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. 

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.

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. 

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?

USA! USA!

Woooooo!

So, there's a reason for the flags. This summer, starting tomorrow, three of our boys in purple will be representing the red, white, and blue: football pre-froshes John Plasencia and Brian Smith will be on the USA team at the very first Junior World Championship, and John Shurna will be a member of the USA contingent heading to the U-19 Championships in New Zealand. I'm excited about this, because I'm a sucker for nationalistic sporting events. (YEAH CLINT DEMPSEY!)

Today, I'll post about football. In the name of saving up things I can write about as long as possible, Ill discuss Shurna when his tournament starts. But Plasencia, Smith, and 43 other kids who have never smelled a dorm hallway before will kick off their tournament Saturday in Canton, Ohio, against France. 

First off, let's welcome Plasencia and Smith. Plasencia is a superback (quoth Fitz: a super person who does super things), and Smith is an offensive lineman. Both, as previously noted, are incoming freshman, both will most likely redshirt, and both probably won't start a game at Northwestern for at least three years. But for some reason or another, they've been selected as part of the US Junior National team. 

But what does that mean? Are these the best players in the United States? What's the history of this tournament?

The answers: I have no idea, nope, and there is none. 

Since this is the first rendition of the tournament, there's no historical context for me to tell you what sort of a harbinger playing in a competition like this is for how good the players are, how they got selected, why they got selected, or any other amount of questions. What I can tell you, because I read the press release, is that 45 players attending 33 colleges next year were selected to play in Canton, and that, according to NUsports.com, Plasencia and Smith aren't the cream of the crop - rather, Plasencia is the 86th best tight end in his class according to Superprep and Smith is the 70th best tackle. 

But enough with the parade raining. It's damn impressive that these kids were selected, and it can't hurt that they get a few weeks of extra training, practice, and game experience, which they'll probably get, considering there's only 45 guys on the team. Not to mention that I doubt whatever mysterious entity involved with putting this team together probably wasn't searching for scrubs: they must have seen something about these two dudes out of the thousands of D-1 tight ends and o-linemen that they liked. (Although, considering the preponderance of Big Ten guys, geography and the logistics of holding a tournament in Ohio might have had something to do with it, especially considering that Smith is actually from Ohio.) I wouldn't be surprised if they were intentionally not picking top-flight players so that opposing teams had a chance, figuring closer games, and maybe a USA team losing a game or two would allow for the sport to grow on an international level.

A way to make sense of all of this might be a brief primer on the history of international American football competitions, which, surprisingly, exist.(figure out which adjective modifies what there.) The wikipedia tells me that the IFAF (International Federation of American Football) has been held three times, with Japan winning twice and the US winning in 2007, the first time they sent a team.

You'd be surprised to find that they didn't completely dominate. After winning their group stage games against South Korea and Germany 77-0 and 33-7, respectively, the team had a serious battle against Japan, winning a 23-20 double overtime game. 

I doubt there will be close games like that in this competition. As far as I can tell, the USA team there was a Frankenstein-ish hodgepodge of inactive ex-collegiate football players with an intense series of regulations on who could be picked: no players who had ever been professional, multiple players had to be selected from D-I, D-II, and D-III, and none were allowed to have been active players at the collegiate level for 12 months prior to the tournament. They played against international teams that, despite lacking the football pedigree and infrastructure that the United States has, had probably been playing together and practicing for longer: after all, it was their one time to shine, while for the USA players, it was just one last fling and attempt at capturing glory after finishing their mildly successful careers and getting an education out of it. 

Here, in the first Junior World Championships, the USA squad makes more sense and is probably going to be more cohesive as a result. There's no draconian restrictions on who could be picked: it's just 45 guys who the USA Football people liked, and they're not rusty, since they just finished with high school and are moving on towards college, not completely finished with their careers. And their competition is probably the same level of skill as in the last tournament: that is to say, bad. 

Let's be real: they're playing France in the first round. France. I'd like to mock the french as weak and cowardly, primarily because of four years of B-minus speckled high school french, but despite never having been mugged in nearly 20 years of living in New York, I managed to get mugged, and, rather violently so, in five days of being in France, so, they officially earned the right to not be called snivelling cowards. Instead, I will talk about how unlikely it is that they are good at football. 

I will paraphrase from the biography of their starting quarterback, Maxime Sprauel, I repeat, whose name is Maxime Sprauel, which is a french name, even though the sport is called American football. (And no: LaDanian is not a french name, if you were wondering.) Maxime plays for the Thornon les Bains Black Panthers (good choice of team name, folks, probably considerably less controversial in France), and recently led the French junior team to a third place finish at the European Junior American Football championships. Other teams in the tournament include Japan,(I guess they were good in those other weird international tournaments I just wrote about), Canada (makes sense, CFL and all), Mexico (okay, getting weird now, although I guess they border us), Germany (NFL Europe, maybe?), New Zealand (really? I mean, this is getting silly), and Sweden (hahahahahahaha). So, yeah, the competition isn't great. Maybe a well-established team like Canada or Japan will give Plasencia, Smith n crew a run for their money, but odds are the two will come to Evanston with some hardware in pocket.

The games, obviously, are not on television, although they will stream from the USA football website. (In other news: I will not be watching.) If anybody does watch, first off, please, leave your house, go get some fresh air, do something else with your life. Second, tell us how the Wildcats involved do. Even though probably, they'll be doing nothing more important than blocking, and it will be really difficult to judge how good they actually are, considering they'll be going up against frenchies. 

If I can find anything out about how the tourney goes, I'll give you a report when the tourney is over. Until then, wish them luck, but for now, just know that the bottom line is that it's great for the program that two of our guys have this cool experience. Next week, I'll discuss Shurna's US experience before his tournament kicks off on July 2nd. 

Oh, and if you're still reading (highly unlikely,) peep the poll on the right side! Make it look like I got readers!