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 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.