A quick look at the start of our day.
Thanksgiving Day
There’s lots to be thankful for this year. Tops among them the opportunity to see Ray Davies (of the KinKs) live this Monday night.
If you haven’t heard it, listen to Ray’s new song, Thanksgiving Day, practically his only original material recorded in about 10 years. It’s classic Ray, a slice-of-life within in an institutional context. BTW, listen to the words, OK?
And for forward-thinking nostalgia, there’s also Father Christmas for your listening enjoyment.
Happy Holidays
PS – See Ray on Conan Thanksgiving night.
Boo!! Hiss!! Boring!!
Some of you may remember my campaign last spring to name the new State College minor league baseball team the Sliders. My nominee had been one of seven (the others were Black Bears, Copperheads, Miners, Mountain Bats, Ridge Riders, and Stags) selected to be semifinalists. I put some serious effort into promoting my choice (I even handed out business cards promoting the name)
Let’s just say that my suggestion didn’t meet with universal acclaim (Click here to read a local writer’s opinion),
Evidently, team managemant felt the same as the above writer because they wound up throwing out all seven of the semifinalists and starting over with a new list of finalist. They were Anglers, Coalys, Furnace, Haymakers, and Spikes.
The grand announcement of the winner was today. And the winner is, drumroll please:
All I can say is “boring”.
I know my field hockey
As I predicted weeks ago, Natalie Berrena was named first team All-American by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association. It caps a wonderful career for Natalie, moving up from a walk-on here at her hometown school to being named captain and All-American her senior season. To put in in perspective, Rudy had a movie made about him and he only got in for a play. 🙂
I’ve been keeping an eye on the NFHCA website because I knew they were overdue to announce the AA’s (their website said they were going to release it yesterday), so I was actually the first to find out. I texted Natalie on her phone to let her know and got this back from her “I can’t believe it! You called it back in sept and I laughed at you… Ha! Who would have thought! I’m seriously in shock.” Nat is truly very humble and doesn’t realize how gifted she is (both athletically and artistically) so her surprise is real.
While I recognized that she was playing good hockey, I also knew that her story would hit home with both the media and coaches. “Local kid walks on, leads home team to championship” just works on all fronts – it’s a great story lead for the press and coaches can hold it up as “you too can do this” example to recruits. Plus, I know her coach well – Char really likes Nat and I knew that Char would likely choose Nat to push for post season awards, so I’m not quite as clairvoyant as I might appear.
I’m not normally a superstitious person
But since I started posting these weekend updates the teams keep winning, so I can’t stop now.
As I’ve already reported, the football team knocked off Michigan State to win the B10 title. Following the team’s return to Happy Valley (the photo on the right shows Michael Robinson carrying the B10 championship trophy into Rec Hall for a welcome back rally Saturday night), a bunch of fans took over the downtown streets celebrating the turnaround season. The B10 championship meant that Penn State had now claimed all five fall regular season Big Ten team championships, a first in B10 history (the previous record had been three fall championships).
The women’s volleyball team was in action on Friday and Saturday also. On Friday, the women swept #19 Minnesota 3-0. They followed that with another 3-0 sweep, this time over Iowa, on senior night. In the photo on the left, three of my Facebook buddies, Sam Tortorello, Cassy Salyer, and Kaleena Walters, are shown holding the B10 volleyball championship trophy (Sam and Kaleena are seniors and were honored before the match). The girls extended their B10 record to 18-0 and can close out a perfect season with away victories this coming weekend. If the girls can win those matches, and they will be heavy favorites to do so, the fall sports programs’ Big Ten record will be an absolutely phenomenal 49-1 (the sole loss be a the controversal last second football loss to Michigan).
Just for completeness sake, I must comment on the other fall sports. Field hockey’s season is over – the only think left to report is whether “Grand Niece” Natalie Berrena makes All-American or not (the announcement is due later today). Women’s soccer continued their march through the NCAA tournament with a 4-1 win over Texas A&M on Saturday afternoon (Saturday was a busy day for me – caught the Penn State men’s basketball win over Cornell at 12:30, rushed over to the soccer field to catch the end of the 1:00 women’s NCAA soccer game, headed downtown to Bill Pickle’s Tavern to meet up with friends to watch the Nit’s 4:00 football win over MSU, zipped up to Recreation Hall in time to cheer the 8:00 girls volleyball team on in the Iowa win, then closed the evening out listening to “JR and Natalie” at Cafe 210 – first set at 10:30) – it’s days like this that make me love Happy Valley). The women now meet Santa Clara here Friday – with a win they advance to the Final Four in College Station TX.
The men’s soccer team will open NCAA play with a match against Seton Hall here tomorrow. The men have earned an 11th seed but are considered one of the more dangerous teams in the tournament coming into the tournament riding a nine game winning streak holding a win over the #1 seed Maryland Terrapins and two wins over the #3 seed Indiana Hoosiers. They should be a force to be reckoned with.
Just in case you are wondering if I am going to be publishing these tomes every week, have no fear. I have no intention of continuing to type them up. It’s just that the teams have made this remarkable run this fall and I didn’t want to do anything to jinx them. Once we get the NCAA championships out of the way in soccer and volleyball, and the bowl game in football, I will cease and desist from my weekly reports.
Penn State has next
I love the title of this article
If USC or Texas stumbles, Penn State has next: “It was well after midnight, East Coast time, when the notion became clear. Hey, maybe this USC-Texas match-up in the Rose Bowl isn’t a done deal, after all. Not yet, at least.
USC’s 50-42 escape against Fresno State reinforced the reality that two more weeks of games are remaining. And even though the Trojans and Longhorns are the only unbeaten teams left in Division I-A, something crazy still could happen.
What then? What if there’s a BCS free-for-all?”
In case you didn’t see this before
About 10 days ago, in my “Ken – remember this?” post, I said:
Just like this year, PSU was hot in the middle of the football national championship picture
Gary came back with:
BTW, Is PSU really “hot in the middle of the football national championship picture “?
And I responded:
Most definitely we are. We are fifth in the BCS. That means we need three teams in front of us to lose to get into the BCS championship game.The four teams ahead of us and their remaining games are:
Miami: @Wake Forest (4-6), Geo Tech (6-2), Virginia (5-3), then Fla State (7-2) in the conference championship game – none of those games are easy and it will be tough for them to win all four games (Fla St has already beaten them once).
Alabama: LSU (7-1), @Auburn (7-2), and a conference championship game against either Georgia (7-1) or Florida (7-2). Alabama’s offense is atrocious – they haven’t scored a TD in 13 quarters and it would be a big surprise for them to record three wins against the teams they have yet to play.
Texas: Kansas (5-4), @Tex A&M (5-4), and a conference championship game against Colorado (7-2). Anytime you have to defeat three teams with winning records there is a decent chance you could lose. The favorite has a history of losing the conference championship in the B12 so it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise to see the Longhorns go down.
USC: @California (6-3), Fresno State (7-1), and UCLA (8-1). While Southern Cal looks to be the strongest contender for the national championship they do have challenges ahead of them. None of those teams are pushovers and UCLA would just love to knock their cross town rivals out of the BCS picture.
Penn State on the other hand has two weeks to get ready for their sole remaining game with Michigan State (5-4). MSU is in their usual late season collapse having lost 4 of their last 5 games. We should be able to handle them easily and just sit back and watch the others fall by the wayside.
The good news is that only three of the four teams in front of us need to lose. There is a very good chance that could happen.
Here’s an update of what has happened since:
Just as I suggested, we were able to beat Michigan State and capture the B10 title and secure a berth in a BCS Bowl. Which bowl is still up in the air.
Last week, Alabama lost to LSU in overtime and dropped out of the national championship picture.
Yesterday, Miami lost to Georgia Tech and their national championship hopes have been dashed.
So two of the three things that needed to happen have. We just need one more and we almost got that late last night (people were glued to TV’s in the bars here in State College last night as the USC/Fresno State game didn’t end until 2:15AM).
Southern Cal staged a furious comeback and managed to overcome Fresno State 50-42 in a game that saw them trailing 42-41 in the fourth quarter (Fresno State had also led at halftime 21-13). USC looks beatable and they have crosstown rivals UCLA in two weeks.
Texas was off this week but they have always dangerous Texas A&M and their famed 12th man next week, then a conference championship matchup with Colorado in two weeks.
That means there are three chances for an upset to happen – I’d say odds are about 50-50 that one of the upsets will occur – and Penn State can claim a spot in the national championship game in the Rose Bowl (there is also an outside chance that LSU could sneak by us with a win in their conference championship game).
Realistically, there are now only five schools with a shot at the title. USC and Texas still have their destiny in their own hands. Win out and they are in. Penn State’s season is over and we sit just on the outside waiting for one of the two to fail. LSU not only needs one of the top two to falter but they also need to win out and start getting some love from the BCS computers. Virginia Tech remains a very big long shot to somehow sneak into the game – they probably need both teams on the top to lose and have LSU also lose while they win out and meet Penn State for the title.
So that’s a long winded way of saying “Yes, Gary we very much are in the middle of the national championship picture.
Do you dream?
I woke up this morning after one of my typical nights of dreaming. The “star” of this dream was Gary. He had just gotten a review at work and wasn’t too happy about it. So he came to the family for advice. We were living in Chalfont. Mommy, Kenny and Ronnie were in the dream. Mommy and I intervened…kind of like attending a “parent-teacher” conference with Gary’s boss. Kenny & Ronnie were “background” constants; Kenny complaining that he was having similar problems at work and Ronnie just standing there laughing (we were all current age except Ronnie who was a teenager)!
Weird. Do any of you dream? Steve says he doesn’t, or at least never remembers them. I dream nightly. Maybe it’s just a female thing??????
Changed the Footer
Decided it was time this handsome devil joined the rest of the family.
Passed my first winter health test
I would say I’m probably 95% recovered from my asthma episode. I still have a little wheezing when I’m lying down at night and if I start laughing hard it will turn into a cough. Occasionally, I will cough up a very little sputum.
One of the things that the doctor told me to look out for was cold weather because it could trigger a coughing attack also. Last night was the first time I was out when the temp dipped into the 20’s – it was actually 18 when I got home. While I wasn’t outside for any real length of time, maybe 10 minutes at any individual moment, I had no ill effects so I’m particularly happy with that.
I also, unfortunately, gained back most of the weight that I lost. I weighed 216 yesterday evening when I got on the scale which is 15 lbs heavier than my low point at the end of September but 5 lbs lighter than before I fell ill. I’d really like to stay under 220 and will probably start working out to keep it down (OK – maybe not probably).
Even so, I’m still 15 lbs lighter than when I started the year so that’s good news. If I can keep that off then drop another 15 next year I’ll be very happy.