Nova/UConn, Michelle Kwan, then Stitzer's Takes

In college hoops, Villanova plays UConn tonight in a match-up of two of the top 5 teams in the country. This will be such an interesting game to watch, as it be interesting to see if Villanova with their lack of size, can handle UConn's size and strength on the inside with Josh Boone and Hilton Armstrong. In the meantime, can UConn match up on the perimeter with Villanova's great guard play, especially if they can get good minutes from a banged up Mike Nardi. The emergence of Kyle Lowery gives Nova three tremendous scoring options on the outside. Will Rudy Gay, the most talented player on the court for either team, actually show up and play hard? In this classic battle of good vs. evil (program that does it the right way with players that have not been arrested and a coach you can understand when he speaks against a bunch of thugs with a scumbag illiterate coach), I look at the homecourt advantage plus the difference in heart (who do you think has more heart, Lowery or Gay?) plus the fact that one team plays better together as a team, I pick Villanova to pull the upset. Nova 77, UConn 72. Or maybe we will get lucky and UConn's plane will crash on the way in. Go Cats.

In my January 16th column, I noted that figure skating was not a sport, because any sport makes you earn it on the playing field, and they gave her a spot in the Olypics despite not being able to skate in the qualifying event. Now, Kwan, the selfish skater who has never been able to win gold despite being the best skater in the world for the past ten-plus years, has pulled out of the games with the same bad groin that kept her from qualifying in the first place. Now Emily Hughes, who did earn it on the ice, gets to skate, but has missed out on much of the experience, including the opening ceremonies, and now has to fight through two feet of New York snow to get to Italy for the event. Figure skating has proven throughout this whole ordeal that it is a joke, and the fact that there was never an uproar just shows that everybody considers this just an exhibition, not a real sport. I am sure we will follow this up with a controversial result, since judges decide this subjectively instead of objectively.

I would have more rambling to do but Stitzer just sent me some of his takes, so I will save the rest of mine for later in the week. As always, the viewpoints below represent those and those alone of Andrew B. Stitzer, and do not necessarily represent those of this writer or anybody else he knows.....

• Over the next 4 weeks, get ready for buffoons like Digger, Dick, Andy Katz, etc…to spend 20 hours a week arguing over which 3-4 teams should get those precious last few at-large bids for the NCAA Tourney. And not one of these teams that they spend so much time on has a legitimate shot to win more than 2 games if they get in.
• Another idiotic thing these bozos do when they want to campaign for a BCS conference team to get in is to tell us what their RPI is and what their SOS is. What they fail to mention in their ridiculous argument based on redundancy is that 50% of a team’s RPI is determined by their SOS.
• From the “just when I think I am out, they pull me back in” files, kudos to my St. John’s Redmen. Way to win three in a row, be down by 3 with 7:44 left @ UCONN, get everybody’s hopes up that we might just have this thing turned around, get blow out the rest of the way in UCONN, then lose 4 in a row.
• Kudos also to SDSU, by following their huge W with a bad home loss to Utah, which now makes this Thursday’s game @ UNLV almost a must win if they want to make NCAAs without winning MWC Tourney.
• I think I finally figured out why Liberals and the Hypmocratic party hate the war in Iraq and the President so much: not nearly enough US troops have been killed! Their heroes JFK & LBJ managed to get 57,000 troops killed while never once coming within 100 miles of Ho Chi Minh. Here is what to do W: put Saddam back in power, get 56,000 more troops killed, and spread a bunch of napalm and agent orange around so that the troops that do survive die back in the USA years later, of course, only after being spit on by the their fellow citizens. Now if W can do that, the Liberals will love him.
• During some random game last week, Announcer X said “you just cannot leave player X open from behind the arc.” Really? You cannot leave 75% players open from behind the arc in my Wednesday night Rec league!! The shot has become such a joke, and it does not matter how far back you move the line, eventually, with enough practice, it becomes makeable and part of the offense. The ABA came up with the shot as a gimmick, just like the red, white, & blue ball. The shot has forever changed college hoops for the worse. And do not give me that Dickie V crap about “it gives the little guy a chance for the upset blah blah blah..” Well, just in case you were sleeping for the past 4 years, the best shooter in the country plays for the best team in the country. The better shooters, just like the better players, will go to the better programs. So the “little guys” cannot pack their zones in anymore against the “big guys” because to do so would be to surrender an extra 50% for letting them hit an open jumper.
• Here is how we can ruin football and baseball: any home run traveling more than 400 feet awards 150% of the runs it would have generated had it been less than 425 feet. A 3 run homer would then be a 4.5 run homer. Football: All TDs over 21 yards ((19.9/94)*100) is worth 9 points.
• The dumbest thing about the 3-point line is that you can hit a 3, intentionally foul, and then the most you can give up is 2. How is that fair? That sounds like something the IRS would come up with: penalizing success and reward mediocrity and ineptitude. You play you ass off for 39 minutes to get a lead, and then you are at the mercy of these dumb rules as the other team has a chance to catch-up. If they are not going to get rid of the 3-point line, then the least they should do is change the rules to the following: if you intentionally foul after hitting 3, the other team gets 3 foul shots.
• Have a good week everyone.