1LDTFS, Post 10: Safeties.

Woah, comments on my last three posts? I know that's pretty run-of-the-mill for any normal blog, but, yo, I just started this joint less than a month ago. Three comments on three posts from three different people makes me all warm and gooey inside. Keep it up, everybody.

Oh, and re: Think Blue Crew, who suggests we play someone who isn't Illinois, therefore making the Wrigley game less of a spectacle in which NU happens to be a part and more NU-centric: that's the pipe dream. That would definitely be better for NU, if we could actually get people to make us the focus of the game. But Northwestern just doesn't have the brand recognition to be able to book Wrigley Field just for us, and Illinois has the upper hand here: they want to play at Wrigley, Wrigley wants them, therefore, they're not going to be the one giving up a home game. We have to take what we can get, and what we can get is a home game at Wrigley Field against Illinois. So let's do it.

On to safeties, yo!

Days til Football: 35.

(The Daily had a ridiculously good photo of Brendan Smith about three seconds after this photo was taking wherein he is lifting his hands victoriously, but I couldn't figure out how to actually get it on here. So, you get this photo with a sullen Eric Decker in the background instead.)

Who did it last year?: NU had two star safeties: free safety Brendan Smith, was great in pass coverage and was a huge asset in the returning game, and strong safety Brad Phillips, who became NU's biggest hitter and had three interceptions. Each had plays that won conference games: Smith won the Minnesota game with his last-minute pick six to give NU the 24-17 victory, and Phillips' hit on Shonn Greene, despite being completely illegal, cuz of the whole "helmet-to-helmet" thing, forced Greene to put the ball on the ground, giving NU a chance to score, and took Greene out of the game. Which we won.

When Phillips played nickelback or moved up a few yards to play a sort of hybrid linebacker, Brian Peters came in as an extra defensive back in the strong safety position. Peters is a big hitter too - he knocked Arrelious Benn out of the Illinois game. (By the way, the reason Arrelious goes by "Rejus" in sports columns isn't because it's a nickname of his, but because "Arrelious" causes more spelling errors from lazy sportswriters than Dwyane Wade and Jarrod Saltalamacchia combined. This is what's known as a "Coach K nickname" in the biz.) (I just made that up.) (But it works. Even though I can totally spell K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-I with my eyes closed.)

Who's got next?: Brad and Brendan are seniors this year, and both made it onto the cover of the media guide, so, yeah, they'll be starting. And Brian Peters will also be doing his thing in those aforementioned nickelback situations. I nominate we call this unit "The Killer B's". Here's to not getting sued by an overzealous Brad Ausmus and Lance Berkman.

Song this unit reminds me of: Killa Beez, by... the Wu-Tang Killa Beez, a very uncreative rap group affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan. Although you probably just thought it was the Wu-Tang because everybody with a verse on this song is, well, also a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. It's for the better: the rapping by the other members of the Wu-Tang Killa Beez on the rest of this album is historically bad. 

Not to tell U-God what's ghetto, but, dude, I have a Chad Pennington jersey in my closet. I don't wear it for a reason. 

And, yes, I'm running with calling this unit the Killer B's. I'm so uncool.

Is this year's unit an improvement? Well, it's the same unit, a year older, a year wiser, and a year better at game-winning interceptions and the not safe for work Chris Tucker quote in Friday-ing of opposing running backs. I like it. 

So, yeah, have a good weekend. Special teams is next. Football season isn't close yet, but it's close to close. 

The Football at Wrigley Question

Every once in a while, there's a topic that takes the tiny NU blogosphere by storm, and, because I'm primarily interested in boring the doo-doo out of y'all, I always feel compelled to comment on it. Nowadays, it's the question of playing a home game at Wrigley Field against Illinois. 

There's arguments against having a home game at Wrigley. I'll list them as obnoxiously as possible.

"But we're giving up a home game! What about the money from the gates! We need that money!"

"But the game will be filled with Illinois fans! If we're trying to promote our team, it won't even matter because only Illinois fans will come and they'll never become NU fans as long as they live so it doesn't even help to market to them!"

"But most football teams don't throw away home games like that! We'd have so few home games!"

"But what if a  player is running really fast and hits into the wall in center field and gets hurt?"

"But if there's only Illinois fans, who's even going to remember NU was there?"

"But waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"

Let me put it this way: I can't see eye to eye with anyone who sees this game as a potential negative for NU sports. I see these negatives, and if you're seriously concerned about this, live a little. 

First off, NU will play a home game against Illinois every other year until they're building skating rinks in hell. Those games aren't going anywhere. And the only difference between those games will be the players and the final scores. You'll attend hundreds of games at Ryan Field, and some day, they'll all start to blend together, if they haven't already. 

However, a game at Wrigley is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. And what's more, just like the Winter Classic actually got people to think about the Blackhawks and Red Wings for an afternoon who never would've done so beforehand, NU can take a little time in the spotlight, and that's definitely not a bad thing. 

Let's be real. Right now, NU can win 8 games a year and play six home games from 2009 to infinity, and you know what? Status quo won't get us more than 30,000 fans in seats and won't get us sellouts in non OSU/Penn State games. That's just being realistic. Status quo won't get us anywhere. We have to try new things just to get people to notice us. I'm not saying a game at Wrigley will change all this, I'm not even saying it'll help. I'm just saying you have to keep trying, or else nothing will ever happen. And if nothing does happen, at the very least we'll have a fun day in somebody else's dilapidated stadium for once.

Variety is the spice of life. And a game at Wrigley can easily add a little bit of variety into our yearly game with the folks from downstate.

Oh, and, re: player safety with the outfield wall being about two feet outside the endzone: good call, they should get cracking on this. I think we can all agree that we need to be more worried about post-touchdown hits from the ivy than we do about in-game hits from Illini linebackers. (Zing!)

1LDTFS, Post 9: Cornerbacks.

Sorry for the four or so day posting break - me and some of the boys went camping, no internet access out in the woods. Hopefully, the new poll on the right makes up for my time away. (Seriously, folks, give Wet Paper Bag his due.)

Days Left Til Football: 38. (Please, nobody actually do the math to figure this out. I'm probably so far off at this point - I keep subtracting from the last time I did this post, but I'm probably losing like 4 days each time I do that.)

Yeah, that's pass interference. 

Who did it last year?: The purple-clad fella above is Sherrick McManis, who started every game last year and did a downright fantastic job. McManis was in his third year starting games at cornerback, his second year full-time, and he's improved every year. He was originally joined by Justan Vaughn, who jumped some people on the depth chart to earn the starting job, but after the Syracuse and Duke games, Vaughn suffered a season-ending injury, and in came Jordan Mabin, who was pretty much as good as McManis, and earned hisself a Freshman All-American honor. 

In the tradition of naming graduated players who sorta contributed in these posts, NU loses David Oredugba, who played a decent amount of corner when we needed three or four on the field, and will forever go down in NU history as the guy whose poor hands led to Brendan Smith's game-winning pick six against Minnesota. Because I'm a journalism student, and I therefore specialize in reporting to you, the reader, the most important and relevant information I can find, I am here to tell you the following information: Oredugba is now gainfully employed playing football for the Helsinki Roosters in Finland.  For all of you who were wondering about ex-NU occasional nickelback David Oredugba's post-collegiate football whereabouts,  you're welcome, and donations are accepted in the form of cash, checks, or credit cards sent to my dorm room. Here are some money quotes from an interview with David from the Roosters' website.

"I understand that during the summer Helsinki is a great place to
be, because of the nice weather, festivals, midnight sunsets. While in
Finland I hope to forge many lifelong friendships."

" I hope to do whatever it takes for the Roosters to win the Maple Title."

The Purple Drank: providing the information you need since June 2009.

Who's Got Next?: McManis and Mabin ensured their starters roles with great performances last year, and with Vaughn back from injury, we've basically got three cornerbacks who we'd be pleased with in a starting role. If needs be, Mike Bolden seems to be the most likely candidate to play in a dime set, although we'd probably end up putting in safety Bryan Peters and having Brad Phillips playing a nickelback role with Vaughn also in the game. 

Is that an improvement? Oh yeah. Essentially, the difference from last year to this year is that we know we have two lock-down corners in McManis and Mabin, plus, our third CB - a pretty necessary position - changes from Oredugba to Vaughn. Don't tell the Helsinki Roosters, but Vaughn was higher than Oredugba on the roster last year, so that's a good thing. Our secondary should be pretty sweet this year, and by now, you've probably noticed that all of the defensive posts since DT have been really complimentary, and the DT one was pretty complimentary too. Long story short, we're going to have a nice defense this year.

And, yes, consider the hunt on for any further evidence related to David Oredugba's Finnish American football career. First person to find anything wins a prize.

Coach Fitz!!!

I wrote last week a little bit about how excitable Coach Pat Fitzgerald is. I think there's no better display of this than his twitter feed, which is handily linked to in the links column on the right side, but which, to be honest, I hadn't really analyzed, or checked, that much, until I got curious today.

As Twitters go, it's a pretty decent one - few spelling mistakes, clearly done by Fitz himself, and extremely Fitz-like. It's filled with all-caps, and most of all, exclamation points.

In his last 20 posts, the man has 24 exclamation points. (!) That's 1.2 per post. Although it drops off a bit as the posts get older - he only has 91 in his last 100 posts, then again, maybe that's because most of his recent posts are about his induction to the hall of fame, which would get me pretty hyped and exclamation point-y - he's still a freakin' prolific exclaimer.

Considering one of the main reasons Fitz is an NU folk hero is his preposterous intensity quotient, it's good to see his online persona punctuates things exactly the way I picture him talking.

1LDTFS, Post 8: Linebackers.

Coming down the stretch of this series, which is a shame, because I clearly have nothing else to write about.

Days Left Til Football: 44.Who did it last year?: On the outside, senior Prince Kwateng, the dude doing something in the photo above, and Quentin Davie started every game. Kwateng was the team captain, and had a pretty solid season, with four games with more than ten tackles, including 13 in the Alamo Bowl. Davie was relatively nice with it as well as a sophomore.

In the middle, Malcolm Arrington seemed like an invaluable part of the defense for the first half of the season. However, he turned out to be just regular old valuable, because Nate Williams came in and replaced him effortlessly, doing as good a job as Arrington had been. 

We also graduate a senior named Mike Dinard, who was a backup OLB who started games in 2006 and 2007 before entering a backup role last year. Sadly, my only recollection of him was a particularly egregious late hit in the Indiana game, but then again, I have a knack for only noticing bad things. 

According to the record books, Brad Phillips started two games at outside linebacker, but I see him as a safety first with the ability to play up a few yards if need be to allow Mike Hankwitz to get creative with his defensive setups.

Who's gonna do it this year? Williams and Davie will reprise their roles from last year. Replacing Prince Kwateng will be TPD favorite and NU folk hero, Ben Johnson, who played a smattering of backup linebacker and struck fear into the hearts of opposing special teamers, and, all things told, should be a pretty good player. 

There's a few other guys who I can't guarantee won't play, so, for the sake of completeness, I'll mention them: Chris Jeske has been injured in a variety of ways for his entire NU career, and is a senior now, and played a bunch of reps with the first team in spring ball, so don't expect his career to end with only blocks to his name. Aaron Nagel transferred from Notre Dame and sat out last year due to NCAA rules, but being a Notre Dame recruit doesn't mean as much as it used to. And as we all know by know, they have a bit of a knack of messing up their LB recruiting priorities anyways. Bryce McNaul was a backup last year, and thus got into the games a little bit, but I don't know much about him.

Is that an improvement from last year? It easily can be. We know Davie and Williams can play from their roles last year, and if you're not a Ben Johnson fan yet, you will be. He's 6'4 and his player profile tells you he was a great high school receiver and set multiple records in track. To sum it up, we have a young unit with two juniors who have proven themselves with starting experience and a sophomore who looks primed to break out.

All said and told, linebacker should be one of many solid units on the defensive side of the ball this next year, and in 2010 for that matter. 

Revisionist History

There's been a lot of hubbub in the tiny NU blogosphere about sprucing up NU's historical records for a bit. Before I get into the thick of this post, I'd like to commend the guys gettin dirty doing the research: the guys from HailToPurple are obviously amazing with their historical knowledge and actually got Northwestern athletics to acknowledge that the football team won ten games in 1903 as opposed to the nine previously believed, and Ryan from Welsh-Ryan Ramblings has been bloggin up a storm about how NU was voted the 1931 national basketball champions in 1931 by the Helms foundation, which many schools consider the equivalent the same as a national championship from the tourney era, but which NU does not acknowledge. 

So, how to feel about this? Well, on the one hand, you always gotta respect your elders, and although I doubt any of the members of either squad are still with us (and if you are... well, I'm impressed you lived long enough to see yourself assumed dead on the internet), you still have to acknowledge their achievements in their memory. 

But on the other hand, I think there's a lot to be said about being true to what we are. And historically, winning is not what we are. If you're a Northwestern fan, you have to embrace our history of losing, sucking, and generally being terrible. It makes the fact that we're decent today so much better. 

There's a reason every hip-hop fan I know knows all the lyrics to Juicy. Rags-to-riches stories, to be honest, are cooler than just being good all the time. 

And as a Yankees fan, and not a douche (we exist!) I have to put up with my fellow Yankee fans. When we win, they expect it, because they think the Yankees should always win. And when we lose, there's the whole "HEY, YOU, HOW MANY RINGS DOES YOUR TEAM HAVE? 26? OH, WAIT, WE HAVE 26, HAHAHAHA, GO BACK TO TORONTO, PUNK" spiel. The Yankees' historical success completely dilutes any enjoyment of the current team that many Yankees fans have. 

Meanwhile, at NU, we have the opposite dilemma. Our teams have been historically the bottom of the barrel. And now? Now, we know how to savor every win, because there were times when we didn't have any. So, yeah, maybe your team did win 7 times in a row against us, or whatever. Maybe you do have a 135-25 record against us. But today? You're probably going to lose. And when you look back at all those historical successes you had against us, you know what? It's going to sting. (Trust me: I'm a Yankees fan. The whole "Red Sox being good now" thing STINGS.)

So when we do win ten games in a season, or when we do qualify for a NCAA Tourney, I'd rather not hear about our 1931 national championship or our 10 wins in 1903. There's a first time for everything, and I'd like to be around for NU's first, rather than hear about how it happened way back in aught six. 

1LDTFS, Post 7: Defensive End

Why did I do two seperate posts about the defensive line, but only one about the offensive? I wish I knew. Sorry bout the double standard, offensive linemen. 

Days Left Til Football: 46. (Woah, under 50?)

Who did it last year?: Primarily, three dudes. 

The one above is senior defensive end/beast/2008 team MVP/2008 first team All-Big Ten/2009 Preseason All-American candidate/2009 Playboy All-American/baby-eater Corey Wootton. Corey Wootton is the truth. Corey Wootton is so good, the Northwestern athletics department embedded a highlight clip in his player profile, which I'm pretty sure is a first for any Wildcat athlete in any sport. You may remember him from doing these things.

On the other end, most of the time, was Kevin Mims, who notched 38 starts as a Wildcat. Mims had been a starter since freshman year, when he recorded a 30 yard pick six in the Sun Bowl, and was Big Ten defensive player of the week once last year, but despite all the achievements, the youtube video he'll be defined by isn't a highlight reel like Wootton, but this:

Mims was also NU's most talented sideline celebrator, besides Pat Fitzgerald, of course.

When those guys took a breather, in came Vince Browne. Vince was a revelation as a RS Freshman, sometimes racking up more tackles or sacks than Wootton or Mims in less playing time. He even managed a Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week nod against Ohio. His year was cut short by injury, but he somehow made it back for the bowl game.

Who's doing it this year?: We return Wootton and Browne, which is great. Wootton was a prospect to go pro until his knee went one way and the rest of his leg went the other while pursuing the QB in the Alamo Bowl, and decided to rehab and return to college after getting surgery in January, a good choice for Corey, because the injury probably would've lowered his draft stock some. Corey will know the decision was worth it when he gets his NU degree 

when he has to walk to Tech in February with four inches of slushy gross stuff on the ground

when NFL DE Luis Castillo comes over to his tiny Evanston crib to visit and lights a cigar with a stack of crisp, clean $100 dollar bills, and flies away in his personal hot air balloon  

when he gets selected highly in April's NFL Draft.

Song/songs this unit reminds me of: 

From Kevin Mims...

To Corey Wootton. Errr, Victor Wooten. Who played a solo show at NU last year. It was awesome. 

I'm close to 100% sure that what he does in that video isn't humanly possible. But hey, same goes for Corey. 

Is that an improvement? Oh yeah. Corey Wootton has probably steadily improved, as he has his whole career, and Browne was arguably as good as Mims last year, and is still a sophomore. No offense to our secondary, but Browne and Wootton are probably the best unit we have on defense, and should put an absolute world of hurt on opposing quarterbacks next season. 

Who else we got? For those of you who are big fans of when I say stupid things about players deep on depth charts I've never heard of, sorry, this feature is done. The way I see it, if you don't actually have a history of playing for us, you don't deserve getting slandered by some dude online, so, no more. I apologize to all the fans of slander out there. 

Here's to Coach Fitz.

Today, as you probably done heard, is Pat Fitzgerald's big day. Our coach is getting inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame for his service to NU as a linebacker back in 1995-96, when, as you also probably know, he led NU's defense to two of the best seasons in NU history, and certainly the best two defensive seasons. 

Unfortunately, I'm only 19. I barely understood football when Fitz was domineering opposing running backs, and didn't pay attention to NU football for at least ten years after his days in purple were over. I know him as a coach. I've already offered my views on Fitz the coach in picture form, so allow me to do so in words.

Even if Pat Fitzgerald was Carmody bad at running a program, I'd still probably like him a lot. He's young, extremely passionate, easily excitable, friendly and likable, he stands up for his players and they love him back for it, and it genuinely seems like he loves Northwestern. 

Luckily for us, that's not a problem. Fitz might be the best recruiter in NU history, and we've seen steady improvements each year he's coached, and, small sample size be damned, the man actually has a winning record as an NU football coach. He probably has close to a 100% approval rating among NU students, as evidenced by his close to mythical status among us and by the extraordinarily high percentage of people who kept those disembodied PTI Pat Fitzgerald heads on sticks they gave out at the Purdue game and put them somewhere in their room. 

Some people talk about Coach Fitz becoming NU's personal Joe Paterno, others talk about him being lured away to some other school by a few extra million. To be honest, as much as other schools are probably willing to shell out for him, I'd be surprised (and betrayed) if he went anywhere else. Fitz is genuinely in love with Northwestern, and is still grateful for getting recruited by NU and for the fact that we gave him a chance as a coach. And I think we'll see him here for decades to come. Hopefully, he'll age more gracefully than Joe Pa. 

So, Coach Fitz, congratulations, and thanks. 

Sorry, no big post today

Instead - enjoy The Purple Drank Best Of: John Shurna Making Silly Faces Edition.Silly Face Basketball Photos happen to everybody. (shouldn't take you more than ten photos to find a good one) It's a fact of life. But some people, notably Anthony Johnson and Mike Dunleavy, Jr. just have a knack for getting into situations that give rise to Silly Face Basketball Photo opportunities.

I think it's safe to say John Shurna is one of those people. 

1LDTFS, Post 6: Defensive Tackle

Yeah, onto the D. Much less interesting to write/read about, so, sorry about that, but, hey, if you want me to write something about NU sports every day in the middle of the friggin summer, which you clearly do, well, this is what you get. 

Since there's no clear order of where to start on defense, like there is on offense with the QB, I'm going from the inside out, or something like that. 

Days Left Til Football: 51.

Who did it last year?: Most notably, the guy in the photo above, John Gill, who, judging from his excitement and the relative depression on the faces of Hawkeyes fans, is pictured immediately after recording a game-saving pass deflection on fourth down against Iowa this year. Anyway, Gill was a pretty dominant DT who started over 40 games at NU. Unfortunately for us, he's now trying to wiggle his way onto the Detroit Lions roster, and you can go ahead and insert your joke about how that's unfortunate for him too, but I'm too classy for that. 

Gill was joined by now-junior Corbin Bryant, who started most of the year as the second DT in our 4-3 defense before an injury at Michigan, and now-senior Adam Hahn, who had started the two years before, started the rest of the year.

Marshall Thomas also played in every game at DT, although quite frankly, I don't remember him, and Jack DiNardo appeared in eight games, but, again, no recollection of this. 

Who will do it this year?: Bryant and Hahn, the two guys with starting experience, will start.

The aforementioned Marshall Thomas is a true senior, and should also get some serious snaps. 

That was easy.

Is that an improvement?: Well, no. John Gill was a serious talent, the type who was clearly good enough to start four years ago and just got better as he went along. Bryant and Hahn are two guys who are pretty good, but, not football-on-Sundays good, and it might show a little in our ability to stop the run. Luckily for us, we have two grade-A beasts roaming the D-end positions, so our line won't be too bad. And, when it all comes down to it, these guys have played before, so it's not like newbies are going in for Gill. But it's a drop-off. 

One Less Day Til Football Season, Post 5: Superbacks

Pat Fitzgerald calls them "super players who do super things." Every other college football in the nation "tight ends and fullbacks." I call them "the topic of today's post, cuz I've covered every plausible offensive position besides superbacks already."

Days Til Football: 52.

Who did it last year? "Starting superback" is sort of an oxymoron, because it's a position that means multiple things and requires a decent amount of depth, especially considering that goal line sets will often have three of them, one as a fullback and two as tight ends. But, Josh Rooks and Brendan Mitchell both caught TD passes in goal line sets as tight end-y superbacks, while Mark Woodsum appeared out of the backfield a lot as a blocker.

Who will do it this year? Because this post just wasn't boring enough, pretty much the same guys. The only difference is the addition of Drake Dunsmore, who showed flashes of good athleticism as a true freshman before missing last year with an injury. He strikes me more of a RB/WR cross than a FB/TE cross superbacks are supposed to resemble, but he's a "superback" because he's too big to be a regular running back and probably too slow to be a regular wide reciever, but he's got the speed and catching ability that hopefully can make a difference out of the backfield, especially with our confusing RB situation. I'd expect everybody mentioned so far to get some playing time, with Rooks acting more like a true tight end and Dunsmore maybe more like a fullback/second running back, with everybody else getting in on goal line sets.

Song that this position inherently reminds me of due to its name: Included due to the Toto incident in last week's O-Line post. Today, here's Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly", from the movie of the same name, which, incidentally, told the story of a young Mark Woodsum (played by Ron O'Neal) and his life as a cocaine dealer. It's a pretty great song/album, with a really mediocre movie. 

Who else we got?

Senior Brendan Mitchell has already been mentioned, but I feel the need to point out that as a beat writer, I noticed that for whatever reason, he's consistently the loudest supporter at any given NU softball game. Your guess is as good as mine.

RS Freshman Brett Nagel was a high school quarterback, which makes me wonder why he isn't playing wide receiver for us like every other high school quarterback in the United States. He was also a highly touted linebacker, but, hey, superback.

John Plasencia is not yet a freshman, but is already a TPD legend as the GTEOATU19.

So, yeah. From here on out, it's football time. 

Summer Nationalism Wrap-Up

So the international basketball/football season is officially over at Northwestern with John Shurna's New Zealand trip ending with gold, so, let's analyze what all this flag-bearing means for NU, player by player. 

John Shurna: Covered this decently yesterday, but hey. It's good to see that he's capable of being a contributing member on a gold-medal team where everybody involved is of a fairly high skill level. It's a little difficult to interpret how his numbers relate to his development as a player - first off, small sample sizes and mixed competition. Second off, he was playing power forward - hence the high rebounding and blocks numbers, whereas at NU, he'll be a three. Third off, the US team was all about the three ball - Shurna shot 18 threes and 17 twos, and that's less of a reflection of Shurna transforming into a jacker than it is a reflection of USA's strategy - four players shot more threes than twos, an additional three shot over 45% of their shots from downtown, Seth Curry shot 48 threes and 15 twos.  So what I'll say is this: Shurna played a jumpshooting big man throughout the tournament, and did a pretty good job. "Jumpshooting big man" is a very close approximation of what Shurna will be doing at NU, although he will technically be the third tallest player on the court most of the time. Therefore, we should just be damn pleased that he did a pretty good job overseas representing his country, and he probably got some pretty decent coaching while there, and he'll probably be a better player for it, plus it looks good for him and for NU. So there. I essentially said nothing in this paragraph.

Kyle Rowley: Let's start easy: Kyle Rowley will get better with time, and a few weeks of practice on a team on which he was the youngest player was a really good way to start. Of course, the down side of this is that as the least senior member of the team - in fact, at 19, he's four years younger than anybody else on the team - and that seniority might have gotten him shafted in terms of playing time. And, if I must say so, these reports from latinbasket are actually somewhat complementary, which is sorta to be expected from guys whose job is it to write exclusively about Trinidad and Tobago basketball, but still good to see. 

Now, here's the problem. At NU, Kyle starts at center, ahead of Luka Mirkovic, a pretty talented center with really good rebounding skills and touch extending beyond the three-point line. In the T&T, Kyle was on the bench behind Julius Ashby, who plays for Tokyo Apache, a confusingly named Japanese basketball team, and Miguel Williams, a 31 year old player for the Petro Jazz of the Trinidadian league. 

That doesn't work.

Unless we want to start considering our team worse than the national team of Trinidad and Tobago, which I personally don't, something's gotta change. 

The fact that the Trinidadian national team doesn't trust him to play in games which have a competitive level below that of Division I, much less Big Ten basketball, is not a good sign for his game now. Now, I have faith that his game will improve with time, but the wrong way to handle his development is by thrusting him into the starting lineup in one of the biggest seasons in Northwestern basketball history.

John Plasencia and Brian Smith: These guys won't play this year, but a few weeks of good coaching and a taste of winning didn't hurt anybody. Also, it looks like Plasencia's got some serious receiving skill - then again, it's really difficult to take anything out of a tournament in which the USA was so thoroughly better than their opponents. And that Plasencia is the GTEOATU19, but that's a given. 

So, that's that. Because I'm really really good at finding perfect endings to blog posts, here's a dude playing the national anthem of the USA on steel drum, followed by a kid playing the Trinidad and Tobago national anthem on steel drum wearing a Santa hat. 

John Shurna: World Champ

John Shurna kinda gets to hold the U19 World Championship trophy

With an 88-80 victory over Greece, the US U19 team won the World Championships, going 9=0, winning each game by an average margin of victory of 22.5 points.

Shurna played arguably his worst game of the tournament - only seven minutes, 0/2 shooting, 1/2 from the line - but it didn't matter. Even if he played a terrible tournament, NU fans could feel happy for him and know that winning a tournament like this might help bring a winning spirit to NU basketball.

Luckily for us, we don't have to worry about that - Shurna played a pretty good tournament. Despite playing the least minutes of anybody on the squad who didn't get a knee injury halfway through the tournament, Shurna averaged 6 points and 4 rebounds, good for a point every two minutes and a rebound every three. He finished with over 50% shooting for the tournament, and just generally played above-average basketball against the world's best. Nothing you can do but be happy that he'll be back in Evanston next year. 

So some of you are probably thinking: if Shurna played such a great tournament, what's this nonsense about him playing the least minutes on the team? 

First off, everybody on the team played well. They won every game by 22.5 POINTS PER GAME. This team was stacked, 1-12. Shurna got the bum end of the stick in terms of minutes, but don't consider that a knock on him from Jamie Dixon and the coaching staff - a) he definitely wasn't the worst player on the squad, outperforming other players statistically with less minutes, and b) he played crunch time minutes, such as down the stretch of the semi-finals game with Croatia. 

Of course, I wish Shurna had played more minutes as a selfish NU fan, but you can't argue with results, and 9-0 is a pretty good result, and in the minutes he did play, Shurna was as good as I could've asked for. 

I'll analyze the summer nationalism performances of all our Wildcats tomorrow, specifically how they might pertain to next season in Evanston. From then on out, it's football time, all the time, unless someone else on our team randomly decides to represent their country of origin in some sort of tournament out of the blue and I get to focus on that for a few weeks, but, yeah, from here on out, football. 

New Zealand Time Differentials confuse me

Remember the post of less than a half hour ago wherein I said that John Shurna would play Croatia in the semi-finals today?

Well, turns out it already happened. There's something like a 16 hour time difference, and 8:30 PM there is apparently 4:30 AM here, or something like that. I would be angry at New Zealand, but, I'm pretty sure I brought this upon myself by deciding to randomly mock your nation in a John Plasencia post a few days ago. I will now attempt to redeem myself on the New Zealand sports karma scale.

Boy, is that Sean Marks good at basketball or what?

Flight of the Conchords is hilarious!

Anyway, USA won, with relatively little Shurna contribution - 2 points, 2 boards - and will play in the finals against Greece.

In writing this post, I discovered that the right side of the U19 tournament website has little highlight clips of some of the games. Inexplicably, they don't have any of the USA games before their quarterfinals game against Canada. Way less explicably, the FIBA highlight editor seems to think 1:30 of people hitting jump shots without any other plays interspersed or the context leading up to each jump shot makes for a good highlight reel. Needless to say, most of the Shurna viewing I got out of the clip was him boxing out for rebounds on shots that eventually went in, with one or two of him guarding people who went on to hit shots. He had a pretty nice and-1 layup against Canada, and was on the floor for the entire last minute of the 81-77 victory against Croatia - good to know. The highlight video also featured a Shurna closeup during the congratulatory handshake line, which was awkward, but it's good to see that his ability to casually acknowledge Croatians is coming along well. 

Anyway: USA/Greece is tomorrow/tonight. Let's hope Shurna can join his schoolmate/first-name sharer John Plasencia in bringing home gold to the States, and more specifically, to Evanston.

John Shurna is having a block party...

AND CANADA IS INVITED!

Yesterday, Johnny and the USA national team advanced to the semifinals with a 93-73 victory over our neighbors to the north. Shurna continued his good play with an amazing line: 13 minutes, 10 points on 3-4 shooting, 3 rebounds... AND FOUR BLOCKS!

SIT DOWN!

BLAOW!

You didn't see Shurna, did you, Canadian guy? 

But he was there. He's always there. Just waiting to swat the crap out of you. Don't turn around, Canadian guy. He's sitting behind you. Right now. Waiting for you to shoot something.

(Shurna deduction technique: there are three white men on team USA. Two of them had no blocks against Canada. The other was John Shurna.)

(Of course, this could be a photo of a highly contested rebound, meaning it might not be Shurna. Let's move on.)

My advice to the Canadian guy: don't shoot.

John Shurna celebrates a block in a game against Canada on Friday

From anybody, 4 blocks in 13 minutes is huge. From an NU player, four blocks in 13 minutes against a relatively high level of competition is downright Manute Bol-ian. 

Shurna and the Shurnettes take on Croatia today - no hard feelings, Ivan Peljusic - at 8:30 PM, New Zealand time. Uhhh, set your alarm clocks?

Friday International B-Ball Update

John Shurna and his USA U-19 Basketball team are the only undefeated team in the World Championships at 6-0, and will play in the quarterfinals today against Canada. What's more, Shurna has been a pretty integral part of the team. I talked about his double-double against Iran already, but since, he's started a few games. He put 13 and 6 on Egypt, 8 on a good Greek team, didn't score, but picked up 7 boards against Puerto Rico, and on Wednesday hit 4/5 shots against Lithuania to finish with 9 points. He's averaging a respectable 6.8 points and 4.7 boards in roughly 12 minutes a game - really not bad numbers, especially on a fairly high level of play. The numbers to really like are his 70% shooting clip from inside the arc and the rebounds, which has obviously always been NU's weakest aspect to our game.

However, I'm a little angry to see that USA Basketball's photographers continue to take exclusively unflattering pictures of John. (To see prior documentation of this, scroll to the bottom of this post and click on the "gawkiness" label.

John Shurna (11) tries to shoot a ball which weighs 150 pounds

But, anyway, good luck to Shurna against those silly Canucks today, and here's to him continuing his decent role play in purple this winter. I'd tell you to go support him by dropping a comment on his player profile, but, his comment section is relatively robust already. Who new Johnny had that much support in Lithuania? 

On a sad note, Kyle Rowley did not attain Carribbean glory - after the 3-0 start the TnT team had, with much hullaballoo on this site despite the lack of Rowley contribution, the team fell 76-73 in the CBC Championship semi-final to the British Virgin Islands, who presumably made Raja Bell and Tim Duncan come to the tournament pretending to be 18 or younger, probably by having them wear Jonas Brothers t-shirts on court and talking about the latest episode of NYC Prep. Rowley didn't get any playing time in this game. 

However, the team still had hope - after all, the gist of this tournament was that the top 3 teams went to next year's CENTROBasket tourney - all they had to do was beat Cuba in the third place game.

As a half-Cuban, this caused a major conflict of interest for me. Since I'm extraordinarily pasty and white and, according to Northwestern, only know somewhere between 83 and 88 percent of Spanish 101  and nobody in my family has been to Cuba since 1964, I have little in common with your average Cuban. The only determining Cuban factors are my ability to enjoy plantains, Celia Cruz, and Cuban sports teams. Thus, my two passions, Cuban athletics, and Kyle Rowley, were pitted head to head.

Ultimately, I decided I'd rather my motherland (or fatherland - I'm half on the wrong side for it to be a motherland) be victorious. Sure enough, they were, winning 91-77 on the back of 22 points from comrade Geoffrei Silvestre. Kyle Rowley played garbage minutes, and presumably demoralized, had only 2 points and 2 boards in 10 minutes. 

The upshot of this? Well, the CBC Championship, like I said, is a qualifier for CENTROBasket, which is in turn a qualifier for the FIBA Americas tournament, which in turn is a qualifier for the FIBA World Championship, which the winner of gets an automatic berth to the Olympics. So this loss whittles Rowley's opportunities for Olympic Gold for two: either he can participate in the same event in two years, which will feed into CENTROBASKET again, which will again feed into the FIBA Americas tournament, which will this time qualify teams for the Olympics, or, he could try to pick up luge in time to be a member of the Trinidad and Tobago contingent at next year's Vancouver winter games. (Sadly, most 7'0 figure skating careers in Winter Olympic history end in heartbreak and occasionally fractured ice skating rinks.) 

Shurna's place in U19 history will be discovered by Sunday - there will be posts by then. 

One Less Day til Football Season, Post 4: O-Line

Probably should start calling this "One Less Week" cuz of the frequency I've been doin em, but, hey.

There's a line between being a football expert and being a guy who knows a lot about football. 

I, sirs, fall on the "guy who knows a lot about football" side. And one thing I think falls on the other side of that line is being able to watch a game and judge how good someone is at offensive line.

Basically, the only time I notice an offensive lineman is when they do something bad, like allowing a sack, or holding, and even then, half the time I'll be like "wow, what a play by that defensive end!" So, the better you are at it, the less you get noticed. Fortunately for NU fans, our five guys up front did a great job blocking for CJ and opening up holes for Tyrell. Unfortunately, that means I barely noticed them.

Case in point: Couldn't find any photos of NU's o-line blocking for CJ all year long. Found one photo of an anonymous, possibly dead O-lineman lying face first while CJ Bachér doesn't know he's about get absolutely crumpled by a blindside tackle from a Mizzou linebacker doing his best Dark Knight impression.

So, here's to the offensive line, the great season they had last year, and to giving them the respect they deserve.

Days till Football Season: 57.

Who did it last year?  From left to right, Al Netter, Keegan Kennedy, Ben Burkett, Doug Bartels, and Desmond Taylor. 

Last year, coming into the season, O-Line was a major issue: Only two players, Joel Belding and Kurt Mattes, had extensive starting experience. The way it turned out, the line became one of our strong suits, despite the fact that those guys didn't even factor in, and instead we started three RS Freshman, a converted defensive lineman in Kennedy, and Taylor,a junior who took Mattes' right tackle spot. Essentially, five guys with no experience whatsoever made themselves into a cohesive unit.

Who's going to do it this year? Everybody mentioned above except Kennedy, the left guard, and Belding, who started at right guard in 2007 only to be usurped by Bartels last year, will return. This leaves an opening at LG, which could be filled by a bunch of people.  Junior Keegan Grant, who is now the only offensive lineman on our roster whose first name is Keegan and whose last name is that of a president, was the starter there in spring ball, but the way to maximize experience and seniority would be to move Taylor, who plays guard as well, there while moving Mattes back to RT, so who knows. (Taylor is the only player listed as an "OT" on his player profile, but I think this is an accident - even centers have "OL" instead.) I predict a line of Netter, Grant, Burkett, Bartels, and either Taylor or Mattes and RT, but, let's face it: I'm in way over my head writing about this stuff, made up mostly of my opinions based on player's profile pages, and, the point of this paragraph is that we have a lot more experience than we had last year. 

In lieu of more analysis, here's the 1979 smash hit "Hold the Line" by Toto.

(Hey, lead guitarist guy: the cherry red sunburst Les Paul looks awful familiar. Looks nice, but you could use some stickers of sub-par basketball players on there.)

(And, for those of you wondering: yeah, it's sort of emasculating to know that my guitar is the same as the one the guy from Toto uses.)

Is that an improvement? I'd say so. Sure, we lose a guy, but think about it this way: where last year, we started five guys who had never played offensive line, much less together, in a unit where cohesion is required. This year, we'll start probably either four or five guys who have experience, depending on how we rejigger people. 

During spring ball, I asked offensive coordinator Mick McCall whether he felt confident with essentially no returning experienced skill position players, and he told me, paraphrased, "well, last year, people were telling me we didn't have an offensive line, and look how that turned out." This year, offensive line has turned into the part of our offense we don't need to worry about. And that's definitely an improvement.

Who else we got? Totally not going to write about every other O-lineman we have on the roster, there's just too many, and I don't know anything about their respective playing styles, so I have nothing to offer. You'll get over it.

The Bestest Present Ever!

Tomorrow's gonna be my real-life birfday, and, knowing me as well as they do, the Big Ten Network got me something even better than anything Jeremih could give me: a day of all NU programming, which will start at 5:00 this morning and will go until 5:00 tomorrow morning.

Of course, like everything else the Big Ten Network does, there's no way I can watch it, I don't know where I could, and quite frankly, even if I knew, I probably wouldn't, because I have better things to do than watch poorly produced repeats of collegiate sports programming, plus the fact that a network completely dedicated solely to airing the goings on of a collegiate athletic conference might be the stupidest idea in the history of ideas. But, hey, 24 hours of NU sports! Get ready!

So this is what's on tap for NU Day on the BTN: Highlights include this years' MSU game, the 1995 Penn State game, the MSU game from two years ago, the 2000 Michigan game, Michael Jenkins' game winner against Iowa, some women's tennis, and, for some reason, the first half of this relatively unimportant softball doubleheader I got to cover.

So, check it out. I personally will be doing more interesting things, but if this floats your boat, more power to you, check it out. And if you can't, well, great news: this is only the second of three times that the BTN will be doing this this summer. It's almost like they're running out of things to show, but that can't possibly be true, considering the athletic happenings of 11 universities is certainly worthy of 365 days of 24 hour programming every year. 

Tuition Tuesday

So, one time, I had an IM soccer game at the field hockey fields, or, as they're better known, "that gigantic piece of concrete with a carpet of artificial grass over it behind SPAC that varsity athletes are somehow supposed to compete on without getting violently injured." And I was trying to direct my friend to said field. 

"I think we're on the field hockey field."

"What?"

"Not the soccer/lacrosse field. The one behind it."

"Why is that the field hockey field?"

"I think it's where the field hockey team plays."

"We have a field hockey team?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Not sure."

"I had no idea my tuition money was going towards subsidizing a women's field hockey team."

So, this is a segment I'ma call Tuition Tuesday. During football and basketball season, I'm not going to let our varsity athletes who don't participating in sports they make into video games go by the wayside. At least once a week, I will delve into the goings on of our other 17 varsity sports.

It's pretty clear why we have a football and basketball team. There's a good amount of school spirit for those sports, it allows us to be a part of the Big Ten conference, and we probably make a good deal of money. 

But what about the other 17? As you saw, when my friend asked, I wasn't sure. I figure these sports are a major whirlpool of school resources, and they generally attract few spectators. And to be honest, I'm still not sure why we have them.

What I am sure about is that I'm perpetually impressed by my schoolmates who participate in these sports. Some, like our lacrosse team, are the best at what they do in the world, others are average, others are a little below average. But all of them spend their lives training year-in, year-out, to get as good as they can at their sports, while managing to maintain better GPA's then me, and considering the lack of pro prospects in these sports, with no more reward than a degree and those cool sweatpants and sweatshirts that all varsity athletes get issued. (They make up for it by wearing those sweatpants and sweatshirts literally everywhere they go. Question to athletes: do you get multiples, or do you just wash them a lot?)

And while I'm not going to make this blog about them all the time, I figure one post a week as a respite from discussing our two major sports will serve as my metaphorical slice of tuition that serves towards paying for the welfare of those athletes. Once a week, I'm going to pay my dues to these sports with these posts

As a writer for the Daily, I've learned how to take a liking to all these sports, having covered wrestling in the winter, softball in the spring, and preparing to cover soccer this upcoming fall, with a little bit of everything else sprinkled in between. 

This is just an intro post - I'm not actually going to do this every week until fall, when there's actually something to write about - but I'd be remiss if I didn't cover something that happened slightly before I started the blog. About three weeks ago, Jake Herbert, Northwestern's two-time national champ wrestler, winner of the Hodge Trophy, the so-called "Heisman of Wrestling", and dude who I annoyed the hell out of all year long with my questions picked up another piece of hardware, the Jesse Owens trophy, presented to the best male athlete in the Big Ten. As you can see in the release, the only previous NU winner was Luke Donald, and the last three people to win it have been wrestlers, but Herbert is probably even more deserving.

If you never got to watch Jake wrestle, you missed out. You didn't need to know anything about wrestling. In fact, I barely did. All you needed to know is that Jake was going to win, and every participant in the room knew that, from him to the coaches to the opponents. The question was how much he was going to win by.

Jake won every match in his last three years at college with the exception of the national championship match his sophomore year. He pinned roughly half of his opponents, and if the match actually had to come down to a final score, he considered this a "hiccup" and sort of a failure on his part. He had an amazing career, pretty much made the NU wrestling program a perennial contender. It's just good to know that now he's competing against people he might actually have a chance of losing to - I got a sense he was getting a little bored of the grind of beating people week in and week out. Herbert is working to become an Olympic wrestler after just having fallen short in 2008 - here's to seeing him on your TV's in London in 2012. 

John Plasencia named World's Best Tight End

OK, not actually true. Technically, Plasencia is just the World's Greatest Tight End in the World under the age of 19 after being named to the IFAF Junior World Cup all-tournament team, but, hey, we'll take it. 

A short but incomplete list of things John Plasencia is: A mountain, a tall tree, a swift wind sweeping the country

Plasencia, henceforth known as the GTEOATU19 (Greatest Tight End Of All Time Under the age of 19), had a 26-yard touchdown grab in the USA's 41-3 gold medal game romp over Canada, cementing his place in history. He finished the tournament with the one touchdown and five receptions for 68 yards, and played in all three of USA's victories in which they outscored their opponents by a total score of 174-3. 

Disconcertingly, his touchdown had echoes of his two-point conversion in the 78-0 victory against France in that it was a bit of a running up of the score, as it was the final touchdown, and the team was already ahead 34-3. But who can blame him? When you're the world's greatest, you need to let the opponent know it. If some punk New Zealandish cornerback thinks they can stick with Plasencia, he has every right to catch a touchdown, high-step into the endzone, and tell them to go shove a kiwi down their throat. The bird or the fruit, doesn't matter. (And yes, for those of you wondering: the New Zealand junior football team did the haka. Way, way less intimidating than when the rugby team does it, but more intimidating than the basketball, baseball, and hockey versions various NZ sports teams use.) 

Plasencia won't arrive on campus until september, and won't even be playing tight end, he'll be a superback, but he's already a legend on the Purple Drank. I advise Pat Fitzgerald redshirt him freshman year - if Plasencia just spent two weeks steamrolling major nations like France, Mexico, and Canada, imagine what he'll do to puny little states like Michigan and Indiana? I shudder, and congratulate the future Wildcat on his performance.

A few quick site notes -

- I was at a Yankees game the other night, and for some reason, my friend and I couldn't get a "Go U!" chant started when Joe Girardi made the most graceful, well-educated pitching change in managerial history. To the 50,000 other Yankees fans in attendance Thursday: consider yourselves officially disowned as NU fans. Girardi's pitching change was probably too sophisticated for all of y'all anyway. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pay 18 dollars for a packet of mustard. 

- Due to my constant desire to make it look like more than 3 people read this site, I'm going to permanently leave various polls over in the sidebar. Stupid stuff, but, I'd appreciate if you'd all play along with it. I'ma write about em, too. As you can see, this poll is about the summer competitions our NU athletes are participating this summer, and, as you can tell, if you're not with us, you're against us. I voted for Trinidad and Tobago -because, come on, it's Trinidad and Tobago - even though their tournament is over, but more on that later.

- The results of the last poll were that 18 of you like NU sports, none of you like sizzurp, and none of you like my writing. Damn. 

- I wanna have discussions in the comments, but, just don't have enough readers yet cuz I'm just starting out. So, if you've been commenting, keep it up. If you haven't, well, you disgust me and I hate you. 

- (I kid.)

Anyway, back tomorrow, discussing the O-Line, so people, get ready.

Happy Fourth of July!

Enjoy your holiday, and if you're around E-Town, go split some uprights at Ryan Field. Supposedly, it's a "marketing promotion", but let's be real: Amado Villarreal ain't gonna replace himself. So try to win some tickets and a potential spot as our official extra-point shanker. 

Anyway, have a happy holiday, thanks for reading the blog in its first few weeks. 

Nationalism Week rolls on!

A short post for a day on which I'm one of about 30 people in the United States working, we'll catch up on our nation-representing athletes.

First off, something I hadn't mentioned yet: some of our FIVE TIME champion Women's Lacrosse players were involved in the Lacrosse World Cup: Alums Kristen Kjellman, Sarah Albrecht, and Lindsey Munday played for the US, who won, and senior Hannah Nielsen contributed to a second-place Australian team. So, let's get six.

Now, to the guys I've written about. 

The first thing I wrote about, the IFAF Junior World Championship, the international American Football tournament in which future Cats John Plasencia and Brian Smith are participating, is going as you'd expect. USA beat France 78-0, and Mexico 55-0. Plasencia has three receptions for 32 yards, not too shabby, and there's no stats for Smith because he's a lineman, but, apparently, he's starting. In somewhat disturbing news, Plasencia caught a two-point conversion to make the score 24-0 against France, even though they were up 23. Against France. In an American football tournament. Really? 23-0 wouldn't have been good enough, USA Coach, you had to go for two? Really? You had to go for two? I'm pretty sure there's no direct translation for "two-point conversion" into french, and you had to go and make sure that you guys didn't only win by 77? Really? At least leave Plasencia out of it. Anyway, Northwestern football: expect victory. 

John Shurna got his grown man on with an 11-point, 10-board double-double against Iran in a 106-55 victory, including 5 offensive boards, prompting FIBA to write this about him:

"After a tense opening that saw the USA lead by just two, 14-12, with less than three minutes remaining in the first period, 203cm power forward John Shurna made the running for the USA, scoring seven points as his team went on a 16-1 run to finish the quarter in control, 30-13."

Yeah! That just sounded cool. Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, Shurna has gotten no better at making photographers take good pictures of him.

The only photographic evidence of John Shurna recording a double-double for Team USA.

Last, but not least, Trinidad and Tobago has to be the feel-good story of the summer in the Caribbean basketball world. Despite my gloom-and-doom predictions last week, the team is 3-0 so far in the CBC championship, but Kyle Rowley has had little to do with their success. In their victory over Jamaica, he played two minutes and had no stats besides a turnover. He got 8 minutes, presumably garbage time, in a 90-63 romp over Barbados, and actually performed really well: 7 points and 5 rebounds. (Per 40 minutes: 35 points and 25 rebounds.) And against the Bahamas, he didn't get off the bench. Obviously, this isn't good for NU, but we should be happy for the T&T. And we should forget how bad I am at predicting Carribean basketball games. 

One Less Day til Football Season, Post 3: Wide Receivers.

Another day another post. I wondered what I would do with myself with a job that gets off at 2 PM even though my friends generally don't get off until 5, and the answer is "start an overwhelmingly thorough sports blog."

Oh, and vote in the pointless poll! What distresses me is that one dude changed their vote from "I like your 1000 word screeds" to "I like Northwestern sports." Dear that guy: I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you. 

Days till football season:64. (You may notice the sunday post said there were 66. Well, I went back to the original post, which was based off of NUsports.com's calculations, and it turns out I am terrible at math. In my defense, I'm a journalism student, and can only understand basic principles of math if they are somehow phrased as per game scoring averages.)

8

9

10

Who did it last year? The guys above, Eric Peterman, Ross Lane, and Rasheed Ward. You needed all three: Peterman provided the closest thing we had to a go-to guy, Lane was a big man on the outside, and Ward, at the risk of sounding vaguely racist, provided speed out of the slot (what? he was really fast!), and was our resident man of a million slants.

Our fourth leading reciever was Tyrell Sutton, who really augmented the spread through his play out of the slot - hopefully, ex-WR Jeravin Matthews can continue the tradition of good receiving running backs, but, you never know. 

There were also decent contributions from Andrew Brewer, who got healthy about halfway through the year, the true freshman Jeremy Ebert, who was our fourth reciever last year and is one of two people to have caught a TD pass from Mike Kafka - the fade at Minnesota - and Sidney Stewart, who settled under Eric Peterman's lone career TD throw. 

Because I'm all about paying respect, Jeff Yarbrough, a receiver who didn't catch a single pass last year, but once had 100 receiving yards and a TD against Michigan State, graduated. Not a big deal, but we could use all the experience we could get right about now. 

Who's got next? Welp, we need a new wide receiving corps. In a dream world, we'd slap Peterman's name on Ebert's jersey, Ward's on Stewart's (again with the vague racism) and Lane's on Brewer's. Anyway, I think they're a good trio. None of them have ever been a #1 receiver, hopefully we'll get a tandem like we had from the last three with a few others contributing. 

I'd be pretty certain that these will be the three biggest contributors based on how they slotted into the offense last year, but the Cats certainly made it difficult for people to predict by passing to nine different recievers in the spring game, with none getting more than three catches. 

Is that an improvement? Eh, probably not. Not a knock on these guys, it's just hard to replace three experienced seniors.

I like Brewer's combo of Lane-esque speed and size, but we've never seen him play wide receiver due to his brutal performances as a quarterback back before I was an NU student and his many injuries. He had a nice 55 yard TD grab in the spring game, so signs are good. Ebert might be a good receiver for years to come, and has a pretty sweet rapport with Kafka judging from that one pass. Stewart also looked decent in limited action last year, we'll just have to wait and see.

Who else we got? NU has 14 - count em - wide recievers listed on their roster. For the hell of it, I'll write a little bit about all of them, but considering only five have ever caught a pass in a game, and I've already written about three of them, and one of the two other people to have caught a pass I hadn't heard of up until spring practices, imagine how little I have to say about the other nine. Done imagining? Prepare to be underwhelmed.

For your reading pleasure, I've seperated the remaining 11 recievers into "guys who have caught a pass in a game, might potentially catch a pass in a game this year, yet I still know relatively little about" and "people who may or may not be figments of NUsports.com's imagination."  

4. Charles Brown caught two passes last year and three in the spring game, and is likely our next guy down the depth chart from the three written about above. Brown was his class valedictorian, and according to his NUsports.com profile, brings "explosiveness," so blame them for the vague racism.

5. Zeke Markshausen is a walkon and the only other player on the roster to have caught a pass in a game. He figured somewhat prominently in spring drills and the game, look for him to pop up once or twice in the slot. I'm also disappointed that his name is actually "Zeke" by birth, because "Ezekiel Markshausen" might have made for the best Amish football player in school history, which in turn would be a great reason to bring back the black uniforms.

Now, in class order: wide recievers who have never caught a pass in a game, might not this year, but who cares. All random facts are courtesy of their NUsports.com profiles, obviously. I'd say any junior or senior on here has the potential to show up on a statsheet. But, like I said, I have absolutely no idea.

6. Senior Kevin Frymire broke a leg in spring ball last year, causing him to miss the whole season, so hopefully he's back to football shape, and hopefully he doesn't mind pretending to be a senior again, because that's probably medical redshirt material. 

7. Senior Kevin Mitchell was a high school quarterback, which according to google translator, is romanian for "Northwestern wide receiver." He's not related to superback Brendan Mitchell or the previously mentioned Kevin Frymire.

8. Junior Carl Fisher has played special teams at NU, and played the role of Gaston in his high school production of "Beauty and the Beast", a fact I'm sure he loves on his football playing resume. 

9. Junior Lee Coleman had a special teams tackle last year. He was a high school quarterback, and there's a joke about that four lines above this. 

10. Walkon junior Mark Ison was listed as a punter/wide receiver up until spring ball, which always fascinated me, because one is close to the most athletic position on the field and the other is probably the least athletic, and yet Ison apparently did both, making him an instant Purple Drank favorite. However, he's dropped the punting gig, which leads me to believe he was pretty bad at it, considering our current punter wants to be our place kicker, leaving an opening there, and the fact that he'll be approximately 12th on our wide receiving depth chart. Here's hoping Ison catches a pass and/or punts at least once this year.

11. RS Freshman Martin Bayless's dad played safety for the Chargers for 13 years, had NFL-player uncles, and is Charles Woodson's cousin. No pressure, kid. 

12. Want to read something interesting about RS freshman Brendan Barber? Too bad. 

13. Ditto for RS freshman Demetrius Fields, although I can say I hope that he and incoming freshman running back Arby "RB" Fields host a buddy sitcom together. Working titles: "Ryan Fields", "Fields of Dreams", "Demetrius and Arby's Fun-Time Variety Hour, sponsored by Goose Island, whatever that is"

14. Last, but not least, incoming freshman Drew Moulton. Obviously, college football recruiting is very difficult and our staff is very good at it, and getting better at it every year, but, Fitz, did you really need to tack on another wide out to make this post 14/13ths longer? Really? I'm sort of mad.

Too much writing about wide receivers has made me need a nap, and made me renege on the "no 1500 word post" policy, but this is probably the last time that happens, because, damn, there's 14 of them, and I felt like it. 

Remember, kids, i before e, except after c, and go vote in the poll. 

USA! USA! (basketball this time)

Update: video of John Shurna's high school slam dunk competition now at the bottom of this post. Just cuz.

Woooooo!

Today, we're going to discuss John Shurna, who's representing the good ol' US of A in the U19 World Tournament starting... well, some parts of the USA Basketball website say it starts today, some parts say it starts tomorrow, and as a journalist, my first instinct is to not inquire any further into this and write a post on it today.

Just like I said in the T&T post about Kyle Rowley, participating internationally is great for young John. In my first basketball post, I probably sounded a little harsh when I said "John Shurna is not Kevin Coble." Well, he's not, but he certainly has the potential to be Coble-esque. He's 6'8, has an above average jumper, is a pretty good rebounder for a small forward, and has enough athleticism to win a high school slam dunk competition, which, if you ask me, is how you describe a keeper. On court last year, he looked tentative at best, didn't make it look like he could create his own shot, which I'd hoped he'd be able to. It's just good a) to see him picked to a select squad, especially over guys like fellow Big Elevener, Minnesota's Ralph Sampson III, and b) playing competitively in the offseason. I expect Shurna to play well, especially on a team with relatively few big names. A nine-point eight-rebound performance in a scrimmage against Croatia is what I want more of, both this tournament and with NU next year. 

Now, to a quick qualm with USA Basketball. They hired a dude to take professional photos of the U19 team scrimmaging. And the only photo they have of John Shurna is this downright silly snapshot.

John Shurna (55) has an allergic reaction to undercooked shrimp he ate earlier while dribbling

To the naked eye, it looks like a blurry photo of John Shurna doing a hop-step while vomiting, while #67 does the "getting low" portion of the dance to the song "Low" by Flo Rida. And that's about as much insight into the photo as you can get from me. Either Team USA needs a new photographer, or their current photographer doesn't believe in John Shurna's constitutional right not to look really, really silly while dribbling. 

A brief aside: A lot of people, including me, were really, really impressed to see Shurna make the USA team. After all, Team USA is associated with pretty much perfect basketball, and Northwestern, well, isn't. But Shurna's selection isn't as surprising as I originally thought.

First off, Shurna isn't the first active Wildcat to suit up for the USA, in fact, he's the ninth since Robert Lebuhn did it in 1955. (For fans of boring lists here's every USA-representin Cat chronologically: Lebuhn, Andre Goode, Shon Morris, Kevin Rankin, Pat Houlihan Baldwin, Geno Carlisle, Steve Lepore, and Evan Eschmeyer.) Nor is he the first to represent the U-19 team - Lepore did that in 1999. 

Secondly, the U-19 team isn't exactly the Dream or Redeem team. This year, the bulk of the young talent in the USA program, including guys eligible to compete with the U-19 team, are representing in Belgrade, at the World University games. And the U19 team isn't historically great: they haven't brought home gold since 1991, and despite boasting a roster featuring five players now in the NBA in 2007 such as Stephen Curry, Michael Beasley, and others, they lost to Serbia and finished second. This year, the roster doesn't feature top-notch talent. Despite the fact that I devote far too much free time to the study of basketball, I only know two players on this year's team: Shurna, and the brother of that Stephen Curry fellow, Seth, who I know because he is the brother of that Stephen Curry fellow and not of his own accord. And I'm pretty sure a Washington State coach was involved in the selection process, because in addition to Shurna, who was heavily recruited there, two WSU players made the cut. So, weird.

The first game of the tournament is either today, or tomorrow, as previously noted, against Iran, who, quite frankly, have bigger issues to worry about.

Anyway, don't blame it on the Shurna if the USA doesn't bring it home. They're going up against talented foreign teams, who have been playing together longer than Shurna n Co have.  

Then again, I've been wrong before: Led by a two-minute, no-point, one-turnover performance from NU's own Kyle Rowley, the T&T shocked the Caribbean basketball world by taking down Jamaica. Congrats to Rowley and all Trinidadians everywhere. 

OK, folks, there's esoteric, and then there's commenting on a blog with a reference to something somebody says in the background of a youtube video of a northwestern basketball player's high school slam dunk competition. BKSherman opted for the latter in the comments. Ask, and you shall receive, so I'm posting said video.