Basketball
drorzel | January 20, 2008My Maryland Terrapins have been, shall we say, inconsistent this year, with back-to-back home losses to Ohio University (not Ohio State, Ohio U.) and American University. As a result, I didn't have really high hopes headed into Saturday's game at tope-ranked North Carolina. Much to my surprise, they played a really good game, and held on to win 82-80 on one of the ungainliest layups in the history of the game by Bambale Osby.
Carolina came into the game undefeated, and have been racking up big wins using Roy Williams's usual fast-paced style. They get up the court faster than almost any team…
drorzel | January 17, 2008Congratulations to Texas Tech coach Bob Knight, who extended his own NCAA record by winning his 900th game as a coach against Texas A&M last night. Knight being Knight, he couldn't get through this without a tiny display of churlishness:
After the game fans chanted Knight's name as he walked off the court to a thunderous ovation.
''You folks being here, seats being full for a change, really made a difference tonight,'' Knight told the crowd before leaving the court.
He's nobody's idea of a nice guy, but he sure can coach basketball.
Unfortunate mental image after the cut:
Clip from Frank…
drorzel | January 15, 2008Steroid scandals in sports, most particularly baseball, have been dominating sports media for a couple of years now. I thought that there really wasn't anything I could possibly care less about, but the New York Times proved me wrong with an article on steroid use among hip-hop artists.
Actually, the Times story is a report on an investigation by my local paper (I'm so proud), but I read the Times first in the mornings. The Albany Times Union does come through with a handy guide to hip-hop artists accused of using steroids. Look quickly before it goes behind the paywall.
What these stories…
drorzel | December 19, 2007Having ranted at great length about the awfulness of Dick Vitale's caterwauling during games broadcast on ESPN, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that he's having vocal cord surgery. In his own words:
The past six weeks have been very emotional for me and for my family as we've visited some of the most outstanding throat specialists. Fortunately, I am currently under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Deems in Sarasota, Fla. and he is an outstanding ear, nose and throat specialist. Dr. Deems strongly recommended that I visit Dr. Steven Zeitels, who is recognized as one of the premier throat and…
drorzel | November 29, 2007The first half of Maryland's 69-61 win over Illinois was as ugly a half of basketball as you'd ever want to see. It actually resembled our lunchtime pick-up games in some ways-- lots of really clever passes being throw to guys who weren't ready, weren't able to catch the ball, or just weren't on the same team as the guy throwing the ball. Basketball is a simple game, and when you complicate it unnecessarily, it gets ugly, fast.
They didn't get a whole lot better in the second half, but they did at least start hitting some shots. Maryland hit a few more shots than Illinois, and managed to pull…
drorzel | November 20, 2007A college basketball game takes a bit over two hours-- 2:10 is pretty typical, what with all the timeouts and miscellaneous stoppages of play. A blowout takes a bit less, a close game a bit more (what with all the intentional fouling at the end), but it's a rare game that finishes in under two hours.
And yet, ESPN persists in scheduling college games for two-hour time slots. Which means that if the game you want to see is the second game of a double-header (or more), you're more or less guaranteed to miss the first 5 minutes or so of game time. And so it was that they joined the Maryland-UCLA…
drorzel | November 19, 2007In one of those "Living in the Future" sorts of moments, our regular lunchtime pick-up basketball game has an email listserver. Pretty much every day there's a game, there's some email chatter and trash talk. My signature comment is to describe one of the other players as being "Weak like a really weak thing."
One of my colleagues from the bio department decided to up the ante, and videotape some trash talk:
Of course, this couldn't go unanswered:
(It helps if you know that Steve's a biologist doing research on the canopy structure of moss...)
There's been a recent elevation in the level of…
drorzel | November 14, 2007Over at the World's Fair, Dave is asking people for their scientific eponyms, that is, the formula they would like to have named after themselves. These are, of course, entirely made up.
Here's my contribution, from the scientific study of pick-up basketball: the Orzel Teammate Desirability Factor (TDF):
The Factor ranges between positive and negative infinity and is a quantitative measure of how much I want to have a given player on my team. The components going into this are:
P is the average number of points scored per game
ρ is the player's career shooting percentage
A is the average…
drorzel | October 31, 2007The phenomenon is familiar to anybody who plays pick-up basketball. (It might be unique to pick-up hoops-- none of the other sports I play regularly involve multiple discrete games.) You get a bunch of players together, and you play a game to 15. Then a second game to 15. And, hey, that's a pretty good run right there, and lunch hour is almost over, and maybe you should get back to work...
"One more game," somebody says.
The justification is always different. If the teams split the first two games, it's a rubber match. If one team won both, it's a chance for the other team to get redemption.…
drorzel | June 2, 2007Setshot lurches back to life to point out the only Democratic primary coverage I need to read: a New York Times piece on Barack Obama's love of pick-up basketball:
From John F. Kennedy's sailing to Bill Clinton's golf mulligans to John Kerry's windsurfing, sports has been used, correctly or incorrectly, as a personality decoder for presidents and presidential aspirants. So, armchair psychologists and fans of athletic metaphors, take note: Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, the version of the game with unspoken rules, no referee and lots of elbows. He has been playing since…
drorzel | April 3, 2007Saturday's Georgetown- Ohio State game was hyped as featuring a clash of two seven-foot centers, but failed to live up to that billing, as Greg Oden picked up two quick fouls, and sat for most of the first half. Roy Hibbert of Georgetown didn't fare much better.
This has prompted a bunch of pinhead commentators, most notably Dick Vitale and Billy Packer to start agitating for changes in the rules so that star players won't have to worry about foul trouble. Vitale wants to move to six fouls before disqualification, but he doesn't stop there. He thinks that you should be able to continue…
drorzel | April 1, 2007Having watched UCLA set offensive basketball back about fifty years in the first half of last night's game (I didn't watch the second half, as the outcome wasn't in doubt, and really, I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a fork), it's worth taking a few minutes today to discuss one of the most important plays in basketball, the pick and roll. This was the Bruins' undoing on both offense and defense, so it's appropriate to explain how it's supposed to work.
The play itself is extremely simple, and involves two players on the offensive team. One of the two, usually a guard, starts the play…
drorzel | March 31, 2007There's a nice article about former Princeton coach Pete Carril and the motion offense popularly associated with his teams:
Carril has not been a college coach for 11 years. But he is wearing a Georgetown cap, and people keep calling to talk about the precise pass-and-cut offense that he supposedly invented but never called the Princeton offense.
"I didn't call it anything," he said.
To him, it is only basketball, and it is not complicated. Carril does not understand why no one talks about other offenses the way they do about Princeton's. But people are calling him, and they are suddenly…
drorzel | March 28, 2007Via Dave Sez, a good Washington Post article about the post-Maryland career of Byron Mouton:
Five years have passed since Mouton helped Maryland win the national title the last time it was held in Atlanta, but the significance of that weekend still casts a shadow over his daily life in the American Basketball Association. Since he started for Maryland during its 2002 title run, Mouton has played for 13 professional teams in nine leagues. Still, even in Wilmington, fans regularly ask Mouton to talk about his old college teammates and sign Terrapins memorabilia.
In the consciousness of…
drorzel | March 26, 2007Hoops commentary has fallen off dramatically lately, but it's not because my teams are out of the tournament. Or, rather, it's not just because my teams are out of the tournament. Mostly, it's because Kate and I were out of town for the weekend, on vacation in Boston, and I barely saw any of the games. I did see the tail end of the UCLA-Kansas game, and the last two mintues and overtime of UNC's epic collapse against Georgetown last night, but that's about it.
Anyway, the chalk-tastic tournament of 2007 has wound down to a fairly unappealing Final Four. I intensely dislike Florida, I've got…
drorzel | March 23, 2007One of the unfortunate elements about the NCAA basketball tournament is that in addition to some great basketball, it brings around a few reminders of what an unpleasant organization the NCAA can be:
During the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament last weekend, John Goodman -- a freshman who wears a steer costume to cheer for the Texas Longhorns -- did what comes naturally to mascots: He patted a referee on the back.
This usually brings applause, laughter or good-natured booing from fans. But in the postseason tournament, when rules are stricter, N.C.A.A. supervisors "actually kind of…
drorzel | March 21, 2007In addition to watching and reading about college basketball, I play a fair amount of pick-up basketball these days-- I try to play three days a week at lunchtime, and most weeks I manage two. Often, the noon hoops game is the highlight of the day, and I suspect I don't want to think too deeply about what that means... Given that I'm currently spending a lot of time thinking about other people playing basketball, it's inevitable that I end up thinking about weird stuff that goes on when playing. Since I have a blog, this means that you're treated to some scattered thoughts on things that get…
drorzel | March 20, 2007In a weekend wrap-up post, Dave makes a passing reference to one of the more uncomfortable aspects of basketball:
Early in the day, I happened upon an NIT game on TV, where Mississippi State was playing someone. While I was watching, I saw a quick, aggressive Bulldog guard drive through the defense for an impressive layup. The kid was Ben Hansbrough, Tyler's little brother. That got me thinking. It's one thing to be 6'9" and play college basketball. Sure, you have to be somewhat athletic, really how many people are you beating out for that spot? But to be 6'3" or so and play college ball, you…
drorzel | March 18, 2007Saturday finally saw some good action in the NCAA tournamnet. Three of the eight games went to overtime, and four of the remaining five were decided by seven points or less. VCU and Xavier came up short against Pitt and Ohio State, but made fantastic runs to get the games into OT, and #6 seed Vanderbilt knocked off #3 Washington State in double overtime. We finally got a slate of close, exciting games.
Unfortunately, one of those games saw Maryland losing to Butler. Thanks to the Ohio State overtime, I actually got to see a fair bit of this one, but really, two lines in the box score tells…