This is Your Quarterback?: An Homage/Hatefest to Greg Paulus. Mainly a hatefest.

This. This is your quarterback?

Greg Paulus would've been one of the least likable players in basketball even if he didn't play for Duke, the least likable team in the country. Duke would be the least likable team in the country even if their coach wasn't Mike Krzyzewski, the least likable basketball coach in the country. And Mike Krzyzewski definitely didn't need Greg Paulus to be the least likable basketball coach in the country. It's a holy trinity of unlikableness, and from here, Syracuse found a quarterback.

I mean, that guy? That guy who slapped the floor and played way way too intense defense to overcompensate for not being very good at it and reminds you in every way of that dicky guy in your pickup game who yells at his teammates and mugs the crap out of you on defense and then turns around and yells AND ONE when he shoots and actually expects you to give him the ball back when he misses saying "BUT I SAID AND ONE YOU FOULED ME" even though you barely even touched him and actually calls charges on people in a pickup game, who went to the school that makes NU look diverse and screams "overprivileged kids from Jersey" that everybody was surprised that their lacrosse team WASN'T going out and raping poor strippers, and whose coach is that arrogant cocky guy whose MO is leading talented teams to underwhelming tourney performances for teams that manage to be worse than the sum of their parts and has a freakin penchant for recruiting top 5 talented players and trying to jam them into his system like square pegs into round holes until they don't have much of a chance at all of being successful at the pro level you should be thankful this isn't a 2,000 word diatribe about the NBA careers of Josh McRoberts and Shelden Williams and/or the likelihood that an athlete like Kyle Singler has anything resembling a good NBA career, the guy who played at that school with that coach, that guy? (I WRITE RUN ON SENTENCES WHEN I'M ANGRY)

That's your quarterback? Man. Jesus. Wow. 

That being said, I'm a bigger basketball fan than I ever have been or will be a football fan. Way bigger. Yeah, I watch baseball in the summer, and my fall weekend afternoons are totally engulfed by football, but they're not ball, they're not the game I was raised on. And when you're 6'2 and still can't touch rim, you grow to develop a hatred of one certain class of people: those who are talented enough to play basketball, but don't really like it that much. (ROT IN HELL, MARK HENDRICKSON!) This is why as much as I love mobile quarterbacks, I sort of hate Terrelle Pryor.  And it even makes me question the GOAT for that 1.5 year stretch where he cast aside the game for some other game which he wasn't good at, realized he wasn't good at it, and came back. 

But on the flip side, I've always considered the rare few who choose ball over football, baseball, or whatever sports they're good at to be near-saints. I loved Charlie Ward as a kid, until I found out he was an anti-semite, and now I only like him. Nate Robinson was a ridiculous cornerback, and at 5'7, it was probably a long shot for him to go pro in basketball instead, and I've always loved him even more for that.

And with this tortuous reasoning, I hate to say this, but I respect Greg Paulus. Yes, he was the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to basketball players: he wasn't that great, and he's a complete and utter tool. But he was a great high school basketball player, and a great high school football player, and when he came to that fork in the road, he took the right path, and even if he has a good year and went pro, people will still remember him as a baller, not a quarterback. So, despite all the aforementioned reasons why I really, really dislike Greg Paulus, I honestly have respect for the guy.

That good? Alright, now I can post video of him getting his sh*t handed to him.

I'd say Greg Paulus is the most yammable-on guard I've ever seen. I've seen decent mixes of people getting dunked on for centers whose defensive games revolve around getting blocks, and who have been in the NBA for decades (Shawn Bradley, Theo Ratliff, and Jermaine O'Neal all have targets on their backs, and should really be taught not to jump sometimes), but Paulus, for a guard, who played a little over 100 college games - that's an NBA season and a playoff run - has a legit compilation of videos of him getting absolutely WRECKED by dunkers. (With Onyx as the soundtrack, no less.) For a guard, it's a really astounding level of production. I think it's part of his overanxious defending habits and his dependancy on drawing charges (note he only jumps to try to block Dwayne Collins) that makes it seem like a good idea to try and get in the way of people about to viciously hammer on his head. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

T&T! T&T!

Wooooooo!

If you're as good as the Flags of the World sporcle quiz as I am - unlikely, punks - or you're up on your NUsports.com press releases,  you probably already guessed that this is the Trinidad and Tobago version of this post I wrote a few days back. 

Kyle Rowley, NU's resident seven-footer, will be representing his native homeland of the T and T at the Carribean Basketball Confederation championship starting today in the British Virgin Islands. 

First off - this is great for Kyle. My viewpoint on Rowley is thus: I'm not quite sure why he came to college last year, considering he had the opportunity to return to high school. He's got all the requisite skills and body type to be a major college center, what he doesn't have is enough playing experience to put it all together - he only started playing as a freshman in high school, and he left high school after his junior year - for starters, he travels more than your average pickup baller, and despite being 7 feet tall, has shot layups that hit the backboard above the square. The more he plays, the less we'll see of these follies, so it's good to see him playing competitive ball in the summer. 

Kyle has experience playing for the basketball version of the Soca Warriors - he participated in a U17 tournament two years ago, and it's good to see him moving up to the senior national team, because that level of competition was beneath him. Rowley led the competition in rebounds and blocked shots (look at the graphic on the right side) averaging 9.8 points, 9 boards, and 4 blocks. Those stats are all you need to know about the competition in that tournament - in his play last year, Rowley wasn't a dominant rebounder or shot-blocker when playing against guys his own size, only averaging 1.8 boards and recording nine total blocks all season long, 11 less than he had in that five game U17 tournament. But those stats are definitely a glimmer of potential, regardless of whether they were against guys half his size. 

Later today, he'll be playing his first game in this tournament, and facing stiffer competition in a Jamaican frontline of Louisville's Samardo Samuels and ex-training camp Clipper and Purple Drank favorite (ffavorite?) Kimani Ffriend (no typo, he's just really a really ffriendly guy), which goes to show that not all Jamaican centers end up wearing the uniforms of other countries. In a surprise move, recently graduated NU walk-on Marlon Day, who hails from Jamaica, was not selected for the Jamaican team's final roster by head coach Sam Vincent.  

As much as we want Kyle to succeed, don't hold your breath expecting Trinidad and Tobago to do much winning. If you have ever spoken to someone from Trinidad and Tobago for more than five minutes, you will probably hear about their excessively cool soccer team, who qualified for their first ever World Cup in 2006, causing the entire country to stop caring about anything else for several weeks, and causing me to briefly contemplate getting a Shaka Hislop tattoo on my right bicep.

But you won't hear about their basketball team - the country has essentially no basketball heritage, as evidenced by the fact that Rowley's U17 team went 0-5 in the aforementioned tournament, and that the squad at the 2007 rendition of this tournament finished in ninth place out of nine. But remain optimistic - if the team manages to be in the top three teams out of 8, they will qualify for next year's Centrobasket tourney, which probably means as little to you as it does to me. It's not like the Bahamas and Barbados are basketball powers, and, hey, if Northwestern lost 34 straight football games and only 15 years later, went to the Rose Bowl, who's to say the T&T can't change their losing ways and go all the way with a little bit of Rowley?

A NU Fans Guide to Watching: The NBA Draft

From time to time, a seminal non-Northwestern sports event will come up, and some of the truer NU heads - the ones who wouldn't shut up about how we beat MSU while watching the championship game with friends, until halftime, when they started talking about how we beat FSU, who beat UNC, making us transitive property national champions once removed, and who made Youtube highlight reels of Super Bowl 42, except the only play featured is Barry Cofield's one unassisted tackle - might have trouble sitting through non-Wildcat sports related events. Well, that's what I'm here for. I'll be guiding you through seminal sporting events and providing them with a purple tint. Today, the NBA Draft.

The NBA Draft is like a holiday of sorts for me, and, considering its essentially all I've been able to think about for the last... oh, two weeks or so, I figure I had to somehow integrate it into this here blog I started during that time frame. Regardless of how tangential it is to NU sports.

Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against Northwestern. A Wildcat has never been selected with a first-round pick, and only one has been picked since 1986 - Evan Eschmeyer, the 34th pick in 1999. This year, nothing looks much different: in fact, although you can reach a page featuring Craig Moore's statistics on draftexpress.com if you try hard enough, attempting to reach his player profile ACTUALLY brings you to this page. But, forget those fools. 

Let the haters hate. Sure, the draftexpress folks are experts in their field, highly respected, and think about the NBA draft for a living, but there's a lot of things they don't know. For example, last time I saw him, Craig Moore was not a massless void lacking physical characteristics, nor was he a gaping expanse of nothingness. And I doubt he's changed that much since March. And if the draftexpress people got that wrong, what can they possibly get right? The answer, of course, is very little. Be optimistic. Maybe the question the draft experts should ask isn't whether or not Craig will be drafted, but whether Sterling Williams, Pat Houlihan, and Marlon Day will follow suit.

Here's a guide how to enjoy a purple-tinted draft night, featuring two equally fun ways to watch the draft.

Craig Moore

Northwestern-themed NBA draft-watching experience t:

A tip: invite guests over. Buy each one a customized Moore jersey from a different NBA team. Whoever gets the right jersey wins a prize! Burn any jerseys from teams which do not draft Moore immediately after the draft ends.. A truly devoted fan would do the same for Williams, Houlihan, and Day, but we're not all perfect.

If it's getting late in the draft, and no Northwestern players are getting picked, a good way to entertain your guests will be uncontrollably weeping.

Most mock drafts only project one pick out of the Big Ten, OSU's BJ Mullens. Make sure to tell everybody within earshot about how dominant Mullens was against NU, recording double-digit points in each of his two games and dropping a double-double in a losing effort against the Cats. Neglect to mention how bad he was in most other Ohio State games, how he's almost universally considered to be a likely bust candidate, and how a list of people guarding him in those two games contains, but is not limited to, Jeff Ryan, Davide Curletti, and Kyle Rowley.

Don't allow any of your friends to leave until the draft is over. People routinely stop watching after the first round, or sometimes the first 10-15 picks. Make your friends stay the entire time. Lock the door if you have to. Also, make sure not to stop uncontrollably weeping the entire time.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, in the unlikely scenario that no NU players get drafted, we should hedge our bets. Very few people outside of NBA circles have heard of the French point guard (via Guadeloupe) Rodrigue Beaubois, and very few people who aren't NU fans watched Wildcat games last year  - we had what, 4 national TV games, including the NIT? - point being, if we all simultaneously pretend that Beaubois attended NU instead of playing professionally in France, who's going to contradict us? Beaubois? He speaks heavily accented english. Ric Bucher? Doctors recommend that he stay away from a poorly ventilated arena like Welsh-Ryan within 36 hours of his most recent Botox injection, and I'm pretty sure he gets one every 38 hours or so. And Chad Ford probably hasn't seen an NU game since he realized he would get paid the same amount to take European vacations, say that some 7 foot tall dude from Eastern Europe has what it takes to make it in the league, and hope nobody notices he's borderline unable to walk. So, what I'm saying, is I think we're in the clear on pretending Rodrigue Beaubois is from NU. 

If you choose to serve hors d'oeuvres or cocktails at your Northwestern-themed NBA draft party, make sure not to uncontrollably weep into them. Doing so is a common Northwestern-themed NBA draft party faux pas. 

Worst case scenario: the 60th pick passes, and its not any of our four ex-Cats. Remind everybody about the success our undrafted NFL free agents had signing with good chances to make rosters, and talk about how many opportunities there are for players to make NBA rosters: summer league, training camp, etc. etc. 

Eventually, after the draft ends let your friends leave. Make sure that you are still uncontrollably weeping at this point to make a lasting impression. Remember to wish them a good night as they leave!

Northwestern-themed NBA draft watching experience 2: 

Don't watch the NBA draft.

A Really, Really, Really, Really Naive Dude Generically Previews Major Northwestern Sports, Part 2: Basketball

The weekend of the generic previews rolls on, homies! I figure for this blogs inaugural weekend, I'd hit up both our money sports, so here goes. 

So, let's be real. I love basketball. Like, I think more about it per day than you probably do in a year. If anybody in the future days of this blog ever, ever questions how much I care about basketball, I will send them to this post. And more specifically, I will forward them to this picture of my Les Paul.

GAME OVER. I win. I ATTACHED FREAKIN STICKERS OF PAT HOULIHAN AND MARLON DAY TO MY GUITAR. EVERY TIME I PLAY IT, ANYBODY WATCHING MUST REMAIN TRANSFIXED BY THE CONSTANT SMILES OF WALK-ON BASKETBALL PLAYERS, BECAUSE THEY'RE FREAKIN ADHERED THERE. PERMANENTLY. Point being, I like Northwestern basketball. 

(Full story: senior day, they printed up stickers of every Northwestern senior. I decided to take one of each as I entered. Then, I thought to myself: hey, why don't I take three or four more of the walk-ons? Is there really going to be that high of a demand for the smiling face of Pat Houlihan? 

It turned out, there wasn't. I was satiated with the five Houlihan heads I already had, but on the way out, on a whim, my friend and I decided to see if there were any stickers left. The Sterling Williams and Craig Moore piles were gone. But there were two industrial-sized rolls containing smiling face after smiling face of Pat n' Marlon, just waiting to be picked up. So my friend and I ripped off about 15 a piece, and started applying them to any and every surface that we felt needed walk-on heads, including but not limited to the University of Iowa team bus parked invitingly outside the arena. It gave me great pleasure knowing that they would have to spend the entire ride with Marlon's eyes staring victorious bullets into their bus all the way back to Iowa City. [Full disclosure: I also slapped a magnetic schedule on the Minnesota Golden Gopher's bus. I have a bad habit.] Anyway, I still, to this day, have about five stickers of each left. And I decided my guitar would look badass with some Pat Houlihan attached. I was wrong, but the sticker remains as a testament to his silly looking jump-stop free throw motion.) 

Anyway. I have a funny feeling older NU fans probably won't consider me a true fan. I was a freshman last year, and, well, in my first year, the football team went to a bowl, and the basketball team won the first EIGHT games I attended, a record sure never to be broken. (I had journalism class during the Purdue game. Had to wait till Illinois to get my dreams smashed.) Traditionally, Northwestern fandom is all about pain and sorrow, and I've had little of it. And they look at me like I'm crazy when I say that I expect good things from our team. Now, Northwestern fans can be optimistic short-term - they go into every game thinking we can win - but when you put out big projections like "tourney", they brush you off. Nope. Not with Carmody. Not at our school. Never. Not without Craig Moore, Carmody needs shooters! No! No no no!

I'm not going to predict a tourney berth this season. I'm far too superstitious to say anything that jinxy. But I will say this: if not this year, when? 

Northwestern has never, ever been to a tourney. We all know that, we all know we're the last BCS school, we all know the sad, pathetic facts. But everybody at the school dreams of a hypothetical Selection Sunday where we're sitting around, watching the brackets pop up, and there - at like the 12th, or 13th seed, maybe - Northwestern? Northwe-NORTHF***INGWESTERN? And Evanston bursts into flame or something. We don't even need to win. Jim Phillips said it best in that Yahoo article, which I can't find right now: I can get hit by a bus that monday, I just need to see us in the tourney.

And this year is going to be our best chance for what looks like a long time. Now Craig Moore was a ridiculous shooter - he shot a lower percentage than Juice, and Juice has comparable range, but the shots Moore could get up successfully and get in were amazing, he barely needed any room - but I think that skill is replaceable. Next year, NU will be able to run out a lineup of something like Juice-Crawford?-Shurna-Coble-Mirkovic where every player has a damn good chance of hitting a threeball. (Obviously I've never seen Crawford play, and we might opt to start somebody else, and will probably start Rowley, but I'm a big Mirk fan.) We can, and will, be able to spread the floor. No one guy can replace Moore, because there just will never be a player who can camp out beyond that line all possession, waiting for his guy to give him just the right amount of room for him to catch and shoot, or come off screens like him - although rumors are that Fruendt is a lights out shooter, and that recruit Marcotullio is too - but we can have lineups where any one guy is capable of popping out behind the line for a three, and I think in a Princeton set with all sorts of guys constantly moving and setting screens and pick-and-pops, that could be as scary as it was lasat year.

So that's why I feel we lose relatively little. But as for why I feel this year is one of them now or never joints, well, it's obvious. Kevin Coble is one of the best players we've had in a while, and will be for some time. John Shurna is not Kevin Coble, and although Drew Crawford is supposedly all that, Kevin Coble is all that and a bag of chips. (Sweet Spicy Chili flavored Doritos, at that.) Coble can turn busted possessions into buckets. He can do this:

"No, please don't shoo- WHAT?"

He can do this:

Heh. Go ahead, watch it again. I know you want to. (Also note the absolute cojones performance from Juice. I mean, Christo. That one shot from the upper peninsula of the floor marker might have made me happier than anything in the history of things.)

So let's be real. For NU, Coble is a once in a long-time scoring talent. And, hey, also leads our team in rebounds. (He's not as good a rebounder as some of the other, less minuted heads like Luka, but with Coble, he's tall and he literally can't afford to take him off the floor.) Without him, our team would be, well, hideous. So, to sum up this super-long post in one, annoying sentence, here it is: NORTHWESTERN BASKETBALL: NEXT YEAR IS NOW.

Oh, yeah, and we should fire Bill Carmody, but that's 43 posts for some other time.