1. Out of the blue, while Debbie and I were sitting in the living room, resting, continuing to try to get over the coughing and sneezing, Debbie said she'd like to hear some music from the 60s. So, I put the station satellite radio station 60s Gold on and we listened, often laughed, and, other times, thought back sweetly to the wildly divergent kinds of music popular at that time. Debbie told me about her experience hearing The Beatles for the first time and how, for her, it changed everything. That was not true for me -- I was a fourth grader when I first heard The Beatles, and mostly I was baffled by knowing girls screamed when The Beatles played.
I can't really explain it, but the song that made the earth move under my feet, that changed everything both the first time I heard it and when I went to Wallace and bought the 45 RPM single was The Kinks', "All Day and All of the Night".
Hearing it today, about fifty-eight years later, I once again felt the jolt of excitement and daring The Kinks inspired in me in 1964.
2. I tuned into the Arizona/Indiana men's college basketball game from Las Vegas this afternoon and thought, "It sure must be fun to play for Tommy Lloyd!" The Wildcats are streaky, cocky, aggressive, and smart. They have snipers from three point land and great muscle and agility in the paint. When the Wildcats are on a running, gunning scoring streak, they look unbeatable with their versatility and overwhelming options for scoring. But, the 'Cats have some streaks when things aren't in synch and it was those streaks of missed shots and turnovers that opened the way for Indiana to play itself back into the game after being as many as 19 points behind.
In the end, Arizona prevailed, 89-75. Four of their players, two outside shooters and two inside post players, scored in double figures in a balanced and, at times, overwhelming offensive attack. (By the way, Indiana had five players in double figures. They also balanced inside and outside scoring, but just didn't have the jet-fueled power and speed of the Arizona Wildcats.)
3. I've been pulling for the Creighton Bluejays to win games for about four years now and, for me, it's been disappointing to witness their recent struggles. Coming into tonight's game against BYU, Creighton had lost three in a row. Two of those losses were to top 10 teams, Texas and Arizona, and the third to an apparently emergent Nebraska team who took Purdue into overtime today.
Could the Bluejays snap this skid against BYU? Well, it was going to be a stiff challenge, in large part because Creighton's center, Ryan Kalkbrenner, couldn't play because of a non-Covid illness. Creighton doesn't have a skilled or experienced player to back him up and as tonight's game progressed, BYU took advantage of Kalkbrenner being gone by funneling the ball inside and getting some great looks and scoring around the basket. But, BYU also made life very difficult for Creighton with its outside shooting, too. In particular, Rudy Williams came off the bench and lit up the Bluejays for 26 points.
Creighton hampered its own efforts when Arthur Kaluma, who was on a scoring spree as long as he was in the game, got into foul trouble and ended up being disqualified with about eight minutes left in the game.
But Creighton is a scrapping team. They demonstrated this in their losses to Arizona and Texas and, again tonight, they forced BYU into a late game melt down and, in the last couple of minutes of the game, erased BYU's eleven point lead with pressure defense and converting free throws.
But, BYU refused to lose and when their freshman, Dallin Hall, missed a shot at the tin with just seconds left in the game, he rebounded his miss and immediately put up a shot again, converted it, and it proved to be the game winner.
I watched this game with an eye to the future, trying to imagine how Gonzaga and BYU might stack up against each other as the WCC schedule gets under way.
I have no idea.
The Bluejays were so compromised by Kalkbrenner's illness and Kaluma's early exit that I couldn't draw any meaningful parallels between Creighton and the Zags as an opponent of BYU's.
My slate is blank on this question and I'll just see how the first Zags/BYU contest plays out when it rolls around on January 12th in Provo.
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