Only one team made a statement in Ithaca Saturday night.
Cornell 86
Harvard 50
Cornell may break into the Top 25 (in the ESPN/USA Today poll -- they are well out of the T-25 in AP) next week.
And in the NBA, the Celts have a made a statement of a different type this week, losing @ORL, @ATL, and to LAL at home.
With KG in the line-up.
(And with Paul Pierce (interestingly) turning down a shot to win at Crunch Time to throw a floating pass to Ray Allen.)
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Heady Days for Harvard Hoops
Tonight's Ivy League clash in Ithaca, NY may not be the most important college basketball game of the year -- but it may be the most publicized game that won't be on TV.
Harvard (14-3, 3-0) basketball -- thanks to a good loss at UConn followed by an impressive win over Boston College -- has enjoyed a boomlet of publicity in the past few weeks, beginning with a Time Magazine article on Jeremy Lin in late December. Cornell (17-3, 3-0) has been solid all year, and nearly shocked then-Number-One Kansas at Allen Field House a few weeks ago. Tonight, Cornell hosts Harvard in a game that -- with no conference tournament in the Ivies -- will put one team in the driver's seat for the League title.
Just this week, Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg all previewed the Crimson-Big Red tilt. KenPom has Cornell winning by 4. With the pressure on Cornell to 'hold serve' at home, the game may be even tighter.
But Lin and the current Harvard players are not the only Crimson in the news this week. Former Crimson player and current US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan enjoyed a generally positive profile in the New Yorker. Two take-aways: Duncan, thanks to a decade of playing hoops with Obama, may be the closest Cabinet member to the POTUS. And his educational agenda is far more centrist than most Obama supporters would have imagined.
Harvard (14-3, 3-0) basketball -- thanks to a good loss at UConn followed by an impressive win over Boston College -- has enjoyed a boomlet of publicity in the past few weeks, beginning with a Time Magazine article on Jeremy Lin in late December. Cornell (17-3, 3-0) has been solid all year, and nearly shocked then-Number-One Kansas at Allen Field House a few weeks ago. Tonight, Cornell hosts Harvard in a game that -- with no conference tournament in the Ivies -- will put one team in the driver's seat for the League title.
Just this week, Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg all previewed the Crimson-Big Red tilt. KenPom has Cornell winning by 4. With the pressure on Cornell to 'hold serve' at home, the game may be even tighter.
But Lin and the current Harvard players are not the only Crimson in the news this week. Former Crimson player and current US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan enjoyed a generally positive profile in the New Yorker. Two take-aways: Duncan, thanks to a decade of playing hoops with Obama, may be the closest Cabinet member to the POTUS. And his educational agenda is far more centrist than most Obama supporters would have imagined.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Dog that Didn't Bark, and other SOTU Thoughts
President Obama's first State of the Union (SOTU) was delivered last night. A few loose ends and random thoughts:
* A Return to Clinton-ism. Bill Clinton was famous for revising the text of his speeches at the last minute, even on the ride over from the White House to the Capitol. This President, who seemingly won't say "Thank You" without a teleprompter, has (heretofore) been more punctual.
But the embargoed text was not delivered to the cable networks 30 minutes before his speech (as promised, according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer.) And unlike previous years, where Members of Congress followed the speech in booklet form, no one was reading; instead they were listening -- with varying degrees of intensity.
And the length of the speech itself -- close to 75 minutes -- indicates that re-drafting was going on to the the last minute. (As Blaise Pascal once remarked, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.)
The lack of a prepared text (for Members, not the POTUS, obviously) meant that the Members were not 'prepared' for when the TV cameras would be focusing on them. Nor the Republicans, in particular, seem to know how or when to react to the various portions of the speech. (For example, the GOP side of the chamber, after the initial ovations during the introductions, seemingly did not stand and cheer for a single proposal or statement by the President until he called for "safe, clean nuclear power plants", which occurred almost half-way through the speech.)
* Joe Wilson II. The South Carolina Congressman who heckled the President during September's health care speech was nowhere to be seen. But stepping into the role, or perhaps auditioning for a larger role later, was Supreme Sam Alito, who responded to Obama's criticism of a recent Court decision but mouthing "That's Not True".
BTW, Obama vs. Alito debating the merits of Citizens United would be "Must See TV."
* The Dog that Didn't Bark. Since at least the Reagan era, it has been a tradition to recognize various Americans (and on occasion foreign dignitaries) in the First Lady's box overlooking the House chamber.) In 2002, newly-installed Afghan leader Hamid Karzai appeared. In 2004, Michigan grad Tom Brady served as a "visual prop" for President Bush's call to outlaw steroids.
Last night, President Obama recognized no one except for the First Lady and Jill Biden. (The cameras did focus on the Ambassador from Haiti when POTUS was discussing the earthquake.)
Although there appeared to be a number of "special guests" in the audience -- including at least according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, members of the response team from the Fort Hood shooting -- this SOTU was not focused on personal symbolism.
* The (Almost) Missing Bark. At the end of the preoration, it is customary to report that "The state of the Union is strong..." or similar words
(A few randomly-selected examples: Bush 43 (2008) ("The state of our union will remain strong"); (2002) ("Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger"); Clinton (2000) ("The state of our Union is the strongest it has ever been"). Interestingly, the only non-use of the "union is strong" formulation that AP could find was in Bush 41's 1992 address, at the start of his failed re-election year.)
Obama incorporated the word "Union" issue three different times in his SOTU opening (including once in a bit of wordplay: "when the Union was turned back at Bull Run"), before concluding: "I have never been more hopeful about America's future than I am tonight. Despite our hardships, our union is strong."
* Enough with Virginia Governors. Virginia sits just south of the Washington, the locale of 90% of the nation's political reporters. Virginia's electorate, with its combination of rural conservatives in the south and west, and yuppie urbanites in the north, supposedly mimics the country's as a whole. And perhaps most important, Virginia's Constitution forbids its Governors from standing for immediate re-election.
So, every four years, when a new Governor is elected in the Old Dominion State, the pundit class declares him (or her, presumably) a "new rising star" and revs up the "could-this-Governor-be-the-next-President" bandwagon.
(Since 1982, here is the list of Virginia Governors: Chuck Robb, Gerald Baliles, Douglas Wilder, George Allen, Jim Gilmore, Mark Warner, and Tim Kaine. Of these, only Baliles (and Kaine, who left office after Obama's election) refrained from either explicitly running, or attempting to run, for President. All six ended, um, poorly.)
Here's another theory: since the VA Governor's seat is always an 'open' one (i.e., no incumbent to defeat), that means that running a successful gubernatorial campaign in VA is actually a very poor predictor of how political talent will fare in a more traditional setting: with incumbents and re-election campaigns.
Anyways, the latest "new rising star" Bob McDonnell was given the opportunity to respond to the SOTU last night. Although he bested last year's speaker, LA Governor Bobby Jindal, that was not a high bar: Jindal's performance was compared (unfavorably) to that of Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock.
But when even FNC's Charles Krauthammer described your oratorical performance as "workman-like", that may be a sign that your star is rising a bit slower than you might like.
* A Return to Clinton-ism. Bill Clinton was famous for revising the text of his speeches at the last minute, even on the ride over from the White House to the Capitol. This President, who seemingly won't say "Thank You" without a teleprompter, has (heretofore) been more punctual.
But the embargoed text was not delivered to the cable networks 30 minutes before his speech (as promised, according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer.) And unlike previous years, where Members of Congress followed the speech in booklet form, no one was reading; instead they were listening -- with varying degrees of intensity.
And the length of the speech itself -- close to 75 minutes -- indicates that re-drafting was going on to the the last minute. (As Blaise Pascal once remarked, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.)
The lack of a prepared text (for Members, not the POTUS, obviously) meant that the Members were not 'prepared' for when the TV cameras would be focusing on them. Nor the Republicans, in particular, seem to know how or when to react to the various portions of the speech. (For example, the GOP side of the chamber, after the initial ovations during the introductions, seemingly did not stand and cheer for a single proposal or statement by the President until he called for "safe, clean nuclear power plants", which occurred almost half-way through the speech.)
* Joe Wilson II. The South Carolina Congressman who heckled the President during September's health care speech was nowhere to be seen. But stepping into the role, or perhaps auditioning for a larger role later, was Supreme Sam Alito, who responded to Obama's criticism of a recent Court decision but mouthing "That's Not True".
BTW, Obama vs. Alito debating the merits of Citizens United would be "Must See TV."
* The Dog that Didn't Bark. Since at least the Reagan era, it has been a tradition to recognize various Americans (and on occasion foreign dignitaries) in the First Lady's box overlooking the House chamber.) In 2002, newly-installed Afghan leader Hamid Karzai appeared. In 2004, Michigan grad Tom Brady served as a "visual prop" for President Bush's call to outlaw steroids.
Last night, President Obama recognized no one except for the First Lady and Jill Biden. (The cameras did focus on the Ambassador from Haiti when POTUS was discussing the earthquake.)
Although there appeared to be a number of "special guests" in the audience -- including at least according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, members of the response team from the Fort Hood shooting -- this SOTU was not focused on personal symbolism.
* The (Almost) Missing Bark. At the end of the preoration, it is customary to report that "The state of the Union is strong..." or similar words
(A few randomly-selected examples: Bush 43 (2008) ("The state of our union will remain strong"); (2002) ("Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger"); Clinton (2000) ("The state of our Union is the strongest it has ever been"). Interestingly, the only non-use of the "union is strong" formulation that AP could find was in Bush 41's 1992 address, at the start of his failed re-election year.)
Obama incorporated the word "Union" issue three different times in his SOTU opening (including once in a bit of wordplay: "when the Union was turned back at Bull Run"), before concluding: "I have never been more hopeful about America's future than I am tonight. Despite our hardships, our union is strong."
* Enough with Virginia Governors. Virginia sits just south of the Washington, the locale of 90% of the nation's political reporters. Virginia's electorate, with its combination of rural conservatives in the south and west, and yuppie urbanites in the north, supposedly mimics the country's as a whole. And perhaps most important, Virginia's Constitution forbids its Governors from standing for immediate re-election.
So, every four years, when a new Governor is elected in the Old Dominion State, the pundit class declares him (or her, presumably) a "new rising star" and revs up the "could-this-Governor-be-the-next-President" bandwagon.
(Since 1982, here is the list of Virginia Governors: Chuck Robb, Gerald Baliles, Douglas Wilder, George Allen, Jim Gilmore, Mark Warner, and Tim Kaine. Of these, only Baliles (and Kaine, who left office after Obama's election) refrained from either explicitly running, or attempting to run, for President. All six ended, um, poorly.)
Here's another theory: since the VA Governor's seat is always an 'open' one (i.e., no incumbent to defeat), that means that running a successful gubernatorial campaign in VA is actually a very poor predictor of how political talent will fare in a more traditional setting: with incumbents and re-election campaigns.
Anyways, the latest "new rising star" Bob McDonnell was given the opportunity to respond to the SOTU last night. Although he bested last year's speaker, LA Governor Bobby Jindal, that was not a high bar: Jindal's performance was compared (unfavorably) to that of Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock.
But when even FNC's Charles Krauthammer described your oratorical performance as "workman-like", that may be a sign that your star is rising a bit slower than you might like.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Raiding Morgantown, continued
A little follow-up: notwithstanding John Beilein's 41-46 record since arriving in Ann Arbor, his contract was recently extended through the 2015-16 season.
(Actually, the extension seems to be a somewhat curious decision -- at least as to timing -- as a team was preseason #15, and that seems reasonably likely to lose star G Manny Harris (he was suspended(*) over the weekend although reinstated for the Michigan State game) is mired with a bubble-icious 10-10 (3-5) record.
(* - AP doesn't have the bandwidth to research the "percentage-of-preseason-All-American-candidates-who-are-suspended-by-their-coach-but-who-nonetheless-finish-out-their-eligibility." But let's just say that the odds aren't great. You know, if betting were legal.)
Back to Beilein's extension: Whatever.
After all, Notre Dame famously gave Charlie Weis an extension early in his tenure, and look how that turned out. (Of course, Weis was 5-2 and #9 in the country at the time he got his new deal.)
The best-case long-term scenario, at least for Michigan fans, is that Beilein's extension empowered him to challenge Harris, and subsequently suspend him. (Potentially) good for team discipline long-term. Not such a good sign as to how the season has gone so far, which perhaps explains the underachieving record.)
But Beilein is not the only ex-Morgantown resident who is now coaching in Ann Arbor. Wolverine football coach Rich Rodriguez has now finished his second season at Michigan, with a combined record of 8-16, and perhaps more alarmingly, won just three conference games in 16 starts.
Are fans -- or for that matter journalists, commentators, or Jay Bilas -- happy with Rich Rod?
Well, he's probably not talking to the AD about a contract extension.
(Actually, the extension seems to be a somewhat curious decision -- at least as to timing -- as a team was preseason #15, and that seems reasonably likely to lose star G Manny Harris (he was suspended(*) over the weekend although reinstated for the Michigan State game) is mired with a bubble-icious 10-10 (3-5) record.
(* - AP doesn't have the bandwidth to research the "percentage-of-preseason-All-American-candidates-who-are-suspended-by-their-coach-but-who-nonetheless-finish-out-their-eligibility." But let's just say that the odds aren't great. You know, if betting were legal.)
Back to Beilein's extension: Whatever.
After all, Notre Dame famously gave Charlie Weis an extension early in his tenure, and look how that turned out. (Of course, Weis was 5-2 and #9 in the country at the time he got his new deal.)
The best-case long-term scenario, at least for Michigan fans, is that Beilein's extension empowered him to challenge Harris, and subsequently suspend him. (Potentially) good for team discipline long-term. Not such a good sign as to how the season has gone so far, which perhaps explains the underachieving record.)
But Beilein is not the only ex-Morgantown resident who is now coaching in Ann Arbor. Wolverine football coach Rich Rodriguez has now finished his second season at Michigan, with a combined record of 8-16, and perhaps more alarmingly, won just three conference games in 16 starts.
Are fans -- or for that matter journalists, commentators, or Jay Bilas -- happy with Rich Rod?
Well, he's probably not talking to the AD about a contract extension.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Elite Pretenders
For the second night in a row in college basketball, a BCS-conference title contender tried to elevate itself. And for the second night in a row, the established order turned away a challenge.
Last night in upstate New York, Georgetown sprinted to a 14-0 start before letting the Syracuse Orange back into the game -- in a big way -- in being outscored by 31 the rest of the way. The Orange, behind G Andy Rautins and F Wesley Johnson, showed that they are well-deserving of their current Top-5 ranking.
A year after the Big East dreamed of sending four teams to the Final Four, it was supposed to be a down year; instead, the conference has six teams in the current AP Top-25 (five in the current KenPom Top-25, but eight (half the league) in the Top-40). The Beast is back.
And Feb. 27th -- Villanova (18-1, 7-0) at Syracuse (20-1, 7-1) -- looms large.
In the Big Ten, meanwhile, Michigan hoped to start on the road back to national prominence when it hosted #5 Michigan State. Armed with a student body seemingly hopped up on Beilein-ball, the Wolverines appeared came back in the second half to take the lead with less than a minute to go.
With 38 seconds remaining, Michigan's DeShawn Sims missed a corner jumper badly. The Spartans' Kalin Lucas drained a 15-foot jumper to take a one-point lead. Sims had a chance to redeem himself with 1.5 left, but a tough layup slipped off the front rim.
And Maize-and-Blue fans wonder if raiding Morgantown was worth it.
Last night in upstate New York, Georgetown sprinted to a 14-0 start before letting the Syracuse Orange back into the game -- in a big way -- in being outscored by 31 the rest of the way. The Orange, behind G Andy Rautins and F Wesley Johnson, showed that they are well-deserving of their current Top-5 ranking.
A year after the Big East dreamed of sending four teams to the Final Four, it was supposed to be a down year; instead, the conference has six teams in the current AP Top-25 (five in the current KenPom Top-25, but eight (half the league) in the Top-40). The Beast is back.
And Feb. 27th -- Villanova (18-1, 7-0) at Syracuse (20-1, 7-1) -- looms large.
In the Big Ten, meanwhile, Michigan hoped to start on the road back to national prominence when it hosted #5 Michigan State. Armed with a student body seemingly hopped up on Beilein-ball, the Wolverines appeared came back in the second half to take the lead with less than a minute to go.
With 38 seconds remaining, Michigan's DeShawn Sims missed a corner jumper badly. The Spartans' Kalin Lucas drained a 15-foot jumper to take a one-point lead. Sims had a chance to redeem himself with 1.5 left, but a tough layup slipped off the front rim.
And Maize-and-Blue fans wonder if raiding Morgantown was worth it.
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