Saturday, July 11, 2009
Here's a Serious Test
And they don't monkey around, either. The site has a quiz asking us hoop-heads to give both school and nickname for every school in DI, including the Indies.
Give it a try.
Put Yourself on the Recruiting Map
Here's my profile.
As always, I hope you, and everyone you know, will jump right in and have a ball. You never know, Youngstown State might come calling.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Extra P's latest T-shirt
I've previously bought shirts for: Appalachian State, Old Dominion, Davidson, Temple, North Dakota State, and UT-Martin. The Jacksonville Dolphins are still on my wish-list.
But this summer, I caved in and bought this shirt that features my favorite DI mascot ever (though the Fort Wayne Mastodon has to be climbing the charts).

Yep, that's the Cal-Irvine Anteater. This depiction of the snouty mammal sealed the deal, as it reminded me of one of my favorite characters from the old Pink Panther cartoons, seen here in his native habitat.

Whew.
It's going to be a long off-season.
Monday, July 6, 2009
USA College Dream Team USA Rolling in World University Games
That's no surprise, but this is: A Bo Ryan coached team scored 113 points!
Evidently Wisconsin's Ryan doesn't hew to his ball-deflation strategy when he's got talent like Robbie Hummel of Purdue, Jarvis Varnado of Mississippi State, and Corey Fisher of Villanova. Team USA is runnin' and gunnin'.
The World University Games is an international competition for college students. Team USA has won gold 13 times, most recently in 2005. In '07, USA Basketball was represented by the University of Northern Iowa (the organization was already fielding two other teams that summer, and didn't have the manpower to support a third). UNI finished 9th.
This year, though, it's back to an all-star team of 12 top players, all from power conferences. (Here's the roster).
USA started first-round pool play with an 87-40 win over Finland, and assured advance to the second round by thrashing South Korea 113-76 on Independence Day.
Second-round play commenced yesterday, and with a 108-77 win over Greece, the U.S. is guaranteed advancement into the quarterfinals.
Coach Ryan has spread the minutes around, as almost every guy on the 12-man roster has gotten double-figure minutes in each game. For that reason, it's tough to identify a star -- a different player has lead in scoring in all three games.
Here are the cumulative statistics for the three games so far; I pulled out some highlights if you don't care to dig for them.
James Anderson (Okla. St.): One of three players averaging double figures at 10.8 ppg.
Talor Battle (Penn St.): His five threes lead the team.
Trevor Booker (Clemson): Shooting 69% from the field.
Craig Brackins (Iowa St.): His 22 boards lead the team; also shooting 69% from field.
Da'Sean Butler (West Va.): Shooting 4-7 from trey-land, has a 6-1 A/TO ratio.
Corey Fisher ('Nova): Leads team in minutes, but having trouble from three (2-11).
Lazar Hayward (Marquette): Another guy having trouble from three (1-8).
Robbie Hummel (Purdue): Playing well all-around, compiling steals, blocks, assists if not a ton of points.
Quincy Pondexter (Washington): Has excelled at getting to the line, his 18 FT attempts lead team by 6.
Deon Thompson (UNC): Leads team in scoring (12.3 ppg), shooting 64%.
Evan Turner (Ohio St.): Low man in points, but leads team in assists and steals.
Jarvis Varnado (Miss. St.): Has played fewest minutes of any player, still leads in blocks (3).
One note about a non-USAer with college hoops pertinence: Zhaoxu "Max" Zhang of China is dominating the tournament defensively, far and away the leader in rebounds (17.7) and blocks (20 in three games). Take note, Pac-10 guards -- the 7-3 Zhang, who was a garbage time player for Cal last year, will be a bigger presence for the Bears this year.
Also, according to YouTube, he is the tallest man ever to do the Soulja Boy dance. So...there's that.
Team USA plays fellow undefeateds (and host country) Serbia Tuesday at 2 p.m. EST, the results of that game will determine which of Latvia or Bulgaria the U.S. will play in the quarterfinals.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Back to the Ol' Blogspot
As much as Marco and I liked the look of our page when it was with MVN, there were a few other issues that we just couldn't get past. So we're going to sit here at the old Blogger layout for part of the summer while we plot the next move.
Here are a few things we learned as we experimented with joining a content network.
1. We really like being independent. It's just the way we're wired.
2. We like being part of the Yardbarker family and don't want to do anything to mess that up.
3. We need to learn something about how to actually manipulate code some day.
4. We should have swallowed our pride and asked one of our smarty-bobarty friends instead of becoming a cog in a machine.
We have some notions of how we're going to fix the whole "your page looks cruddy" issue. That's what summer is for.
Well, that, and helping us turn our STFU Wiki into something really special.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
STF at Blogs with Balls 1.0
Some of you may know that Marco and I met up and traveled to New York to attend the Blogs With Balls symposium last weekend. The event was hosted by HHR Media, who did a spectacular job of integrating mainstream and new media personnel - not only on the panels, but also in the attendees.
We met several people whose work we have admired from afar: Spencer Hall from EDSBS, Nathaniel Friedman from Free Darko, Greg Wyshinski from Yahoo! and so many others - Michael Tunison, Matt Ufford, Dan Levy, Matt Sebek... the list goes on forever.
Anyway, another blogger I wanted to meet was Keith Thibault of Sports Media Journal. Keith runs a public-access TV studio in Rhode Island, so he came to the conference prepared to do some serious interviewing. I was honored to be one of his first subjects:
I also introduced Keith to our brother in college hoops, Jonathan Tannenwald, who got to give his take on the intersection of new and old media:
Thanks to Keith for taking time to chat with us. Blogs with Balls was a revolutionary experience for Marco and I. If they ever have one of these things near where you live, I highly recommend it.
