Burger And A Beer? No Problem!

THE QUID PRO QUO

Although she has turned into a bona fide college hoops fan, I kind of felt sorry for Momma Cuandito last weekend. What caused this sympathy was my television viewing plan covering Friday night through Monday, as follows:

Friday: NCAA women's Final Four semi-finals from Tampa, including # 1 seed Notre Dame (the "Irish Lassies," as I like to call them) versus the # 2 seed UConn Huskies. This heated rivalry has been labeled by many sports journalists as the best in the women's game over the last decade. The ND-UConn tilt was slated to follow the other semi-final, # 1 seed Baylor vs. # 2 seed Oregon.  Naturally I felt an obligation to watch the Lady Bears-Ducks semi in case Irish head coach Muffet McGraw called me later for a scouting report on the winner.  I've always been a fan of Muffet ever since she responded with a hand-written note to a congratulatory letter I sent her following Notre Dame's 2001 National Championship.  [An aside:  Many observers have opined that Muffet and UConn head coach Geno Auriemma don't appear to like each other.  At the Women's Final Four Media Day, they were asked about their relationship, and whether they might be friends if not for their teams' rivalry.  Muffet answered, "I would respect him, but I wouldn't want to be married to him."  Geno replied, "I wouldn't want to be married to me either."]

Saturday: Considered by hoops fanatics to be the greatest sports day of the year, the two NCAA men's Final Four semi-finals, Auburn-Virginia and Michigan State-Texas Tech.  The winners get to play for the National Championship.  Having the Final Four in Minneapolis was exciting for our metro area, but the truth is I would watch every second of both games regardless of the venue location.  By comparison, my annual agenda for watching the NBA playoffs is this:  Wait for the final series, and if there is a Game 7 I will watch the last two minutes.

Sunday and Monday: The NCAA women's national championship finals and the men's, respectively, each preceded by an hour long pre-game show.

All together, that's about sixteen or seventeen hours of boob tube watching over a four evening span.  To compensate Momma Cuan for the hogging of our TV, I had a brilliant (BRILLIANT!) idea. "Let's go out for lunch Saturday," I suggested.  Momma Cuan was all in.

THE GAME PLAN

Since we each have different favorites when it comes to pizza and burgers, we usually take turns picking the establishment if one of those foods is what we jointly have in mind.  For example, if we're going for pizza, The Leaning Tower (24th & Lyndale) is my fave, whereas Momma Cuan prefers Black Sheep (26th & Nicollet).  Both are very acceptable to each of us, so it makes little difference whose turn it is to pick.  The same can not be said for hamburgers.  Everyone who knows me well is aware of my periodic craving for the Amsterdam burger at Park Tavern, aka the "PT."  For years I have labeled it the best burger in the Twin Cities.  MC absolutely loves Lake & Irving's entire menu, but especially their burger.  Unlike the pizza situation, I honestly don't relish L & I's burger.  I believe I'm a minority of one in my family.  (For what it's worth, my second place burger is the Mount Mushmore at JL Beers in Nordeast (First Ave & University).  JLB's burgers cost under $7, and as an extra added attraction they boast a fantastic tap beer selection.)

Our late Saturday morning conversation regarding dining destination went something like this.  You might notice hints of Minnesota-speak therein.

Me:  Where would you like to go for lunch?  What do you have a taste for?

MC:  I could really go for a great hamburger; haven't had one in awhile.

Me:  Okay, where do you want to go? (At this point I was sure she was going to say "Lake & Irving," but she surprised me.)

MC:  Oh, I don't care, you pick.  (At this point, I'm sure Mary thought I was going to choose the PT.)

Me, still feeling a little guilty about all the college hoops I'd been watching and still planned to watch that weekend:  How 'bout if I name five places, and you can pick from that list?

MC:  Okay.

Me:  Harriet's Inn, Merlin's Rest, The Lowbrow, Pat's Tap and Red Wagon (actually a pizza joint).  (Notice I left out L & I, but neither did I include the PT or JLB.)

MC: I can't decide.

Me: Well, what if I narrow it down to just two of those five?

MC:  Okay.

Me:  The Lowbrow or Merlin's?

MC: Where is The Lowbrow again?  Oh, yeah, 43rd and Nicollet.  Let's go there.

THE ADVENTURE

We left the Quentin Estates at 1:00, heading for south Minneapolis.  Although we had intentionally omitted downtown lunch spots from our list of of possibilities due to the congestion expected with the Final Four, we still hit a bunch of traffic snags along Lake Street.  As we slowly passed by The Lake Formerly Known As Calhoun, I half-expected Momma C to say, "I've changed my mind.  Let's do Lake & Irving."  You know what they say about a woman's prerogative.  But, that did not happen; we arrived at The Lowbrow around 1:30.

Our server was a nice young man whose name I didn't catch, but let's call him Oliver.  Oliver informed us that, on Saturdays, The Lowbrow served only brunch until 2:00.   "Lunch is not available until 2:00," he said almost apologetically.  He left to attend to another table, but promised he'd return quickly.  Mary and I had a meeting of the minds simply by making eye contact with each other.  We had already eaten breakfast that morning.  We had just spent a half-hour in the car getting pumped for hamburgers.  We were not in the mood for brunch, but hey, no problem.  We will simply order Bloody Marys, nurse those drinks for a half hour, then grub down on burgers.  Oliver soon returned and Mary told him our plan.

"Great," the eager Oliver exclaimed.  "But just so you know, we are unable to serve real Bloody Marys here, due to a neighborhood legal restriction.  I can offer you a Bloody Beer [made with Hamms which, as I recall, is barely drinkable suds from the old days] or a Sake Bloody."

Another silent meeting of the minds.  Both of those alternatives sounded disgusting, or as our granddaughter Rosie would say, "exgusting."  "I'll be right back," claimed the over-extended Oliver.

Mary and I figured by the time we drove to another restaurant or bar, it would be almost 2:00, so we came up with yet another idea.  Might as well stay at The Lowbrow, kill the 30 minute wait with a couple of beers, then order burgers at 2:00.  When Oliver returned as promised, we told him our new plan.

"Great," Oliver cried joyfully.  Then there was a pregnant pause.  "But just so you know..."  As soon as he uttered those five words we knew what followed would not be good.  "... we can't start cooking our lunch items right at 2:00 because it takes the kitchen about twenty-five minutes to clean the grill and convert their operation from brunch to lunch."

Sigh.  As we exited The Lowbrow we concluded the travel gods must have taken today off.

***

A short attempt for lunch at Revival proved equally fruitless and nearly fatal.  That small restaurant, which rightfully has a reputation as the premier place in Minneapolis for fried chicken, was not on our radar before we'd set out for The Lowbrow, but the two places are right across Nicollet Avenue from each other.  We had loved our two previous Revival visits, so using the Bird In The Hand Theory, we decided to give it a shot.

Two problems, getting there and getting seated.  Crossing Nicollet at 43rd Street is literally tempting fate.  The vehicles come whizzing by from both directions without regard to pedestrians.  After our second aborted attempt Mary reminded me that a few months ago a woman was killed right there trying to do what we were struggling to do now, i.e., crossing Nicollet to get to Revival.  Our third time was the charm, only to find out that people were lined up inside for what appeared to be at least a forty-five minute wait.  Neither one of us was in the waiting mode, especially following our disappointments at Lowbrow.  Crossing Nicollet a second time to get back to our car proved more challenging than the first, as a city bus decided to park along the curb on the south side of 43rd, obstructing our view of oncoming traffic.  We had to go out almost to the center line to scope out a break.

***

When we reached our car parked two blocks away, it was time to reconsider our options.  By now we were not only frustrated, but hungry as well.  We weren't that far from Matt's Bar (35th & Cedar), but decided that was too much of a tourist attraction for the out-of-towners here for the Final Four.  Friday night's local news telecast confirmed that.  Pat's Tap (35th & Nicollet) was even closer, but when their outdoor patio is closed at this time of year, the inside space gets filled up quickly.  Once again, I wondered if Momma Cuan was going to bring up Lake & Irving, but I was not about to propose the idea.  "Well, Merlin's Rest is still an option," I pointed out to her, "and a Belhaven would taste pretty good right now."  We drove off, destination 36th Avenue & East Lake.

***

Merlin's Rest is a Longfellow neighborhood bar which we discovered several years ago.  It is the only tavern in Minneapolis which serves Belhaven on tap, so even though it requires a grueling drive up and down Lake Street, we need a Belhaven fix every so often.  Belhaven is to Scottish ale what Guinness is to stout.  It is even poured the same way, meaning the bartender lets the first stage settle in the glass before topping it off with a perfect head.  At Merlin's, the food is almost an afterthought.

This was turning out to be a day in which plan flexibility was not only well-advised but even mandatory.  We still tinkered with other dining ideas as we zig zagged across the residential streets of south Minny, bound for Merlin's.  First Mary proposed heading to a bar in the Nokomis neighborhood where we had enjoyed good burgers last year.  The problem was neither of us could recall the name of the place, although I knew it used to be the Sunrise Inn.  I was foggy on the location, but vaguely remembered walking to the Sunrise over ten years ago from the Blue Line's 46th Street station.  We headed for 46th, but before I could get there I found myself in a left turn only lane when I needed to go straight.  Unable to change lanes, we found ourselves going southwest on Hiawatha.  When we couldn't get a cell phone signal to figure out directions, we scrapped those short-lived plans for the Nokomis place.  (For the record, the bar we were momentarily trying to get to is called the Bull's Horn on 46th Street and 34th Avenue.  We'll have to save that idea for another time.)

When we passed Roosevelt High School we contemplated checking out Northbound, a smoke house so-named because it is spitting distance away from the Blue Line's 38th Street station.  Smokehouse is one of those places where the aroma from the kitchen grabs you as soon as you walk inside.  It's also another place which, like Merlin's, I associate with a particular beer, in this case their Smokehouse Porter.  Yum!  Writing about it makes me want to go there soon.

By the time we arrived at Merlin's we truly needed a rest.  It had been almost an hour and a half since we'd left the Quentin Estates.  Maybe we shouldn't have been so adventurous in our quest for burgers and beers.  The restaurant was not busy at mid-day and we easily found two stools at the rail.  The bar was being tended by Allie, who sports a tattooed outline of the state of Minnesota above her left breast.  I always think it would have been more appropriate for her to have chosen Scotland's Highlands, this being a Scottish pub, but who am I to judge?  She has served us a number of times before and, to her credit, pours an excellent pint.  

After starting out with delicious Belhavens, we at last ordered our long sought burgers, The Burger (aka plain burger with cheese) for Momma C and an Irish Burger for me.  I would have ordered a Scottish burger, but none appeared on the menu.  The Irish Burger's "secret ingredient" is Connemara bacon jam.  Fifteen minutes later, as she presented our meals, Allie raved about how much she loved her employer's burgers.  She told us that she refused to eat a hamburger anywhere other than Merlin's and one other Minneapolis restaurant which had the same meat supplier.  Mary obliged Allie by asking which other restaurant.  Allie replied, "Lake & Irving.  Are you familiar with it?"

Fouls To Give

March Madness, The Big Dance, Hoops Hoopla.  The NCAA men's tournament has started.  Many of us will now watch games between two teams we haven't followed all year.  Even if we don't have a rooting interest or a connection to either of the combatants, we can always resort to cheering for the team wearing the darker jerseys; they are the lower seed, and therefore the underdog.  The excitement level of most year's tournaments is directly proportional to how many upsets occur.  The tournament is comprised of sixty-seven games, and you can bet that a chunk of them will go to the underdog.  In fact, since the turn of the century there has been only one year, 2008, when the top seed from each region made it to the Final Four.

One basketball term which the television and radio announcers have been using more over the past several years is "fouls to give."  I don't remember that term being used much, if at all, until about two or three years ago.  What does it mean, and why is it important?

In men's college basketball, a non-shooting foul (sometimes referred to as a "common foul") does not result in a free throw until the offending team has committed its seventh foul of the half.  At that time, the opponent is in the "bonus" and is therefore entitled to a "one-and-one," i.e., a free throw which, if successful, is followed by a second free throw.  Once a team commits its tenth foul of the half, the opponent is in the "double bonus" and is therefore entitled to shoot two free throws even if the first attempt is unsuccessful.

When a team has "fouls to give" that means it has not yet reached its sixth team foul of the half, so the commission of its next foul will not put their opponent in the bonus.  Thus the next common foul will not result in the opponent getting any free throw.  The opponent will merely get to inbound the ball.  With that in mind, sometimes teams with a foul to give will intentionally foul a player on the other team toward the end of a close game.

Consider this scenario.  Minnesota leads Iowa by three points with ten seconds to go in the game.  Iowa inbounds the ball at the opposite end of the court (ninety-four feet away) from its offensive basket, and Minnesota has fouls to give.  The Minnesota coaches have a choice to make.  Do we simply play tough defense for ten seconds, or do we intentionally foul an Iowa player when the clock has dwindled down to about four or five seconds?  Because Minnesota has fouls to give, if Minnesota executes the latter strategy, Iowa will not go to the free throw line.  Iowa will have to inbound the ball with only four or five seconds left.

There are two schools of thought on the wisdom of employing the end-game strategy of intentionally fouling an opponent when your team has fouls to give.  Here are the most important pros and cons.

The Pros:

1. Generally, fouling the opponent disrupts the opponent's rhythm.  It is not unlike a track sprint race with a false start.  Now the athletes have to start all over again, only in a basketball game there is now less time available for a team to do what it had originally planned.

2. The strategy works best if the opponent does not have any time out remaining.  The opponent's coach probably spent his last time out designing a play to run for the situation which presented itself at the ten second mark.  That plan at least partially, if not completely, goes out the window after the intentional foul.

3. Following along the same lines as # 2, it stands to reason that the more time which elapses between the coach's instruction and the moment of execution, the less likely successful execution will be.  This is particularly true if the team with the ball is young, inexperienced and on the road with thousands of fans screaming.  In our hypothetical, if Iowa is playing several underclassmen in The Barn, their chances of tying the game are decreased by Minnesota's intentional foul.

4. The opponent is forced to inbound the ball, not always an easy task.  Minnesota will probably have its tallest player, with a wing span resembling that of a Boeing 747, jumping and waving his arms in front of the inbounds passer.  Minnesota will want to force Iowa to inbound the ball to a Hawkeye running away from his basket.  That will eat up a few more precious seconds.

5. Even if Iowa completes the inbounds pass, with fewer ticks left on the clock, Iowa will be limited as to how many dribbles and passes it can make before its final shot.

6. If Minnesota still has yet another foul to give, it might even do so again after the inbounds pass has been completed.

The Cons:

If intentionally fouling when you have fouls to give is such a brilliant end-game idea, why don't teams do it all the time?  Here are some reasons why, and they are all deal breakers. 

1. Minnesota must not be called for an intentional foul, even though they are intentionally fouling! In other words, the Gopher committing the foul has to be somewhat of a good actor.  He can't just hack at the Iowa player he wants to foul.  If the referee rules that the foul was intentional, Iowa will shoot free throws and then retain possession of the ball.  A good rule of thumb for making an intentional foul look unintentional is this: Swipe up at the ball, not down.  If you swipe up, you will not be called for a hack.

2. Equally as dangerous as # 1 is the possibility of fouling a player in the act of shooting.  If the Gopher player is just a few tenths of a second too late with his intentional foul, the Iowa player could launch a shot in the process.  If the referee deems the foul was a "shooting foul" (not a common foul), Iowa will shoot one free throw if the shot goes in, or two free throws if the shot misses.  Either way, bad news for the Gophers.

3. The Minnesota coach should be able to trust a bench player to commit the intentional foul.  You want to avoid having to use a starter, especially one who already has three or four personal fouls, to be the one who commits the foul, because if by some miracle Iowa sends the game into overtime, you want your starter available for the OT.  The problem for Minnesota is that the bench player may not be accustomed to being used in crunch time, and now you are asking him to perform a key role in your strategy.

4. This might be the biggest warning of all, and it is one emphasized by basketball analyst/guru Fran Fraschilla many times.  A coach whose team has a foul to give should not ask his players to do so unless his team has repeatedly practiced that end-game scenario throughout the season.  The art of intentionally fouling an opposing player in the heat of battle requires (as noted above) perfect timing and a bit of acting.  This is not something you whip up on a clip board during a thirty second time out.  Using a "foul to give" has to be part of a team's regular arsenal.  If it's not, just play tough D and forget about giving the foul.

Gridiron Influences Hoop Rooting Interests

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

- John 8:7

 

The Big 10 Conference Tournament for men's basketball starts tomorrow in Washington, DC.  Every one of the thirty-two Division 1 conferences holds such a tournament.  The winner of each conference tournament receives an automatic invitation to the NCAA Tournament, aka the "Big Dance," regardless of where they finished in the conference standings during the regular season.  Any team not winning its conference tournament is at the mercy of the Selection Committee for inclusion in the NCAA tournament.  The Committee will choose thirty-six "at large" teams to fill in the sixty-eight team bracket.

 

With the Gophers expected to make some noise in this year's conference tournament, many Minnesota fans including me will pay more attention to the entire tournament, not just the games featuring our lovable rodents.  Usually I will simply root for the underdog.  But human nature being what it is, other factors come into play, including a school's head basketball coach -- thank goodness Jim Boeheim, Coach K, Coach Cal and Rick Pitino are not Big 10 coaches -- their football program and their fan base.  It may seem strange that I would include a football program as an element, but like it or not, college football is the make it or break it revenue creator for any college athletic program which hosts both football and basketball.  It is hard for me to wish a basketball team well if I have a problem with its school's football team.  My like or dislike of a school's basketball team sometimes has less to do with roundball than it does with the pigskin.  In other instances, football is a non-factor.

 

What follows, then, is my rooting interest ranking, in ascending order, of the fourteen Big 10 basketball teams in their conference tournament.  I have conveniently sorted them into two categories, creatively labeled "Teams I Would Like To See Lose" and "Teams I Would Like To See Win."  When two teams within the same category oppose each other, I root for the team closer to # 1.

 

I can be very judgmental, but in the universe of sports-related blogging, such behavior often comes with the territory.  I am not without sin, but I'm fine casting stones here.  As the great philosopher Popeye used to say, "I yam what I yam."

 

TEAMS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE LOSE:

 

14. Penn State: Penn State should have received the death penalty in football for the 2011 Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal.  The Nittany Lions' fans feel no shame.  The chances that Paterno knew nothing about what his assistant coach was up to in the locker room showers hover around 0%.  Yet the fans want to bring back a statue of the late Joe Pa which the school removed, under immense public pressure, from grounds outside the stadium.  (I wonder, how is the view from the fiery furnace?)  Hard to cheer for a hoops team whose fan base is likely comprised of the school's football fans.  Saving grace: None.

 

13. Ohio State:  The Buckeyes are having a horrible basketball season, an anomaly for them.  The Buckeyes' football fans have a reputation of being the most hostile hosts to visiting teams' fans of any major program in the country.  The head football coach, Urban Meyer, is known in some circles as "The Poacher."  Most coaches -- although certainly not new Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck, another poacher -- will stop recruiting a high school prospect once that kid has given a verbal commitment to another school.  It's only if that committed kid later initiates contact with another school, thus indicating that perhaps his commitment is not on solid footing, that a coach will resume going after the high schooler.  Not so Urbie.  A kid's verbal means nothing to him.  It is only after the kid has signed a national letter of intent that Meyer will call off the dogs, and only then because to do otherwise would invite an NCAA reprimand.  I have nothing against the Buckeyes' basketball coach, Thad Motta, except that he is willing to use "one and done" athletes, the standard practice of John Calipari at Kentucky.  Saving grace: Throughout the season, Motta has suffered from severe back pain.  I've had my share of back pain too, so maybe I should cut him a break.

 

12. Michigan:  For many years the Big 10 was known as "The Big 2 & The Little 8" in football.  The Big 2 were Michigan and Ohio State, especially in the days when Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes were, respectively, their head football coaches. The old Domers of my era never had a bone to pick with Michigan when we were students.  The Irish and the Wolverines did not play each other in football from 1944 until 1978, nine years after I graduated.  However, the younger generation of Irish alums and subway alums dislike Michigan even more than they do our arch rival, Southern Cal. The Michigan football team has a kind of gangsta thugginess about them, and many of their (especially younger) fans follow suit.  They are an easy team to mock.  Certainly the "team up north" leads the league in kinesiology majors.  Since they have hired the rules-bending Jim Harbaugh as their coach, Michigan's football fortunes will probably rise.  Similar to what I wrote about Penn State fans, how can I cheer for their basketball team when I know Michigan's hoops fans are also their football fans?  Saving grace: I do like the Wolverines' head basketball coach, John Beilein.

 

11. Maryland:  Notre Dame fans refer to Boston College as "Fredo," the Corleone brother in The Godfather who betrayed his family.  ["Fredo, you are nothing to me now," scolded younger brother Michael, who waited for their mother's passing before ordering a henchman to give Fredo his just desserts.]  BC, which was a charter member of the Big East, deserted that conference to join the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2005, at a time when the Big East was highly successful.  Maryland is the ACC's Fredo, opting in 2014 to abandon its ACC charter membership for what it considered to be the greener pastures of the Big Ten.  Maryland is not a midwestern school, rarely having midwestern kids on its roster.  I would rather cheer for schools that do.  Saving grace: Unlike their football team, which exemplifies gridiron mediocrity, the Terrapins have represented their new conference well on the hardwood.

 

10. Michigan State:  When I attended ND in the sixties, two chants which we yelled the most were "Hate State!" and "Screw Purdue."  Michigan State (158 miles from The Bend) and Purdue (109 miles) were practically neighbors of ours.  We played them every year in football, and those games were always no holes barred.  The most famous game in the ND-State series was the classic 10-10 tie which I attended in East Lansing my sophomore year, when we won the 1966 National Championship.   Throughout the years I have never considered the Spartans to be lacking class, but one ignominious incident which occurred on September 17, 2005 is still talked about every time the two schools meet.  After beating the Irish in overtime 44-41 at Notre Dame Stadium, several jubilant Spartan players planted a Michigan State flag at the fifty yard line.  That addition of insult to injury was a sportsmanship no no and remains the lowlight of the two schools' rivalry.  As for hoops, Michigan State has been the most successful Big 10 team since 1995 when current head coach Tom Izzo was hired to fill that position.  It's always gratifying for opposing fans to see a perennial favorite stumble.  Saving grace: Although he can be a court side crybaby, Izzo runs a clean program and is highly regarded.

 

9. Indiana:  Of all the Big 10 schools, the one having the biggest gap between glorious basketball success and football ineptitude is Indiana.  Minnesota has christened itself the State Of Hockey.  In Indiana they have Hoosier Hysteria, which technically refers to the high school scene but describes nicely the state's basketball atmosphere at every level.  This is the state of John "The Wizard Of Westwood" Wooden, Bobby Knight and of course the 1986 film classic, Hoosiers.  Indiana's 1976 National Championship team is the only team in NCAA Division 1 history to achieve a perfect season.  Like Izzo's Michigan State, Indiana can usually be counted on to have a very good season, so a bump in the road for them would be a pleasing change of circumstances for many of their conference rivals' fans.  Saving grace: Indiana has suffered more injuries to key players this season than any other team in the league.  The result has been a dismal season.  Cheering against them might be piling on.

 

8. Rutgers:  Rutgers does not belong in the Big 10.  It adds nothing to the conference's football or basketball standing as a Power 6 Conference.  Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delaney, a self-serving empire builder, sold the notion that Rutgers would bring the New York television market into the Big 10 Network.  Guess what, Jimbo?  New York is a pro sports town which pays scant attention to the Big 10.  No sports fans are more provincial than New Yorkers.  They could not give two hoots what Rutgers is doing, much less Iowa, Nebraska and their hinterland brethren. Saving grace:  Unlike Maryland, which came into the Big 10 at the same time as Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights have not represented their new conference well, but they are so weak as to be irrelevant.  I would feel like a bully rooting against them.

 

7. Purdue:  Purdue has always been a huge rival of Notre Dame.  See the chant cited above.  The following short story reflects how I feel about the Boilermakers.  In the fall of 1996, Momma Cuandito and I were on our way home from Oxford, Ohio where we had dropped off our daughter, Gina, at Miami University for her freshman year.  As a diversion from the long drive, we stopped in West Lafayette, Indiana to walk around the Purdue campus.  The temperature was around twenty-five, and we were too lightly dressed.  Our first stop was the bookstore, where I bought MC a heavy Purdue sweatshirt.  She offered to buy me one in return.  My response was, "I would rather freeze my badoodskies off than wear a Purdue sweatshirt."  The main reason to root against the Boilers in the upcoming tourney:  They are the # 1 seed; upsets make for engrossing, dramatic theater.  Saving grace: The best player in the Big 10 this year is Boiler big guy Caleb Swanigan.  He has a most interesting bio, including overcoming homelessness and obesity as a youth.  I wish him well.  I also like head coach Matt Painter, a former Purdue hoopster.

 

6. Nebraska:  The main reason I have the Cornhuskers in this "Lose" category is that I can't think of a reason why I should root for them (unless, of course, they were playing one of the seven teams listed above them).  Maybe I am simply envious of their historic football success, although since joining the Big 10 in 2011, they are not the powerhouse they once were in the old Big 8 Conference.  My observation is that Big Red Country is all about football; basketball is just something to watch in the offseason.  I would rather see a team with a more vested interest from its fan base achieve basketball success.  Saving grace: I have heard from many sources that the Nebraska football fans are among the most gracious and hospitable sports enthusiasts in the nation, showing a lot of class whether in Lincoln or on the road, i.e., the opposite of Buckeye fans.

 

5. Iowa:  I am conflicted whether to put the Hawkeyes in the Win or Lose category.  I lived in Iowa for three years, yet have never claimed to be from that state.  When asked the question, I have always responded, with pride, that I hail from Illinois or North Dakota.  I have attended many football and basketball games pitting Minnesota against either Iowa or Wisconsin.  Here is my observed comparison. When the Badgers win their fans celebrate and  have a party, right there in the stadium or arena.  Their band is excellent.  "When you've said 'Wis-con-sin,' you've said it all!"  When the Hawkeyes win their fans feel a need to brag and ridicule their vanquished opponent.  They have failed to learn the wise advice learned from a coach in my youth: When you lose say little, when you win say less.  Saving grace:  As I wrote in my December 28, 2016 post, I enjoy Iowa's fiery head basketball coach, Fran McCaffrey, and not just because he is married to former Notre Dame basketball star Margaret Nowlin.     

 

TEAMS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE WIN:

 

4. Wisconsin.  The number of reasons to cheer on the Badgers is marginally greater than the number on the opposite side of the ledger.  It starts with my favorable impression of the Wisconsin fans; see my comparison to Iowa's above.  Our family cabin is in the great Wisconsin North Woods, which makes me a land owner and a tax payer.  My daughter-in-law, Lindsey, is a Badger alum, as are several of my kids' friends.  And what better place to spend a fun weekend than Mad City?  I also appreciate the tradition of the Badgers' players staying in school for the duration of their eligibility, a practice which one might cynically attribute to a dearth of NBA caliber talent.  The Badgers' roster is not stocked with McDonald's All Americans, but they've been to the Sweet 16 each of the last three years.  On the other hand:  The Badgers are the Gophers' arch rival, which causes some pangs of betrayal for those of us on the west side of the St. Croix to pull for them when they're not facing Minnesota.  (Note: Although Wisconsin has had the upper hand lately in football -- twelve straight wins over the Gophs -- the football series is tied 59-59 plus 8 ties.  The Maroon & Gold hold a razor thin victory margin in the basketball series, 102-99.)  There is also the matter of recruiting wars, with both schools going after some of the same high school phenoms.

 

3. Northwestern.  Northwestern,the highest ranked school academically in the Big 10, has never participated in the NCAA tournament.  Although the term "Mildcats" originally was meant as a slur on the football team, the Wildcats basketball team historically has also proved deserving of the label, having almost always finished in the bottom half, if not the bottom fourth, of the Big 10 standings.  Not so this year; seeded sixth in the Big 10 Tournament, they are a lock to be invited to the Big Dance as an at-large team.  Northwestern is this year's Cinderella of Power 6 teams.  The icing on the cake for rooting interest purposes is that one of their starting forwards is Sanjay Lumpkin, the pride of Benilde-St. Margaret's High School.  On the other hand: When I was a high school senior, I applied to three colleges, Notre Dame, Marquette and Loyola.  When I was a college senior, I applied to three law schools, Minnesota, Northwestern and DePaul.  Of those six schools, Northwestern was the only one to respond thumbs down.  Should I be rooting for them anyway?

 

2. Illinois.  Illinois is my native state.  (The rumors you've heard are true; Hillary Clinton and I were born four days apart in Chicago.)  In grade school I developed a love of geography -- thank you Mrs. Foley, my fifth grade teacher -- and studied the Prairie State quite thoroughly.  Ever since then I've held a fondness for the Land Of Lincoln.  It is hard for me to cheer against the Fighting Illini, even though I haven't lived there since I was thirteen.  No one can accuse me of being a front running band wagon rider.  Illinois finished ninth in the Big 10 and would probably have to win the conference tournament to reach the Big Dance.  On the other hand: No basketball team wastes its location in fertile recruiting grounds like Illinois.  Illinois high school basketball is among the best in the nation.  If only Illini could recruit two or three of the top players from the Chicago area each year, they would have a leg up on their conference brethren.          
 

1. Minnesota.  The reasons for placing the Gophers # 1 are obvious.  The four biggest are (i) Momma Cuandito is an alum, (ii) I have lived here since 1966, (iii) my kids and grandkids were born here and live here, and (iv) to do otherwise would incur the wrath of Gina, the Hot Italian Tomato and the Gophers' # 1 fan.  On the other hand: I am not a fan of the new Gophers' football coach, PJ Fleck. (Here we go again, looking to football in a basketball post.)  It is my (old fashioned?) belief that when a new head coach accepts the position, he should not recruit or accept transfers from the program he is leaving.  Such practice is probably unethical, and if that's too harsh an accusation, let's just say it does not pass the Smell Test.  This coming season's football roster will be stocked with former Western Michigan recruits and at least one or two transfers.  If you think he won't pull the same stunt when he leaves Minny for greener pastures some day, you must also believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Get A T.O., Baby!

We are now down to the season's final football game, the Cheaters' Bowl, aka Super Bowl.  That February 1 duel will be between the Patriots' head coach, Bill Belichick, who got caught cheating more than once in the NFL (plus new allegations regarding ball deflation last Sunday), versus the Seahawks' head coach, Pete Carroll, whose program at Southern Cal got caught cheating by the NCAA, which levied stiff penalties against the Trojans, causing Carroll to get out of Dodge before the posse arrived.

The wait between football season and baseball spring training is about four weeks.  I like hockey, but not enough to watch it on the tube.  It must be about time to write about basketball.

This post contains my observations about one of the key elements of the game, viz., time outs.  To be clear, I'm not referring to media time outs, but rather time outs charged to a team.  Since I follow college hoops more than any other level, this post mostly pertains to that game, although you are invited to extrapolate what I've written into the pro or high school game.  I have collected my thoughts into five tidbits.

1. The Initial Time Out.  One of the sublime satisfactions of coaching, playing or cheering for a team occurs when the opponent is forced to call the first time out of the game.  Of particular joy in a televised game is when the opposing coach feels the need to call that initial T.O. before the first media time out (which is scheduled to occur after the first whistle following the 16-minute mark).  "The wheels are coming off the wagon.  Help!"

When a coach uses that very early time out, it's tantamount to him admitting to his team that they're either not prepared (read: getting out-coached) or that they are not executing the game plan.  Waiting for the media time out may be too late to salvage things.  They need to huddle up NOW!

The coach most famous for espousing the theory of "forcing" the opponent to call an early time out was The Wizard Of Westwood, John Wooden of UCLA, commonly regarded as the greatest college coach of all time.  He almost never called the first time out of the game.  One of the rare times he did was against Notre Dame on January 19, 1974, when the Irish snapped the Bruins' record-setting eighty-eight game winning streak.  Irish Coach Digger Phelps told his team during that noteworthy T.O. that they were going to win the game; the great Wizard had caved.  The documentary Eight-eight And One includes recollections about that game by some of Wooden's players, like All American center Bill Walton.  According to Walton, when Wooden called time, his own players couldn't believe he'd done so, it was such a rarity.

Incidentally, in last Saturday's Gopher-Rutgers game, Rutgers head coach Eddie Jordan decided to call a time out at the 16:18 mark of the first half.  His team was off to a horrible start, trailing the Gophs 10 to 2.  He felt he couldn't wait for the fast-approaching media time out.  The fans in The Barn recognized the desperation, and cheered wildly.

2. The Second Time Out.   There is an old saying that you can't take time outs home with you.  In other words, if you have five time outs per game, you should use all of them, especially if you're losing, because you obviously can't carry them forward to your next game.  However, you can carry unused time outs from the first half into the second half.  Most coaches do not want to use more than one time out in the first half.  They want to go into the second half with four T.O.s in their pocket.  (The teams are already getting four media time outs per half, at the 16, 12, 8 and 4 minute marks.)  Using that second allotted charged time out before the half is usually a sign of weakness, desperation, unpreparedness, or a combination thereof.

Some coaches, both in hoops and in football, use the theory that they "only use the first half to get to the second half."  In other words, we are not looking for the blow out win right away.  We're not going to show all our cards in the first half.  Waiting until the second half to display new wrinkles makes it harder for the opponent to make adjustments.  Opponents' adjustments would then have to be made on the fly during the second half rather than having an entire half time (usually about twenty minutes) to do so.  All the more reason to save as many T.O.s as you can for the second half.

Only rarely are games won in the first half.  Coaches believe, "If we are at least close -- a deficit of less than double digits in basketball, or no more than a two-possession deficit in football -- there is no need to abandon the game plan." Using up a second charged time out in basketball during the first half would indicate an abandonment of the game plan.  No coach plans to burn two of his precious time outs in the first half.

3. The Final Time Out; End Game Strategy.  One of the great debates on basketball strategy is whether the coach should call a time out very near the end of the game, to go over with his players what he wants them to do in the final seconds.  I am in the camp of The General, Bobby Knight.  His ego, not to mention his skill as a coach, led him to this train of thought:  My team is better coached and better prepared than your team.  We have practiced end-game situations -- including with the lead, tie game and trailing scenarios -- countless times at every practice since Day One.  My kids know what to do without me calling time.  If I call a time out near the end of a tight game, that acts as something of an equalizer.  It gives you (the opposing coach) a chance to go over things with your team, a chance that my players don't need.  I have faith in my guys.

Of course, if you have a veteran (upperclassmen) team led by a savvy point guard, using Knight's approach is a lot easier to adopt.

In the January 6 game between the Gophers and Ohio State, the score was tied at 72 in overtime with 24.1 seconds to go.  Each team had one time out left.  The Buckeyes inbounded the ball at the far end.  OSU head coach Thad Motta chose not to use his time out, and was rewarded when forward Marc Loving  sank a nine foot jumper to put his team in the lead by two with 5.6 seconds to go.  Gopher coach Richard Pitino elected not to use his time out.  Instead, senior point guard DeAndre Mathieu came down the floor and proceeded to throw the ball away in the front court.  Game over.  A lot of the Minnesota faithful, and some media talking heads and scribes, took Pitino to task for not using a time out before the Gophers inbounded the ball.  I claim Pitino did the right thing, even though it did not work out.  Mathieu is a veteran point guard.  It's easier to attack a defense in transition instead of using a T.O., which would have given Motta time to scheme.  Them's the breaks.

In a bit of humorous irony, Dan Dakich, who was the ESPN television courtside analyst for the game, expressed great surprise that Pitino did not utilize a time out at the end.  What makes his comment ironic is that Dakich played four years for Knight at Indiana, and then was an assistant under Knight at IU for twelve seasons.  Apparently he and The General did not see eye-to-eye on end game strategy.

4. The Wasted Time Out.  How many times have we seen a player call a time out to avoid a turnover?  This happens often when the player with the ball is trapped, or is about to be tied up following a mad scramble with bodies strewn all over the hardwood.  My theory is this: Unless the situation occurs in a very close game with under five or six minutes to go in the second half, you are better off not using one of your precious T.O.s.  It's not the end of the world if your player gets tied up, especially outside of that five or six minute window.  Half of the time, your team is going to be able to retain possession of the ball anyway, because the possession arrow is in your favor.  If the arrow is going the other way, so be it.  I'd rather give up the ball that one time, play good D, and still have that T.O. to use later.  Any player who uses a time out to avoid a turnover in the first half should have to pick up towels in the locker room for a week.

5. Limiting End Game Time Outs.  Even basketball enthusiasts like my daughter, The Dolphin, think that games drag on needlessly at the end because each coach calls a series of time outs which they've been judiciously saving the entire game.  Here is my solution to the problem.  Change the rules so that after the last media time out (which, again, occurs at the first whistle following the four minute mark), each team is permitted a maximum of only two time outs, even if they have more than two left.  I would really prefer changing the rule to one (instead of two) time outs permitted during that period, but realistically, that is unlikely to happen in the current climate.  Even if each team used up all of their allotted T.O.s, under the proposed new rule at least they all wouldn't be bunched up at the end of the game.      

The General Was Out Of Line

The two most important games of the basketball season, the NCAA men's and women's championship games, will take place tonight and tomorrow night.  Yes, I realize that many fans consider the men's semi-final games held last Saturday to be more important than all but the men's final.  Might they be overlooking the fact that the undefeated Irish women are are in Tuesday's title tilt?  Regardless, it's time for a basketball post.

Last Tuesday night the Gophers defeated Florida State in an NIT semi-final game at fabled Madison Square Garden.  One of the two courtside TV analysts was Bobby Knight, referred to by Dick Vitale and other hoops celebrities as "The General."  Anyone who has watched Knight over the years, and especially those who have read John Feinstein's "A Season On The Brink," knows that The General is a horse's patootie.  A case in point illustrates the epithet.

 

The Gophers were clinging to a three point lead with seven seconds remaining, and the Seminoles inbounded the ball on the opposite baseline from their basket.  Both teams were in the double bonus.  Knight opined as if it were gospel that the Gophers needed to foul the Seminole player with the ball before a shot was attempted.  However, the Gophers elected not to foul, choosing instead to play straight-up defense.  Of course, as luck would have it, FSU guard Devon Bookert drained a low percentage three pointer with 0.3 seconds to go, thus forcing the game into overtime.  The gloating Knight immediately castigated head coach Richard Petino for not instructing his players to foul when the Noles inbounded the ball.  "The Minnesota coaches really fell asleep on that one," scolded Knight.  The TV viewers were then treated to Knight repeating his point ad nauseam during the interlude between the end of regulation and the beginning of OT.

 

Wouldn't you know, an almost identical situation then presented itself at the end of the overtime period. Minnesota led by three as the Noles inbounded the ball from the far base line with 6.1 seconds to go. Presumably for the benefit of those late-comers who missed his commentary at the end of regulation, The General reminded us once again that the Gopher coaches "fell asleep" by not fouling at the end of regulation. Yet once again, the Gophs chose not to foul, only this time FSU missed their last desperation field goal attempt.  Final score: Gophers 67, Seminoles 64.

 

The point of fouling the trailing team is to shorten the number of seconds in which they have a chance to run a play before time expires.  Ideally, the leading team wants to limit that very last play to a "catch-and-shoot," for which the chances of success are minimal.  No time to reverse the ball, no time for a dribble drive, no time for screens or a pick 'n' roll, and no time for an offensive put-back.

 

Notwithstanding The General's unhesitatingly harsh vocal opinion regarding the wisdom of having the leading team intentionally foul in end-game situations, the proper strategy is not as cut and dried as Knight would lead us to believe.  There are plenty of head coaches who would have done exactly what Petino did, i.e., instruct his team to play straight-up tenacious defense for the opponent's last possession.

 

Here are some considerations which go into the decision of whether or not to have the leading team foul in end-game scenarios:

 

1. Does my team have "fouls to give," i.e., is the opponent in the bonus?  If my leading team has fouls to give, then having them foul intentionally makes a lot more sense.  (Such was not the case in the Gopher-Noles game.)

 

2. How much time is left?  If it's less than four or five seconds, the need to foul decreases, especially if the ball is in the back court. 

3. Where is the opponent inbounding the ball?  If the location of the inbounds pass is in the back court, it will take at least a few ticks to get the ball into the front court.

 

4. Is our lead three points, or less than three?  If the leading team is up by three points, all the leading team has to do is defend the three; two points won't beat you.  Therefore, the wisdom of intentionally fouling is at least questionable if the lead is three.

 

5. Are any of my players in foul trouble?  This could present a huge problem if the game goes into overtime. Therefore, the leading team's coach, if he opts to foul, might consider inserting a designated fouler (usually a deep reserve with quickness).

 

6. Whom to foul?  This is where a scouting report becomes important.  Try to force the opponent to inbound the ball to a poor free throw shooter.  Double team the opponent's best free throw shooter.

 

7. The Two Worst Things That Could Happen are (i) fouling the opponent while he's in the act of shooting (especially if his shot goes in), or (ii) being called for an intentional foul, even though it is an intentional foul.  The guy who commits the intentional foul has to make it look unintentional so that he doesn't get whistled for an intentional foul, and he has to commit the foul before the opponent goes into the act of shooting.  To mitigate the risk, fouling in the back court is more desirable.

 

8. Is my team good at "playing small"?  The strategy of intentionally fouling is easier to execute with a smaller (and therefore quicker) lineup.  The trade off is that your chance of grabbing a defensive rebound is diminished with a small lineup.  That is a trade off which you, as the coach of the leading team, might not want to accept. 

 

9. Similar to point # 8, is my team good at executing the intentional foul in end-game situations?  By April, the coaches have seen their teams in practice and in thirty or so games since last autumn.  Some teams are good at the execution, and some are not, and no one knows better than the head coach where his team falls on the spectrum.  If my team simply is not good at pulling off the end-game intentional foul, I would not instruct them to to it.

 

I don't have a problem with The General imparting his wisdom to us laymen.  After all, the man did win three NCAA championships.  But to castigate (repeatedly) a head coach for failing to employ the end-game strategy deemed necessary by The General, particularly when there are many smart coaches out there who would consciously instruct his team in the same manner Petino instructed the Gophs, was uncalled for.  Give me the smooth Bill Raftery instead of The General, please.

On Foot Behind Enemy Lines

In the very imperfect world of college basketball, your team is nothing if you do not make it to the Big Dance.  For the uninitiated, the term "Big Dance" refers to the 68 team field comprising the NCAA men's basketball single elimination tournament, which dominates this country's sports scene for a span of three weeks.  Thirty-two qualify for the tournament by winning their conference championships.  The other thirty-six teams are invited by a selection committee to be "at large" entrants.  Teams that, as of this writing, are nationally ranked in the top twenty are virtual locks to participate in the Big Dance, either because there's a good chance they'll win their respective conference championships, or, failing that, they'll be invited by the selection committee as an at large entrant.  Likewise, teams whose records are currently well below .500 in their conference have almost no hope (or expectation) of reaching the NCAA tournament, unless they pull off a miracle and win their conference tourney.  This year's Notre Dame team, with an ACC conference record of 5-9, is in that second group.

The thirty or so teams which fall somewhere in between the two categories cited above, and which play in one of the so-called "power conferences," are commonly referred to as "bubble teams."   The Big Ten is a power conference, and the Gophers are on the bubble.  As of last Thursday the Gophs had a conference record of 5-6, tied for sixth in the twelve-team Big Ten with seven regular season conference games to go. Unfortunately, only three of those seven are in the beloved "Barn" (aka Williams Arena).  According to my North Dakota high school math, that meant that the Gophers would have to win at least one of their four road games to finish with a .500 Big Ten record -- that is, if they won all three of their home games.  The local hoops gurus have routinely stated, in matter-of fact fashion, that finishing with a regular conference record of 9-9 would be enough to get them into the Big Dance.

The four game road slate included Wisconsin on February 13, followed by Northwestern, Ohio State and Michigan.  Momma Cuan and I decided that the Gophers desperately needed our help in Madison, former home of daughter Gina and future (tomorrow!) daughter-in-law Lindsey, and one of our favorite midwestern destinations.  We figured even if the Maroon & Gold lost, there was a good chance we'd manage to have fun in Mad City.  Both of those prospects proved to be true.

The 275 mile drive to Wisconsin's capital is an easy one along I-94.  Wisconsin is one of the few states which do not require leaving the interstate highway to find beautiful landscapes.  This is particularly true in winter, when the farm fields are blanketed with deep pristine snow, and one can see much deeper into the woods than is possible during the other three seasons.  If it weren't for the omnipresent state troopers hiding out underneath bridges and on entrance ramps, medians and other invisible sneaky places, the journey would be near-perfect.

Not counting our requisite Norske Nook lunch stop in Osseo, we arrived in the capital city four hours after we left home.  Upon our arrival it took us what seemed like almost another four hours first to find our hotel, and then to figure out how to navigate the convoluted Madison streets to reach the hotel's parking ramp. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura once famously (infamously?) opined that St. Paul's street design must have been drawn up by a bunch of drunken Irishmen.  Ventura was criticized for saying that, but after trying to make sense of Madison's endless array of one-ways, diagonals, inner and outer circles, blockades and indecipherable street signs, Ventura's quip could certainly apply to that city too; just substitute "German" for "Irish."

Our hotel, the Best Western Inn On The Park, was located right on the square --sometimes referred to by the locals as the "inner circle" -- which surrounds the capitol, on the corner of Carroll & Main.  The ramp usage is free for the Inn's guests.  The valet informed us that the Badgers' home arena, the Kohl Center, was at most a fifteen minute walk from the hotel.  That was the first of many pleasant surprises regarding the walkability of downtown Madison.  Prior to being schooled by the valet, I would have thought that the Kohl Center was three miles away.

Our fourth floor room was fairly large, with a view of The Tornado Room across the street.  I had to snap a picture of that great steak house and send it to Michael, because the two of us dined there last September on our way to the Notre Dame-Oklahoma game.

Momma Cuan and I had almost three hours until tip-off at the Kohl, so we headed for The Great Dane for dinner.  It was another easy walk, albeit in the opposite direction from campus.  Every beer served at The Dane is brewed in-house.  The Nitro Bock 4000 is so-named because it was the 4000th barrel brewed by the proprietor.  Of the beers I've tasted so far this calendar year, it is my new favorite, displacing Northbound's Solstice Brown Wheat for that honor.

Our server told us the shortest way to walk to The Kohl from The Dane was to cut straight through the capitol, which he promised stayed open until 10:00 every night.  I don't know if he was pimping us for wearing our Gopher garb, but in any event it turned out to be a bum steer.  Nevertheless, the brisk walk to the game in the twelve degree weather was only twenty minutes.

The Kohl Center is very modern, the antithesis of The Barn.  The place was crawling with red and white, but no one gave us any grief for obviously being from the wrong side of the St. Croix.  Over the years I've found the Badger fans to be good natured, maybe due to the fact that Wisconsin teams usually have their way with Minnesota, regardless of the sport.  (Okay, maybe hockey is an exception!)  The students in the section right below our upper deck seats were a riot.  When the band played "Tequila," the kids all bounced around like Mexican jumping beans.  And whenever the Gophers' Latvian forward, Oto Oseniecks (Oceans Eleven), touched the ball, the young Badger fans would scream, "Yankees rule!  Yankees rule!"  Sure, that may have been poor sportsmanship, but I laughed anyway.

The less said about the game, the better.  Final: Whiskey 78, Minny 70.  Watching the Gophers' futility, it was hard to believe that they had beaten the Badgers by thirteen points in the Barn last month.

After our cold walk back from the game to The Inn, Momma Cuan and I decided that Jameson nightcaps were in order.  As you know from my June 3, 2013 post (Sojourn In Sudsville), a key element for Momma Cuan and I in selecting an urban hotel is that it must have a good bar.  Jerome's off The Inn's lobby filled that requisite nicely.  Two of the four sides of the tavern's room had floor-to-ceiling windows, half of them with a view of the capitol.  It just might be the best view in town.  We enjoyed the scene so much that we reprised the visit before turning in the next night too.  I did have to wonder, however, if the bartender was hosing me on that second visit, as the tab for two Jamesons then was $20, compared to $18 the night before.  Maybe I look like a rube.

On Friday morning we got out of bed in time to have brunch at Capital Brewery, just off the square on fabled State Street.  We each started out with a mug of coffee and a cup of clam chowder.  After that, there was no sense pretending; we each ordered a beer to go with our fresh lake perch sandwiches.  I decided at that point that if, in the late sixties, South Bend had a bar as close to the ND campus as Capital Brewery is to U Dub, it would have taken me six years to graduate.

The two non-drinking highlights of the afternoon were visiting the Madison Museum Of Contemporary Art, and a unique cheese store on the square called Fromagination.  The museum's featured exhibit -- a traveling exhibit organized by New York's Whitney Museum Of American Art -- was Real Surreal, a display of (mostly) paintings in which common elements are depicted with strange juxtapositions or exaggerated features.  The collection focused on works created during World War II and immediately thereafter.  A companion exhibit titled The Mystery Beneath was more of the same, but concentrating on Wisconsin artists.  Although I'm usually more attracted to classic European masterworks, I hereby readily and willingly admit that I was extremely impressed by what I saw at the MMOCA.  One of my favorite paintings was Triangle Inn No. 1 by Wisconsin artist Santos Zingale, who until 1978 was an art professor at U Dub.

Momma Cuan and I went back to Capital Brewery for a quick happy hour pint in between cultural stops and then off to see more little shops, the best of which was Fromagination.  When we first entered the small store, I was almost knocked over by the pungent aromas  emanating from the shelves and display cases. Three minutes later I did not even notice.  Fromagination has almost any kind of cheese you've ever heard of (except probably Velveeta!).  The pamphlet offered to customers categorizes the Wisconsin cheese inventory into product made from sheep's milk, cow's milk, goat's milk and "mixed and various milk" (e.g., Casa Bolo Mellage, produced by Carr Valley Cheese from a mixture of sheep, goat and cow's milk).  Momma Cuan decided to buy some Dunbarton Blue made by Roelli Cheese in Shullsburg, Wisconsin.

We must have browsed in every State Street store which sold infants' wear.  With Rosie now nine months old and Hortence due in early April, it's amazing how my attitude about clothes shopping has done a one-eighty.  A year ago, I would have found a watering hole and waited with a beer for Mary to come out of the shops.  Now I only use that strategy if the sought-after clothing is not intended for a grandchild.

Dinner that Valentine's night was at one of our old Madison standbys, the Essen Haus.  That German restaurant is another example of a destination which I would have guessed was well beyond walking distance from our hotel.  To the contrary, we hoofed it in less than twenty minutes.  Momma Cuan had the sauerbraten and I had the Bavarian Combo, a selection of German meats including jaeger schnitzel, weisswurst and wiener schnitzel.  I should have ordered the sauerbraten.

A funny thing happened after dinner, as we made our way to the indoor beer garden to finish our drinks, listen to the Steve Meisner trio play German polkas and watch the customers dance.  I still had almost a whole pint of my doppelbock left, and Momma Cuan had over half the complimentary bottle of Chilean merlot which had arrived earlier with dinner.  Mary finally decided that she simply could not ignore the inferior quality of that wine, and furthermore, when in a German restaurant is it not a given that you should be drinking beer?  But what to do with the half-full bottle?  We offered it to the four older women sitting at the table next to us, and you would have thought we'd given them the keys to Haskell's wine cellar.  They thanked us profusely.  Something told us that they most likely were not wine connoisseurs.  The fact that they actually enjoyed the Chilean vino was our first clue, but what removed all doubt was when the lady next to me dumped several ice cubes in her glass to chill the merlot.

Saturday morning was another beautiful sunny cold day in Madtown.  The temps were in the low teens, perfect for the Winter Festival events happening on Capitol Square.  The four streets were closed off, and huge trucks dumped piles of snow on them to create a wide track for snow shoe races and cross country ski competitions.  We wondered if the thought ever occurred to the event organizers to use one of the two huge lakes on either side of the isthmus as the venue rather than going through the effort and expense of bringing in copious amount of snow via trucks.

We were smart enough to purchase hot coffee at the nearby Starbucks, and then stood outside across the street from the capitol to watch the competition.  After awhile, we strolled around the square, "embracing winter" as Mary's mantra goes.

We stopped in a few more shops, including the Wisconsin War Veterans' Museum Store, watched the ice sculptors work their magic, and eventually made our way to the Overture Center For The Arts, Madison's impressive performing arts showpiece.  There, we enjoyed a concert by Black Star, a drum squad organized by the Boys & Girls Club Of Madison.  Those fifteen (or so) kids were skilled on the various types of drums incorporated into their show.  For a few numbers they were joined by local rappers whose charisma and talent had everyone in the multi-age audience smiling.

After exiting the Overture Center we started to retrace our steps from Thursday night.  We found Gorham Street and minutes later were belly-up to the bar at Brickhouse Bar-B-Que.  We inhaled scrumptious brisket and local craft beer while we watched the Olympics on the flatscreen overhead.  On the way back to Capitol Square I couldn't resist stopping for a look-see inside A Room Of One's Own, possibly the coolest book store I've ever been in.  It reminded me of Majors & Quinn in Uptown Minneapolis, only a little nicer and more user-friendly.  I was excited to find Graham Nash's autobiography, Wild Tales, which I purchased.  He was a founder and rhythm guitarist for the Hollies, my favorite band of all time not from Liverpool.  Most Americans probably know Nash more for his affiliation with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

We stopped to watch a little more of the cross country skiing competition, which was scheduled to run all day and into the early evening around Capitol Square, and then took an Olympics-viewing break (as if we deserved one) in our room.  Although hardly hungry after the big Brickhouse lunch, we walked over to Francesca's a few blocks away for pizza.  The place had a European feel to it, an interesting mixture of Italian cuisine with French ambiance.

We took the long way home, walking around the square one last time.  I believe I have personally seen twenty-four state capitols -- yes, I am linear enough to have kept track!  The Madison building, whether viewed at night or during the day, is number one on my list for beauty, elegance and setting.  (An aside, based on previous Madison visits: The view of the capitol at night from John Nolen Drive, with the lights reflecting off Lake Monona, is stunning.)

Sunday was our getaway day. Until the valet retrieved our car for us that morning, we had not used it the whole time we were in Madison. We were pretty proud of ourselves for being hardy Minnesotans. Skyways?  Who needs 'em?  Besides, Mad City doesn't have them!

Just one noteworthy item regarding the Sunday trip home.  We discovered a new restaurant along Interstate 94 called Timber Valley, which is in Hixton, Wisconsin.  There is a short history behind our discovery.  On the aforementioned drive to Notre Dame last September, Michael and I stopped for gas at a Clark station just off Exit 105 around 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday.  Attached to the station was a restaurant, and the steady flow of customers streaming into the place caught our attention, causing us to make a mental note to check it out on some future trip.  That opportunity presented itself to Momma Cuan and me on Sunday as we pulled off the road around lunch time.  Mary had a half baked chicken dinner and I had a big ham steak.  The food was very good and so was the price: $22.00, including a soft drink.  My only regret is that we had no room left to try one of their homemade pies, of which there were a dozen or more to choose.  I would love to compare Timber Valley's desserts to Norskie's, which is only seventeen miles up the road.

When we paid our bill, we noticed that, other than the gas station/restaurant and a small storage facility across the street, there was little else visible besides farm land.  Mary asked the young cashier, "Where, exactly, is Hixton?"

"This is it," came the reply.

Vikes Ignore Flag Football Coach

Last Wednesday the Star Tribune published a list of the eight men who had the best chance of succeeding the deposed Leslie Frazier as the next head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.  There were a few familiar names (Darrell Bevell, Jack Del Rio, Ken Whisenhunt) and some not so familiar (Todd Bowles, Dan Quinn, Ray Horton).  By Sunday's edition, the list of candidates had grown from eight to eleven.  My name was not included on the short list, and to add insult to injury, it was not even on the long list either.  Assuming the lists' accuracy, what I deduce is that my one year's experience as the head coach of the Most Holy Trinity girls flag football team thirty-eight years ago was not enough to impress Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman or owner Zygi Wilf.  So be it.

The humiliating experience of being shunted by The Purple's top brass, however disappointing that might be, is not enough to erase the happy memories of my coaching days.  By my count, I have coached forty-four teams, including the aforementioned girls flag football team, one girls soccer team -- I didn't know the rules, but nobody else stepped to the plate -- one wrestling team (all boys, in case you were wondering), three T-ball teams, eleven softball teams, nine baseball teams, thirteen girls basketball teams and five boys basketball teams.  The ages of my players ranged from five to fifteen.

There used to be a TV police detective show called The Naked City which ran for five seasons starting in 1958.  Each episode took place, and was filmed on site, in New York City.  At the end of each broadcast, a deep-voiced narrator would say, "There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."  Just like the TV show, I could probably come up with a little story about many of my forty-four teams, but there are couple of anecdotes which I like so much that I've told them several times over the years.  With apologies to those of you who've heard them before, I offer them today for your amusement.
  
The Aquila Atrocity:  Every T-ball league in America is a treasure trove of comedic stories.  How could it be anything else, considering that the players are five and six years old?  A third of the kids are clueless, and another third are hapless.  Yet almost every parent looks at her precious darling as the next Joe Mauer. Michael's T-ball team was an anomaly, as we had no less than seven or eight kids on that coed team who were good little athletes.  Therefore, the coaches could actually teach the kids some of the basics.  We even pulled off some force plays, relays, cut-offs and run-downs, all things one would rarely see in a T-ball game.

 

I was the head coach -- the manager, if you will -- of the team, and my two assistants were Craig and Mike, who were fathers of two of the players.  Craig and Mike fit the definition of "good cop, bad cop."  Craig, a marine veteran, was a person who commanded attention, and did not want to have the kids waste his time by not listening to his instruction.  Mike, on the other hand, was laid back, soft-spoken, and saw T-ball as more of a recreational activity than a competition.  (True confession:  I was more like Craig.  My feeling was, if the league is going to have us keep score, then we are in it to win it!)  Mike was one of those guys about whom it could honestly be said, "He does not have a mean bone in his body."  That's why what I'm about to write is preposterous, yet true.

 

The game in question took place on a field adjacent to Aquila School in St. Louis Park.  The diamond was surrounded by grassy slopes (grassy knolls?) which ran along the first and third base lines, and it was on those slopes that the parents sat. Most T-ball games are very well attended because they are among the first athletic competitions when parents can see their children in action.  This game was no exception; the hills were crowded.

 

At one point in our four-inning game, our opponents had the bases loaded.  Coach Mike yelled out to our infielders, "Get the easy out," meaning "if the ball is hit to you, throw it to the nearest base."  It is something that 99% of all baseball and softball coaches have yelled to their players under the same scenario.  That sentence is definitely part of the baseball lexicon.

 

Unfortunately, the mother of the kid who was batting took umbrage at Mike's choice of words.  She thought he was yelling to our pitcher that the batter was a weak stick!  Totally oblivious to the fact that Mike was only using conventional baseball parlance and was not demeaning her little Johnny in any way, she started swearing at him as if she were from the cast of Scarface.  She was sitting on the first base hill and our team's parents were across the field on the third base side, so her bellowing went across the diamond, audible to everyone there including the kiddies.  Finally, presumably when her husband or one of her friends explained things to her, she sat down and zipped her lip for the duration of the game.  The parents of our team laughed about that incident for the rest of the summer. But poor Mike!  He didn't deserve the verbal abuse.  

 

The Brookside Beanie:  My favorite sports quote of all time was uttered by John McKay, the head coach of the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers which, in 1976 under McKay's leadership, went a perfect 0 and 14.  Following one defeat late in the season, McKay was asked at a post-game press conference what he thought about the execution of his team.  "I'm all in favor of it," he quickly replied.

 

I only bring this up because my second favorite sports quote was delivered by my coaching assistant, Craig -- yes, the same Craig who coached T-ball with me -- during a hotly contested fourth grade boys game in the St. Louis Park Rec League at Brookside School.  The fourth graders played on a court drawn width-wise across the gymnasium floor, and the baskets were adjusted to eight feet (instead of the regulation ten) for the little guys.  The parents and other spectators sat on folding chairs lined up on the stage which ran along the length of one side of the modified court.  The team benches were along the opposite side.  As a result of this configuration, the parents could hear virtually every word that was spoken (i.e., yelled) by the coaches.

 

The teams in the fourth grade league were assembled by neighborhood, which for us meant Fern Hill, heavily populated by Jewish families.  Half the kids on our team, the Rockets, were of the Jewish persuasion, including Uri.  Uri was one of the most conscientious players on the Rockets, a hard worker, a good listener and a diligent competitor.

 

In the closing minutes, the game was on the line, and the Rockets were clinging to a slim lead.  The hot shot guard of the opponents was dribbling up the floor, and Uri was defending him well, although having difficulty keeping up with the kid.  While Uri was holding onto his own yamaka with his left/back hand, he was attempting to swipe the ball away from the dribbler with his right/front hand, all the time side-stepping to stay between his "man" and the basket.  Just as it looked like the guard was going to blow by Uri, Craig yelled out, "Uri, let go of that damned beanie and play some defense!"

 

If I could have dug a hole and disappeared into the Brookside floor, I would have.  There was no doubt the parents heard Craig.  Of course, the action didn't stop, and by the time the game ended fifteen or twenty minutes later, the shock value, if any, had dissipated.  There was the usual mingling of families after the game while we exited Brookside.  No one brought up the "beanie" comment.  I breathed a sigh of relief as I made my way out to my ice cold car.  I felt like we'd just dodged a bullet.  Craig and I straightened things out before the next practice. 

The Fours & Field Contest

Three weeks from today is not only St. Patrick's Day, but Selection Sunday as well. This means bracketology, office pools, hating Duke, wishing the Gophers weren't in the NIT, Cinderella teams, fans forgetting to call the two play-in games on March 19 and 20 "first round," Charles Barkley not knowing much about the college game but still managing to make the best observations of any of the studio talking heads (other than Jay Bilas), Gus Johnson screaming into the play-by-play mic, Digger Phelps using a felt tip marker which is color-coordinated with his tie, Dick Vitale waving his hands from side to side while he uses the word "unbelievable" in every other sentence, Clark Kellogg informing us that the losing team "doesn't need a three" even though they are trailing by five with under twenty seconds to go, spectacular slam dunks, miracle finishes, and of course, One Shining Moment. The three week NCAA men's basketball tournament is possibly my favorite time of the year, right up there with the World Series (which, incidentally, lasted only four games last year).

One reason why the Big Dance takes over the country for that three week period is that even people who have not watched a college basketball game all season can get involved. Most of the major sports websites, such as cbssports.com and si.com, host their own "fill in the brackets" on-line contests in which fans can participate for free. The prevailing wisdom is that US worker productivity takes a nosedive right before and during the tournament while people fill out their brackets and discuss their predictions over the proverbial water cooler. Almost all of the contests out there involve filling out a complete set of tournament brackets for all sixty-seven games. While this is fun in its own way, let's face it. We probably can't name even one player on most of the tournament teams, so there is quite a bit of luck involved.

Although I am not a big gambler, I feel that the tournament is a little more interesting for those who have some money at stake. Accordingly, I am proposing a contest, which I have dubbed the Fours & Field Contest. For purposes of this post, I'm calling it "The FFC." All you need are seventeen warm bodies who each have ten bucks to throw away. Of course, these are make believe bucks I'm writing about, since gambling is a no-no under the law.

The FFC is all luck; your fortunes depend solely on the luck of the draw. There is, however, a lot less work involved than trying to predict the winners of sixty-seven games (which, as I pointed out, also involves a huge portion of luck). Here is how it works.

The NCAA tournament is comprised of sixty-eight teams which are announced on Selection Sunday. Two "first round" -- actually play-in, regardless of what the NCAA says -- games are held on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 19 and 20, resulting in sixty-four remaining teams. Those teams are assigned to one of four regions, East, West, Midwest and South. Each region has its own two-week tournament, with each team therein seeded from 1 through 16. The winner of each region goes to Atlanta's Georgia Dome for the Final Four on April 6 and 8.

Some time between now and March 20, the Organizer of the FFC collects the imaginary $10 from each of the seventeen participants. Seventeen cards are put into a hat. One card is labeled "FIELD." The other sixteen cards have a seeding number from 1 through 4, plus the name of one of the four regions. For example, one card will be labeled "2 EAST." Another card will be labeled "4 SOUTH," etc. Once all the money has been collected and all seventeen cards are in the hat, those participants present for the drawing blindly pull a card out of the hat. For any participant not present, the Organizer selects someone to draw for that absent participant. When all the cards are drawn, there will be seventeen participants, each with her own card.

Let's say that the number 3 seed in the Midwest Region (as announced on Selection Sunday) is the Cincinnati Bearcats. Whichever participant has the "3 MIDWEST" card will have the Bearcats as her team throughout the tournament. If the number 1 seed in the West Region is the Gonzaga Bulldogs, then whichever participant has the "1 WEST" card will have the Bulldogs as her team throughout the tournament.

What about the participant who draws the card labeled "FIELD"? That lucky person will have all fifty-two teams which are not seeded in the top four of their respective regions.

Obviously, the Organizer needs to establish what the payoff structure will be before the money is collected and the cards are drawn from the hat. Since I am planning to organize my own FFC (if I can come up with seventeen people), my initial plan for how to distribute the imaginary $170 is as follows:

$5 to each participant whose team makes it to one of the four Region Finals (aka, the "Elite 8"), for a total payout of $40; plus

$10 more to each participant whose team wins one of the four Region Finals (aka, the "Final 4"), for an additional payout of $40 (cumulatively, $80); plus

$20 more to each participant whose team wins one of the two National Semifinal games in Atlanta on April 6, for an additional payout of $40 (cumulatively, $120); plus

$50 more to the participant whose team wins the National Championship game in Atlanta on April 8 (cumulatively, $170).

If the FFC participant who draws FIELD is lucky enough to have more than one team seeded 5 or below make it to the Elite 8 (or beyond), that person will be entitled to cash in for each such team. For example, if two of the teams which make it to the Elite 8 are seeded, say, # 7 and # 12, the participant who holds the FIELD card would win $10 (not just $5) at that stage.

Here are some historical tidbits about the Final Four for the last thirteen seasons (i.e., 2000-2012):

* Of the 52 teams which have reached the Final Four, 19 (37%) were # 1 seeds, 12 (23%) were # 2 seeds, 7 (13%) were # 3 seeds, 4 (8%) were # 4 seeds, and 10 (19%) were seeded # 5 or lower (i.e., from "the field").

* A # 1 seed has won the National Championship 9 out of the 13 seasons (69% of the time). A # 2 seed has won once (8% of the time), and a # 3 seed has won 3 times (23% of the time). No team seeded lower than # 3 has won the National Championship during the thirteen season span.

* The Final Four has had at least one # 1 seed 11 out of the 13 years (85% of the time). Only once, in 2008, have all four # 1 seeds made it to the Final Four.

Four quick final thoughts. First, Selection Sunday will be much more enjoyable and dramatic if the card drawing is done before the CBS telecast of the announcement of the tournament brackets. (ESPN also has a Selection Sunday show.) The show usually comes on the air at 5:30 CST. If you are going to participate in a FFC, consider having the drawing ceremony thirty minutes before the telecast. Second, I recommend having a "no trading" rule. You have to live with the team you draw. Third, if at all possible, don't allow anybody to play more than "one hand." The FFC works best with seventeen people, not fifteen with two participants paying double and drawing two cards.  And fourth, I am not advocating the FFC as a replacement for the standard "fill in the brackets" contest.  The latter is as American as apple pie (to coin a phrase).  I am suggesting the FFC as an additional source of merriment and entertainment.

Enjoy the tournament, remember that we're talking about imaginary dollars, and by the way, Go Irish!

Hoop Dreams At St. Joe's

Gopher forward Rodney Williams, a junior jumping jack, takes off with a leap from the free throw line, palms the basketball high over his head as he's suspended in mid-air, squirts between two taller defenders, apexes when his elbow is rim high, and slams the ball through the hoop. Two points! I turn to my wife, Mary (Momma Cuandito), and proclaim, "Rodney must have been watching film of me shooting layups at St. Joe's." She rolls her eyes and subtlety shakes her head from side to side. She's heard that joke before, maybe a hundred times. Getting no verbal response from her, I laugh at my own joke, as I am wont to do.

Actually, I did in fact play basketball for St. Joe's, my grade school in Libertyville, Illinois. In honor of Final Four Weekend which starts tomorrow, I thought I'd regale you with some memories of my one-year playing career.

St. Joseph School was housed in a large old two-story brick building, with no cafeteria or gymnasium. The Sisters of Mercy ran the school with the proverbial iron fist. The students were there to learn. Period. Extra curricular athletic activities for the youngsters (and by "youngsters" I mean boys) were left to the town's Little League and the Boys Club. Neither organization offered basketball, only softball, baseball and football. Things changed a little when a large addition was built for our school, just in time for the beginning of my eighth grade in the fall of 1960. We still didn't have a cafeteria, but at least now we had a gym. If you build it, they will come - - a basketball team, that is. The incarnation of the mighty St. Joe basketball squad occurred that winter.

There were twelve guys, all eighth graders, on our team, and our schedule included home and road games against many of the Catholic grade schools in northern Lake County. Our coach was a rotund middle aged fellow named Tom Pierce, who stood about five foot nine. He started the same five guys every game, and his rotation most of the time was ten deep, meaning that one other poor soul and I were riding the pines. This would not have been quite so ignominious were it not for the fact that St. Joe's did not win a single game all year. True, we were playing schools that had gymnasiums (probably) long before we did, and therefore fielded teams reaching back to fifth or sixth grade. But, you'd think that the law of averages would have enabled St. Joe's to come out on top at least once. Nope, it never happened.

I don't remember having too many practices in our shiny new gym, but I do recall, with clarity as if it were yesterday, two incidents that occurred at practice under the tutelage of the great Coach Pierce. During one of our first gatherings, I was dribbling the ball near center court in a four-on-four drill, when he loudly blew the whistle and yelled, "Double dribble!" He grabbed the ball from my hands, awarded it to the other side, and play resumed. A minute or two later, it was deja vu all over again. As I was dribbling he blew the whistle, this time even louder, and cried out with disdain, "Double dribble! Double dribble!!" The other side took possession and we carried on. I never knew what double dribble meant until after practice when I sheepishly asked one of my teammates. I guess Coach Pierce was too busy strategizing for the next opponent to take ten seconds to explain the rule to a kid who'd never played on a basketball team before.

The second practice incident left me feeling even lower. Around mid-season, the entire team was running around the perimeter of the court to warm up. The great molder of men, Coach Pierce, blew his whistle and called everyone over to the side to huddle up, except he instructed my teammate Tom S (I don't want to use his last name, although I can assure you I know what it was - - in fact, I saw him back in Libertyville about six years ago) to keep running. In the huddle he said to the eleven players (paraphrasing), "Even though Tom is not very good, I want you guys to remember that he is a member of our team. He is trying as hard as he can." This struck me as both odd and ironic. Keep in mind that Coach Pierce was not talking to the Dream Team. He was addressing a bunch of guys who had not come within fifteen points of winning a game. Tom S was no worse than at least eight or nine other guys on the team, but how would Pierce know? He had his unswerving rotation for the games. As you might have guessed by now, Tom S was the "other poor soul" to whom I referred two paragraphs above. I always wondered if the coach said the same thing to the team about me when I wasn't nearby.

As for my "blink of an eye" participation in actual games, I remember three things from that season fifty-one years ago. When we played Santa Maria on the road in Mundelein, we were getting stomped by over twenty-five points, and as the clock was winding down I had not yet been called to offer my valuable services. Up to that point I had usually played maybe two to three minutes a game. I figured Pierce was afraid if I went in, the margin would climb to thirty-five points in quick order. Then, with exactly four seconds left in the game (that is not a typo), he had me go in. Despite my absolutely heroic efforts during those four seconds, I could not snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

The second game action memory was also on the road, this time against St. Gilbert's up in Grayslake. Toward the end (when else?) of another lopsided game, I found myself with the ball, wide open at the top of the key. This was a shot I had been practicing forever on the playground, usually in a game of horse. I stroked the shot, it looked right on target with good rotation, but it hit the heel of the rim, bounced a foot in the air, and fell off to the side. Why, you might ask, do I remember that shot, especially when it didn't go in? The answer is very simple: in my basketball career, that was the only shot I ever took! Yep, I scored exactly zero points in the only year I played on a basketball team.

At the end of January, 1961, my family moved from Libertyville to Bettendorf, Iowa. That leads me to my third and final game memory. In my last game for St. Joe's before I left for Iowa, we had a home game, and Coach Pierce had me start. I did not ask for the honor; maybe my dad slipped him a sawbuck, I don't know. Anyway, before every game the five cheerleaders would go on the court to do a cheer which included the girls taking turns to name the five starters. "Mike, Mike, he's our man, if he can't do it, Billy can! Billy, Billy, he's our man, if he can't do it..." I can't recall who our opponent was that day, but I do remember the cheerleader who called out my name. It was Linda Donino. When you are a thirteen year old eighth grader, you notice things like that.

By the time we arrived in Bettendorf it was too late in the season for me to join my new school's team. Nine months later, I tried out for the freshman team at Assumption High School in Davenport, hoping that somehow I could go from an eighth grade benchwarmer to a regular player. Instead, I was cut from the first round of tryouts. My illustrious basketball career was over.

Linda Donino? I haven't seen her since I headed west in 1961. To borrow some words from "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band, I hope she's alive and doin' fine. I wonder if she realizes that when the history of basketball is written for the ages and the sport's greatest moments are relived, her name will be right there, along with Wilt, Magic, Bird, Michael and Kobe.