Monday, January 26, 2004
Tired, but Happy
I'm back from a weekend road trip that would have had to involve that dream I keep having about Britney Spears to have been any better. Good friends and cheap beer always make for a nice time.
This weekend was even better for AU. Knocking off Colgate and Holy Cross on the road, 2 of the top 3 preseason league favorites, was huge.
First off, Colgate is in a dump of a town. It seems that Hamilton, NY couldn't be any smaller or colder. Widl chills were about -3 degrees when we rolled in. Why anyone would a) build a college in the middle of nowhere, where the weather is nice 2 months a year or b) attend said college is beyond me. Colgate's a great academic school, don't get me wrong. But living like a damn eskimo can't be fun.
To make matters worse, the local pub refused to sell alcohol to my crew, on account that we didn't have 2 forms of picture ID. So we went to the local dive, the Hour Glass. I think we were the only people under 40 to ever step in the place.
A big crowd of about 500 decided to show up at the game (that's an optimistic number), since most of the Hamilton and CU fans were at the CU hockey game, which was proceeding at the same time, IN THE SAME BUILDING!
This maybe explains why Colgate draws so few-- is this a common occurance? I know hockey is a big deal at CU, so you would think that they would avoid scheduling anything against it. Regardless, this was the worst basketball crowd I've ever seen. They were SILENT the entire game, until the last minute when the Hockey crowd started to file in. I can't imagine that it's fun for the CU players to play in front of a crowd so awful.
Anyway, AU dominated the game the whole time, mostly because Rodriguez was on. The absence of Howard Blue let AU do whatever they liked in the post, and the only thing that kept the game close was Mark Linebaugh's excellent 2nd half play. Rodriguez missed about 300 foul shots in the last minute, but AU's defense kept CU from what would have been a heartbreaking comeback.
Holy Cross is in another fine megalopolis, Worcester, MA. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of driving through Worcester, imagine if all the crappy parts of New Jersey were combined into one town. Then you add a nice campus, which Holy Cross certainly has, and you have Worcester.
This was a defensive game on both ends. HC was forced into tough long-range jumjpers all afternoon, and AU took some ugly shots and were forced into some bad passes.
A quick aside: I think HC's domination of the Patriot League over the last few years has had three key elements:
1) Own the low block on offense with bigger and stronger players, rebound and deny easy looks down low on defense
2) Play good half-court D
3) Have the experience to hit clutch shots and know how to take a game away
HC had one of these three in Friday's game, playing some very good defense. They negated AU's leading scorer, Andre Ingram, giving him few open looks. They were killed in the paint. Jernavis Draughn was just too quick. Fingleton looks like he is in slow motion out there, and I'm not sure what all his hype is about. Sure, he can alter a shot or two, but he can't rebound or play offense to save his life. His one move was a decent hook shot in the first half, but he had only three rebounds in 17 minutes. If you're 7'6", you need to be tipping every other bucket in.
Lufkin looked scared. I see now what the HC posters say about his inablility to play with his back to the bucket. If I was Ralph Willard, I would give him 50 pushups every time he took a shot further than 7 feet from the hoop. I saw no post moves from him all day.
HC's younger guys were impressive in spurts. But Meade played mediocre most of the game, and was clearly beaten by Rodriguez, who was fantastic all day.
It's late and I'm tired. I'll try to get more thoughts up tomorrow. @ 11:34 PM
I'm back from a weekend road trip that would have had to involve that dream I keep having about Britney Spears to have been any better. Good friends and cheap beer always make for a nice time.
This weekend was even better for AU. Knocking off Colgate and Holy Cross on the road, 2 of the top 3 preseason league favorites, was huge.
First off, Colgate is in a dump of a town. It seems that Hamilton, NY couldn't be any smaller or colder. Widl chills were about -3 degrees when we rolled in. Why anyone would a) build a college in the middle of nowhere, where the weather is nice 2 months a year or b) attend said college is beyond me. Colgate's a great academic school, don't get me wrong. But living like a damn eskimo can't be fun.
To make matters worse, the local pub refused to sell alcohol to my crew, on account that we didn't have 2 forms of picture ID. So we went to the local dive, the Hour Glass. I think we were the only people under 40 to ever step in the place.
A big crowd of about 500 decided to show up at the game (that's an optimistic number), since most of the Hamilton and CU fans were at the CU hockey game, which was proceeding at the same time, IN THE SAME BUILDING!
This maybe explains why Colgate draws so few-- is this a common occurance? I know hockey is a big deal at CU, so you would think that they would avoid scheduling anything against it. Regardless, this was the worst basketball crowd I've ever seen. They were SILENT the entire game, until the last minute when the Hockey crowd started to file in. I can't imagine that it's fun for the CU players to play in front of a crowd so awful.
Anyway, AU dominated the game the whole time, mostly because Rodriguez was on. The absence of Howard Blue let AU do whatever they liked in the post, and the only thing that kept the game close was Mark Linebaugh's excellent 2nd half play. Rodriguez missed about 300 foul shots in the last minute, but AU's defense kept CU from what would have been a heartbreaking comeback.
Holy Cross is in another fine megalopolis, Worcester, MA. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of driving through Worcester, imagine if all the crappy parts of New Jersey were combined into one town. Then you add a nice campus, which Holy Cross certainly has, and you have Worcester.
This was a defensive game on both ends. HC was forced into tough long-range jumjpers all afternoon, and AU took some ugly shots and were forced into some bad passes.
A quick aside: I think HC's domination of the Patriot League over the last few years has had three key elements:
1) Own the low block on offense with bigger and stronger players, rebound and deny easy looks down low on defense
2) Play good half-court D
3) Have the experience to hit clutch shots and know how to take a game away
HC had one of these three in Friday's game, playing some very good defense. They negated AU's leading scorer, Andre Ingram, giving him few open looks. They were killed in the paint. Jernavis Draughn was just too quick. Fingleton looks like he is in slow motion out there, and I'm not sure what all his hype is about. Sure, he can alter a shot or two, but he can't rebound or play offense to save his life. His one move was a decent hook shot in the first half, but he had only three rebounds in 17 minutes. If you're 7'6", you need to be tipping every other bucket in.
Lufkin looked scared. I see now what the HC posters say about his inablility to play with his back to the bucket. If I was Ralph Willard, I would give him 50 pushups every time he took a shot further than 7 feet from the hoop. I saw no post moves from him all day.
HC's younger guys were impressive in spurts. But Meade played mediocre most of the game, and was clearly beaten by Rodriguez, who was fantastic all day.
It's late and I'm tired. I'll try to get more thoughts up tomorrow. @ 11:34 PM
