ETERNAL SUNSHINE

Your faithful PL blogger caught the AU/Loyola game on Monday night, using Flexcar to borrow a ride up to Charm City. Some thoughts from the action:

- Jeff Jones is still tinkering with the AU starting lineup, as well as how many minutes each guy gets, something we AU fans haven't seen in a while. The rotation goes a legitimate 10 deep, with only one guy playing less than 10 minutes last night. This can mean two things: 1) AU is deeper than in past years or 2) AU has nobody who has earned any playing time yet.

- Linas Lekavicius..what is there to say about this guy? It's like Jekyll and Hyde out there sometimes, but you certainly can't question his effort or desire to win. I like him coming off the bench, I don't like sitting him at the end of the game when he was the only consistent scoring threat AU had all game. At one point, he took the game over completely for 5 or 6 minutes, scoring literally at will, until a BS offensive foul call and a cheap reach in sent him to the bench. If he plays this well in every game, AU will win the PL championship. But that's saying a whole hell of a lot.

- The AU young guys continue to develop. Travis Lay and Jordan Nichols had the best games of their AU career, with Lay doing particularly well defending in the 2nd half and moving the ball. Mercer also looked great in penetration.

- Nothing good came out of the first half. It was maybe the worst I've seen AU look since the CAA days. There's no point in even talking about it. It was that bad.

- Despite the 0-4 record, I'm still optimistic about this team and nowhere near giving up. There are a lot of newcomers here, and a lot of changed roles from last year that take adjusting to.

SPORTSWRITING 101: SAY THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Speaking of which, there's another team with a losing streak that has a lot of changed roles from last year that take adjusting to, the Holy Cross Moor-Killers (we try to remain PC here at the PL blog).

While I think everyone in HC la-la-land is overreacting about their recent skid, they may be in some legitimate trouble without the legitimate frontline they've been able to put out there in the past.

Two years ago I attributed some HC's previous success in the league to:

1) Owning the low block on offense with bigger and stronger players, rebound and deny easy looks down low on defense
2) Playing good half-court D
3) Having the experience to hit clutch shots and know how to take a game away

I think they have #2 and #3 now, but they come from #1. If I was Ralph Willard (HC fans are thanking God that I'm not right now), I'd give out gold stars (or beers) to my frontline guys every time they committed a good hard foul. That is, when a young guy is beat, sometimes the best thing he can do is get a body on the guy. When they get more comfortable being physical, then they can get more comfortable moving their feet. But, luckily for everyone at HC they have a much better coach than me, who I suspect will figure things out.

BOY I AM SMART

Here's a timely link to give me an ego boost and you a little background. First, LC plays St. Peters tonight for the third year in a row. St. Peters has the national scoring leader for the last two years, Keydren Clark, who you could have read about here back when he was a Frosh. I think LC finally stops surprising people tonight and lose to the peacocks while Clark drops 28.  @ 12:17 PM