Sunday, February 26, 2006

Thoughts From a Hoops Overloaded Weekend

Since it snowed about 10 inches here, and the roads resemble a Bobsled course, without the banked turns...or really bumpers of any kind, (actually perhaps it most resembled a curling rink (? course? court? field? throw me a bone here...) I didn't make it too far from the La-Z-Boy, and instead watched a whole lot of basketball. J.J. broke the ACC scoring record (yawn, though the game did remind me what a sports snob I am, as I was watching with two Duke law grads who were trying to decide which of J.J. and Paulus were cuter. Bad, bad times.) 'Stache was underwhelming but the Zags still won, etc. So to clear space for something more useful, a memory dump of sorts is in order:
  • Speaking of Gonzaga, teams like that (really good teams from really bad conferences) are always, always vastly overrated in the final Polls. They've been playing Pepperdine and Pacfic while Conneticut has been playing Pittsburgh and Marquette. But the way the polls work is, if you lose you move down. The Zags haven't lost in forever, but they really haven't had a losable game in a few months. They're no better than the 7th best team in reality (Duke, 'Nova, Memphis, Texas, Tennessee, West Va. in case you're wondering . George Washington falls roughly into the same category of 'Good team, bad conference')
  • Speaking of UCONN, I'm really not sure how any team has come within 20 of them all-season. On their game, they beat the Knicks by 12. Of course when your point guard is an admitted felon, it may be an indication that there is a certain knucklehead factor getting in the way of peak performance.
  • Now that Sam Cassell is on the downside of his career, I'm glad that Delonte West is in the league to ensure that the All-Ugly team has a point guard into the next decade:


Rounding out the current squad, Adonal Foyle, Hedo Turkoglu, Ervin Johnson and Sasha Pavlovic. Charlie Villanueva is DQ'ed, as beings from Kronos don't count:


  • Villanova is my favorite team to watch, as a neutral observer, in a long while, with West Virginia and Washington being runners up. Nova's Kyle Lowry reminds me a little of Bobby Jackson from the great Gopher team that never was. (I'm not sure there's a stupider rule than the 'expunging' of NCAA records for past rules violations. It was the Final 3 in 1997?)
  • My Texas pick is looking better and better. Man did they put a whuppin on Kansas.
Two weeks til Selection Sunday, 18 days til my favorite day of the year. I have to remember to call in sick well in advance...

Incidentally, any readers out there interested in a WAP bloggoffice pool? Prizes and such up for negotiation...

5 comments:

Icepick said...

All Ugly Team? Paul Mokeski has to be the starting center.

Icepick said...

Oh yeah, behold the wonder of a young Paul Keen Mokeski. I don't care if he's been out of the league and in the clink, he's STILL the starting center for the All Ugly Team.

Mr Furious said...

Shades of the Sports Guy with the All-Ugly Team... Funny stuff. I did a quick Google search looking for the SG Ugly HOF column and you get a surprising amount of results.

Here are some highlights:

[link] G - Sam Cassell. There's no way around it. Sam is an ugly man, and I know there's a bouncer at a strip club somewhere that agrees with me. Is it possible that he averages 20 points a game because the guy guarding him is always playing with his eyes closed?

F - Tyrone Hill. His head comes to a perfect point on top. Thankfully, no one will notice because the rest of his face looks like it's been at the bottom of the ocean for five months.

Calvin Booth. He has a head that's shaped like a thigh. It's not natural.

Another list that makes the Calvin Booth / thigh comparison.

Another team Brian Cardinal - There is a time in every balding mans life when they must make a choice; Embrace the baldness, or fight it. Brian is the perfect example of what is wrong with fighting it. He looks like the slightly retarded guy who washes cars at car dealerships, not a professional athlete.

Bill James is a funny guy, too Dom Mossi had two careers, one as a reliever an one as a starter, and he was pretty darned good at both. No one who saw him play remembers that, because Mossi’s ears looked as if they had been borrowed from a much larger species, and reattached without proper supervision. His nose was crooked, his eyes were in the wrong place… he looked like Gary Gaetti escaping from Devil’s Island. [Follow the link, you NEED to see the picture.]

More here

Sigh. All that and I couldn't find the Sports Guy list.

Pooh said...

Crap, I forgot Tyron Lue...

Anyway, Sammy C. always seemed Pug-ugly to me. There something insouciant (sp?) about him that makes him somehow adorable.

reader_iam said...

What?! Pug-ugly? Pugs aren't ugly! Oh ye of little imagination!

And thanks for the link; I just noticed (sort of out of it here).