1. Recently, Paul raked and bagged the leaves in Christy's yard and put the bags in the bed of the pickup. Since, right now, I have the key to the truck, I took it upon myself to haul the bags of leaves to the dump today.
2. After dumping the leaves, I roared over to Silver Valley Tire and left off the pickup so its windshield wipers could be replaced. Later in the afternoon, I strolled down and retrieved the truck and it will be a much safer vehicle to drive now.
3. The Zags played tonight against a university I'd never heard of, Tarleton State University of Stephenville, TX. I didn't bother dropping into the Vizio room to watch it, figuring the Zags would easily cream the TSU Texans. Around 7:20, I checked the score and the game was close. I cranked up the Vizio and, indeed, the very pesky and determined Texans were giving the flat and dispirited Zags a very good game, hassling the Zags on defense, forcing turnovers, running a slow down offense and hitting some shots, and simply not playing the role of Gonzaga cannon fodder.
I watched the rest of the first half and the entire second half, never really believing that Tarleton State would win this game, but they never let Gonzaga run away with it. The Zags won by a final score of 64-55. This game made me think of March Madness. Every year a few unheralded teams frustrate a highly favored opponent with some sharp shooting and energetic defense, catching a superior team on a flat night and every year unimaginable upsets occur. Tonight, the upset didn't happen, but I certainly learned that this very talented Zags team is not immune from having a flat night, not immune from possibly not taking a lesser opponent seriously enough, and, if this happened, is not immune from coming out flat on Monday after a tense and demanding game against Duke on Friday.
One after thought: Tarleton State University's coach is Billy Gillespie. For several years in the early 2000s, Gillespie was doing very well. He had good runs at both UTEP and Texas A & M, but his career nosedived when Kentucky fired him after two seasons. He had a lousy single season a couple of years later at Texas Tech and because of personal problems, health problems, and accusations that he mistreated players, he was out of coaching until he took a junior college job on two separate occasions in Texas at Ranger College. Then, in 2020, Tarleton State hired him to coach their program as it transitioned from being a Division II school to playing in Division I.
This is all to say if you watched last night's game and thought to yourself that Tarleton State had a solid game plan and seemed well coached, that is because Billy Gillespie knows basketball, is very experienced, and it's always been other transgressions and personal difficulties that have made his professional career so checkered.
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