The Season Is Nearly Upon Us!

It’s amazing how these things sneak up on you, but it appears that the 2012-2013 season is just about upon us.  Next Monday night I’ll be making my way to my first live game of the year, and next Friday Marquette kicks off the season in grand fashion by playing on an aircraft carrier.  And an early start to this year’s high school season means that we’ll have more basketball than we can handle before ESPN’s Feast Week even begins.  I don’t think I’m alone in my excitement over all of these things.

With the season coming up, one of the most common questions that I get from acquaintances that I run into is “Are you still doing that basketball blog thing?”  It’s always sort of tough for me to answer.  I do still post thoughts from time to time, but by and large, I abandoned regular blogging 2-3 years ago.  It’s not for lack of desire (watching basketball and writing are still two of my favorite pastimes), but I simply no longer have the amount of time necessary to watch a basketball game and form a page worth of coherent thoughts about it every night.  Usually I just end up telling people that the blog is mostly part of my past, but that I haven’t had the heart to totally kill it yet.

And while I’d like to tell you that everything has changed this year, the truth is that my efforts are likely to remain about where they have been for the past 2-3 seasons.  That is to say, sporadic and random.  Part of what drove me years ago when I was doing daily updates was knowing that every day a handful of people like me were sitting in their offices and coming to my blog to read one or two interesting things about basketball before starting their work day in earnest.  But when I couldn’t do daily updates anymore (and I simply can’t), there was no reason for those that I had entertained to check in every day, and I no longer felt beholden to anyone.  Oddly, being 100% committed to something is easier for me, because I know exactly what I need to do.  Only being 50% invested is tougher, because it offers opportunities to slack off (as I have in past years, missing opportunities to write about some great games and events that I’ve seen).

I should probably get to a point, though, after that overly self-important digression.  I still plan on checking in on the blog from time to time.  Next week, in fact, I’m going old school and posting thoughts every day (mostly because I’ve had a chance to bank a few things over the past week or two).  The week will examine four of the things that I’m most looking forward to this season in a series that I’m creatively titling “Things I’m Looking Forward To,” with a brief interruption on Tuesday for my thoughts on the first UWM Exhibition of the year.  Here’s my tentative schedule of posts for next week:

Monday: Things I’m Looking Forward To: UWM’s Return to the Klotsche Center
Tuesday: Game 1: Thoughts on the UWM vs. UW-Parkside Exhibition
Wednesday: Things I’m Looking Forward To: An Early Start to the High School Season
Thursday: Things I’m Looking Forward To: The College Debut of Sam Dekker
Friday: Things I’m Looking Forward To: Marquette and Ohio State on an Aircraft Carrier

After that, if something huge happens, I’ll share thoughts.  And if I happen to be at a game where a mascot does something that merits recognition of his or her excellence, rest assured that I’ll check in so that others can hear about it.  But I’m realistic enough to know that I won’t be here daily, no matter how much I want to be.  And that’s probably a good thing.

Here’s looking forward to a great start to the season next week.  Happy hoops watching!