Category: Basketball

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“Unstoppable”

Just saw this movie trailer and it reminded me of something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM-0Ywc7wNY

Last year, Penn State opened their basketball season up with a home game against Penn. As usual, I was at the game. My seats are located behind the visitors bench and just across the aisle from the visiting teams section (visitors get about five rows of tickets immediately behind the team bench.

During one of the timeouts, there was a Subway promotion. For the promotion the cheerleaders encourage fans to stand and cheer while they throw wrapped subs into the stands. For some reason I must have been particularly hungry that night because I was up cheering for a sub and I don’t even like Subway. As I’m standing there, one cheerleader breaks away from the bunch and comes running up my aisle. She stops a couple of rows in front of me and actually hands her sub to a guy sitting on the end of the row in the visitor’s section.

When I see this I start half complaining to my buddy in the seat next to me saying “you know, it’s bad enough that sometimes, when they have promotions like these, they wind up throwing the item into the visitor’s section, but it’s downright stupid of them to actually hand something to a visitor; I really would have liked that sub”.

A minute or two later, my buddy nudges me and says “I think I know why that guy got the sub.” “Why?” I ask. “Take a close look” he says, “I think it’s Denzel Washington”.

Sure enough, it was. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so bad that the cheerleader chose Denzel over me. 🙂

It turns out that Denzel’s son, Malcolm (guess who he was named after), was a reserve on the Penn basketball team. Denzel was actually in the State College area filming the above “Unstoppable” and took time out from the movie to come over and watch the game. FTR, Penn State won and Malcolm didn’t play (he did get some time the rest of the year averaging 4 mpg).

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Props to Talor Battle…

Who you ask?

Talor is Penn State’s sophomore point guard. He was an unherald recruit (at least on the national scene) but, before he’s done, might go down as Penn State’s best ever basketball player (heck, some think he already is).

Halfway through the Big Ten season, Talor was the odds on favorite to be named the Big Ten Player of the Year. He faltered a little coming down the stretch (quite possibly due to worrying about his mom who suffered a mild heart attach right at the point that Talor began to struggle) but still managed to make first team all Big Ten.

Unfortunately, PSU came up just short of getting an invite to the NCAAs (despite finishing fourth in the conference and just missing a win in our last game at Iowa, two OTs and we had shots at the end of regulation and the first OT to win it, which would have put us in second place in the Big Ten and locked up a bid for sure).

We did, however, receive a bid to the NIT and the first game was last night. In the game, Talor came up with one his miraculous finishes that he’s starting to become famous for on campus. First, to set the stage, here’s what he did at the end of our game with Illinois when we were down one with seconds to go. He dribbled the length of the court, passed all five Illinois defenders and scored the winning bucket with .3 seconds left.

Here’s a fans video from the upper deck.

In the aforementioned Iowa game, Battle almost topped that. We were down nine points with 2:23 to play. Over the next two minutes Battle scored 12 straight points to tie the game up, then just missed a three point at the buzzer that would have won it (sorry no video).

But he did top it last night. We were down three with 4.8 second left when the following happened.

We went on to win it in overtime.

The kid is just amazing and we get to watch him for two more years.

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I could have been on TV

Missed out on a great opportunity today. PSU played Wisconsin in a Sunday afternoon hoops game covered by the Big Ten Network today (unfortunately, we played terribly and got beat). My standard routine for a basketball game is to TiVo it and come back and watch the game afterward.

Another standard routine of mine used to be to get up at half time and walk around the arena to stretch my legs. For most of this season I haven’t done that because walking up (the arena is sunken) the 30 some steps from my seat to the concourse was just exhausting. However, within the last two weeks I’ve resumed my half time exercise routine.

So after the game I come home and am watching the game replay. Just as the second half is about to start, the TV camera gradually zooms in on the fans behind the Wisconsin bench. They zoom all the way down to one fan who is standing by himself as the announcers talk about him. It was two time US Open champion Andy North who is a HUGE Wisconsin basketball fan and catches as many games as he can. The cameras zoom in so far that the only thing that fills the screen is Andy’s upper torso and the two empty blue seats behind him – my seats.

I was literally seconds from sitting back down. Blown opportunity to get some TV face time.

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Not your average high school

Last night, I was chatting with Danny Morrissey, an UncleLar nephew and shooting guard for Penn State’s basketball team. Danny went to prep school at the Pendleton School in Bradenton FL. Pendleton is part of the IMG Academies, a world renown collection of training academies for youth athletes. Some of the academies you have undoubtedly heard of – the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, the Chris Evert Tennis Academy.

Pendleton creates a unique educational environment where kids go to class in the morning at the prep school, then attend training sessions at one of the academies in the afternoon. As Danny described it “This was not your typical high school. Taurean Green (starting guard for two time national champion Florida) was my point guard, Maria Sharapova (world renown model/tennis player) was a classmate of mine, and Freddie Adu (soccer phenom) lived in the dorm room below me.”

Taurean Green

Maria Sharapova

Freddie Adu

All of a sudden my high school experiences seemed quite boring.

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Every Day is Valentine’s Day – Redux

I’m on my MSNBC portal when I notice a sports story titled

“Refs should be whistled for traveling”

so I click on it and discover an article about how many college basketball refs are overworked. The thought immediately goes through my mind “Boy – would my map be perfect for his guy’s column?”

Sure enough – 3/4 of the way down is this paragraph.

Welmer, who generally only takes Friday off, and Shaw have called in excess of 85 games already this season. Ted Valentine has worked more than 70 and there’s even a web site called Valentine’s Day that tracks his every move.

and it includes a link to my map. 🙂

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Utah Jazz

A friend of mine may soon show up in Kenny’s neck of the woods. Tyler Smith, a former Penn State basketball player, just made the Utah Jazz’s 18 man training camp roster (the Jazz camp doesn’t start until Monday and the roster won’t officially be announced until then).

Tyler is from the Chicago area. He played for Lake Forest High School graduating in 1998. He played four years at Penn State graduating in 2002. For the last few years he has been bouncing around the hinterlands of the pro basketball world pursuing his dream of playing in the NBA. Last year he played for a team in Peru.

Somewhat unbelieveably he’s close to making his dream happen. Tyler is the last guy you would ever expect to be an NBA player. Not only is Penn State not known for producing basketball stars, Tyler wasn’t even a star on PSU’s team. He didn’t become a full time starter until his junior year when he was the fourth leading scorer on the team (the team was pretty good though – making it to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAAs).

As a senior, Tyler was the third leading scorer on the team averaging about 12 points per game but the team was really bad (we went 7-21 and the coach was fired at the end of the year). Tyler’s list of Penn State basketball awards consisted of winning the team’s Scrappiest Player and Unsung Hero Awards at their post season banquet not exactly the type awards to build you an NBA portfolio (actually he also was a three time Academic All B10 player but academic awards don’t get you to the NBA either). On top of that, he was white man’s disease, i.e. he can’t jump.

He is a smart gutty team player though. He was a 6’8″ power forward at Penn State with a soft shooting touch. He’s worked very hard on his jump shot and can not hit it pretty well from NBA range.

His saga of how he wound up with the Jazz is pretty interesting. As I said Tyler played in Peru last year but foreign basketball contracts are strictly on a year by year basis. Tyler went to a west coast open tryout camp last month where he played exceptionally well. At the camp, he was invited to hang around for a second week for a tryout camp that a bunch of Chinese teams were having. Chinese teams are allowed to have two foreign players on the roster. Tyler excelled at the camp and was named to the camp’s all star team. Then came draft day when the Chinese teams held a draft to populate their squads. As a result of his camp, Tyler fully expect to be drafted in the first round. Nope. In fact, he slipped all the way to the 2nd pick of the third round. Bad news, because only players in the first two rounds get those guaranteed Chinese contracts. Tyler was extremely disappointed.

Right after the camp was over, Tyler was called aside by Rick Barry (yup, the Rick Barry) who was running the camp. Barry told him that the Chinese teams were under orders from management back home to bring in big black guys not white one. So Tyler is a victim of racial discrimination. However, that’s when the good news happened. Barry told Tyler he thought he had NBA level skills and would make some contacts to see if he could arrange a tryout. True to his word, Barry called a couple of days later and said he had arranged a tryout with the Jazz. Tyler went to the tryout last week with three other guys and at the end of the tryout Tyler was signed to the Jazz’s practice squad.

He doesn’t have the team made yet (the Jazz are taking 18 players to camp but can only keep 15) but he’s got a chance which is more than he thought just a month ago.

So Ken, if you see a tall white guy that looks like this:

tell him you are a real relative of Uncle Larry.

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Mr Cinderella

A friend of mine just made the Final Four. James Johnson was an assistant coach at Penn State for the last two years but took a job with George Mason this year. There were a bunch of people who questioned why he would leave a B10 school to go to the Colonial Athletic Conference but his decision is looking like a stroke of genius now (for more on his decision, read this story from the Harrisburg Patriot.

Here’s a shot of him leaving the court on Friday after their win over Wichita State that got them to the Elite Eight.

This afternoon they knocked off UConn in overtime to advance to the Final Four. In addition to the Wichita win, GM also knocked off traditional major conference power houses Michigan State, North Carolina, and UConn. What’s even more amazing is that George Mason was a controversial at large pick for the NCAA tournament to begin with. They lost in their conference tournament to Hofstra and thus didn’t earn an automatic bid. Several people felt that because Hofstra defeated George Mason twice in the last two weeks of the season, Hofstra deserved a bid instead. Now just two weeks after learning they were in the tournament, the Patriots will be headed to the Final Four.

Since everyone’s bracket is probable all messed up with the upsets, this will give you someone to root for when the Final Four starts next weekend.

BTW – As you might be able to tell from the photo, JJ dresses well. So well, in fact, that while he was at PSU, he was named as one of the NCAA best dressed assistant coaches.

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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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Central Bucks West Basketball

I rarely watch live TV these days other than some live sports. I was just checking the TiVo guide to see if there was any B10 game currently on, so that I could warm up before the Penn State/Illinois game at 9PM (8PM Central) when I noticed that the Pennsylvania Cable Network’s High School Game of the Week was on – CB West at Norristown.

CB West and Norristown are two of the four teams all within a game of each other fighting for the Suburban League Continental Conference championship. CBW beat Norristown in their first game so this will be a grudge battle. I’ve seen a couple of CBW football games since I left town but this is the first basketball game of theirs that I’ve watched in over 40 years. I’ll report the final once the game is over (CBW leads 9-8 after 1Q).

PS – for those in the Chicago area the PSU/Ill game tonight is on WCIU. One of my best friends, Brian Allen, will be doing the color commentary for the broadcast.

FINAL SCORE: Norristown 62 CB West 51. That eliminates CB West from winning the conference but they still should make the state playoffs.