Random Thoughts for a Friday night/Saturday morning

Here are a few thoughts that crossed my mind recently:

• Due to injuries, Minnesota Wild Forward Marian Gaborik has only played in 13 of the teams’ 78 games to date. He has 9 goals & 5 assists in those 13 games, for a total of 14 points. The 9 goals make him 10th on the team, even though he’s only played in 17% of the games. He’s one of only 5 members of the team to have a positive +/- number for the year (and two of the other guys have spent half the year in the minors). His 1.08 points per game far surpasses anyone else on the team (Captain Mikko Koivu is 2nd with 0.84 points per game). The Wild as a team are currently on the outside looking in for the Western Conference playoff race, needing to probably win 3 or 4 of their final 4 games, and get help from some other teams, in order to sneak in to the post-season. They’ve won 47% of their games this year, and had 9 games where they earned 1 of a possible 2 points with an overtime loss (22% of their losses were OT losses). With Gaby in the line-up, they’ve won 62% of the time, and 40% of their losses were OT losses where they earned that 1 point and didn’t go home completely empty-handed. Basically what all of this stats mumbo-jumbo is saying (and the numbers are a lot simpler than they may look!), is that if Marian Gaborik had stayed healthy this year, the Wild would be trying to play for home advantage in the playoffs right now, rather than crossing their fingers & hoping that enough other teams lose for them to slide in to the second season. What I don’t know, is if that’s an argument for the team to try to hold on to him whatever it takes, or an argument for the team to cut ties, and try to find a difference maker who might be on the ice a little more often than the frequently injured Czech all-star. Wild fans saw what happened last year though, when he stayed on the ice for the essentially the whole season – the team won its first Northwest Division Championship. Hmm…
  


• Life on Mars on ABC. Poor Jason O’Mara never seems to get a show that lasts long. He was in The Agency, In Justice & now Life on Mars. The Agency lasted the longest at 22 episodes. In Justice was 13 & Life on Mars has been canceled after 17 eps. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0641816/) I have watched Life on Mars all season (but don’t tell me how it ends since I am 3 episodes behind on my iPod), and haven’t been sure what to think. I thought the first couple episodes were great, and they hooked me in, but then the next one was just odd, and it seemed to alternate between a fun & different cop show, to too bizarre to really watch. All the ones from February have, in my opinion, really clicked and demonstrated what the show could be, but it had already lost too many viewers by that point, and was canceled. I loved the concept of the guy being stuck in 1973 & not knowing if it was a dream, a coma, time travel, etc., but they just experimented with making it too many different kinds of shows early on. Disappointing. Good thing Burn Notice comes back in June for Season 3 (and I’m following @jeffrey_donovan on Twitter in the meantime- he plays Michael Westen - as gives little updates on the filming & even some fun photos from the set).
  


• My latest sports rant is about slam dunk contests. They need to change. I think after years of stagnant, boring type competitions, the dunks have gotten much creative again, from the high school level, to college, to the pros, but the judging needs to change. One, get judges that have a clue. Jon Secada doing the high school one? Calvin Johnson (Detroit Lions wide receiver) doing the college one, and giving a 7 on a dunk when everyone else gave it a 10 might show that he didn’t really know what defines a good dunk. Two, let them use video replay in their voting! With some of the creative dunks that kids come up with these days, its sometimes hard to catch all of what they did when watching it in real time as it happens. Some dunks don’t look quite so impressive until you see the replay, and then I often find myself thinking “How on earth did they do that?” I realize this is not quite as important as improving the economy & establishing world peace, but this has a much easier fix too!



• Congrats to Gonzaga basketball seniors who had some fun this week in Detroit. While it wasn't for the Final Four, as they would've wished, they made their presence felt in the College All-Star competitions. Jeremy Pargo & Micah Downs were two of the eight participants in the slam dunk contest. They each had some of the best dunks in the first round, and advanced to the semis, but failed to get their dunks down in the Semis, so hence, didn't advance to the finals. One of Pargo's dunks made the Sportscenter highlights though: http://tiny.cc/2009CollegeDunk and one You Tube site showed all the 1st round dunks http://tiny.cc/09DunkRd1 and here are a couple other good Pargo dunks from real Gonzaga games: http://tiny.cc/PargoatSMC, http://tiny.cc/Pargo360, http://tiny.cc/PargoAkron. Unfortunately, even though Micah Downs had one of the best game dunks I've seen last year, which was #1 Top Play on Sportscenter, I can't find a video of it online, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but I did find one little dunk video I took last year, which is at the end of this post. I haven't figured out how to edit videos yet, so after Micah's dunk there is a lot of nothing, and then a fairly routine Ira Brown dunk, so just watch the beginning! Then in the Hershey's All-Star Basketball Game, big man Josh Heytvelt played a big role in team Reese's coming back to win, as he hit a go-ahead 3 pointer late in the game, finishing with 17 pts & 11 rebounds, in another opportunity for him to show off to the scouts his ability to play inside & outside. http://tiny.cc/HeytveltReeses



• Jeremy Pargo also did his part earlier this year to help promote the "Coaches vs. Cancer" fight for the Spokane area chapter. Zags coach Mark Few has had many fundraisers, which have made him the #2 money raising coach nationwide for Coaches vs. Cancer. Pretty impressive for the smaller school in a very small media market! Here's a video that Jeremy Pargo did, and yes, this text number is still applicable to make $5 donations to the cause! http://tiny.cc/PargoCVC
  


• Finally, those of you reading this on Facebook, you should take a look at what will be a continuing series of a photo diary, where Sleepy (as in the 7 Dwarfs) shares the picture story of his life, traveling with me for work trips & vacations, including his thoughts and comments. He got started yesterday, but I'm only letting him do a few pictures at a time, so you'll have to keep checking in on him! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67181&id=533074373&l=26b89ea2fd.
  

How Zags could've beaten North Carolina

I have a few thoughts in my mind, which must be what kept me awake until 6:20am today. Just to clarify, I in no way think I know more than Gonzaga Head Coach Mark Few, nor am I questioning anything he did. I'm just expressing what I observed about the game.

The turnovers were a huge issue, and leaving jump shooters open was a problem, but I think if Gonzaga had taken good shots, they could've beaten North Carolina. Rick Pitino, head coach of #1 overall seed Louisville, said after their win over Arizona yesterday "That's the great myth for us. People say you're not a good shooting team. We're not when we take challenged shots. When we pass, we're a great shooting team. Our press feeds off the passing and the scoring." ( http://tiny.cc/RickPitino ) That was a major issue for the Zags, and I believe it stems from how they played against "lesser" teams all year. They took way too many long jump shots without ever passing the ball inside, or driving the ball inside first. On Friday, those shots usually didn't go in, and North Carolina was able to get the long rebound and run down in transition to score. Over, and over, and over.

Gonzaga was able to get away with doing this all season long against teams that were not as good, but by getting in those bad habits, it kept coming out on Friday night against a much tougher opponent. When the Zags drove inside first, or passed inside first, good things happened! Heytvelt scored or was fouled, Bouldin took a smaller defensive player to the hoop, or it was passed out for an easier jump shot for someone like Gray. I'd been arguing this point to my family watching the game with me, the whole night. Clark Kellogg started to say the same things on CBS all throughout the 2nd half (I'm fairly certain I never thought that Billy Packer and I were on the same page in the past!).

I completely believe that UNC is the best overall team in the tourney this year, and as Mark Few also said "It's just -- and I've said all along, if all 16 of us, if we all play at the top of our game, North Carolina wins the national championship. I just feel like, when they're playing at their highest end, they're better than the rest of us. " (http://tiny.cc/LL5nY ) I also believe that North Carolina didn't necessarily play their very best, but had a chance to show off their best skills because of offensive mistakes made by Gonzaga .

Alas, we'll never know. Thanks to Jeremy Pargo for 4 years of intense dedication and fun moments; to Josh Heytvelt for showing everyone how a tough experience can make a person better overall, both on and off the court; to Micah Downs for taking on the true "Zag" role this year, as the biggest hustler & scrapper on the team, combined with a very high talent level; to Ira Brown for showing fans some special athleticism and energy off the bench; and to Andrew Sorenson for always being fun to cheer for, for always being the first off the bench to great teammates, and for making us all smile with the 15 pts on senior day!