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

Indiana and Purdue heading in opposite directions

First appeared on February 6th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Short people unite! Unite in an effort to reach items from the top shelf in the grocery store without knocking five other things off in the process, unite in the spirit of the young Eddie Gaedels’ and Herve Villechaizes’ everywhere, unite for the common defense of your kingdom full of mushroom shaped houses and half naked blue people.

Unite as the Purdue Boilermakers continue waging their war upon players blessed with inferior size. In a game that has mimicked the NBA by becoming increasingly smaller and more athletic, Purdue is quietly finding success going against the grain. While staying true to his core principles of a strong perimeter defense, Matt Painter has also ripped a page out of yesteryear by fielding a team with Wooden-like size.

Despite some early stumbles, Painter’s bunch seems to have finally embraced the role of bully on the block. Against Indiana especially, AJ Hammons and Isaac Haas looked out of place; almost like a tag team duo of Andre the Giant and Godzilla. Bullying their way to the basket with defenders bouncing off one after the other, the dynamic duo absorbed so much of Indiana’s defensive attention that several other Boilers, the ones who don’t look like Yao Ming stunt doubles, were able to worm their way to the goal with ease.

What Hammons and Haas did to Indiana a week ago was almost inhumane, bordered upon cruel and is illegal in 49 of the 50 states (last we checked the Ned Beatty Bill was still being debated in the Georgia State Senate). The impressive win also seemed to wake a sleeping giant (pun fully intended) as the Boilers have gone on to win three straight, including Wednesday night’s victory over another nationally ranked opponent in Ohio State.

But it all started a week ago by drumming Indiana in a game that kept Purdue’s season alive. It was also a victory Painter likely needed to avoid finding an email in his inbox with the subject line: “Pick up change of address form”. And while Hammons and Haas have anchored the interior, off-season transfer Jon Octeus has been a pleasant surprise as a defender with length and athleticism as well as a point guard who brings an attitude to the floor.

And while the win has injected life into Painter’s team, the opposite can be said for Tom Crean’s Indiana Hoosiers. Losers of 3 out of their last 4, Indiana suddenly finds themselves in a similar position to Purdue a week ago. In fact, it’s almost as if the two have passed each other on an escalator.

Indiana had spent much of their year riding the up escalator, but for some reason have changed their minds and hopped the rail. The Hoosiers knew coming in to the season their lack of size would present challenges. Unfortunately this has never been more apparent than this past week as Purdue manhandled the Hoosiers before Wisconsin flirted with embarrassing them. Things were so bad that, five minutes into the Purdue game, short men everywhere quietly slipped into the restroom to stuff more folded up paper towel into the bottoms of their shoes.

So now Indiana finds themselves fighting to get off the down escalator. Sunday’s date with Michigan suddenly has ‘must win’ written all over it with a road trip to Maryland and home date against Purdue looming on the horizon.
With all eyes on the up escalator, one has to wonder where it leads. It could be the NCAA Tournament, it could be the home house wares section of Kohl’s. The down escalator is a far different story. The down escalator is crowded with empty wallets, angry shoppers and screaming kids. The Down escalator is a comfortable ride to nowhere and remains the one place Tom Crean and Matt Painter can’t afford to be.

© 2015 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

As AJ Hammons Turns...

First appeared on January 17th, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

Potential. It’s such an enigmatic term. And as a rule, throughout history, in most credible walks of life and the marriages of at least one part time pretend sports columnist, ‘potential’ doesn’t get one very far.

Yet potential can mean everything to sports fans. You see a 6’7 Adonis-in-Jumpman shorts with the wingspan of Christ the Redeemer (yes Jay Bilas, we said wingspan) grab a nickel off the top of the backboard and immediately people are talking Championship.
But does potential really exist, or is it simply a term used to describe anything that’s underperforming? Few will argue the massive ‘potential’ Purdue’s sophomore center AJ Hammons possesses and Boiler fans will testify unanimously that, when AJ wants to play, he’s capable of completely transforming the make-up of Purdue’s team.

Many a late night has been spent by a bleary eyed Matt Painter, scouring EBAY for a Tyler Hansbrough-like motor he can score on the cheap. For he knows, if such a motor were propelling Hammons’, Purdue wouldn’t lose another game; ever. Well, at least not until he graduates or enters the NBA draft, the latter of which appears most likely to occur first.

What really exists is Hammons 7’0, 250 pound frame and wingspan; one rivaling a small single engine Cessna (yes Jay, that’s massive). In fact no player in the Big Ten, NCAA, or most of the NBA’s Eastern Conference for that matter, is capable of stopping an engaged AJ Hammons. The part where Matt Painter’s head begins to reunite with the locker room wall repeatedly is Hammons’ play, which was integral in Purdue’s road victory at Illinois Wednesday night but has been noticeably inconsistent.

Painter’s group garnered no preseason attention and, with Sparty still chugging along strong, Wisconsin entering conference play undefeated and Iowa busy opening eyes nationally, Purdue remains firmly entrenched under the radar. Despite this, Painter has quietly put together a promising freshman class.

Fort Wayne’s Bryson Scott leads the Boilers in steals while Basil Smotherman (Lawrence North) is a slippery wing capable of making heady plays. These two join a pair of transplants from the Land of Lincoln in Jay Simpson, a punishing 6-10 Red Shirt, and Kendall Stephens, who leads the team in three pointers and enters with the added pressure of being the son of Boilermaker legend Everett Stephens.

Clearly young talent abounds in Painter’s stable, but these pieces are rendered moderately ineffective when Hammons is battling fouls or taking one of his frustratingly frequent breaks from playing inspired basketball. The obvious elephant in the room is the fact Hammons appears to be everything Matt Painter never even wanted in a basketball player. A fondness for high energy, hustle guys who play their guts out has become Painter’s calling card and to this point Hammons simply doesn’t play his guts out that much, if ever.

His size, brute strength and wingspan (put the tape measure away Jay) makes it possible for him to dominate without, you know, breaking a sweat or increasing his resting heart rate. Hammons came into the Illinois game averaging just south of 10 points and 7 rebounds a game. Wednesday night NBA Scouts could only drool longingly as Painter’s pivot scored 17 points, grabbed 8 boards and rejected 3 shots, including a late run where he scored on an offensive rebound before notching a key blocked shot to help seal the win.

So as Painter labors to restore relevance to his program amidst a Big Ten season that can be brutally long, he does so knowing full well this particular season, much like Hammons, is chocked full of potential.


© 2013 Eric Walker Williams

Irish building quiet dynasty

First appeared on January 13th, 2010
in The Lebanon Reporter
It is college sports (or perhaps politics) at its finest, knowing the Alabama state legislature will take up the issue of a Congressional resolution celebrating the Crimson Tide’s national championship. So as the grass roots movement to nominate Head Football Coach Nick Saban Czar of the BCS, Governor of Alabama or perhaps Pope, rages through the Yellowhammer State with all the fury of an Cat 5 Hurricane there are some coaches dominating their sport with much less ballyhoo and fanfare.
For 23 years Muffet McGraw has done nothing but show up and punch the time clock. Demanding the most of herself as well as her staff and players has led to 14 straight NCAA tournament appearances. Her resume includes 584 total wins as well as a National Championship (2001). McGraw’s teams have won 74% of their games and her players are graduating at a clip of 100%. Just who is she you may ask? For those not in the know, she is the head coach of the Notre Dame Lady Irish and her team is currently undefeated and ranked 3rd in the national polls.
You don’t need me telling you that winning 74% of her games far exceeds anything the football program has put together over the last 20 years but I don’t see the day the bean counters at NBC come knocking on McGraw’s door with a TV contract in hand. But such is life, and college sports of course.
Understandable or not, with the firing of Charlie Weis and undefeated runs by both the Colts and Purdue, the perfect start to this season by the Lady Irish has gone largely overlooked in the Hoosier state. This being said, while the Irish have been dominant on most nights, every great run isn’t without its own close calls. Four of Notre Dame’s wins this season have been by 5 points or less including a 68-67 squeaker over Michigan State early in the year.
In getting out to such a fast start Notre Dame has leaned hard on three key players; Freshman Skylar Diggins and Seniors Lindsay Schrader and Ashley Barlow. Diggins is a hometown hero who helped South Bend Washington win a State title. She also garnered national fame by being named the 2009 Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year. The perfect compliment for an outstanding freshman of course would be some seasoned veterans to play alongside. This is exactly what McGraw has in Schrader and the Pike grad Barlow. Not only are they experienced, both seniors are also 1,000 point scorers.
Now before we uncork the champagne and declare the Lady Irish season a complete success, bear in mind they do have a date with number 1 Connecticut on Saturday, in Storrs. You remember UCONN right? Head coach Gino Auriemma? The John Wooden of girls’ basketball? The man with so many rings the grand opening of his jewelry store would include an overstock sale?
If McGraw’s teams are anything like her however, they won’t be fazed by Auriemma’s six rings or UCONN’s recent run of total dominance. And by total dominance here we are specifically referring to the fact that they have won 54 straight games.
Despite her fountain of success however McGraw’s teams are accustomed to toiling in the shadow of a once proud tradition of grid-iron-greatness. Something tells me McGraw will once again be forced to play second fiddle to another football team when her girls face UCONN Saturday night as that is when the Colts play Baltimore. But hey, I guess it’s moments like this that prompted Al Gore to invent the DVR now isn’t it?

Purdue Suffocatingly Stellar in Win

First appeared on January 5th, 2009
in The Lebanon Reporter

With everything that happened over the weekend, Mike Leach’s firing, Ohio State winning the Rose Bowl, Tim Tebow playing his last college game (in which we saw the glass slipper finally fall off Cinderella’s hairy Bearcat foot) and our beloved Colts performing another stirring rendition of “Lay Down Sally”, Purdue’s performance in Mackey Arena Saturday against West Virginia was understandably lost in the shuffle.
While both teams rode in to West Lafayette with undefeated records, by the midway point of the second half one had to wonder if the Mountaineers wouldn’t be heading back to the Blue Ridge Mountains via stretcher. With 1993-94’s 14-0 start squarely in their sights, it would appear the Big Dog’s leash is about out of rope as a new generation of Boilermaker basketball is busy chasing history.
Simply put, Purdue did what Purdue does, they defended West Virginia 94 feet for 40 minutes. And they don’t merely guard you, they harass you. They hound you. They are in your shorts the minute you break the team huddle. They are tough. They are physical. They are well coached and they are relentless. And just when you think you have turned a corner and beaten your man to the basket for an easy score, like a high-dollar Vegas magic act, somebody ALWAYS appears from the weak side to deflect the shot or take a charge.
When ESPN Jay Bilas said Purdue was simply “outtoughing” West Virginia Saturday, it became clear he was so inspired by what he saw that he turned to using words nobody ever uses to describe it.
Handing the ball to officials and cheering for their teammates from the sidelines may give the appearance that Purdue is a clean cut and proper bunch, but they’re not the type of Boy Scouts who would help an old lady cross the street. They’d rather take a charge from a speeding bus to be certain she gets herself and her groceries home in one piece.
To borrow a page out of the Jay Bilas playbook, the Boilers were “suffocatingly” stellar in their win on Saturday. Not only were they outstanding defensively, the key to their performance against West Virginia was the fact that the Boilers shot the ball very well too. Coming in to Saturday’s game Purdue was shooting 45% as a team from the field, this included 31% from three point range. Saturday the Boilers fired 50% from the field including a blistering 60% from behind the arc in the second half.
Unappealing but effective, Purdue’s style is a lot like Picasso’s painting. The first impression is that both are relatively ugly, but true art aficionados and fans who understand basketball appreciate each for their individual beauty.
With this year’s Final Four just a few miles down the road in Indianapolis, Purdue may be able to save some money on Expedia by booking their hotel rooms now. For, even with speedy point guard Lewis Jackson out for the season following foot surgery, the Boilers showed Saturday they still have everything they need to make a run to Indianapolis.
For the most part on Saturday West Virginia appeared as if they didn’t have any business being on the floor with Purdue. But before we go feeling sorry for head coach Bob Huggins let’s understand, barring another key injury, Purdue has enough talent and tenacity to make their way to Indianapolis come March. And that should be enough to keep Boiler fans everywhere dancing; even the Big Dog himself.