I carry some of my gear to and from the lunchtime basketball game in a red and white canvas-and-mesh bag. The zipper doesn’t work, and hasn’t for years, and the logo on the side is almost worn off, but if you look closely, you can still make out the New York State Public High School… Continue reading Twenty Years Ago This Week
Category: Sports
Teams Who Are Ahead Win More Frequently
Over at the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog, Justin Wolfers gets into the March Madness spirit by reporting on a study of basketball games that yields the counter-intuitive result that being slightly behind at halftime makes a team more likely to win. It comes complete with a spiffy graph: Explained by Wolfers thusly: The first… Continue reading Teams Who Are Ahead Win More Frequently
The NCAA Physics Tournament
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket was announced yesterday, which has kicked off the usual round of people “predicting” the outcomes based on totally silly criteria like the Academic Progress Rate of the schools in question. This is, of course, completely frivolous. What you really need is solid, relevant information. Like predictions based on the… Continue reading The NCAA Physics Tournament
Lazy Sports Writing Hall of Fame: William Rhoden
I’ve lost a lot of sleep this weekend staying up late to watch Syracuse games, so I’m only getting to some of the Friday articles in my RSS feeds now. I don’t want to let this utterly worthless column by William Rhoden of the New York Times pass without comment though. It’s ostensibly about the… Continue reading Lazy Sports Writing Hall of Fame: William Rhoden
Quick Basketball Notes
I haven’t written much about basketball this year, for the simple reason that I haven’t watched much basketball this year– between SteelyKid, the book, and my day job, I just haven’t had time. This weekend, though, I watched a whole bunch of hoops, mostly involving my two teams, Syracuse and Maryland. Yesterday was a bad… Continue reading Quick Basketball Notes
Seven Quarters
My plans to write long and smart blog posts today was thoroughly derailed last night by a combination of a slightly sick SteelyKid (she’s had a runny nose for a while because of teething, but it seems to have slid into a bit of a sinus infection) and an incredible basketball game. Syracuse and UConn… Continue reading Seven Quarters
A Game of Timing
One of my coaches, back in the day, always used to say that basketball was a game of quickness. Usually when he had just stolen the ball from somebody thirty years younger than him. It’s true, quickness is a big asset in basketball. But it’s also a game of timing– knowing when to shoot, when… Continue reading A Game of Timing
Seasonal Sports Peeve
It’s March now, which means that we’re at the absolute peak of the college basketball season. Small conferences have already started their tournaments, playing for the one shot those teams have of getting into the NCAA’s. Big conference tournaments start next week, with the Big Dance the week after. So, of course, ESPN and all… Continue reading Seasonal Sports Peeve
Go Figure
Maryland 88, North Carolina 85 (WARNING: Auto-playing video): Greivis Vasquez did something no Maryland player had done since 1987, and the Terrapins pulled off an upset that was almost as remarkable. Vasquez had a career-high 35 points and 11 rebounds and 10 assists — Maryland’s first triple-double in 22 years — and the Terrapins rallied… Continue reading Go Figure
Is It Better to Be Lucky or Good?
My cold from last week has shifted into a bit of bronchitis (and here I thought my virus-fighting strategy of staying up really late drinking beer would clear everything up), so I’m kind of groggy and lethargic. And I have book edits to work on, which precludes taking a long time to write blog posts… Continue reading Is It Better to Be Lucky or Good?