Alone in Gonzaga’s indoor rowing facility — the media workroom, I mean — I glanced back and forth from Colorado at Kansas St. to this blank sheet.
I’ve rarely been the writer who stares at a blank sheet. There’s always something to say, though it might be off-topic or mundane. (Natalie Goldberg wrote a couple of outstanding books about how valuable it is to write the off-topic, mundane shit without stopping or thinking, because that gets you closer to what’s really on your mind.)
I mean, I’ve got lots to say about the rental car, but travel items are so well covered by standup comedians.
Coach Mulkey looks like a chunk of spumoni today.
Airline seating and rental cars, those are evergreen topics in standup. Coach Mulkey’s attire is the equivalent fallback for basketball writers.
I swore I wouldn’t sink to that level — I’ve never mentioned what coaches Rueck and Graves are wearing — but Coach Mulkey welcomes it.
Then ESPN broadcast team Ann Schatz and Mike Thibault walked in.
Schatz smiles and greets me as the first colleague in the office. I think: “What do I say now? ‘I turn off the sound when you’re working, because it grates on me that you say nothing that the viewer cannot see plainly’?”. Instead, I nodded cordially.
“Coach”, I said.
“Good morning. How ya doing?”, said Coach Thibault.
I thought about saying: “Why’d you cut Brooke Smith!?”, but 2007 was a long time ago, and I quit while ahead.
Colorado is doing very well to trail 33-31. The lead was 9 a minute ago after the Wildcats made a 4-point play, and the crowd in Manhattan was, as they say, into it.
Tinfoil hat
I stopped there early this afternoon. I’d already leveled up for exchanging greetings with Coach T, and the media conference with Utes Ines Vieira and Matyson Wilke was soon to begin.
I lingered on that word “broadcasters” because I didn’t want to make them sound too dumb. They have a job that shouldn’t exist, and I reckon that makes it a job impossible to do well, or to the satisfaction of every viewer.
Broadcasters want crowd noise to matter. It’s heartening for the viewers to think their support from the seats or their couches matters. There was a TV commercial during football season in which a San Francisco 49ers Faithful has a chair glued to his butt. The spot begins with the guy saying “where’s my chair, my team can’t play to its full potential unless my ass is in the right chair”, and it ends with 49ers star George Kittle telling a TV reporter “we couldn’t have done it without my man Joe Schmoe and his lucky chair”.
Which is pretty funny, and I’d say it was an effective ad if I could remember what it was for. A financial services company. Or snack food.
I don’t think spectators matter a fig’s worth. I think “home court advantage” stems from sleeping in a familiar bed. I’ve said often that basketball games should only be attended by teams plus team staff, officials, game staff, and print journalists.
That’s on my list of crackpot notions, along with free throws should be attempted underhanded, technical fouls should be assessed to players who signal a ball to go their way, and two made free throws should be as valuable as one made dunk.
What? Two free throws are as valuable as a dunk?! OK, you tell them.
Vonleh
Colorado was fortunate to trail by just two then. If you saw that game, did you get the impression that the basketball gods screwed with the physics of basketballs rolling on the rim? Four of Kansas State’s FGA that looked like they were going in … did not go in.
Then Colorado overpowered KSU in Colorado fashion in the second half. In spite of thousands of purple-painted KSU fans making all that crowd noise.
I don’t want to look for boxscores, because opening any page on the web is dangerous when there are recorded games to be watched. I still have Oregon State and Stanford to watch, but Colorado post Aaronette Vonleh must be mentioned.
The Pac-12 is stuffed with outstanding forwards. Vonleh is overlooked because “Vonleh” isn’t spelled phonetically, like Brink, Betts, or Beers. And because it doesn’t start with ‘B’, I guess.
Vonleh is a truck, but she had SEVEN steals in the first half. Seven steals in one half is not something we associate with truck-like forwards.
If it weren’t for the crazy bounces and Vonleh’s interference, Kansas State might’ve led by 15 at half. The second half still could’ve played out like it did, but you know what I mean.
Media conference, with players
The media conference put two players under the harsh lights, then one coach. Utah’s assignees to that task were guards Ines Vieira and Matyson Wilke.
Vieira and Wilke are outstanding contributors to the saving of Utah’s collective ass.
The “most improved player” award could’ve gone to Vieira or Iriafen, and if the voters needed a tiebreaker in their minds, Iriafen’s team won the regular season championship. If you had to single out one Ute whose responsibilities were most increased after injuries to the starting 1 and the starting 2, it was she.
She delivered. Ines’ dad is always most supportive on social. I should tell that man I’m sorry for attributing that to what we expect of student-athletes’ parents rather than the fact that he knew before the rest of us that she’d kick all kinds of ass.
I told a Utah staffer that I’d never heard Ines speak. That’s weird, the Utah director of basketball operations said, because she never shuts up.
Among the question marks on the Utah bench, it was Matyson Wilke who established herself as a period, or at least as a semicolon.
Wilke transfered from Wisconsin, which I guess she took as the best option closests to Beaver Dam. The two things I want to ask Wilke are: 1) Why is her hometown called Beaver Dam, and 2) What does the modern Wisconsin Badger know about Suzy Favor?
Badgers
Before I could say Matyson Wilke is my favorite basketball player from Wisconsin, I had to search for any I might’ve forgotten. Seems not, which fits with Wisconsin as a football school.
Decades ago, I was in a tabletop football league, and one of my favorite teams was the 1962 Wisconsin Badgers, who in real life lost the 1963 Rose Bowl to USC. The simulation sheets didn’t provide much information about the teams or their histories, so I wrote to the Wisconsin athletic department to ask ‘who were those guys?’. Someone in the U. Wisconsin athletic department sent me a photocopy of their football media guide from 1962. Wisconsin will always stand out in my mind for that reason, even though they’ve never produced a basketball player I can name besides Matyson Wilke.
Wisconsin also produced Suzy Favor, one of the best middle-distance runners in the world during the early ’80s. Blonde, pretty, and fast, Suzy Favor was in TV commercials for shoes and shampoo.
Mental illness ran in her family — her brother’s depression pushed him to jump off a tall building. In her bipolar case, the inner voices caused her to fear losing and winning. In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Favor thought to throw herself to the ground rather than finish 1500 meters, and then have to talk to people.
Rather than talk to a worldwide audience, Suzy Favor fell. Really, that feeling goes for ONE PERSON as much as it does to BILLION PEOPLE.
Somewhere before 2010, I’d been in bed for a couple of months, staring at the wall. Pacific was visiting UC Davis, and I thought: Coach Simpson and Coach Roberts both think you’ll be there, so be there. I drove to Davis, thinking the whole time “if I can get through this without talking to anyone, it’ll be OK”.
Can you imagine how it feels to be terrified of interacting with people, and having to wind your way through a basketball arena on game night? You don’t want to make physical contact with anyone, because that might lead to verbal contact, and so on.
I made it to the floor at UC Davis, with my chair at the press table in sight, and an unfamiliar man comes charging from the seats to introduce himself. It was one of the scariest conversations I’ve had in my life. I believed he was playing some sort of “good cop” role before busting me for something I couldn’t remember doing.
I think of Martin as a dear friend now, and he’s said all along that I seemed quite OK then, though I do not see how that could’ve been so. I laugh about it now, but I was so afraid. And that was for dealing with one stranger. The entire world was looking at Suzy Favor.
After retiring from running, Suzy Favor and her husband, a Badger baseball player, started a real estate company. She didn’t like that much, because it meant talking to many people.
Then she worked as an escort in Las Vegas, and was most successful. Which makes sense, because there’s just one person to deal with, while the dynamics favor (humor unintended) supply, not demand.
When an investigative reporter pieced Favor’s story together, she was back in international news for a time, and these days she’s an advocate for others with bipolar disorders. Perhaps Matyson Wilke has never heard of Suzy Favor, or perhaps every Wisconsin student-athlete has some story to tell related to the legend of Suzy Favor.
Media conference, with coach
Then Coach Roberts had to face the press. Who remembers Face the Press? There was a time when journalists asked hard questions, and it made for interesting television for one public figure to field questions on camera from a panel of journalists.
These days, I use “face the press” as a joke to myself, because modern sports media ask only the dumbest softball questions possible. The great baseball movie “Bull Durham” parodied the modern media-to-sports-figure interaction, which had the undesirable effect of making it dumber.
Coach Roberts has become a true professional about handling media. They ask about Brynna Maxwell, perhaps fishing for conflict within a soundbite, but no (“She’s a great kid”, said Roberts. “We wish her the best, just not tomorrow.”).
They ask about the offensive structure similar to both teams (one overwhelming forward, plus four wings who attack on ground and in air), aiming for — well, I dunno, because they’re just doing their jobs to fill time and space.
Coach Roberts said both teams will be prepared, and one team will execute more effectively than the other. She used the “chess match” metaphor twice, which wounds me deeply.
It’s universally accepted that “chess match” applies as a metaphor to any sporting or business or geopolitical engagement between two parties where both sides have things to think about.
One baseball manager brings in a relief pitcher. The other manager sends a pinch hitter to the plate. Media calls it a chess match.
Icing the shooter
Oh, while I’m on the subject of this pet peeve, I’ve been wanting to say something about the Presbyterian-Sacred Heart play-in game.
Presbyterian won the play-in 47-42 Thursday, earning the right to get crushed by South Carolina Saturday afternoon. It was close at the end, which made one replay review noteworthy.
The officials reviewed a foul call for, um, about two hours. They were determining whether a shooting foul warranted an upgrade, a call they don’t want to screw up, because possession of the ball hinges on it. While they’re huddled over the replay monitor for three hours, the FT shooter waits.
One of the enduring sports cliches is “icing” a FT shooter or FG kicker before the critical free throw or field goal attempts. This four-hour replay review was the longest instance of “icing the free throw shooter” I’ve ever seen, but had no effect on the Blue Hen shooter, who made both.
Practice
Utah’s practice immediately followed the media conference.
“They won’t let me ask the questions I want to ask”, I said.
The only person in this place I talk to is Coach Roberts, I said, and someone has to explain to me what an “indoor rowing facility” is. Gonzaga converted its indoor rowing facility to the media center for this basketball tournament. There’s an oar on the wall to commemorate some damn thing. There’s a giant plaque acknowledging the donors who built it. It makes no sense to me, because how can you properly train a team of rowers for actual water in an indoor facility?
“What are you talking about?”, said Coach.
That’s why I keep quiet during press conferences.
This is the latest in a season I’ve attended a practice, and it’s less interesting. In November and January, there are still knots to unravel and questions to answer. In March, forget it. If the team hasn’t figured out who they are by March, they’re watching these games on TV, not playing in them.
I learned at Sunday’s practice that freshman forward Daniela Falcon Hernandez does, in fact, exist. She’s a real person, wearing #11, standing six-foot-something, just like it says on the roster.
Hernandez has not played. I thought Alyssa Blanck was the last player on the bench. Blanck played in the last minute of Saturday’s win against South Dakota State, attempting one field goal (which I truly wish was made, because the team seems to adore this kid, so that would’ve been a great moment).
It’s reassuring to know that Hernandez is with the team, not just a mistake on the roster webpage that the athletic department hasn’t bothered to fix.
Correcting basketball-reference.com
Jeff Judkins was a 2nd-round pick of the Boston Celtics in 1978. He coached at Brigham Young for 20-some years, when the Cougars went to 10 NCAA tournaments.
These days he’s on Coach Roberts’ staff, though I can’t figure out what his role is, besides Silent Bob. There’s a trope in pop entertainment where some character doesn’t talk for the entire presentation until the end, when it’s a doozy.
Coach Judkins sat on the sideline for the whole practice, until he got up once to undo a defensive mishap. Like Silent Bob, he’s got one line in the movie, but it’s the one the players will remember from practice.
I finally got to talk to the guy Saturday. I said: When I was 19, living in a yard shed doing nothing but running NBA simulations from 1979, I said the hell with the minutes-played suggestion on your card, and let you play 45 or 48.
He laughed, said he had fun that year. You can look it up. On a per-minute basis, Boston’s leading scorers in 1979-80 were Larry Bird, Pete Maravich, and Jeff Judkins. That’s why I scrapped the item on his simulation card that said 10 minutes per game. With Bird, Maravich, and Judkins all getting 45 minutes, I was lighting it up with that Celtics team.
I had to consult basketball-reference dot com for some reason Sunday morning. Years ago, there was a Chrome plug-in that enabled basketball-reference.com as one of your search bar options. Man, I wish that plug-in were still in development.
Judkins’ page was my last visit there, and I spotted March 23 as his birthdate. Sunday, I said: Coach, if I’d known yesterday was your birthday, I would’ve spared you the story about my living in a yard shed and running you ragged in simulations.
Coach Judkins said the online references — Wikipedia, NBA dot com, basketball-reference dot com, all relying on each other — have it wrong, because his birthdate is March 27.