1. Jeff H.'s friend, Brian (whom I don't know) is a truck driver and on Thursday nights uses his cell phone to tune into Jeff's weekly radio show Deadish -- on KEPW-FM (kepw.org). This past Thursday, he couldn't listen live, but since the show is archived for two weeks, he listened to the archived file later in the night after getting a cell phone glitch figured out. I won't detail his description of driving on nasty roads from Eau Claire to Superior/Duluth nor his joy at listening to the music played on Thursday in commemoration of Black History Month. I'll just say that I was very grateful to Jeff for sending Brian's email forward to me and that I loved reading Brian's experience and loved being invited into Brian's enthusiasm for Jeff's set list, an enthusiasm I shared.
2. After watching a lot of college basketball today, it struck me how, yes, for the purposes of marketing the conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament itself, it's effective and accurate to refer to the post season as March Madness. In reality, though, the madness of college basketball kicks in earlier than March. Today, lowly Cal traveled to Eugene and spanked the Ducks. It had looked like the Ducks were a team on the rise and they got routed.
The struggling, but improving Butler Bulldogs bolted out to a huge half time lead against Marquette, a team that had looked like it was on the upswing, and weathered Marquette's comeback and beat the Golden Eagles. If you look to the bottom of the Big East standings, there sits DePaul in ninth place, one rung from the bottom, and at the top sits Providence. But, today, DePaul flew into Rhode Island and led Providence for most of the game, only to lose it in overtime. Rutgers is improving and surprised Wisconsin today.
After earning a great win over Auburn earlier in the week, today Arkansas lost their game with Alabama. Tonight, USC was without their best player, Isaiah Mobley, and yet they tightened up their defense, got a monster performance out of Drew Peterson, and triumphed over UCLA, 67-64.
It was madness today in college basketball.
Teams like DePaul and Butler who have no chance of winning their conference or earning at-large bids into the NCAA tournament have begun to really find themselves at this late juncture in the season and are playing with determination, making life very difficult for teams who've had better seasons. That's what's fun about February madness. Lowly teams improve. Teams who've had better seasons get pushed hard, and are even defeated, by these improving teams. It's fun to flip on the Vizio, watch hoops, and have no idea what might happen in any given game.
Well, so far, there's one team who has yet to confront much of a challenge as they play their conference schedule.
I didn't watch the game, but I know that while St. Mary's came back a bit on the Zags and reduced a double digit deficit to single digits, in the end, Gonzaga cruised to victory by a score of 74-58.
It would be fun to watch Gonzaga play in a conference with teams strong enough to challenge them. So far, that's not true in the WCC where the Zags are undefeated and have won all of their conference games by wide margins.
3. Debbie stopped in at The Lounge either before or after a quick shopping trip at Yoke's and fell into a long conversation. She was going to be hosting Diane and Christy for an evening cocktail party and since her visit at The Lounge ran longer than she planned, Debbie purchased a surprise for the two of us.
She returned home with a take out box full of House Special Lo Mein from Wah Hing.
What a great surprise! What a great dinner!
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