My Life Blog

Timing and bad weather have enabled me to see much of the Mavs-Spurs series and so today I was lucky enough to see the second half of Game 7.  It seems the only time my blood pressure has really elevated on this vacation, its been during one of these games.  What a series!

I am very proud of the Mavericks for winning this one.  I felt like they were the better team throughout the series and said so even after the Game 1 loss. 

Many may not know this, but my home town is San Antonio and the Spurs were my first NBA team.  I grew up with George Gervin, Larry Kenon, Louis Dampier, and James Silas as my basketball idols.  But after moving to Dallas in 1986, my allegiance quickly changed.  Trouble is, short of one or two of the Tarpley years, I’ve consistently been upside-down on the exchange.  And to make matters worse, I family still in SA that remind me every year.  I’ve never enjoyed any of the SA championships as they didn’t come under my watch.  So now, maybe its Dallas’ turn.

I truly believe the best team won this series and maybe I’m a homer for making this next point.  Tim Duncan gets every call and believes he’s never committed a foul or traveled.  He’s an amazing talent, for sure.  But man, he gets all the calls from what I can tell.  Our guys, Dampier and Diop, looked to me like they were playing good defense, but Duncan would run over them and draw a foul.  It was amazing to watch. 

When my SA family used to complain from time-to-time about SA not getting the calls during a game, I always figured that they had a point.  SA is a small-market team and conspiracy theorists would have you believe that they weren’t the NBA’s pick to advance.  But what I think now is that they were used to getting all the calls and lost the games that somehow got called fairly.  My family will surely disagree with this, but there are film highlights and boxscores with overwhelming foul advantages for SA as evidence.

I’m getting off track here, just wanted to say that I’m glad the Mavericks gutted it up and won.  Game 7 was incredible.  This series was incredible.  Now let’s see what happens next in the Dallas playoff run. 

Last week, the Aggies lose by a point to LSU.  This week LSU beats Duke by 8.  So by the transitive property of math, A&M would have beaten Duke by 7 tonight. 

Seriously, I do think A&M’s tenacious defense would have made the match-up interesting, but we’ll never know.

Its no wonder my Aggies couldn’t beat Texas.  Just look closely at the picture to see their defensive secret weapon!

Earlier in the day, I was listening to the radio as the analysts were busy assessing the prospects of Duke in the next round.  At the time, Duke had advanced to the next round and awaited the winner of the LSU vs. Texas A&M game.  One commentator asked the other how LSU would match up.  My eyebrow and my ire was raised since LSU needed to go through my Aggies before getting to Duke.  Suffice it to say that the national media is slow to give A&M much respect.

As it turns out, LSU did advance, but they did so by the narrowest of margins  — 1 point.  The final score was 58-57.  And what a heartbreaker it was for Aggies fans. 

A&M got down by 12 early and things looked really bad.  Then they rattled a 17-0 spurt to go ahead, before settling for a tie at halftime.  In the second half, it was hard-fought and late in the game the Aggies found themselves down by 7.  It looked really bad at that time.  Then the Aggies tied it.  Then they took the lead by 2 with 19.2 seconds left.  In my mind,  I thought they were going to win as LSU had not been able to solve the Aggie defense.  I sure didn’t think they would take the lead.  But LSU came down and worked the ball around before settling on a long 3-point shot.  It went in leaving 3.2 seconds for the Aggies to tie it.  They could not muster a shot.

But what a great showing for a team that was 0-12 in Big XII games just two years ago!  They definitely knew the Aggies were there.  Beating Syracuse who had earlier beat the favored team in the tournament UConn.  Then playing the higher-seeded LSU so close! 

I’m so proud to be an Aggie today…this was a short, but great run.  Hopefully we’ll get to do this again next year.

Billy Gillispie brought the team to the arena today to watch the entire day’s schedule of games.  The first game started at 11am CST and the Aggies finally took the court at 9pm CST.  The intent was obviously to give the players the flavor and intensity of the tournament.  The secondary purpose was to soak in the experience.  An Aggie team last played in this tournament in 1987 and last won a game in 1980.

Syracuse was the talk of the tournament after having won the Big East tournament this past weekend.  The Aggies meanwhile bowed out of the Big XII tournament in the second round with a narrow loss to Texas.  Prior to that, A&M had won 9 straight games.  So it was #5 seed Syracuse versus #12 seed A&M.  Boeheim vs. Gillispie. 

The media will try to spin the Aggie win as a case of them capitalizing on a team trying to play with an injured point guard, Gerry McNamara.  However, the guy started.  And yes, he played poorly.  But as in any team sport, if you build your team around one guy, you are bound to eventually lose. 

In my opinion, the Aggies won because they outhustled and outplayed Syracuse.  They also appeared to be well-prepared as they had weren’t intimidated by Syracuse’s 2-3 zone defense and scored several times against the full-court press.  Despite what may be said in the national media, the Aggies were the better team in every facet of the game.

You must understand that the Aggies have not won a game in this tournament since before my time at A&M.  Obviously, that’s a very long time!  So next up, LSU.  All I know about them is that they struggled against little Iona.  Its doubtful that the Aggies will sneak up on them, so it should be a really good game.

I realize this will probably be a short tournament run, but like Gillispie and his players, I’m soaking it in and enjoying every minute of it.

This means nothing to my few readers, but I must give public props to my school for the improvement they’ve made in their basketball programs.  Its a meteoric rise, if you will.

First the men.  I have waited almost 20 years for them to return to the NCAA tournament and not only are we going this year, we are actually pretty firmly in.  At least by my estimation.  I realize I take a risk in saying this since the selection happens tomorrow. 

It has been a long and dreary road back to a competitive team.  For the longest time, our basketball facility held us back.  Heck, I graduated in that building 21 years ago.  But finally in the last 5 years or so we have a grand facility.  I’ve never been in it, but it looks beautiful from TV.  The court reminds me almost of the old Boston Garden.  But anyway, recruits now have something to get excited about.

We also have a legitimate coach, Billy Gillispie.  Just look at that first name…I may not have to say anything more.  But alas, he’s taken the likes of UTEP to the same NCAA tournament and now in his second year with us, he’s doing the same thing.  Just watching him coach and hearing about how he coaches in practice gives me assurance that he’s the real thing. 

For instance, we recently beat #4 Texas with a last-second three-pointer from well behind the arc.  It was a miracle shot.  And the game was billed as the "signature win" that we needed to gain enough credibility to get into the NCAA tournament.  So the team could easily have rested on its laurels.  But Gillispie had 7 players in practice shoot that same shot.  Only one made it.  His lesson: we win on consistent performance throughout the game, we win with defense, offense comes through defense, and we don’t depend upon lucky shots.  In short, we must outwork other teams.

They promptly closed the year out with a blowout against Bobby Knight and Texas Tech to ensure Knight of his first losing season in over two decades.  Then against Colorado in the Big XII tournament, a 33 point blowout.  Colorado was competing for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.  Some said that only the winner of that game would have gone, but we’ll never know.  A&M has closed the year (to this point) with eight straight wins and the last two blowouts.  I think they are clearing deserving of an NCAA bid…its not even close. 

So now we’ll see what they do in the rest of the Big XII tournament.  Today is a big rematch with Texas.  And if they get past them, then who knows?  This is a stunning reversal for a team who has never played past Thursday in the Thu-Sun tournament. 

I have less to say about the women, but they too are experiencing a renaissance.  Last year’s NCAA overall champion, Baylor, narrowly beat our ladies in the Big XII women’s tournament.  It was a 1 point loss.  I watched the team beat Nebraska the previous night and they play that same style of aggressive, tough defense.  And it looks like they have a couple of scorers too. 

So needless to say, Aggie basketball is back.  Now if I we can just work on that football team a little bit…

As I prepared to watch the Rose Bowl, I puzzled over who to pull for.  As an Aggie, there are almost no cases where you’d ever pull for tu.  Yes, its tu.  Aggies don’t give them credit for being "the university" of Texas.  That’s rather arrogant, we think.

But alas, my Texas state pride and my Big XII pride kicked in and swung me in the direction of Texas.  My twisted mind also thought that if tu won, then when A&M beat them next year, it’d be all that much sweeter.  But who am I kidding?  Texas without Vince Young is still exponentially better than A&M.  Though it must be said, I think A&M was their 2nd toughest game this year.

I am not an Aggie turncoat.  But if others think so, at least I am not alone as the picture below proves.  And no, I don’t need my own shirt, so thanks anyway.

One quick sports prediction here.

The NHL opens its season this week with a fresh set of rules designed to increase scoring — it basically looks like basketball on ice to me. The number of power plays was up significantly in the preseason and though I don’t have statistical proof, I’m pretty sure scoring was up as well.

So my prediction…there will be a record number of Hat Tricks this year. So if you go to a game, consider which hat you might be donating to tradition.

If you aren’t familiar with the term Hat Trick, read about it here.

Last night I had the opportunity to watch (on TV) my first hockey game in 17 months.  It was the Dallas Stars versus the Edmonton Oilers.  All in all, I enjoyed it but I found that the game I remembered is not the game they are putting on the ice this year.

There are several new rule changes this year designed to open up the ice.  Along with the rule changes, is an edict to the officials to call the games closely.  Because there are so many changes, EA Sports has incorporated animated rules briefings into their marketing campaign.  They are of course using their gaming assets to do so.  I have to say that I appreciated it and needed the information.

Last night’s game had 20 power plays and 10 goals — the game ended in a 6-4 Stars victory.  If each power play had not overlapped, the 20 power plays would have represented 40 of the 60 minutes of hockey.  So basically, the 5-on-5 play was in short supply last night.

To be honest, I’m not sure I liked it.  I kinda liked a team working hard for their goals.  And I liked that power plays were limited and that you really had to take advantage of them when you got them.  As it is now, you only have to wait a couple of minutes and then you’ll be on the power play.

I do not know how many shots on goal there were last night, but the shots that did find their way to the net were very different than normal.  These were mostly power play shots.  I can’t help but think that the goalies have to hate this.  They are facing more coordinated attacks and harder more frequent shots.  I guess if you have chosen to stop rubber for a living maybe you look forward to the challenge.  But this is like being at a hockey all-star game every night where there is no defense — you get shots like those in that contest, but only for one night and for only one period.  We’re talking about a whole season now. 

I have no idea now how you build your team.  You better have a good goalie, for sure.  And then it seems you better be solid on defense.  Then again, you need to have good skill up front to take advantage of the power plays.  You’ll also need the same skill players to do penalty kill duty.  If you are deep on the bench and aren’t on any special teams, will you see the ice?

So many questions and so I guess we’ll see how this goes.  Next up, Dallas Stars vs. Detriot Red Wings on Friday night and in person.  Whether pre-season or not, those match-ups are always fun.

Two NASCAR entries in less than a week will do a lot to repulse the few readers that I have. However, I wanted to write a quick follow-on entry since I realized my favorite race is coming up.

NASCAR goes to Bristol, Tennessee this weekend for night races on Friday and Saturday night. The big race is on Saturday night. But anyway, the Bristol Motor Speedway track is a 1/2 mile track with banking. That’s a small track to have 43 cars on it. But just look at the picture below:

They have just about enclosed it stadium-style and for years its been sold-out. The appeal of the race has a lot to do with the comparatively small venue. With 43 cars going around on a small track, there are plenty of wrecks and fans are really close to it. Fans are guaranteed to see drivers lose their cool.

In the past, I have seen drivers get out of their cars after a wreck and throw a helmet or their gloves at a driver that sent them into the wall. I’ve also seen near-brawls after the conclusion of the race. If that’s not enough, consider that a driver can win the race if they resort to a classless chrome-bumper move to move the leader out of the way.

There are also cool special paint schemes and its all under the lights on a Saturday night. To me, this is more exciting than the Super Bowl. And I hope someday to see the event live. They call it “Thunder Valley” because its so loud. Check it out…