Project OSPREY: Comeuppance
A week and a day late is still better than never, oui? Firstly, my congratulations to the Kansas Jayhawks. Though my natural disposition is to be vehemently against any and all members of the thuggish Big XII Conference, in this case they were a useful means to an end. The Memphis Tigers are an astonishingly formidable basketball team. To oversimplify the case, they have only one identifiable weakness, a genuinely pathetic free throw shooting percentage. And here is the sole reason why Memphis's defeat was the end for which I embraced Kansas as the means: this weakness was pointed out to their head coach, John Calipari, in several public forums; this deficiency was acknowledged by Calipari; and then dismissed by that selfsame coach. In any level below that of professional athletics, the paramount job of any coach is to instruct, to teach through the medium of sport lessons that will make those in his charge better members of society. Calipari taught his kids that if you are perfect except for one glaring weakness, you should completely overlook that weakness and arrogantly believe that it could not possibly return to thwart your ambitions.
What was the misstep by Memphis that gave Kansas the slimmest of opportunities to force overtime and thus earn a second chance at victory? 1 of 6 free throw shooting in the closing seconds. Kansas got the ball with ten seconds left in the game. The Jayhawks drove down the court and scored an improbable three-point shot to send the game into overtime. Had Memphis made just one of those five missed free throws, Kansas would have been down four, an insurmountable deficit given the time remaining. One free throw and the Tigers would have won the Big Dance. No team is perfect. No team can correct all its flaws. But Memphis is the only team I can remember that looked at its one flaw, scoffed, and declared that they were simply too good to let some little thing like that stand between them and their rightful championship. And so, as they missed those free throws in the clutch, I laughed and laughed and laughed. Ah, what a glorious sight, chumps and their justly-earned defeat.
Project OSPREY:
31-25-7 for the whole of the tournament, thirty-one picks correct and thirty-two in various stages of incorrectness. Not bad. Not good, but not all that bad, really. Remind me sometime to tell you of the year I won the 1213 house pool, predicting not only both teams in the championship game, but also the final score within two points of the actual total. Heady days.
Project OSPREY: Farewell
I look back and I am ashamed that in the six years I lived in Ann Arbor, I never once attended a basketball game at Crisler Arena. All those opportunities that I let slip through my fingers. All the years, both in A2 and since, that I let all that college basketball on T.V. pass by me unwatched. Life is far too short and far too fleeting to forgo these chances so cavalierly.
Well, enough of that, there's no reclaiming the past. There is only the future. Boy howdy, I cannot wait for next season!
Believe: Predators 5-3 Red Wings
Series: Detroit 2-1 Nashville. Still two down, fourteen to go.
Well, that sucked. I did not expect the Wings to sweep the series, but neither did I expect such a rapid collapse. Alas, such are the vagaries of sport. I am confident of vengeance and victory on Wednesday. Go Wings!
The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Queen, "Killer Queen" from Greatest Hits I (T.L.A.M.)
Commentary: "Dynamite with a laser beam."
Zinda Blake, Lady Blackhawk, a.k.a. Queen Killer Shark?
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