1. Cooking on Thanksgiving Day required cookware: two crock pots, the Dutch Oven, my larger Pyrex cooking pan, and other pots and pans. After dinner on Thursday, I had plenty of oomph to take care of the dinner dishes, but I decided to wait until this morning to clean the cookware and slice up the leftover turkey breast.
Once I got the cookware cleaned and the turkey carved, I revved up the two crock pots. I cut up several stalks of celery and three onions and combined them with the turkey breast bones, water, bay leaves, salt, pepper, and some leftover bits of meat in one crock pot and with two fully loaded turkey drumsticks, some other bones, leftover meat, the same seasonings, and water in my other crock pot. Within an hour or so, both batches of turkey stock were bubbling away and comforting aromas soon filled the house.
2. Last winter, I watched the Michigan Wolverines play several basketball games against several very good teams like Michigan State, Wisconsin, possibly Purdue, and others. When this season started earlier this month, I wondered how their talented returning players, Zavier Simpson, John Teske, Isaiah Livers, and Eli Brooks, in particular, would respond to the departure of the program's very experienced coach, college basketball lifer, John Beilein, and the arrival of former Wolverine Fab Fiver, longtime NBA player and NBA assistant coach, and completely inexperienced college coach, Juwan Howard.
Coming into the Battle 4 Atlantis, the Michigan Wolverines were undefeated, unranked, and, in my view, underrated and unappreciated.
On Wednesday, Michigan defeated a solid Iowa State five and on Thursday they defeated one of college basketball's Mt. Rushmore programs, North Carolina.
To borrow the favorite word of every analyst on ESPN: the 2019-20 Michigan Wolverines are legit.
And, today, oh my, did Christy, Everett, and I ever see just how legit they are.
Michigan's seniors, the bulky John Teske and the nearly flawless Zavier Simpson, along with the sharp shooting of junior Isaiah Livers, dominated Gonzaga and coasted to a victory, 82-64.
Michigan completely outplayed Gonzaga: the Wolverines out muscled, out fought, out assisted, out blocked, out shot, out rebounded, out toughed, out smarted, out hustled, out defended, and, thanks to a doughy bare armed fan in a Fab Five jersey, whom ESPN showed about fifteen times in the stands, out danced the Zags.
I would love to be in the room this week as Mark Few and his assistants watch and analyze the film of this game with their players. Mostly, I'd enjoy hearing what the coaches will have to say about what the Zags must learn about defending a team like Michigan. Michigan is muscular and productive inside, around the basket, but a defense can't pack the interior because the Wolverines are a superb outside shooting team (their best inside player, John Teske, is also a sharp shooter from the top of the key); Michigan is an elite ball handling squad (especially Zavier Simpson), whose players find lanes and angles and openings while driving to the cup and are, in Steve Lavin's words, eager and willing to share the sugar. (The Wolverines dished out 17 assists against the Zags.)
I came away from this game thinking less about how the Zags lost this game and more about the great skill Michigan employed to beat them. I thought, during some quieter moments of the day, about what Gonzaga's team might have learned about themselves after playing such a physically strong, accurate shooting, and agile opponent. Can their young big guys, especially Timme and Petrusev, learn to play a more physical game inside? Can this team learn to do others what Michigan did to them -- that is, simultaneously defend players both near the basket and on the outside?
On offense, coming into this game, Gonzaga had been averaging over twenty three point attempts per game and were converting a solid percentage of them. They only shot twelve times from beyond the arc in this game. Michigan defended them tightly from long range and Gonzaga didn't compensate by scoring consistently inside because Michigan defended the Zags stoutly near the hoop. After facing the best defensive team they've played this year, what can the Zags learn about cracking such defenses as they move forward in their schedule?
I don't know any answers, but I'd love to listen in on those film sessions as the staff and players put their minds together to figure it out and then work on these challenges in practice.
(Oh! By the way, Patrick and Meagan brought six pints of six different beers with them. All of them are beers I've never heard of brewed by breweries I'm unfamiliar with. I drank one pint today per half. My first beer was a juicy, expertly hopped Hazy IPA from Baerlic Brewing Co. called Long Story Short. I loved it. My second beer was a Hazy Farmhouse IPA, brewed with honey, from the Wolves and People Brewery called Honeycone. I loved it, too. So, while it stung to watch the Zags suffer today's sound defeat, some of the hurt was balanced out by the pleasure of these two ales.)
3. Meagan, Patrick, and I relaxed all afternoon. We listened to jazz. Meagan read. Patrick enjoyed time online on his cell phone. I worked crossword puzzles. We talked a few times about going to CdA, but we never quite got moving.
It's good we didn't.
Around 3:30 or so, a truck eased into the driveway and out stepped a man with a clipboard. I was delighted, upon opening the door, that it was the gutter guy from Jimbo's. I'd put in a request for someone to come and look at the gutters on the back side of the house. They weren't working properly. Sure enough, the gutters had been pushed down and away from the house by ice sliding off the roof. The guy from Jimbo's pushed some sections back up again, but saw places that needed minor repair work that he didn't have the equipment to do. So, a work order will go in and, at some point, the repair will get completed.
Later, when Patrick and Meagan went to City Limits, I declined. My day had started with 6 o'clock breakfast with the guys at Sam's and I was fading. Originally, Patrick, Meagan, and I were going to drop in at The Lounge, but, by 8:00 or so, we all decided to settle in and relax; we all turned in fairly early this evening.
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