1. High winds yowled and whistled this afternoon and evening. People throughout the North Idaho and Eastern Washington region lost their power, but in our home, our lights and heat stayed on.
2. I kicked off another kidney week today by having blood drawn and producing a urine sample at the clinic. I'll get the results online before I meet my Friday appointment with Dr. Bieber. I hope my blood test results are as stable as how I've been feeling.
3. I see where Gonzaga flew past an inferior opponent, Alcorn State, 84-57 tonight. I didn't watch any of the game because I was engrossed by two games in this week's Gavitt Tipoff series. This week long affair matches eight teams from the Big Ten Conference with eight teams from the Big East. Over the last couple of seasons, I've watched a lot of games involving these two conferences and tonight I was eager to see how Marquette would match up against Illinois and Providence against Wisconsin.
The Marquette/Illinois game was often ragged, marred by a lot of turnovers, many of them unforced. But, as it turned out, this ragged play created its own kind of excitement. Thanks in large part to Illinois' sloppy ball-handling combined with Marquette's full court pressure defense, Marquette roared from twelve points down in the second half of play and upset Illinois 67-66.
Although I couldn't avert my eyes as Illinois, especially guard Andre Curbelo, frittered their lead away with careless play, my main focus in this game was on Marquette. I wanted to see how the players were responding to their new coach, Shaka Smart. Last year, Marquette freshman, Justin Lewis caught my attention with some solid play and I wanted to see how he had developed from last year to this one. Lastly, I'd enjoyed Darryl Morsell play at Maryland the last few seasons and now he's playing for Marquette. I wondered how he would contribute to his new team.
I thought the Marquette players enjoyed playing the Shaka Smart's high pressure style of basketball. Justin Lewis is more muscular and mature than he was a year ago and looked really good. Last year, Darryl Morsell was primarily a defensive stopper for Maryland and was named the Big Ten's Defensive Player of the Year. With Marquette, though, he's also a scorer and I enjoyed seeing him score 21 points and learning that he's scored twenty or more in all of Marquette's early season games.
In the second game, Providence relied for much of the contest on the inside prowess of Nate Watson and complimented his inside scoring with decent outside shooting and solid defense. I very much enjoyed watching the Friars defeat Wisconsin, 63-58.
I hung around the Vizio as postgame coverage got underway and FS1 rewarded its viewers with the in studio guys interviewing Providence coach, Ed Cooley. Cooley was, as always, generous, affable, and open to sharing his insights about his team and how he's coaching them to play this season. He's one of my very favorite coaches in all of college basketball.
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