.
You know what's not fun? Being ranked in the Top Ten for the first time in school history and then losing by 12 points. To Wright State. That's what happened to Butler Saturday. The No. 10 Bulldogs are in second place behind Wright State in the Horizon League standings. Wright State isn't even the historically preeminent men's basketball program in Dayton, Ohio. That would be ... you guessed it ... Dayton.
It was the first basketball sellout in the history of Wright State's Nutter Center. Over 3,000 students showed up in the crowd of 10,827. Wright State lost 73-42 when it played at Butler earlier this season Those students apparently weren't deterred.
Why am I writing about Wright? Because Iowa got beat, Iowa State got beat, and nobody in their Wright mind cares about the Pro Bowl.
Late in the telecast of Iowa's 91-78 men's basketball win at Minnesota Wednesday night, play-by-play guy *** Bremer (a Minnesota broadcaster) said his pick for the Big Ten's Player of the Year was Adam Haluska.
That was after Haluska scorched the Gophers for 34 points. Which was one game after Haluska dropped in 33 points in a home win against Indiana. He now averages a league-high 22.3 points a game in Big Ten play.
The overwhelming favorite to win that award is Wisconsin senior forward Alando Tucker, who has been fantastic in guiding the Badgers to a 9-1 league mark. But with Iowa 6-4 in the conference with Haluska playing like J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison did last year for Duke and Gonzaga, respectively, voters for the award have another option to consider.
Haluska is shooting the 3-pointer (6-of-10 Wednesday) the way Chris Kingsbury and Kent McCausland did in their best years for the Hawkeyes, but he also is scoring in other ways. He had two old-fashioned 3-point plays against the Gophers. And, he had eight assists! If all eight of those were on 2-point baskets, that means Haluska was directly involved in 50 points. That, folks, is an extreme rarity in college ball.
Before this season started, I had doubts about Haluska being a leader. He seemed like a great supplementary player to Jeff Horner and Greg Brunner. But could he lead?
The answer has become a resounding yes. This isn't a gunning ball hog. This is a scorer who is also passing, rebounding, and yes, leading. The word for such a player is "valuable." As in Most Valuable Player.
Wisconsin's Tucker deserves all the hosannas he has received. By all accounts, he is as decent a guy as Haluska seems to be. Saturday, Iowa plays at Wisconsin, and maybe Tucker will do the same kind of job on the Hawkeyes that he did less than two weeks ago at Carver-Hawkeye when he scored 27 points. But I'll bet Haluska won't have the same kind of 3-for-18 shooting game he had against the Badgers.
He was called Demond Sanders when he signed a national letter of intent to play football at the University of Iowa, but he was soon known as Bob Sanders once he started playing for the Hawkeyes.
It only seems right, in retrospect. This isn't some fancy Demond. That's too close to "Deion," as in another defensive back named Sanders. Deion Sanders was the greatest cornerback in history who seemingly never made contact with an opponent. But a Bob is straight-ahead, full force. Bob Sanders certainly is, anyhow.
The Chicago Bears' longest play from scrimmage in Sunday's Super Bowl came because Sanders had a bad angle on Bears running back Thomas Jones and crashed into teammate Kelvin Hayden. That freed Jones for a 52-yard first-quarter run that set up a short Rex Grossman touchdown pass and gave Chicago a 14-6 lead. If the Bears were counting on more help from Sanders, they were as wrong as anyone who picked the Bears to win this game.
You know the rest. Just about all the other big plays from then on were made by Colts, two by Sanders. He blasted into Bears running back Cedric Benson late in the first quarter, forcing a fumble that Indianapolis recovered. Benson was of no use to Chicago the rest of the day, and the rest of the Bears seemed shaken.
“It was a great tackle by him,” Benson said.
“He pinpointed the ball, put his headgear right on it. It was a great
professional tackle by him. I’ll learn from it, definitely.”Sanders intercepted a long Grossman pass to Bernard Berrian late in the game to basically seal the Colts' 29-17 win. The pass was underthrown. Sanders got the pick by staying exactly where he was supposed to be on coverage. Not long after that, he was on the podium at the middle of the Dolphin Stadium field with teammate Peyton Manning and coach Tony Dungy, kissing the Vince Lombardi trophy.
Sunday night on ESPN, analyst Sean Salisbury called the 208-pound Sanders the best player in the NFL, pound for pound. Kevin Hench of Foxsports.com said "Bob Sanders looks like he might be the best free safety of his generation."
This was a guy who played as many postseason games this season (four) as regular-season games. The one question about Sanders' long-term potential is if he can stay healthy given the kamikaze way he plays. But he's a 3-year NFL veteran with a Super Bowl ring and the respect of all football. Sanders is under contract with the Colts through the 2009 season, adding to the good feeling Indianapolis has about its world championship team.
That three-year run of football glory the Hawkeyes enjoyed from 2002 to 2004 was keyed by a lot of terrific players. But it seems like things started to move forward once Sanders smashed his way into the starting lineup with three games left in the 2000 season. It was if everything changed. The Hawkeyes became the hunters.
The same was said of the Colts' defense once Sanders returned for this season's playoffs. Maybe Salisbury and Hench are right.
I get frequent e-mail queries from publicists seeking some run for a lot of different things, few of them of interest to the general public. But a few days ago someone offered to hook me up with a phone interview with Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi for his thoughts on the Super Bowl. So I thought, sure. I doubted Mizrachi had any special Super Bowl insights, but when a guy is coming off a year in which he was named Player of the Year by CardPlayer Magazine -- a poker bible -- and won $6 million, he must be a pretty sharp fellow.
Mizrachi picks the Colts by 3. Now about the poker ...
"I try to keep myself in shape. I go to the gym. I'll hit the steam room before a tournament to clear my head. I try to have a good breakfast, or lunch or dinner. You've got to come in with a clear mind. You've got to be in shape in all aspects, physically and mentally, to be prepared for any situation. I'm 26. I'm a person that doesn't need much sleep, three hours every night. That's why you see so many younger kids making it now in poker. The older you get, the more you start losing focus and needing some sleep. So I try to play as many hours as I can now."
"I gave myself the name 'Grinder' eight years ago playing online. When somebody grinds, it means they win slowly but surely. That name was to try to make me more intimidating, to try to gain respect. My family calls me 'Grinder.' If you call me Michael, I won't turn around. Michael's a common name."
"I'm at home in Hollywood, Florida, right now. I'm going back to Las Vegas Monday. When I'm in Las Vegas, it's all work. I'll do a few photo shoots Monday with Absolute Poker. Then I'll drive to Los Angeles for a heads-up poker tournament with a $10,000 buy-in. I'll play a few more tourneys, come back to Las Vegas for the NBA All-Star Game, then be back in L.A. again. Then it's off to the East Coast, or maybe Monte Carlo. I'm doing something every single day."
"You have to have great instincts in poker, great reads. You have to know what to do in every situation. Most people are taught the basics and read all the books. I know how everyone's taught, which books they've read, and I take full advantage of it. It takes me 15, 20 minutes, maybe an hour, to tell how somebody plays. I've got to play a few hands with them. Last week in about 10 minutes I knew the two worst players at my table in a tournament. They ended up being the first two out."
"I pretty much always knew how good I was at poker. It was in the genes. My mom was a good poker player. I learned a lot from my older brother, Robert. He brought me into the game 10 years ago. He started taking me on cruise ships. He'd work with me on hand-analysis throughout the day, and money management. He took me on my first poker trip, to Gila River Casino in Arizona. I had a bankroll of $1,000 on me. He put $150 in envelopes, one for each day. He said if lost the $150, I was done for the day. But I went through every single envelope the first day. But I still broke even and made enough to cover expenses for the trip. And I've been winning since Day 1."