The Victors: Project OSPREY
Penn State 84-78 Michigan (№ 4)
23-5, Big Ten 10-5

We had a fifteen point lead halfway through the second half & it was at this point, alas, that we stopped hustling, apparently assuming that our lead was insurmountable. This proved not to be the case. We really earned this loss, by committing an unusually large number of turnovers (a recurrent theme in our defeats) & by sending the ferocious Nittany Lions, the least fouled club in the Big Ten, to the free throw line with appalling frequency. They are called free throws because they are essentially free points. Many of my fellow Wolverines have disputed my predictions of doom in the league & national tournaments. They point out that our losses have all come on the road, against hostile crowds, & there are no such games in tournament play. I reply to their faith in neutral sites by pointing out that we have no won a game outside of the friendly confines of the Crisler Center in a month & that tournament games will be played outside of those friendly confines. Tonight we handed Penn State its first league win. We were defeated by a club that had suffered fourteen straight losses. We lost on the road, again. We lost because we are lazy & stupid & prone to panic. We are doomed. The № 4 basketball club in the country? We barely belong in the top twenty-five & certainly not in the top ten. If we can lose to Penn State—to the previously winless—we can lose to anybody. Selection committee, please take note & please take pity.

Go Blue!

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They Might Be Giants, "Alienation's for the Rich" from Then: The Earlier Years (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "Alienation's for the Rich," a predecessor of ye olde internet meme "First World problems." Complaining about a loss by a club of collegiate basketball players, scholarship attendees of one of the finest universities in the world, to another club of collegiate basketball players is the kind of alienation only the rich can afford.

"Well, I ain't feelin' happy
About the state of things in my life,
But I'm workin' to make it better
With a six of Miller High Life!
Just drinkin' and a-drivin',
A-makin' sure my dues get paid
Because alienation's for the rich
And I'm feelin' poorer every day."