Occasionally someone asks who I think I’m writing for, what I consider my audience to be. OK, very occasionally, but it has happened. The answer is a person who’s interested in sport for its own sake, not because they went to Penn State or their nephew plays for McCaskey, a person who wants to know, honestly, what the game or event or situation was like, and a person who is willing to think, even if it means having their own prejudices (face it, we all have them) challenged.
In that vein I’ve gotten two satisfying e-mails the past couple weeks. One was from my, uh, typical demographic, an ex-Donegal wrestler now living in Morocco (swear to God) who loved the diary of spending most of a week in Hershey’s Giant Center during the district basketball playoffs.
The other regarded last Sunday’s column on the NBA. The writer had spent Saturday night switching back and forth, via TV remote, between Duke-North Carolina and Houston Rockets-New Orleans Hornets. He wrote: “Much to my surprise, the Hornets-Rockets game was the better game to watch. I spent much more time with it than the college game…. This experience challenged my presumed notion that the college game is better to watch than the NBA game.”
Having said all that, we watched the Blue Devils and Tar Heels in the office Saturday night. Looks like Carolina has finally gotten serious about defense, which means they have to be an NCAA favorite, in my mind for the first time this year.
Ten days ago my NCAA pick would have been UCLA, but their two wins last week may as well have been losses. They beat Stanford in overtime after an horrific call with a couple secs left in regulation put Bruin point guard Darren Collison on the foul line, where he forced the OT. Saturday they beat Cal by one on a circus shot that arced over the corner of the backboard and fell in. There’s a rule that the ball cannot legally go over the backboard in either direction, but I don’t really have a problem with the refs on that play. One, from the baseline, which is where the nearest ref was standing, it probably was hard to tell went over the board or sort of skirted the corner. Two, I don’t understand why the rule exists.
The point is, at home, UCLA outplayed neither. Cal isn’t very good, and even Stanford, which is good, isn’t on UCLA’s quasi-NBA level athletically.
On the other hand, I talked myself out of Florida last year because of some shaky late regular-season performances….
SHAMELESS PROMOTION DEPT. - Tomorrow we videotape the premiere edition of The Low Post, an Internet talk show hosted by This Space and Eric Stark, also of the Sunday News. The plan for now is to tape the thing Tuesdays. We’ll do tomorrow’s, on the Phillies, around noon. It’ll take a little while for production work to be completed, and you should be able to watch it on Lancaster Online by late afternoon. We did a little test Friday and it looks pretty cool. Mypromise to you- it’ll be better than Stephen A. Smith. You are invited - nay urged, implored, begged - to check it out.
