Craig Moore: Dutch Masta Killa

Hey, it's all the people who clicked links over from Lake The Posts! Nice to see you. I urge you to go over to the side of this post, and vote in the poll, which was a boring 10-5 Carmody lead before LTP readers started coming in, and has turned into an Alamo Bowl-esque thing with Wet Paper Bag taking leads and giving them right back to Carmody, including an 18-18 deadlock heading into last night. Now stands with a 24-21 lead for the Bag. Remember folks, the Wet Paper Bag might not be human, but he's known as a player's coach, something Carmody has never been. I'm actually going to extend the poll a little bit so we can see its thrilling conclusion. 

So, since I know there's nothing you peeps love more than news of ex-NU players playing overseas, today's a good day: Craig Moore is on the move to Holland, where he'll be playing with DeFriesland Aris Leeuwarden of the Dutch Eredivisie. (Eredivisie, of course, is Dutch for "the Rik Smits Memorial Dutch Basketball Association.") DeFriesland Aris placed seventh in the Eredivisie last year, and their Eurobasket page features this picture of their home court, which appears to be some sort of futuristic lazer tag arena where there's lines for 40,000 different sports on the court in order to make officiating impossible. (How's that for a run-on, guy who commented on my last post?) 

The team is located in Leeuwarden, which is a city in the region of Friesland, which is a part of the Netherlands which speaks Frisian, the language most similar to English of any language in the world. There was once a joke about this fact in this post, but it was so bad that I grew guilty about how unhumorous it was and retroactively removed it. Moving on. 

You probably know Holland best as one of the cooler countries in Europe and as the filming site for large amounts of Deuce Bigalow 2: European Gigolo. When it comes to sports, if you know them at all, you probably just know their soccer team which rivals the T&T in coolness. Off the top of your head, the Netherlands probably seems like some sort of basketball backwaters, but, off the top of my head, I can think of the aforementioned Smits, Francisco Elson, Dan Gadzuric, and recent NBA draftee Henk Norel hailing from the Netherlands. So there's that.

Here's wishing Craig luck abroad. Although Craig was a great player at a Big Ten level, there's really not much hope for a player of his caliber outside of college: people from across the world have great jumpers, and although he was a surprisingly tenacious defender, his lack of height and speed made that not really mean much. He turned the ball over at least twice that I can think of simply because he doesn't know how to dribble with his left hand, and other times, looked really silly because his lack of a left meant that the only way he could turn left would be by doing a 270-degree right handed spin move, which was hilarious to watch. But he was perfect for the college level, and even more for Carmody's system: he provided a player who could pretty much get off a shot whenever he wanted against college defenders, no matter how closely he was being guarded, and who could stretch the floor and keep opposing teams from packing the paint. There were times last year when I thought the best, most efficient play our offense could run at this point would just be to dribble the ball across half-court, give it to Craig Moore, wherever he is, and have him shoot it. I could see him having some success abroad, so, here's to Craig.  

The post-college whereabouts of Pat Houlihan and Marlon Day are still unknown, but I'm working on taking a higher-res picture of my guitar.