Thursday, March 31, 2005

Cubs/ Final Four

Cubs
The season is almost here and I'm getting excited. It would be nice to have Prior healthy but he will be back really soon. I spoke with a sports bio-mechanist/ PT this week who explained his theory on Prior's problems. If you look at Prior, he has a lot of calf musculature but little in the thighs or the butt. Everybody thinks he is a strong leg pitcher because of his calves but actually he's a lot more of an arm pitcher. His mechanics changed with his Achilles injury which caused the elbow problem last summer. He never really found his release point until the end of the season, to which he was very good. Hopefully, he has solved the mechanics issues and is ready to go for another season. I'll post some predictions this weekend.

Final Four
Well I predicted 1 out of the 4 from the Sweet 16 which isn't real good. For this week, I'll take Illinois over Louisville in the first game. Pitino was outcoached in the Elite 8 game and was lucky West Virginia didn't pull away to start the second half. I have no clue why he stayed in the zone the whole first half and let WV fire wide open 3s. He has better athletes, make them play man to man and get out and guard people, like you do against MU. Speaking of zones, hey Roy Williams thought up a brilliant scheme against Wisconsin, another zone that allowed UW-Madison to scored 82 points. Sometimes I think coaches outthink themselves. Keep it simple with college players. That's why I'll take Michigan State in the other semi-final. For the record, Michigan State let up 88 points to a more up and down Kentucky team in Double OT. I'll take the defense and Michigan State. For the championship, I'll take Illinois over Michigan State. I dislike all of the Illinois residents here at MU cheering on them. We compete for recruits, I want them to fail, just like UW-Madison.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

NCAA Tournament

I had the quality of having nothing to do this weekend, but watch basketball and that's what I did. I came away very impressed with Washington, West Virginia, and Texas Tech, all in the same bracket. I didn't get to see much of North Carolina at all, but I was impressed with their scores. Washington has tons of athleticism, more than Louisville. I think about 65% of all people are taking Louisville to win that region, which is nonsense. Washington plays great defense and has many guys that can take people off of the dribble. I have been impressed with West Virgina since they beat Pittsburgh at home. Yesterday they were just on their A game. Wake Forest couldn't do anything they wanted to near the end of the game or the overtimes. They were lucky to extend it that far. Finally Texas Tech showed off their Knightness in knocking off Gonzaga. While Gonzaga when on a couple of runs, Texas Tech calmly cut into the lead and continued running the motion offense and getting more and more baskets. I think about the 7 minute mark on, I had a feeling Texas Tech would pull that one out.

For the Final Four, I'm sticking with the first 3 and let's add Texas Tech to upset Washington in the Elite Eight to send Knight to the Final Four. That will send Indiana fans into craziness. I didn't mention UWM, because their win over BC wasn't that impressive. BC continually got lost on defense and it just seemed like a gimmick. Gimmicks die over a long week with the number one team in America coming up.

Off Topic: The whole Terri Schiavo case is ridiculous. For perspective, I was talking about this in an MU medical ethics class in the fall of '03. It isn't a new issue. The thing that bugs me is when Congress talks like a bunch of doctors when they have no business talking about any medical issues besides the funding of Medicare and Medicaid. About every court appointed doctor that I have read has stated that she is in a vegetative state and has been for 15 years. I have seen the videos of her "tracking" a balloon and watching blinking lights, and they don't impress me that much. Supposedly she said something when they took the feeding tube out, but I couldn't get the MP3 to work. Whatever your feelings on the feeding tube is debatable for me, but Congress has no right to play doctor which I have heard some doing this past week. My solution: let's do it the Jack Welch way. Let's get Schiavo's husband and parents together and LOCK them in a conference room where they will not leave until a decision is made. People never want to negotiate just have people work for them and get more on their side. At some point, you have just to sit down and git 'er done as Larry the Cable Guy would say. I promise no more off-topics for a while.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Lots of Updates

Prior's Injury
Mark Prior has been diagnosed with ulnar neuritis around his elbow. My reaction: big deal. The ulnar nerve is what normal people call the "funny bone." It can flare up if you run a machine that vibrates a lot, like a jackhammer. It also flares up if you sleep with your hands up by your shoulders all night like you are going to punch somebody. That position stretches the nerve to its furthest extent. Prior will take anti-inflammatories and will wait until it goes down. It's no big deal in my opinion, and I don't think it's as serious as a lot of people make it out to be. It may simply be a reaction from all of the extra work he's been doing with the start of camp.

MU
I was one of the individuals at the empty BC Monday night. I'll post more later, but definately a disspointing way to end the season.

My NCAA Bracket
I would love to get all of the prognosticators predictions and see how they actually all end up. Look people, it's throwing dice out there. Pick Nike schools to make it to the Final Four and pick 1 seeds to win in the first round, otherwise who knows what happens. It's so dumb for experts to predict what is going to happen with some authority. With that said, here's my Final Four.

1. Champion- Duke. Everybody doesn't pick them because of lack of depth, but they have all of the other intangibles. They have guards, they have big guys and they have experience, from going last year. They won the ACC tournament. They didn't beat anybody over a 4 or 5 seed (I can't remember what GT was), but I think they will fly under the radar into the Final Four.

2. Championship Game- Oklahoma St. That's right no Illinois. Oklahoma St. returns basically the same roster, from a Final Four team that knocked off a 1 seed in the Elite Eight near the Number 1 seed's home court (St. Joe's in the Meadowlands). I think they can do it again. Illinois will have a home court advantage in Chicago, but Oklahoma St. took Kansas to the wire at Kansas. You have to have some guts to take this one, and I am.

3. Final Four #1- Wake Forest. I don't like Washington. Did they win their first round game last year? I can't remember, they were out in the second round either way. I don't like non-experienced teams, if you can tell. My alma mater went to the Final Four two years ago, however they had a 5th year senior and an NBA all-star. Washington has neither. Somebody said beware of Wake because they rely on their point guard too much. Wake also has Downey, Gray, and Eric Williams. I dislike Chris Paul for many reasons (another post), but I think he will carry them to St. Louis.

4. Final Four #2- North Carolina. They are the most talented team in this tournament. Their best players are juniors and they have great inside/outside game with a good bench. I didn't pick them to beat Duke, because Duke had them on the ropes at North Carolina. Granted McCants didn't play, but I'll take the Blue Devils in the Final Four. I dislike North Carolina more and more every year, which is a surprise to my family and high school friends who saw me in my NC starter jacket for about 4 years. Ever since they took it to MU my freshmen year and have gotten more and more arrogant, I've just disliked them.

There you have it. Once again, I'll be lucky to get 2 in. It's one and done, not a seven game series, so you never know what will happen.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Shoulder Bursitis

That's the official diagnosis of Kerry Wood's mysterious illness as diagnosed by an MRI. Bursitis is more commonly found with hips and elbows. The thing that scares me is that it could be secondary to a rotator cuff tendinitis. To Wood's condition, there is no pain, according to him and he 's pitching again on Monday, so everything should be okay. What I think happened, is he got into his pitching season and the thing just flared up a bit. Everything, I think should be fine.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Postseason Over for MU?

Marquette exited the C-USA tournament yesterday in the first round for the third year in a row. I always wanted a Conference Tournament championship, because I thought it would be awesome to follow your team for 4 days straight. I can't imagaine what it was like in '97. I hope MU gets an NIT bid. I might get to see them one more time this season at home and who knows what could happen. I really respect what the team has done, especially without Diener, these last couple of weeks. Not a banner year for my college teams. No MU, no Valpo, maybe IU won't get in either. I'll guess I can root for some random team like West Virginia

Kerry Wood
Rumors are flying that Wood is headed back to Chicago to have his shoulder looked at. The "tightness" that Wood described doesn't really worry me too much. I think he is going back to Chicago to see all of the doctors he needs to at Northwestern and get any imaging done at the hospital. Arizona might not have as good CT scanners or MRI's that Northwestern would. It's not last year, trust me.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Busy

Blogging has been put to the side as I am in the middle of 7 tests in about 12 days, 6 in 8 days. Marquette= Dissapointing. Cubs= Excited. That's about it for now. I might get around to a rant on Chris Paul or something else that bothers me during Championship Week, but who knows.

P.S. Dwyane Wade is so freaking good.