Ron's View

Denver vs. Johns Hopkins, May 21, 2011

This is the time of year when I write a post (or more) about the NCAA men’s lacrosse championships. I let last weekend’s action go by without a post. Time to catch up.

First, my traditional stage setting. Until recently, seven schools dominated the sport: Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Maryland, North Carolina, Princeton, Syracuse, and Virginia. They were the only schools to win the championship. But more than that, they accounted for almost every championship game appearance, the only interlopers until 2005 being Maryland schools, once each: Loyola, Towson, and Navy. And the super seven accounted for almost all semi-final appearances as well.

But the game is changing. It is a growing sport at the high school level across the country. As a result, there is a larger pool of talented players, and more schools are competitive. As one example of the sport’s move westward, Notre Dame was a quarterfinalist in 1995 and 2000 and a semi-finalist in 2001. More recently, it has joined the super seven as a power, making the quarterfinals in 2008, then going undefeated in 2009 and being ranked #2 but being upset in the first round of the tournament. As for their performance last year and this year, more in a moment.

The school that has been on the verge of breaking into the elite throughout the last decade is Duke. They were runner-up to Hopkins in 2005, losing by a single goal. 2006? Well, you know. There was that scandal that dominated the national news, and the program was shut down in mid-season. In 2007, they returned to the championship game, losing once again to Hopkins by a single goal. Another one-goal loss to Hopkins in the 2008 semi-final and a blowout loss to Syracuse in the 2009 semi-final added to their frustration. But last year, they upset #1 ranked Virginia by a goal in the semi-final, landing in the championship game opposite Notre Dame.

If you’re following, you understand that this means the two teams who had been knocking at the door had simultaneously arrived in last year’s championship game. One of them would break through. After 60 minutes of regulation play, they were tied 5-5. Finally, Duke scored, winning their first championship and joining the super seven as a member of the new elite eight.

Then there’s Denver. Bill Tierney, the long-time Princeton coach, shocked the lacrosse world by uprooting and moving to Denver before last season. At Princeton, he had won national championships in 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2001, the team finishing as runner-up in 2000 and 2002. This year, in only his second season at Denver, they were one of the top teams in the country. Might they be knocking at the door next?

Well, there you have it. The setup. Let’s turn to this year’s tournament. The NCAA invites 16 teams, 8 of which are seeded 1 through 8. In the first round, the 8 seeds play at home, each hosting one of the unseeded teams. That took place last weekend. The quarterfinal games are played at two neutral sites, two games at one site and two at another. Then the semi-finals and finals are held on Memorial Day weekend, in recent years at some NFL football stadium — the home of the Eagles, the Ravens, or the Patriots.

Of the elite eight, only Princeton didn’t qualify for the tournament. It was an off year for them. Joining the other seven elite programs were Notre Dame and Denver. These were the top 9 teams, but only 8 could be seeded and thereby get to host their first-round game. Maryland had won the ACC tournament, beating North Carolina and Duke. Yet, they were the odd team out, not being given a seed. The seeds in order, 1 through 8, were Syracuse, Cornell, Hopkins, ND, Duke, Denver, Virginia, and UNC.

Last Saturday, Maryland wasted no time showing they should have been seeded, beating host UNC handily. The other seven seeds all won, Virginia having the toughest time, eking out an overtime win over surprising Bucknell. That set up this weekend’s quarterfinals. Yesterday, at Hofstra’s stadium on Long Island, Cornell (seeded 2) would play Virginia (7) and Hopkins (3) would play Denver (6). Today, at the Patriots’ stadium in Foxborough, Syracuse (1) would play Maryland and Notre Dame (4) would play Duke (5) in a rematch of last year’s championship game.

I watched parts of all four games. In yesterday’s opening game, Cornell opened a 4-1 lead, but Virginia came back with 10 consecutive goals to take a 10-4 halftime lead. Cornell fought back, outscoring Virginia 3-1 in the third quarter before succumbing 13-9. The second game was stunning, as Denver flew to a 6-1 lead early in the second quarter with 6 straight goals. Hopkins settled down and closed to within a goal at 8-7 midway through the third quarter, but Denver responded with a 5-goal run to make the score 13-7, finally winning 14-9. This was a landmark in lacrosse history, a team from the mountain west making the semi-finals, and doing so by beating the team with the greatest tradition in the game. Unbelievable.

Today, Syracuse and Maryland opened the action at Foxborough with a hard fought defensive struggle. Syracuse started the scoring with a goal late in the first period and another late in the second. But Maryland, held scoreless for the first 26 minutes of the game, finally got two goals of its own in the final four minutes of the first half. They followed with 2 more in the first half of the third quarter to open a 4-2 lead. Syracuse closed to 4-3 late in the third period and then Maryland scored a shocking goal with 1 second left in the period to lead 5-3. Syracuse fought back, shutting out Maryland in the fourth quarter and getting the tying goal with 1:03 left in regulation. They had the momentum and looked poised to win, as would befit their #1 seed. Alas, Maryland controlled the ball throughout the first overtime period, scoring the winning goal three and a half minutes in.

The last quarterfinal was Duke vs. Notre Dame. Another low scoring game, tied 4-4 through three periods, at which point Duke started to take control, scoring 3 goals to open up a 7-4 lead. ND got a goal with 16 seconds left, by which time the result was determined.

Great weekend. Four great games. And all four top seeds lost. Next week, Virginia will take on Denver in one semi-final, with Maryland and Duke in the other. Two schools from the old super seven, one from the new elite eight, and one taking center stage far earlier than anyone would have dreamed. After what Denver did to Hopkins yesterday, no one will be counting them out.

I wouldn’t dream of predicting the results. I know only that we’re in for three exciting games. I suggest you watch.

This idiocy is an old theme, but one we west coasters don’t pay the price for. I paid the price this past week, though, what with flying into New York on Saturday, the day of the NCAA men’s basketball final four round, and then being in New York Sunday for the women’s final four and Monday for the men’s championship game.

The idiocy? Games that start at 9:20 PM or 9:30 PM eastern time. For the semi-final rounds, that was the start time of the second games. And on Monday night, the championship game started around 9:30.

It’s not like I actually care all that much, but believe me, I don’t care enough to stay up that late. On the other hand, we did just get in from Seattle, so we weren’t exactly on eastern time. Which is to say, I did catch the end of the UConn-Kentucky men’s semi-final Saturday. As for Texas A&M’s upset of the UConn women on Sunday, I missed that one. And the UConn men beating Butler Monday? Well, I was reading, but still awake, so I turned it on to catch the end. However, if I lived in the eastern time zone and were going to work the next day, I would have skipped it.

By Tuesday, I was fully adjusted to east coast time, but that was our night to fly home, so we would be missing the the women’s championship. Plus, with our 8:00 PM flight delayed and our arrival in Seattle scheduled for near midnight PDT (or 3:00 AM EDT), I mostly wanted to sleep. As it turned out, I could have watched the entire game, since a selection of TV stations was available via satellite on the small screens in the airplane seat backs, but this didn’t even occur to me. After a late dinner, I went to sleep. When I awoke somewhere around 2:00 AM EDT, I turned my screen on for the first time and stumbled on the game highlights on ESPN.

I watched about as much of the basketball as I wanted to. It remains a mystery to me why the powers that be think it’s in anyone’s interests to have games end at 11:30 on weeknights. Or later. I’m just thankful that I’m usually here in the Pacific time zone.

Princeton’s Douglas Davis with last-second shot

[Jessica Hill/Associated Press]

Basketball isn’t my sport, so I don’t want to spend much time on this, but I do want to follow up on my post a week and a half ago about Ivy League basketball. At the time, Harvard would be playing Penn and Princeton at home to close out the Ivy League season. With victories, it could win or tie for the Ivy title.

Harvard beat both teams, ensuring at least a tie for the title, pending the result of the Penn-Princeton season ender this past Tuesday. When Princeton beat Penn, it joined Harvard atop the league, necessitating a one-game playoff between Harvard and Princeton to determine the school that would receive the league’s automatic slot in the NCAA tournament.

The playoff game took place this afternoon. A neutral site was required, and Yale is just about halfway between the schools, so Yale served as host. The game wasn’t on TV — no surprise, I suppose — but ESPN did show a live stream of it on espn3.com. I tuned in during the first half. However, the feed wasn’t very good, freezing for seconds at a time, so I abandoned it. Later, still not knowing the result, I turned on another game as the network was using a break in the action to show various highlights. I was just in time to see tape of the Princeton team going wild, with a final score of Princeton 63, Harvard 62. I had missed by just a second the replay of Princeton’s Douglas Davis making a last-second shot.

Harvard is still Ivy co-champion. Just not an automatic qualifier for the NCAAs. Historically, for the Ivy League, not being an automatic qualifier means not being a qualifier. But Harvard is actually being described tonight as a bubble team, with a chance to qualify. That would be fun. Their last NCAA appearance was in 1946.

As for the win of this post’s title, the Harvard-Princeton game was winding down as the Arizona-Washington Pac-10 championship game was heating up. Washington was the pre-season favorite to be conference champion, and widely regarded to be a top 15 team, if not top 10. That was how they were ranked at times, too, but a three-game losing streak during conference play dropped them out of the rankings. A few key victories near the end of the season allowed UW to finish 3rd in the conference, behind Arizona and UCLA, but an NCAA bid wasn’t guaranteed. An early loss in the Pac-10 tournament might have doomed them.

But here they were, this afternoon, in the tournament championship game, after a narrow escape over Washington State two nights ago and a convincing win over Oregon last night. We watched the first half, then Gail, Joel, and I headed over to Northlake Tavern for an early dinner. (You’ll recall that in a post a few weeks ago, I confessed my secret love for Northlake.)

When we walked in, the place was nearly full, with every TV tuned to the game. And we were up! We had erased the 3-point half-time deficit and were up another 3. Alas, that didn’t last long. We were up 59-55 when Arizona scored 8 straight points. But three times in a row, over the last minute and a half, we made 3-point shots to draw close and finally to tie, sending the game into overtime. I don’t think I would have watched so intently if we were home. I would have been too nervous and walked out. But at Northlake, with a full restaurant hanging on every possession, I watched us open up a lead in overtime and keep it until an Arizona 3-pointer tied the game with seconds to go. Then Isiah Thomas, our star all game long, pulled up at the 3-point line and attempted the most amazing off-balance shot imaginable, with the ball falling through the net as the backboard light flashed to show that time had run out. Washington 77, Arizona 75. An NCAA bid assured, as it probably was once UW made the championship game. More important may be the impact of the win on UW’s seed. I think we might have been a 7 or 8 otherwise, but maybe now a 5 seed is imaginable?

Okay, enough of that. This may be my last college basketball post for a while. I have to say, it was fun to be at the tavern for the end of regulation and then overtime, with everyone watching as one. Maybe I’d like basketball more if I did that more often.

I realize that Harvard’s basketball fortunes are not a topic of wide interest. But the NYT has seen fit to publish a piece about them tomorrow, so I may as well piggy back on and say a few words.

Yes, it’s true, Harvard has a chance to win its first Ivy League title. Princeton and Penn have dominated for decades, with Cornell atop the pack more recently. This year, at last, could be Harvard’s year, and it’s been a long time coming.

Harvard’s fortunes were supposed to change with my class, which included some highly touted recruits, most notably a kid named James Brown out of high school basketball power DeMatha Catholic in metropolitan DC. Freshmen weren’t eligible to play varsity sports in those days, so we had to wait until sophomore year to see what difference our class would make. I had forgotten just how well we did. Tomorrow’s NYT article observes that “Harvard had only one outright second-place finish in its history (1970-71, behind perhaps the best Ivy team ever, the 28-1 Penn Quakers.)”

I can tell you one school we lost to that year: UMass. They had a pretty good junior, whom I looked forward to seeing in the rematch that would take place a year later in Cambridge, but he left UMass after that ’70-’71 season for the ABA and basketball history. We had much in common: both from Long Island; both with the same last name (up to a perturbation in spelling); both future doctors. He became Dr. J. I became Dr. R.

I did go to the Dr-J-less rematch in 1972. We lost. The team didn’t do as well in junior and senior years as in sophomore year. Our star, JB, ultimately abandoned his pro basketball dreams to become a television personality. And we have waited 40 years for another shot at an Ivy title. We lost to Yale by a point last weekend. That hurt. Now we have to beat both Princeton and Penn at home this weekend. And then we’ll see. A possible league playoff game awaits to determine who makes it into the NCAA tournament.

Go Crimson!

In my last post, I wrote about my iMac woes, which culminated in the trip Gail and I took to the Apple Store yesterday for the final resolution of my problems. We had a 10:00 AM appointment at the Genius Bar, 10:00 being the bar’s opening time, and we arrived a few minutes early, allowing us to watch the geniuses come out one by one from the back and take their seats at the bar. Then fellow supplicants began to take their seats across the bar from the geniuses, and soon it we were called to face Nate.

I already explained that Nate got started on restoring data to my once-ailing iMac, at which point he suggested we take off for half an hour while the files were transferred from Joel’s hard drive back to the iMac. On our return, Nate was busy with others, giving us what turned out to be about a 6 or 7 minute wait. Which brings me to the point.

Two genius locations down from Nate, a woman was on her genius bar stool being helped. Behind her, sitting up and looking for attention, was a hairy white dog, on the large side, though not super large or anything. He was on a leash, which was tied to the stool. I was standing about 5 feet away, and he seemed to have taken an interest in me. I didn’t want to get him worked up, but Gail assured me that I should go over and return his interest.

So I did. I put my hand out to his nose, then petted him. His tail was wagging furiously. I was a little puzzled about what breed he was, and was thinking of asking the woman, who at this point turned around to look at me. I said something, like maybe that the dog was a lovely one. Gail, still a few feet away, said something too. Then the woman asked, “Are you a husky fan?”

Now, I have to tell you, this was no husky. I don’t know much about dogs. I’m learning. Watching the Westminster Dog Show every year for the last decade has helped a lot. But I don’t need a dog show or a book to know what a husky looks like. I know huskies. Dog sleds, Alaska. Yup, I know huskies. And, of course, I’ve been associated to the University of Washington for three decades now. No one can be a part of UDub and be ignorant of our husky mascot.

So, why the heck was she asking me if I’m a husky fan? And here I was going to ask her what kind of dog it was. If I were a husky fan, I sure had chosen the wrong dog to pet. I was mystified. Then again, we were just across the street from the UW campus, so maybe the question had something to do with UW sports. Am I a UW sports fan? Well, sometimes. A little. Not entirely, because being one would mean I support the corrupt industry of big time NCAA sports. Still, this was no husky, and was she really asking me out of the blue if I root for UW?

I finally responded. “Not entirely.” That seemed about right, whatever she was asking.

And then she elaborated. Well, you see, she had taught the dog to respond to the UW fight song, Bow Down to Washington, by getting down flat on the floor. She could say “bow down” and the dog would obey. Or, I gather, she could play the song and he would do the same. She added that her boyfriend was a UW football player, and he loved this trick.

Okay, so that explained the question, and assured us that she didn’t think the dog was a husky. Gail finally asked just what the dog was. A labradoodle. And what a lovely labradoodle he was. Gail thinks we should get one. I’m thinking we should look at poodradors instead.

UW's Victor Aiyewa hits Nebraska's Rex Burkhead to force a fumble

[Dean Rutz, The Seattle Times]

I’m not that big a fan of University of Washington football. After all, I despise college football on principle, so how can I care how our team does? But, last night’s Holiday Bowl game was our first bowl appearance since losing in the 2002 Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve, so after finishing my Bainbridge outing post, I turned on the TV late in the game’s first quarter.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that we were up 7-0. However, I was soon annoyed that ESPN thought the game they were in the midst of broadcasting wasn’t as important as the game over at ESPN2. Time after time, the coverage would be interrupted so we could be updated on developments in Palo Alto, where Stanford’s women’s basketball team was leading the University of Connecticut with just minutes to play.

You probably know that UConn has won its last 90 games in a row. The big sporting news a couple of weeks ago was their 88th victory, tying the great UCLA men’s basketball teams of the early 1970s for consecutive victories, and then their 89th, breaking UCLA’s record. Stanford, meanwhile, had its own streak going, having won their last 51 home games. One of those streaks would be coming to an end.

As long as ESPN was going to keep telling me the basketball news, it seemed simpler just to change over to ESPN2 and watch the UConn-Stanford itself, which I did. Time and again, UConn would come down the court down 6 and miss in their effort to cut the lead to just 4. Or 3. Maya Moore, their star and the best player in women’s college basketball, kept missing shots, as apparently she had done all evening. Stanford would push the lead up to 8, UConn, would get it back to 6, but they couldn’t seem to do any better than that.

Or maybe I missed something, because as it turned out, I couldn’t watch the basketball game continuously. It was bad enough that ESPN kept interrupting football to tell us about the basketball game. But worse, ESPN2 took advantage of every break in the basketball action to turn the camera on one of our nation’s most glamorous war criminals. It wasn’t good enough to stick to the basketball, to focus on a game that was setting up to be the biggest one of the regular-season in years. No, we had to watch Stanford professor (and former provost) Condoleezza Rice cheering her school on.

Why, ESPN? Why did we have to have her shoved in our faces? Did her presence make the game more important? You already dominate sports coverage in this country. Are you aspiring to dominate in the category of fawning over former National Security Advisors and Secretaries of State who led us into or prolonged wars based on lies? What about Henry Kissinger? Couldn’t you get him on screen too? Maybe you could have paid him and flown him in last night so he could sit with his fellow war criminal.

It seems that Stanford held on to win. UConn got into the standard end-of-game cycle of fouling in order to get the ball back and Stanford was thereby able to increase its lead, winning by a final score that I never did catch. Ah, it was 71-59. I did switch back after the game ended, only to be forced to get one last look at Condaleezza, standing up, cheering, and swaying to the music being played in Maples Arena.

I returned to ESPN for good and was relieved that they allowed us to focus on the football game, with no further interruptions. A good thing. We won, 19-7. Over Nebraska. But that’s another story. I’ll stop here.

FIFA's Sepp Blatter announcing the 2022 World Cup host

[Shaun Botterill/Getty Images]

FIFA announced the host countries for the 2018 and 2022 soccer World Cup today. It had already been established that the 2018 World Cup would be in Europe, and Russia had been considered a front runner, so it was no great surprise when they were selected. For 2022, the US and Qatar were perhaps widely considered the two favorites, so it was perhaps no surprise either when Qatar was chosen. But as unsurprising as the result may have been, it served only to lend credence to the belief that the entire process is corrupt, as are many FIFA officials.

Let’s start with the obvious. Why would anyone schedule a sporting event in Qatar in the summer? Why in particular schedule the most widely watched sporting event? Would the answer have something to do with money? It’s hard to think of any other explanation.

The US did have the disadvantage of having been a World Cup host just sixteen years ago. Fellow finalists Japan and South Korea served as joint hosts just eight years ago. Yet if the priority were to award the honor to a country new to hosting, the remaining finalist, Australia, would have been an excellent choice.

There probably isn’t much point in being shocked by the behavior of FIFA. Just frustrated. Let me turn to Sports Illustrated’s soccer expert, Grant Wahl, for more.

Choosing Qatar and Russia is the biggest indictment possible that FIFA is not a clean organization. The message here is that petrodollars talk. For an outfit that likes to thump its chest and claim that it is not corrupt (Trust us, says FIFA president Sepp Blatter), having two oil-wealthy winners is the clearest message possible that FIFA needs a complete overhaul in its leadership and organization. Russia had a pretty good case for being chosen, but Qatar (which was funded heavily by its government and bought the support of celebrity endorsers) didn’t make a lot of sense in the first place. Get ready for searing summer heat in the Middle East!

The pity is, a World Cup here in 12 years would have been extraordinary. Not only is the quality of play in the US better and better, not only are more US players having an impact in the top European leagues, but US fans are increasingly sophisticated about soccer worldwide. I get to observe this daily in my own house. Joel, and he is surely typical of many in his generation, follows all the major European leagues and knows all the top players in the world. I learn a lot from him. The next World Cup in the US, whenever it occurs, and I hope I get to see it, will be something special.

You gotta love this photo. I do, anyway. I’m no fan of Duke basketball. I feel about Duke the way I feel about the Yankees. It’s not that I want them to lose, or do poorly. Rather, I just don’t want to be reminded that they exist. I have read enough about the program to last me a lifetime. If they simply disappeared, I would be happy.

But now they feature freshman point guard Kyrie Irving, and I have renewed interest. Is that jersey cool or what? I’ll be ordering one soon.

I always wished Dr. J (Julius Erving) spelled his last name a little differently. We had so much in common. We both grew up on Long Island. We both went to college in Massachusetts. And we had the same last name. Almost. But after his sophomore year at UMass, the end of my freshman year, we went our separate ways. He joined the ABA and became its greatest star. I stayed put and watched our team struggle. UMass came to town that next year, Dr. J-less, to play us. I went to that game. I don’t remember who won, but it wasn’t the same without him.

A few decades later, I now have Kyrie to root for. We’re #1!

It’s not news to readers of this blog that I don’t care too much about football. I mean, I follow it and all. Yes, I know that Michael Vick replaced Kevin Kolb for the Philadelphia Eagles and did pretty darn well. Yes, I know the Giants so far suck this year, and the Cowboys kept their hopes alive of playing at home in the Super Bowl with a win yesterday over their cross-state rival Texans. But really, I’m sick already of these story lines — Vick, Giants, Cowboys. And Favre. I don’t want to think about football until Thanksgiving. There’s enough else in sports to occupy me.

Yet, something did get my attention a week ago yesterday, when I watched a small slice of the Jets-Patriots game at the New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. You may recall that the Jets began life as the New York Titans in 1960 in the old American Football League, playing in the Polo Grounds. They would soon move to Shea Stadium, which they shared with the New York Mets baseball team, and changed their name to the Jets. Then they decided to leave Queens (and new York City) behind for the meadowlands of New Jersey, joining the Giants in 1984 as tenants in Giants Stadium. After a failed effort by the team, New York City Mayor Bloomberg, New York State Governor Pataki, and others to get a new Jets stadium built over the rail yards on the west side of Manhattan, the Jets agreed with the Giants to jointly build a new stadium in the meadowlands. It opened for football two weeks ago, with both teams playing at home that inaugural weekend.*

What caught my eye a week ago, as I caught glimpses of the new field during the Jets broadcast, was that the stadium was trimmed out as a genuine Jets home stadium, something the Jets had to do without during all those years as tenants of the Giants. How did they do it? I figured that the week before, when the two teams played at home on successive days, it must have been quite an operation to turn the stadium over from a Giants home to a Jets home.

Well, sometimes you get what you wish for. The New Yorker’s Samantha Henig was on the case. Two weeks ago she observed the conversion, and last Friday she shared the details in the New Yorker’s blog. The post even has a slide show to help the reader visualize the process. An excerpt:

It was five o’clock on a damp Sunday afternoon in mid-September: four hours since the New York Giants christened the new Meadowlands stadium with their first game of the season; thirty-seven minutes since they locked down their victory, thirty-one to eighteen, against the Carolina Panthers; and twenty-three hours until the stadium would begin admitting Jets fans for their turn at a season opener in the new space. That meant less than a day to transform the 1.6-billion-dollar stadium from the Giants’ quarters to the land of the Jets. In Giants Stadium, which both teams shared from 1984 until last year, that was easy enough: as the name implied, it always had a bit of a visitor’s feel for the Jets. At the more even-handed “Meadowlands Stadium,” lights, banners, flags, and artwork all coördinate with whichever team is drawing the fans. Luckily for the forty-six workers orchestrating the night’s quick conversion, this stadium is made to morph.

Even the clothing store had to be converted: “Inside, twenty-five workers in dark gray shirts and black pants wore the glazed expressions of Internet gamblers on an all-night binge. But their marathon was more tedious: stripping the Giants shirts from mannequins and dressing them in Jets gear; restocking three hundred T-shirts, three hundred sweatshirts, and five hundred caps; and, as a final flourish, switching the store lighting from blue to green.”

Forget football. Let’s televise this.

*Maybe I should point out that I grew up going to Giants games at Yankee Stadium and Jets games at Shea Stadium. Those were the days.