Weekend Hodgepodge

For reasons that I won’t get into, it was a draining weekend, so all I’ve got for you are a few brief points from the hodgepodge of basketball that I enjoyed this weekend.

1) I was watching the Duke-Temple game as J.J. Redick became the all-time leading scorer in ACC history. He broke the record while shooting free throws. One of the TV announcers then noted that it was ironic that he broke the foul shot at the line, since he’s known for his three-point shooting. This may be one of the dumbest points that I’ve heard made all year, since the statement overlooks that aside from Redick’s three-point shooting, the thing that announcers spend most of their time fawning over is Redick’s foul shooting. So really, I think that the manner in which Redick took the scoring title was not ironic, but rather, was undeniably appropriate.

2) During the last couple of games where Redick has been making a run at the record, they’ve showed snippets of interviews with now former record-holder, Dickie Hemric of Wake Forest. First off–I think there at a lot of good reasons why you don’t see a lot of guys going by the name "Dickie" these days, but I think one reason that’s probably overlooked is that there’s something sort of ridiculous about seeing a guy in his early 70s that goes by the name of "Dickie." That said, Hemric looks pretty good for a guy who’s past 70 years of age. He’s not at his playing weight or anything, but if not for the talk about him playing his last year of college hoops in 1955, I wouldn’t have figured he was as old as he is.

3) I’m not sure what to make of Ray Nixon theory after this weekend. Wisconsin beat Minnesota, but I wouldn’t say that Nixon played a stellar game. He wasn’t bad, though, so for my purposes, I’m just going to say that Ray Nixon had an average game, and that’s why the Badgers win was not in a convincing manner. See, I love Nixon theory, because I can spin it just about any way to back myself up.

4) I was watching part of North Carolina vs. Maryland on Sunday, and Tyler Hansbrough was having another great game. This got me thinking about how many great freshmen are out there this year. Maybe part of it is just because Marquette has so many solid freshmen and I see them every week, but I can’t recall a time when so many impact freshmen in the country have readily been at the front of my mind.

5) Indiana beating Michigan State again proved to me that no matter what I think I know about basketball, I’m probably wrong.

6) I’ve seen painfully little basketball this year outside of those played in by Wisconsin-based teams, ACC media darlings, and Gonzaga (the late-night version of Duke). Thus, I’ve missed some pretty obvious teams during my basketball watching. But this weekend I tried to make up for that a bit, and yeah, Villanova and Texas are pretty good. In fact, I’m really kicking myself for not checking out Villanova earlier, because they seem really fun to watch.

7) Big thanks go out to Detroit for beating Butler and ensuring that the Horizon League tournament will be hosted by UWM in Milwaukee rather than Butler in Indianapolis. I was a bit worried that I had made my last trip to the Mecca this year, but I guess there will be time for at least one more rum-infused smoothie in a tiki cup. Let’s just hope that the Horizon tourney is the last chance for this, because I don’t want to end up going to an NIT game at the Mecca.

8) Due to a variety of factors, my friends and I didn’t end up seeking out any of the Milwaukee-area taverns showing the Marquette game on Saturday night (though I do thank everyone who suggested a spot to me–there were some good ones in there). Instead, we all hung out and my friend Dave gave us score updates on his cell phone as the game went on. Yes, we were those guys.

I’m still crafting my schedule for the week, but hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow with something significantly more interesting than today’s update.