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. 

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. 

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.