Maui Maui

I'm watching some hoops tonight, and these are the things that have popped into my head:

- Ok State is leading LSU 25-17 right now, and James Anderson has really been leading the team so far this game for the Cowboys. He looks good and a he's a very promising freshman, but the announcer just compared him to Adrian Peterson, the football player.....who went to Oklahoma.

- You can chalk up LSU as another team that's just awful this year. I just found out that Tasmin Mitchell is hurt and not playing for LSU, so I'll reserve judgement, but my Ok State pick just got a little better.

- So A-Rod won the MVP, and I wanted to see the official voting to see if anything really stupid happened. It didn't, but I stumbled upon this page from 2004. It's the MVP voting from that year, and guess who finished 25th, with a single ninth place vote: Lew Ford. Seriously. If this was widely reported, I've either forgotten or blocked it out because it's so dumb. I'm sure some reporter thought Lew Ford was totally awesome because he's such a gamer and gave him a vote. Man, people really love white people. That guy's vote needs to be taken away.

- Ok State leads 42-22 at half. They look really good. Defense, inside and outside game are all looking solid. Hard to believe the lost to No. Texas. Maybe LSU is even worse than I thought.

- I guess LSU is without Dameon Mason as well. So basically they're just a bunch of crap.

- I hope LSU isn't counting on this freshman Garrett Green. He's a poor man's Blake Hoffarber.

- LSU has scored 11 straight to cut it to ten. I better not lose this game.

- Ok, it's officially stupid how many intentional fouls are called. Any fast break layup where there's a foul is called intentional now? Stupid. This must be how crazy football fans feel about all the rules against tackling.

- LSU has cut it to three with 1:31 left. Not because they're very good, but because Oklahoma State has completely forgotten not only to play defense, but to score as well. LSU does have some quality players, but they seem to have made the comeback more to loss of focus by OSU rather than their own ability.

- OSU pulls it out, 83-77, giving me the cover as well. Even with the lapse which took their lead from 21 points down to three, the Cowboys have a good nucleus with Marcus Dove, Byron Eaton, James Anderson, Terrell Harris, and Obi Muonelo. They should be in the mix for an NCAA bid.

- UCLA struggling a bit against Maryland. Not having Collison is really affecting them so far, as they've turned it over 8 times in the first ten minutes, a lot of them against the Maryland press and their very good backcourt.

- Do you think Darren and Nick Collison are related?

- Maryland managed all of 18 points in the first half against UCLA. Kevin Love is one of those kind of guys where you don't really realize how good he is watching him, but he just fills up the stat sheet. He has 10 rebounds at half time.

- Is Josh Shipp (UCLA) related to Joe Shipp, who used to go to Cal? By the way, UCLA isn't having pressure problems anymore, up 43-23. Maryland is not a tournament team.

- Funny Chicago story: Mrs. Bogart was meeting up with some friends at a bar, and had us meet them for a bit. Her friends said that Maddog and I were both good looking, but Bogart had really bad skin. Take that, fancy boy!

- Maryland has it down to nine, mostly due to a guy named Bambale Osby, who only has 8 points but seems to be completely controlling the paint, with his rebounding and defense. If Maryland had anybody to take the scoring burden off of Vasquez, they might be ok. Also, Dickie V's love affair with Kevin Love is getting to be a bit tiring. Very Madden/Favre like.

- Winthrop looks awful good. I thought they'd be a little overrated this season, with their name out there, but minus three starters and their coach from last year, but they are rolling on Baylor and looking very smooth doing it. This on top of already beating Georgia Tech - and Baylor already beat Notre Dame. Looking like they'll be dangerous again this year.

- I was just getting ready to set the Tivo to tape the Gopher game tomorrow night since I'll be at my touch football game, and it seems the game isn't on TV. Way to go. The most excited Gopher fans have been in years for a basketball team, and you don't put a game against a major conference team on TV. I could watch Maine v. Quinnipiac if I wanted to. Nicely done. You people who are in charge of this kind of thing are idiots.

- Baylor has cut it to 4 at the half. This Taj McCullough kid is a real damn good player for Winthrop.

- I can't watch the Michigan State/Missouri game yet, because ESPNU has the big Fairfield vs. Siena woman's volleyball match, and it's running over. And Fairfield just called a timeout. Awesome.

- Siena won. Good thing they didn't break away from it, it was a real barn burner. Only missed a minute though, so not too bad. MSU up 4-2.

- This is already my favorite game of the year. There's very little defense, and a whole lot of pushing the tempo. With 15:18 left, it's 19-8 Spartans. I haven't done all the high level math here, but I think that equates to a 212 - 177 game.

- Ok, I shouldn't say no defense, but Missouri pressures and takes chances on defense, and MSU has handled that, plus Neitzel is knocking down everything. And they can't stop Missouri's offense. It's 26-18 at the 12 minute timeout, and Neitzel has 12.

- This style really favors Missouri, but the Spartans haven't been taken out of their game. They're shooting quicker, but they're still taking quality shots, and not getting caught up in the Mizzou craziness. Very impressed right now.

- Here's a shocker - Dick Vitale thinks Kansas is going to be good this year. Between Duke, Kansas, and UNC it's amazing that guy has time to talk about anything else. Flipped over to see that Baylor has taken a four point lead on Winthrop also. And they've done it without Bruce scoring at all. That's good for them.

- I actually found a Pepperdine Basketball Blog. It's not updated into the regular season yet, but here's how he describe Rico's play in the first exhibition:

PG Rico Tucker: Tucker is a familiar face to dedicated Waves fans after sitting on the bench all last year after transferring from Minnesota. The 'lil guy at the point showed some flashes of playmaking-ability but has a pretty shaky outside shot. He's got crazy hops though and almost brought the house to its feet on an alley-oop feed from Tyrone Shelley that he just missed slamming down (that's right, the feed was FROM Shelley TO Tucker).

God that guy's awesome.

- Baylor now up 9 with 35 seconds left, thanks to a Curtis Jerrells 35 footer - very Chris Kingsbury like, except this one went in.

- Baylor wins by 8 to bring us to 3-0, and Mich State is up 10 at half. I'm going to try to check in later for the late Illinois game.

- Back just in time to see the Spartans push, rather than cover, the 3 due to a couple of desperation three pointers by Mizzou. And flip over to see Illinois up 22-3 on Arizona State. This is not good for my ASU +3.

- Not only are they down 27-7, but Jeff Pendergraph, their best player, is down with two fouls. Awesome.

- Vince Young threw for over 300 yards tonight? How the hell does that happen? That guy would probably be a slightly above average throwing quarterback in a flag football league, how does he ring it up like that in a real game? He must've thrown the ball like 60 times.

- Wow does Illinois look solid. They don't really have a standout guy, but it's not a weakness as they go 10 or 11 deep, and really move the ball well. Even with a whole second group in the still only gave back a couple of points to the Sun Devil starters. Interestingly enough, Jeff Jordan (MJ's kid) doesn't look for his own shot (and probably shouldn't, as he just airballed an open 17 footer)