The End of the World as Hoosier Fans Know It

First appeared on March 31, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

According to Prepper Shows USA, the essentials for surviving the end of the world are shelter, water, food and communication. Apparently they don’t know its March, or basketball would have made their list as well. I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend a lot of time prepping for the end of the world. When I was a kid, the end of the world meant nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union, but I suppose today the thought of Kentucky going 40-0 carries about the same meaning.

If you’re like me, you’re wondering at what point politicians forgot they work for an electorate, why there’s a Preppers Shows USA to begin with and how in the world Notre Dame lost to Kentucky Saturday night. Notre Dame did everything they needed to do to win. They played together. They played fearlessly for forty minutes. They got scoring from all five positions.

There was also no shortage of examples where smaller players defied the laws of nature. Riding the wings of pure heart and guts far up into the stratosphere, to the point where the outsized Irish found themselves looking down from the roof of the world. A perch that allowed Notre Dame to snatch many a timely rebound. Rebounds that were hovering just beyond the outstretched arms of Kentucky’s freakishly large front line.

In short, Notre Dame did everything they needed to do to win, everything but score once in the last 3 possessions. And then an Aaron Harrison three pointer from twenty-five feet sent the Irish down to a knee, grasping the rope as the judge began his count. But Irish coach Mike Brey called time out, rallied his troops and opened the door for his senior stand out Jerian Grant to bury a shot from South Bend to put his team back up by 2. And just as every person on Earth living outside ‘Big Blue Nation’ seemed ready to celebrate an Irish victory with a poorly executed jig, Notre Dame lost.

So now the Big Blue Train chugs on. On towards the end of the world. Next stop Indianapolis, land of the free and home of the intolerant. A place where lawmakers would have you believe friendly farmhands will stop slopping hogs long enough to greet you with a smile and save you a seat, provided you share the exact same values and religious beliefs as them that is.

And now derailing the Big Blue Train and saving the world from the aforementioned annihilation falls to Bo Ryan. And if there’s one thing to be said for Ryan it’s that he won’t shy away. He won’t back down. He will stand on the tracks as the Big Blue Train bears down on him and chuckle at the thought of his group being overmatched.

But in the end will it be enough? Will Ryan’s fiery glares and eternal scowl, his old school no-nonsense approach to playing the game, share the ball, stop the ball, protect the ball, be enough to counter Kentucky’s athleticism and historic length? Does a team built mostly of in-state kids tackling a traveling team of AAU All Stars stand a chance? Ryan would say yes.

To beat Kentucky you have to protect the ball and make shots and its hard to argue anybody does this better than Wisconsin. And now, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Kentucky and Wisconsin will meet Saturday night. And as the young Badgers race out to defend all that is good and proper in college basketball, let the rest of the world lock arms and sing, “On Wisconsin! Fight! Fellows fight, fight, fight! We’ll win this game!”

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Merry Christmas from the Sports World

First appeared on December 18, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

For you Christmas lost its meaning in third grade when the Santa outside 3D got mad at you for crushing the pack of cigarettes he’d stashed in his front pocket. And as his profane string of insults throttled your virgin ears, they arrived riding the strangest of smells.

A toxic potpourri that would remain undiscovered until many years later, where at a gathering of so called friends in a dark college apartment, full of crushed cigarettes and hormone-powered profanities, you found yourself bitten by the Wild Turkey for the first time.

Today the sermons sound simple and ring true. Speeches about caring for others and giving to the less fortunate, but for you Christmastime remains frozen in time. It’s the season to wish for the things you don’t have. Things that seem within reach but for a variety of reasons remain at arm’s length. And so you still compose lists in your head, your own personal get back for that rag tag Santa who shattered the world as you once knew it.

Those in the sports world profess to be selfless human beings, but we know deep inside the depths of their souls, in a place no probing journalist has ever found, lurks an ugly Grinch-like desire to lie, steal and cheat their way to the top of Mount Crumpit. Facts are facts, you don’t get to the top without a little of the green guy in you.

With this in mind, coaches and teams are not above wishing for things that could make them better. Tom Crean’s list begins, “Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is someone taller than 6’8 who can play.” Meanwhile, eighty miles to the north, Matt Painter is up late baking gingerbread cookies to leave out with his short note, the one asking for a chance to play North Florida again.

John Calipari’s list is a bit longer. He wants an undefeated season for his Kentucky Wildcats capped by a National Championship, and he’d like it to arrive as soon as possible, that way he has enough time to enjoy it before the NCAA strips it away. Indiana fans want a chance to play the Wildcats again, while Kentucky’s faithful have written the North Pole hoping for things like some new socks, a professional sports franchise other than UK’s basketball team and more front porch space.

Frank Vogel wants his team to play hard, fight every night and scrap their way into the Playoffs. Apparently his list includes an opening round bloodbath at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers as well. Meanwhile, every Pacer fan on earth wants them to lose every game by 50 and stink their way into the lottery where they might luck out and pick up one of Kentucky’s bench players.

The Colts are asking Santa to bring Andrew Luck a pair of glasses so that he might see the opposing team’s secondary while Reggie Wayne is hoping to find a new pair of knees under the tree on Christmas morning.

For Cubs fans Christmas came early with the signing of free agent Jon Lester and for Lester’s kids, well there’s really no reason for them to make out a Christmas list now is there? But Cubs fans have been down this road before, they know it’s too soon to talk World Championship. This means they’ll just bide their time and wait for the wheels, or Lester’s arm, to fall off before their season crashes and burns up in a fiery, catastrophic and somewhat all too familiar, death.

Merry Christmas to you and yours and may God bless us everyone (even the Kentucky fans).

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

Prepare to be Shocked: Wichita State no Cinderella

First appeared on March 26, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

The blueprint for life is simple. Eight glasses of water a day, four glasses of milk, six helpings of fruit, a teaspoon of red meat here and there, stay on the right side of the road, avoid falling space junk, squeeze in twenty five hours of exercise a week and maybe you live to see sixty.

The blueprint for building a college basketball program is a bit more complex. Recruiting used to be simple. A high profile coach takes a Friday night trip to a small town gym. Red faced locals stop riding that new coach, the one who thinks you can win games playing zone and walking the ball up the floor, long enough to fawn over the big dog in the crowd. The high profile coach smiles, shakes hands with the parents, walks around and kicks the tires while saying all the right things. The deal gets done with a handshake, sealing a young player's lifelong dream of playing for State U.

Today coaches are up against ESPN, internet rankings, Twitter and the seedy underbelly of AAU circuits. Maybe that’s what made Gregg Marshall and Wichita State so appealing. They seemed to provided a much needed alternative. On the surface they were everything big time college basketball wasn’t.

Enter Kentucky and their high flying Blue Bloods. Hot off the AAU circuit, the best recruiting class in college basketball history. Enter John Calipari. One part college coach, one part politician, one part Dark Lord of the One and Done World. Work the phones, kiss some babies, get the top five guys on the board and ride them like the British are coming. And when the dust settles and they’ve all declared for the Draft, pick up your phone and start over.

Surely Calipari would take one look at Gregg Marshall and tell you that boy’s climbing on the horse from the wrong end. For if John Calipari’s a chef, Gregg Marshall’s an architect. Building something from the ground up. Taking kids so far from Kentucky’s radar they might as well have been playing in some remote Pacific island near Kiribati, shooting coconuts into empty oil drums nailed to palm trees. Molding them, shaping them, teaching them to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Maybe it was the fact Marshall’s speeches seemed so authentic, his words bordering on the prophetic that made me want to see Wichita State drum Kentucky Sunday. “Play angry, play for each other”. Maybe it was the little dog in the big fight that had me clambering onto the Shocker bandwagon, or maybe it was simply the fact that, as a Hoosier, I’m blessed with a bottomless reservoir of hatred for the Wildcats.

Either way it was short lived. In the end Kentucky’s thoroughbreds thundered past the Shockers. Thirty five wins and a cloud of dust. Still the power of the team isn’t lost. What five players, five recruits the big schools barely knew existed, connected on both ends of the floor can do, even when pitted against the best recruiting class in NCAA history.

They took Kentucky to the edge. They mussed Calipari’s perfect hair. And though they came up short on the scoreboard, Gregg Marshall did more than put Wichita State back on the map, he reminded us all what college basketball is supposed to be. Players committed to each other, committed to the name on the front of the jersey.

Players thinking, acting, responding and moving as one. In today’s land of one and dones, Wichita State was ice cold lemonade on the Fourth of July, proving Marshall’s blueprint, while not the most popular, remains time tested.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

Proof in the Pudding Sweet for Big Ten

First appeared on March 27th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

When I was 14 I saw Rex Chapman in the Indiana-Kentucky All Star Game. After it was over I asked Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball for his autograph and he punched my dad in the face and burnt down the orphanage for handicapped Somali children my parents ran out of their home. OK-so maybe that didn’t happen exactly as I recall, but for a myriad of reasons I did learn to loathe Chapman while he was at Kentucky.

Who knows where my Rex-o-phobia began, perhaps it’s simply the hatred for Kentucky that, like a love for anything breaded and deep fried, comes to Hoosiers naturally. More likely it’s, despite our similar age and love of basketball, Chapman was a high school All Star, Division one stand out and 10 plus year veteran of the NBA and I clearly was not.

But recently Rex erased any doubt of my overall disdain for him when the former Kentucky Wildcat said the Big Ten was “overrated” and the Big East was “the best conference in America”. This affront led me to settle things in true Hoosier fashion; one on one with Rex Chapman.

Arranging a game with Chapman wouldn’t be easy considering getting him back in Indiana would probably be the equivalent of helping Robert E. Lee book a vacation to Gettysburg or asking Magic Johnson to come back to late night TV. Ours would be a virtual tussle.
Chapman made millions in the NBA and has a job as an analyst on the Tru TV Halftime show. In between diaper changes and my many other duties as a patriotic American, I hammer out stories of debatable journalistic merit that the local paper uses as filler when things are so slow they’re unable to locate other, more relevant news. Advantage Chapman.

Chapman was a two time participant in the NBA Dunk Contest and I…well advantage Rex. Once sporting a proud hair helmet that was half mullet, half jerry-curl and entirely backwoods fabulous, Chapman has since moved on to the ever popular shaved head look so many aging sports stars subscribe to. Begrudgingly, advantage Chapman.

As for the picks, the part time pretend journalist in me wanted more information but after googling “Rex Chapman’s bracket” all that came up was some obscure fishing rod contraption Chapman may or may not have endorsed when money got tight after retiring from the NBA. I’d have to stick to his man-crush on the Big East.

After the first three rounds of the Men’s Tournament the Big East Conference has gone 6-5 while the Big Ten has posted a sparkling 10-3 record. Advantage me. Of these six wins, it should be noted two came from Marquette who could have lost twice if not for a boneheaded cross court pass and botched out of bounds play by Butler.

The Sweet 16 includes four Big Ten teams and three from the soon to be imploded Big East including the aforementioned Marquette and what’s left of their nine lives. Point me. According to CBS.com the Big Ten’s conference RPI is second only to the Mountain West; and while I’m no mathematician and haven’t studied the full list, I’m fairly certain this places the Big Ten ahead of the Big East. Advantage clearly me.

So we stand eye to eye, score knotted at 3. Thursday’s showdown between Indiana and Syracuse looms featuring two legendary programs. And, because we’re both too out of shape to continue, Chapman offers the couch on his front porch and we agree to let it ride on Thursday’s Big Ten/Big East face off. Winner takes all, once and for all.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams