Some thoughts from the NCAA tournament:
God, don't you love the Wisconsin basketball team?
The Badgers are amazing. Saturday they took on Kansas State and Michael Beasley, who is probably going to be the top pick in the NBA draft.
Beasley got some points, but it was like he was in a war. Every point was contested. Midway through the second half you could tell by his body language that he knew he had met his match, and then some. This kid only plays in the half-court and has only a nodding acquaintance with defense.
The Wisconsin team is aptly nicknamed because they badger the daylights out of opponents. They are very smart. They are very disciplined. And they are very, very tough. Play Wisconsin and your body thinks it's been a football scrimmage or wrestling practice. Bang and they bang back. Don't bang, and they still bang back.
Those who do not consider Bo Ryan one of the very best college coaches in the land have not been paying attention. He's got a system and he gets players who fit and will play in that system. And he just keeps on winning.
The Badgers will have their hands full with a very hot Davidson team on Friday. With Stephen Curry and Jason Richards, Davidson is a guard-dominated team. It should be interesting to see if Davidson can stop the Badgers' great inside game and if Wisconsin can hold those pure shooters in check.
Watching Marquette lose that heart breaker to Stanford Saturday, I recalled the intense debate after last season about whether Dominic James was going to turn pro. And I remember the Hallelujah's when James decided to stay.
The reason I thought this was interesting is that I don't think James is the best guard on his college team. He may not even be in the top two.
I think there is a good argument, that both Jerel McNeal and Wes Matthews are better players than James and better pro prospects. They can both shoot better than James, both are bigger and both play incredibly tough defense.
Plus, James seems to have an attitude that he's the horse when it comes to crunch time. A span of about a minute in the second half was very revealing.
After Stanford made two free throws with 2 minutes 25 seconds left, Marquette still led, 69-68. With 2:09 left, James drove to the right and threw up a horrible layup under intense pressure that missed. He got his own rebound, amazingly, and dribbled back outside and incredibly drove again, and missed layup again. He couldn't get it over the tall trees inside.
Two more free throws and Stanford had the lead. This was followed by James missing a jumper with 1:22 left and then missing a layup again with 1:19 left.
James' final line for the game was 4-16 from the field, nothing for three from three-point range and 10 assists. He's a real hustler with good jumping ability but he really isn't much of an offensive threat. And while he plays good college defense, I can't imagine him defending any NBA guards with much success.
Part of any presidential campaign is playing along with whatever sport is hot during the campaign.
Thus, we get brackets from Clinton, Obama and McCain.
Obama seems like he really knows what he's doing. He talked about needing to do some "bracketology" before filling his out.
McCain seems like the kind of guy whose aides had to start out by saying, "all right, now this is a basketball."
Hillary's campaign said that they were not going to make her bracket public. Come on here folks. What? She was keeping it secret so she could just use it in the office pool? They would have been better off just saying she was concentrating on other important things and didn't fill out a bracket. But not making it public! How dumb do they think we are?
I'm a dedicated Mac user. And the NCAA didn't manage to think of Mac users when they announced they would stream every game. I tried, but couldn't get it.
And speaking of television, any idea why Channel 58 didn't show us the Georgetown-Davidson game on Sunday? The winner would be the next opponent for Wisconsin. Instead, we got Tennessee and Butler. I can't imagine that someone at Channel 58 thought that we'd be interested in watching Bruce Pearl more because he used to coach here. Wait. On second thought. I can believe it.
With a history in Milwaukee stretching back decades, Dave tries to bring a unique perspective to his writing, whether it's sports, politics, theater or any other issue.
He's seen Milwaukee grow, suffer pangs of growth, strive for success and has been involved in many efforts to both shape and re-shape the city. He's a happy man, now that he's quit playing golf, and enjoys music, his children and grandchildren and the myriad of sports in this state. He loves great food and hates bullies and people who think they are smarter than everyone else.
This whole Internet thing continues to baffle him, but he's willing to play the game as long as OnMilwaukee.com keeps lending him a helping hand. He is constantly amazed that just a few dedicated people can provide so much news and information to a hungry public.
Despite some opinions to the contrary, Dave likes most stuff. But he is a skeptic who constantly wonders about the world around him. So many questions, so few answers.
