Category: Larry

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Coach UncleLar

Set your TiVo’s and VCR’s. Coach UncleLar makes his TV appearance Saturday when the Wisconsin Badgers visit the Penn State Nittany Lions in a basketball game being broadcast by ESPN2 at 4PM EST (3PM CST).

The timing of this couldn’t be better. We had a HUGE upset win over Illinois in Champaign on Saturday. At the time, Illinois had won 33 games in a row at home, at the time, the longest home winning streak in the nation.

The team showed incredible grit in their win. They went down 13-0 early in the game and scored all of 12 points in the first 14 minutes of play. At that point they trailed 26-12 and things weren’t looking good. From that point on though, things started to change. First, they suddenly found their offense, scoring 13 points in the next 6 minutes. Unfortunately, Illinois kept scoring so, at the half, PSU still trailed by 14 at 39-25.

The second half was a different story. Penn State’s offense continued to hit and they tightened their defense up considerably. PSU scored 41 points in the second half against the B10’s best defense while holding the Illini to only 26 points. That resulted in a one point win that wasn’t decided until a good 2-3 minutes after the buzzer sounded.

Illinois guard Rich McBride sank a 3 pointer as the game ended. The officials on the floor ruled the shot good and the Orange Krush, Illinois’ student section, stormed the court. However, the NCAA has instructed their officials to use replay to confirm game ending buzzer beating winners, so they went to the videotape. Sure enough, the video confirmed that the ball was still in McBride’s hand when the red light behind the basket went on signalling the end of the game. The arena got very very quite as the only celebrants were a bunch of happy young guys in blue. Read the story here.

Some photos:

Here’s the shot at the end (you can’t see the clock though).

Here it is going through the net.

The ref signals it good:

Fans on the court:

Not so fast, it’s time for the guys in blue to party.

Students react:


The win was a huge one for our program. Illinois was the highest ranked team, #6, that we had ever beaten on their court. We’ve had bigger wins, over #2 Michigan State, #5 Ohio State, and #5 North Carolina but they were all on neutral courts. We’ve been really suffering in hoops, last in the B10 for the last four years but we’ve shown signs of improving.

We hired a new coach two years ago and the team has had considerable turnover over the last two years as the old coaches recruits decided to transfer. This is the first year that our new coach, Ed DeChellis, has had mostly his own recruits on the floor. We are the youngest team in the B10 with 1 senior, 2 juniors, 4 sophomores, 5 freshmen. We are also the smallest team in the B10 with no starter over 6’6″. Despite our lack of height we are one of the leading rebounding teams in the league – that’s a tribute to the heart and fight in these kids.

Fan support, including the student body, has been very lukewarm – losing will do that. But over the last five game stretch, all against ranked opponents, we hard started to show signs of improvement. We lost badly in the first of five at Ohio State but we were in every other game until the final minutes. We led Michigan State with five minutes to go in East Lansing before the Spartans pulled out the victory. Following the game, MSU coach Tom Izzo proved to be a prophet when he said that we were a good team and would beat somebody on the road. Some of us diehards believe that also but I don’t think any of us thought it would happen in Champaign.

We’ve not got a chance to get momentum on our side. We’ve got a very beatable Minnesota team here in Happy Valley tomorrow (Minn has ONE Big Ten win). Wisconsin comes in Saturday. The have been a force for most of the year but have been in a freefall the last 2 1/2 weeks so they are beatable also. We then get Indiana next Wednesday, also at home. If we can build on Saturday’s win and take at least 2 of the next 3 we may have turned the corner.

And to make things even better, I really am going to be a coach – OK an honorary coach but I’ll be on the bench just the same. Look for me. I’ll be the guy way way down on the right. As an honorary coach, I get to go to practice on Friday, the shootaround Saturday morning before the game, have lunch with the team after the shootarond, and then sit on the bench for the game. I’m definitely looking forward to it.

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One of my favorites


Shannon’s 21st birthday. Gary and I flew in and teamed up with Ron and Steve to surprise her. We just walked into the bar where she was celebrating the birthday with her girlfriends. When she saw us, she did this double take that was almost as amazing as the look we got from Kenny when we surprised him for his birthday (or the look I got from Marilyn, Mary, and Mary Ann the time I surprised them at a Chippendales show). She then let out a scream and ran over to hug us. I’m sure her girlfriends didn’t have a clue what was going on.

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More Halloween Moments

Natalie was exactly four and a half that Halloween. As cool as trick or treating was growing up in Chalfont, the block we lived on in SLC was a kid’s dream come true.
60 houses in a 2 block area…all lit up and well stocked with goodies. The kids made a huge haul in under an hour. But Larry ate most of it.

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Another niece (real type) photo


Kenny’s right, I have been neglecting the real nieces, so I’ve been scrounging around trying to find photos. I’ve found a couple of interesting ones which I’ll post over the next few days starting with this one of Charlotte and I. I think Charlotte is just a little over two months old at the time. I was living in CT then so I just buzzed down one day to visit. Charlotte and I are obviously quite comfortable in each other’s company. 🙂

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UncleLar’s Food Specialties

Ok – here’s another side of me that you all have probably never seen. I have a couple of legendary (pun intended) recipes that I usually break out for special occasions (usually called football tailgates) but that I am willing to share here.

First of all:

UncleLar’s Killer Kreole Kornbread Sausage Stuffing
(served when we deep fry a turkey at our tailgate)

Ingredients:

  • box of cornbread mix
  • 1 cup minced onion
  • 2 tablespoons chopped green basil
  • 4 teaspoons cayenne powder (or cajun seasoning)
  • 2 teaspoons onion powder
  • 2 teaspoons ground white pepper
  • 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 4 teaspoons dried oregano
  • 2 teaspoons dried thyme
  • 1 chopped green onion
  • 1 cup chopped parsley
  • 2 cups chopped red bell pepper
  • 2 green chili peppers, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 1 tablespoon hot pepper sauce (Tabasco)
  • 8 oz butter
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 1/2 lb spicy Italian sausage (casing removed)
  • 2 cups evaporated milk
  • 7 eggs, beaten

Directions:

  1. Make the cornbread following the recipe on the box.
  2. In a small bowl combine the salt with the white pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, onion powder, oregano, thyme, basik, and bay leaves.
  3. In another bowl, combine the minced onions, green onions, parsley, red/green peppers, chili peppers, and garlic
  4. Melt the cup of butter in a large fry pan. Add the spices and cook for a few minutes. Add the vegetables and cook about 5 minutes. Do not allow the vegetables to brown.
  5. Place the sausage in the skillet, crumble and cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain.
  6. Add the chicken broth and the Tabasco. Stir and cook 5 minutes more.
  7. Crumble the cornbread into the skillet and mix.
  8. Add the evaporated milk and eggs off the heat. Make sure to stir when adding the eggs. Return to a low heat and cook, stirring, for about 2 minuts.
  9. Remove the bay leaves. Place the stuffing in a bowl and cover. Cool before stuffing turkey (the stuffing will be plenty HOT without needing any external heat) if serving with regular turkey or serve on the side with a deep fried turkey.

If you like spicy food, this recipe is a killer (hence the name). It’s great for tailgates because it warms the body.

Next Recipe:

UncleLar’s Chili Extraordinaire
(haven’t tried this in the crockpot yet)

Ingredients:

  • 3.5 lbs sirloin steak
  • 1 lb pork sausage
  • 3 medium white onions
  • 4 dried red New Mexico chiles
  • 4 chilpotle chiles
  • 2 7-oz cans chopped green chiles (optional)
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1 tsp ground comino (cumin seed)
  • 1 tsp Mexican oregano
  • Mesquite seasoning
  • steak rub/lime juice/soy sauce
  • 4 10-oz cans diced tomatoes
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 3 fresh chopped sage leafs
  • 1/4 cup chopped celery
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • 6 pack of beer

Directions:

  1. Cut off the tops of the dried New Mexico chiles to remove the stems and seed and to expose the interior, leaving them as whole as possible. Cut the tops off of the Chipotles and cut them lengthwise to extract the seeds. Set all of the chiles aside steeping on a small saucer in hot water (just enough to cover).
  2. Dust the steaks with the Mesquite seasoning, then marinade in the lime juice and soy sauce after a little fork-poking. Pop a beer and grill the steaks over hot goals until medium, then set aside. Set aside a 1/2 lb to snack on while you finish the cooking.
  3. Get a big oven ready pot. Add the pork sausage, onion, garlic, and saute until the onion is soft.
  4. Chop the steaks into 1/2 inch cubes and add to pot. Add a beer of your choice (and probably time for another one for yourself).
  5. Back to the chiles. Remove the New Mexicos from the hot water and cut them in half, length-wise. For each half, carefully scrape off the inner pulp with a flat knife, angled away from the scraping direction. Then scrape the pulp off the knife into a blender. Add the water and the chilpotles, and blend into a sauce. Keep your face away from the sauce DO NOT try to smell it, it’s deadly on the eyes. BTW – if you have to go to the bathroom at any point in time I suggest using gloves – eyes aren’t the only thing that’s sensitive to the sauce.
  6. Add the ground comino, oregano, paprika, sage, celery, thyme, and the optional green chiles to the pot and add about half of the sauce. Pour in a bottle of beer and pop another for yourself.
  7. Put in a 300 degree oven for an hour. After an hour test for spice and moisture. Add more or all of the sauce, if you like. Consider adding another bottle of beer if the things appear to be drying out too much. Put back in the over for another hour.
  8. After the second hour, check for doneness. The sirloin should come apart easily and the gravy should be thick not water. Cooking another hour is not out of the question.
  9. Serve in bowls with cheese or use as a dip for tortillas.
  10. You might consider having milk, sherbet, ice cream, and/or cold cucumber slices handy because someone will need them. The chili has an extraordinary afterbite – hence the name.

Another excellent tailgate recipe, the chili keeps you warm just like the stuffing.

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Anyone have CSTV?

College Sport TV that is. CSTV is an all college sports TV cable network founded by a friend of mine, Chris Bevilacqua. I have some legend stories to tell about Bevi such as why Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza’s high school gym coach was named Mr Bevilacqua or how I met William Baldwin through Bevi, but they will have to wait for another day because this story is about – surprise – an UncleLar niece, Stacey Wild (just an FYI, I didn’t take the photo, it came from her Facebook profile – unfortunately, I think the link will only work for my Facebook buds, Chris and Elliot)

Stacey is a Penn State freshman who is majoring in journalism – she also swims for Penn State’s water polo team. About two months ago, CSTV canvassed Penn State’s journalism department looking for students to co-host a TV show that CSTV broadcasts called Total Access. Total Access is weekly show that takes place on various college campuses around the country (this month the show features Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Stanford). It’s a TV magazine style show that tries to show you a little bit of the personal side of college athletics. While the show has a studio host most of the on campus segments are hosted by a local student (usually an athlete). Stacey was fortunate enough to be selected to be the host for CSTV Total Access Penn State Orange Bowl special. So she got to travel all over South Florida in the days leading up to the Orange Bowl showing folk all the normal pre-game hype that precedes a bowl game – pep rallies, night life, beach bashes, tailgateing, etc. (worked out to be a pretty nice gig for a kid just a few months out of high school). The show will broadcast on CSTV on Thursday night at 10PM EST (9PM CST time – the Utah folk will have to check their local listings) and I thought she did a very nice job.

Stacey relationship with me is similar to Natalie Berrena’s (they’re not just any old UncleLar nieces). I have a special affection for Natalie because I used to date her mother. And I have a special affection for Stacey because I used to live with her mother. She loves to introduce me to people with the comment “Larry could have been my father”.

When I moved from State College to Pittsburgh in 1977, I moved into a two bedroom apartment in Monroeville, a suburb of Pittsburgh (13 miles closer to State College – I lived there so the trips back to Happy Valley would be shorter). I had only been in Pittsburgh for a few weeks when I ran into an old acquaintance, Pat Fagan. Pat had been a member of the Pi Beta Phi sororiety at PSU and I had gone out with a few Pi Phis (actually too many – it seems a friend of mine and I once made a bet about how many Pi Phis we could get a date with – unfortunately, they found out and we paid a bit of a price for our little indiscretion, but that’s another story for another day).

Pat was getting her MBA at Pitt and was due to graduate soon. She was lamenting to me that she had just gotten a job with IBM in Pittsburgh and would be going through six months of training to sell copiers and typewriters (for you next generation Falls who have never seen a typewriter this is what one looks like – think of it as your computer keyboard attached to your computer printer minus the middlemen of the computer processor and display 🙂 ).

Pat was a little frustrated because she was going to have to move out of her apartment in Oakland (where Pitt is located) and find a new place to live yet she had no idea where her territory would be once she finished training (it could have been as far south as West Virginia). She said she was having an impossible time trying to find a place with just a six month lease. Since I had an extra bedroom, I just suggested that she move in with me – which she obviously did.

Pat lived with me for about a year and, while Stacey likes to joke about me being her father, there wasn’t much chance of that because Pat and I had a very much platonic relationship. We did sometimes have trouble convincing people of that because in that day and age guys and girls didn’t live together platonically very often (for that matter, they didn’t live together non-platonically that much either then).

The reality of the situation was that there wasn’t much opportunity for us to get involved anyway. I had a girlfriend that I would see almost every weekend (Joanie, the girl I mentioned in a previous thread – she was still in school and I would spend most weekends back in State College). And Pat, well she had TWO boyfriends, so there was definitely no time for me. I have to give Pat credit for ingenuity the way she juggled the two guys. Eric, the one in Pittsburgh, didn’t know about Fritz, the one back in State College. Fritz, however, did know about Eric. Pat was from State College so she simply convinced Eric that she was homesick and had to go back and visit her family all the time.

I could never understand why Fritz would put up with the arrangement but I guess he knew what he was doing. After about a year of living this dual life, Pat dumped Eric, quit her job with IBM and moved back to State College and married Fritz. They’ve been married for well over 25 years now so I suppose things worked out well in the long run.

That’s my Legend story for today. Hope it was mundane enough.

PS – check Stacey out if you get the chance Thursday at 10 EST (or set your TiVo – you all do have a TiVo don’t you?)

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Spring is in the air

Took advantage of the sudden warm weather to make a golf road trip yesterday. Nine of us headed a couple of hours south to Cumberland MD to the Rocky Gap Resort, just over the Pa/Md line. to play their Jack Nicklaus designed course.

The weather was in the mid to high 50s and the sun was out. It was quite comfortable, in fact I was even a little bit warm in the turtleneck that I was wearing.

I meant to take my camera with me but forgot so I had to be satisfied with shots from my phone. I was actually surprised at how well it turned out (the camera feature works much better at close range than it does at long range as the following show).

When I went to Rocky Gap’s website to get the links I was surprised to find a couple of shots that closely matched mine, so here are two of my camera phone shots (kind of ugly because of the poor lens quality, time of the year, and shooting into the sun) taken from the same spot as two of the photos on the website (Click here to see them – I can’t download them because they are imbedded in a Flash movie)

Eat your heart out guys.

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A New Years Memory

It’s a little strange sitting home watching football on New Years after so many years of being at bowl games for the holidays (for the record I’ve been to 23 bowl games) but with the slump that Penn State was in before this season I’ve started to get used to it.

One trip that stands out was thirty years ago. Penn State played Alabama in the first Sugar Bowl in the Superdome on New Years Eve December 31st 1975. The game started at about 8 PM local time and seemed to drag on forever. Penn State wound up losing 13-6 with the game ending a little past 11:30 which meant that we were going to have to rush to get down to Bourbon Street before midnight.

I was with Tod Jeffers and he and I rushed to the famed Pat O’Brien’s. Unfortunately, hundreds of others had the same idea and we wound up trapped in line during a rainstorm. Sure enough, midnight struck with us still in line. Cheers and noisemakers started going off and everyone started hugging and kissing their dates. Bummer, we had lost the game, we were soaking wet, and we had failed to get into the bar before midnight – the night wasn’t going well at all.

At that point I looked up and there was this cute blond coed dressed in Penn State blue standing in line just in front of me. Time to seize the moment. I just grabbed her, wished her a Happy New Year, and laid a big kiss on her. The kiss must have worked because I wound up dating her for about 3 1/2 years.