1. I had fun today texting back and forth with Byrdman and Roger about college basketball between about 1975-1978. Our conversation was inspired by two titans from that era having just died: Coach Bob Knight and North Carolina's All-American Walter "The Greyhound" Davis. Bob Knight's 1974-75 and 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers were remarkable. In the 74-75 season they went undefeated until losing to Kentucky in the Elite Eight round of the NCAA tournament, a loss that was almost certainly attributable to one of their best players, Scott May, breaking his arm toward the end of the season. Knight's 1975-76 team was undefeated, won the national championship, and is widely regarded as one of college basketball's best teams ever.
Walter Davis played on the North Carolina team that played Marquette for the national title in 1977. That game was remarkable for many reasons, but especially for the fact that Marquette head coach, Al McGuire had announced his retirement. Marquette won that championship game, 67-59. Walter Davis led North Carolina with 20 points.
It was a fascinating period in the history of NCAA men's basketball. John Wooden retired from UCLA after the 1975 season (and ten national titles) and things felt more wide open to me. Granted, I loved those great UCLA teams, but that 1976 Indiana team, having perfected Bob Knight's motion offense, played a style of basketball I loved to watch. I loved the grittiness of Marquette's teams. I especially enjoyed the 1977 underdog team from U North Carolina Charlotte, featuring future Celtic Cedric "Cornbread" Maxwell. UNLV also broke into the national scene that year, with many great seasons to come.
My mind swirled much of the day with memories of those college teams and performances from that era and of players like Walter Davis when they played in the NBA.
(By the way, I was traveling in England from Jan through early April of 1979 and didn't get to see the Michigan State/Indiana State match up featuring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.)
2. I've been feeling sluggish lately and today I pretty much snapped out of it by rolling out my exercise mat and doing exercises targeted to help strengthen my knees, hips, and core.
3. For dinner tonight, I fried a couple of chicken cutlets seasoned with Italian seasoning. When they were cooked, I dropped a package of butternut squash agnolotti (very similar to ravioli or tortellini) into a pot of boiling salt water, put the chicken in a foil tent to rest, and then cooked sliced shallot and added a couple handfuls of spinach and finely chopped garlic. Once the spinach was good and wilted, I added a packet of cheese roux concentrate and some pasta water and when it had thickened a bit, I added cream cheese, Parmesan cheese, and butter to this mixture.
I dropped the cooked agnolotti into the pan along with half of the chicken pieces I'd just sliced up and after it cooked briefly, I served the contents of the pan into two bowls and topped it with the rest of the chicken pieces and some more Parmesan cheese.
I especially enjoyed the butternut squash agnolotti.
This dinner capped off a good week of solid HelloFresh meals, the two we ordered and the one bonus meal we had last night.
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