B-Ball Postmortem
An utter implosion. The Stanford men were up 41-30 in the first half, only to lose 93-70 to Mississippi State. Stanford hoops fans have been spoiled for years now-- it was the first time the men had lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 11 years. And the Stanford women look like they'll make yet another deep run in the tournament, possibly taking it all (they're 30-2 now). Coach Tara VanDerveer is a master of the game-- not only does she keep the Card in the chase every year, but she relaxes from the rigors of coaching by practicing classical piano! Gotta like that...
Despite the Cardinal men exiting early from the "March to the Arch," I did find the character they exhibited in getting to the tournament in the first place inspiring: the adjustment to a new coach after the legendary Mike Montgomery left for the Warriors, the departure of two players who opted to focus on football, the academic ineligibility of redshirt freshman Tim Morris, the season-ending injury to leading scorer Dan Grunfeld...
In my other mental meanderings, Hunter S. Thompson's suicide is weighing more on my mind than I thought it would. My uncle David, a regular patron of the famed Woody Creek Tavern, sent me a whole pile of local Aspen-area press immediately following HST's death. True, the Good Doctor could get rather creative with certain facts, and his personal morality could be debated around the barn, but his political insights were on the money FAR more than most of the "insiders" and "voices of reason" in the hopelessly deracinated corporate media. In my book, I'd put HST in a class of creative icons such as Bill Hicks and Charles Mingus-- people who weren't content to just watch the world go on around them without calling out the endless parade of shit peddlers who aid and abet the degradation of our world in more ways than we can possibly imagine.
Yet another person who never got his due: Tadd Dameron. I've been listening all weekend to some Coleman Hawkins sides from December 1947, tunes arranged by Dameron. I've heard very few musicians whose writing could convey the concurrent optimism and darkness of that time so well.
Despite the Cardinal men exiting early from the "March to the Arch," I did find the character they exhibited in getting to the tournament in the first place inspiring: the adjustment to a new coach after the legendary Mike Montgomery left for the Warriors, the departure of two players who opted to focus on football, the academic ineligibility of redshirt freshman Tim Morris, the season-ending injury to leading scorer Dan Grunfeld...
In my other mental meanderings, Hunter S. Thompson's suicide is weighing more on my mind than I thought it would. My uncle David, a regular patron of the famed Woody Creek Tavern, sent me a whole pile of local Aspen-area press immediately following HST's death. True, the Good Doctor could get rather creative with certain facts, and his personal morality could be debated around the barn, but his political insights were on the money FAR more than most of the "insiders" and "voices of reason" in the hopelessly deracinated corporate media. In my book, I'd put HST in a class of creative icons such as Bill Hicks and Charles Mingus-- people who weren't content to just watch the world go on around them without calling out the endless parade of shit peddlers who aid and abet the degradation of our world in more ways than we can possibly imagine.
Yet another person who never got his due: Tadd Dameron. I've been listening all weekend to some Coleman Hawkins sides from December 1947, tunes arranged by Dameron. I've heard very few musicians whose writing could convey the concurrent optimism and darkness of that time so well.
posted by Tom (a.k.a. "G-Man") at 5:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home