Quote of the Moment

"It's one thing if you're naturally ugly, but I hate people who let themselves get that way."

I mean, this is one heck of a quote. The best (and somewhat shocking) part is that I didn't even say it. This quote comes from a chick who we met while out with MTS and G-Man the other night. This is also a reminder that I need to meet more people at the bars. The hilarious part? The gal uttering this amazing quote was maybe a 5.5 or 6, and was clearly insane.

Anyway, just a fun teaser that I had to get down in print before I forgot about it.

-Chairman

O-ver, Ra-ted, Clap, Clap, Clap-Clap-Clap

I've decided that Christmas is overrated.

One thing that gets me is that you have the rampant commercialism that this season has become. I mean, you get all of these stories about how people just go insane on Black Friday, in an effort to get some cheap Christmas shopping done. Or when there are toy shortages. You see stories of price gouging, and realize that it's just the market at work, since you wouldn't have people raising prices exponentially, unless there were buyers. I just sit back and wonder why people insist on trying to cover up ugly holes in their souls and lives by buying things that they can't afford for people that they should have treated better throughout the year. After all, simply buying stuff isn't going to fix everything that's wrong in their lives. That's the job of alcohol. And gambling. And meaningless sex. Which is great, ordinarily. But on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? Not so hot. Because everything's closed.

On a completely different track, I think that Christmas is extremely overrated in a religious sense, as well. After all, the idea of Christmas is a celebration that is intended to celebrate the birth of Jesus. In my mind, that's not a watershed point in the Christian faith. I think that Jesus always was. There seems to be some evidence within the Bible that points in that direction. Okay. So his arrival on earth in human form is a small blip, not a big blip. I'd say that it would be like seeing a little dot on the map of the U.S. that says "Little Rock." Not the big dot that says New York City.

Where the existence of Jesus really gets interesting is a few decades later. I tend to think that Good Friday is a more important day to the Christian faith than Christmas. For those of you not familiar with the Christian narrative, the idea is that Jesus Christ, son of God, was crucified for the cumulative (past and present) sins of Man, allowing for the redemption of Man before God. Good Friday commemorates the death of Jesus. That was when at the very least, a good man, who was likely at least a prophet, and possibly even the Son of God was killed by Romans, at the request of the Jews. It is his death that I believe is more interesting to the Christian faith because it is the death of a clean soul that allows for the payment of Sin.

But where the story gets better is actually 2 or 3 days later (3 days in the Bible, 2 days how we observe it), on Easter Sunday, when Jesus' burial site is empty, when Jesus actually rises to fulfill the old prophecies as the One who redeems. I don't think that Easter gets enough buzz. And that's just strange to me. Because this is the point where the Christian faith stands alone. Until that point, the Christian faith and the Jewish faith are virtually the same. It is at that point where things really change based on your faith. It is at that point where Christianity makes it's claim that it is different, set apart from the all else, the singular path to God, through Jesus Christ. It is the idea of a man, who was also God, allowing Himself to physically die in order to save Man, and then overcoming death by shedding the burial shroud to walk amongst the living days later.

Why does Easter seem more solemn? I have no idea. I think that it's because very little is done on Good Friday. If there was a time to be solemn, Good Friday would be it. But Easter Sunday? If there was a time to party, I don't see why Christians don't choose Easter. In my mind, if I was a Christian, Christmas would simply be an excuse to party, while Easter would be a reason to party. Easter is when Christ was born in a revolutionary way. If you wanted to buy presents, why not give them on Easter to symbolize the treasures in heaven that will await us?

So, when I become dictator, you're going to see some changes. For one, the bars and restaurants will be open on Christmas Eve. You'll have Fat Thursday immediately preceding Good Friday. And the Monday and Tuesday day after Easter will be mandatory detox days. And Christmas? We'll have that replace President's Day, since we won't have any need for GW or Honest Abe in my new theocracy.

So, here's to Easter - the new Christmas.

-Chairman

1-217-R-U-LEGIT

So Microsoft has this number that you can call to see if your software is real or a rip-off. If we were to set up a hotline to see if the Illini were legit, what would it say?

Well, first off, we have to look at the ranking that we currently have: #6 in the country. Is this for real? Well, we are undefeated so far. We have a couple nice wins - Xavier projects as an NCAA team, Wichita St. and Georgetown look to be boderline NCAA/NIT, and Rutgers and Oregon have chances to be NIT teams. Of course, we do have a nice win at North Carolina, who is currently 6-2 and right on the edge of the Top 25. There are 9 other undefeated teams in the Top 25, though only Duke, UConn, Villanova, and Florida have real cases to be ahead of us. Among the 1 loss teams, Memphis seems to be legit to be ranked ahead of us (they're the only team that's hung with Duke this year). I don't think that you should rank a 2 loss team ahead of an undefeated team that had the buzz that the Illini had coming off of last season. So, is #6 appropriate for now? I think that the ranking is legit for now.

But what does that really mean? Nothing.

The real interesting question is, "Do the Illini have a shot to challenge for the National Championship?" Interestingly enough, I'm buying more and more into how this squad plays. Last year, I made a posting about the Illini team, and I was convinced that we were the best team in the country. This year, I'm not going to make that statement. But some of things that apply to last year's team applies to this year's team.

I wrote last year: "This is a squad that reminds me of the old early 90's UNLV squad - run and gun on offense, but able to play halfcourt, but more importantly, shut down D. The UNLV squads liked the matchup zones a little more, whereas, we run something similar, but more of a doubling/switching man."

We'll use that again for this year's team. Out on the perimeter, Dee Brown is an elite defender. He's excellent on the ball with his footwork and willingness to work. Away from the ball, he's a ballhawk. Rich McBride has improved his defense immensely, though he still tends to use his hands a litlte too much. Where this year's team gets interesting is with Brian Randle. Last year, we were a little small at times, and had to rely on Deron Williams' strength and Luther Head's overall athleticism against the height of some swingmen. This year, we can match up Brian Randle at 6'7" against other team's wings. And off the bench, the play of freshman Jamar Smith has been a very pleasant surprise. He's listed at 6'3", though he seems more like 6'1", Jamar does move his feet well on D, and is willing to hit the floor. Having him on the floor hounding the guy who brings the ball up lets Dee get some rest. He's just a very heady player for a freshman, in general. When he gets stronger next year, watch out.

I think that where this team excels is with how the bigs play D. James Augustine has become an excellent defender over the years. He is rarely in foul trouble, and really does impact how the other team plays. He, Shaun Pruitt, and Marcus Arnold all rebound pretty well, and are active for big men. What I like is that Weber will have us double the high screen, and often push the ball handler back to halfcourt. This completely takes teams out of their offense, and makes the undisciplined teams crumble. The defense that we play makes teams take tough shots - contested jumpers, tough post looks over two people, etc. And teams that don't pass well generally will look awful against us.

In all honesty, on defense this year's version is superior to last year's version. We take a step back in replacing Deron with Rich, but replacing Luther with Randle is about a wash. And really, having Jamar Smith come off of the bench is a better defensive addition than when Rich came off the bench last year. But, the biggest reason is the addition of Pruitt/Arnold over Powell at the 4. While Roger was a tough player, he was often overmatched (see last year's Gonzaga's Morrison, Ohio St.'s Sylvester, and Iowa's Bruener) and asked to do too much. Jack Ingram was a nice player, but he couldn't be counted on to do as much dirty work as we've seen Pruitt and Arnold do. Our bigs still seem to double with a very high level of effectiveness. Not just up high like I mentioned earlier, but also down low. They don't allow the easy dump offs to cutters when they double. With a defense this good, we should be able to stay in any game that we play.

Whether we end up being a top 32 team or a Final Four team will be in our offense. At times, we look like we're still trying to figure out how to play with each other. We'll throw the ball away and look awkward in our motion. Some of the guys still don't look natural in the motion. But I think that the team issues will come together as the season progresses. Our bigs can run, and teams have wanted to slow it down against us. We can still run and gun if teams allow it, but I think that's been a point of emphasis against us this year.

Individually, there are some issues. Dee has looked off until the Oregon game, but picked it up there, and again at the Braggin' Rights game. He's only shooting like 37% from the floor, but he seems to be getting his outside shot back. Rich seems to be willing to take people off the dribble and take a 16' pull-up, which may loosen up the D on his outside shot. Randle has shown the ability to drive to the hoop, and has a knack for getting some garbage points off of loose balls. The problem is that it's all been inconsistent for these guys. In the big games against top teams, we'll need a more consistent effort from 2 out of 3 of these guys. I do like the contribution that Jamar Smith has made - he's like 55% from outside, and just has a good feel for the game.

The bigs are just getting it together right now. Auggie has become pretty reliable for about 14 points, and is mixing it up a little more than he has been in the past. Pruitt has looked a little tentative on offense, but Marcus Arnold is getting back to doing athletic things. Against Mizzou, he had a very nice reverse layup, a strong drive from the top of the key, and a hard dunk to finish off the game. If he's doing athletic things as a 4, then we become a very scary team.

So really, we have a nice 7 man rotation right now. When Chester Frazier gets back, he'll get some minutes spelling Dee. And Warren Carter fits in somehow (though I have to admit, after 2.5 years, I have no idea how - you can't play the guy for more than 3 minutes at a time; he gets lost on offense and shoots whenever he catches it, but makes enough to be intriguing; on D, he's always lost, but is tall and athletic enough to recover a lot of the time, and seems to be a good rebounder). I think that it's realistic to ask for 25 points and 20 rebounds from Auggie, Arnold, and Pruitt. If we get it, then we'll be looking alright.

Here's the deal. Dee's good for 15 a night. Figure that Brian, Rich, and Jamar combine for 25. We'll get 25 from the bigs, plus you'll have some random number between 0 and 10 for Warren. That puts us at 65, conservatively. No one's cracked 65 on us this year, and we've only had 3 out of 12 teams get to 60 on us. At the very least, we'll be in every ball game. We'll tend to have the advantage in experince, so you figure that Auggie and Dee will be able to make some plays at important times for us.

So what do we have trouble with? Oddly enough, I don't think that it's zone. This year, we seem to have been able to get the ball inside against the zone, and Randle has done a very nice job penetrating against other team's forwards in zone. I think that if we were to face a team that plays the style of D that we play, we'd have issues, since we're a little suspect in passing under pressure. So who comes to mind?

Duke comes to mind very quickly. If you remember our Sweet 16 loss to them 2 years ago, it was like watching two teams with the same game plan go at each other. They're good again. Watching Villanova play last year in the tourney, I think that their overall talent level on the perimeter would pose interesting problems (Rich couldn't check either Allen or Foye). UConn has a scary weapon with an unfortunate name in Rudy Gay (worst selling jerseys, anyone?) who's a 6'9" (not making that up) swingman (also not making that up) that should be the #1 pick in the NBA draft this year to go with some nice bigs in Boone. A few teams that have two inside weapons may give us trouble, as well - Boston College (Dudley and Smith) and Gonzaga (Morrison and Batista), and Indiana (Killingsworth and White). But those teams would have point guard issues against us. I think that the same goes for Michigan St. and Texas.

I really have no clue about Florida, as their top players are all sophomores and juniors who we don't know that well. And Memphis is one of those teams that looks great on paper, but seems too young (5 freshmen getting real minutes) and too flaky to win 6 tourney games in a row (though could beat anyone in the country on a given day). I don't think that any of the rest of the teams really stand out.

So for the Illini, I think that a conservative over-under on regular season losses is 4.5. Figure that we lose at Indiana, at Michigan St., at Wisconsin, and at Ohio St., and maybe at Iowa. We do have a chance to make it through with only 1 or 2 losses, actually, as we do match reasonably well against the previously mentioned teams, but we'll just leave some potential upside. We should finish right around 26-4 or 25-5, somewhere in the top 3 in the Big Ten, and have a shot at a 2 seed in the Dance if we can make it to the Big Ten tourney finals.

If we get a 2 seed, we're looking at Dayton or Detroit in the 1st 2 rounds, maybe Minneapolis in the Sweet 16/Elite 8, and then Indy for the Final Four. It's a much tougher road than last year's Indy-Chicago-St. Louis route, but if we can make it to Indy... who knows?

-Chairman

A New System

It's always interesting to me how things roll around in cycles. But speaking of rolling... one funny line to relate. I'm off with DE, and we're about to change location. I make the comment, "It's about time to roll out of here." Naturally, we look over to the left, and sure enough there's a dude on a wheelchair right next to us, who proceeds to roll out before we do. Whoops. I felt like C-Lauff putting my foot in my mouth. But it happens.

I'm currently taking care of final grades for our large, introductory, marketing course. The way we've set it up, the class average is a high B. 1/3 of the students got an A. Another 53% got B's. Only about 13% C's, and a couple D/F's. So naturally, no curve, right? If you were to curve, you'd actually curve people down a few points. But sure enough, we have a ton of bitching and moaning about grades. And all of it at the last second. So many things could have been done throughout the semester. But everything needs to be done now. Oh well. I wonder if any of the students will try to bribe me. I hope so.

Anyway, the last few weeks have been interesting. A lot more fun than that last year or so. It's nice to have a little crew to hang out and go out with. It's different than back in the day, but I think that we're putting all of our experience to good use. It's been such a relaxing, freeing feeling. Instead of worrying about saying the right things to the right people and being all worked up about the inconsequential, we're turning life into our own cocktail party.

Here's the thing. If you can just go out and talk to anyone about anything, you'll just have a much larger social network to draw from. And the process of networking is something that you can train yourself to do. It's all about just being willing to take a step out of the box and talk to people. And it's being willing to do it anywhere. It's being willing to take a rejection and not lose a step. It's being willing to not be satisfied with getting a positive response.

It's strange. Once you put yourself outside of your normal comfort zone, things just seem to happen. Case in point: Normally, at the gym, I'll just keep to myself. Maybe I say hi to a guy that I know. But that's about it. So the other day, I'm off at the gym, I run into this dude that I met through a friend a while back. I catch up, and meet the guys that he's working out with. We have a nice chat and after the guys leave to finish their work out, this cute gal on the stair climber starts up a conversation because she heard that I was a doctoral student. Turns out that she's a post-doc in kines. Score. We have a nice conversation about the stuff that we research. We get her info, and we'll drop her a line at some point this week. No idea where this goes, and no worries about that . We've got a professional link for sure. Maybe we had a connection elsewhere. Who knows? Regardless, it was the cocktail party attitude that made it happen. I was proactive in chatting with my acquaintaince's friends. I was rewarded with a nice conversation on the side.

We've had quite a few other instances over the past couple weeks, as well. Chatting people up has been a fun way to go. We've met some interesting people. We've renewed some ties that were thought to be lost. And we've strengthened some existing ties. Some people I know have always been masters at this. OD comes to mind. Maybe one of my friends Dan. The ability to just talk to anyone, and then to make it a point to talk to them again in the future is something that isn't easy to most people. I think that ultimately, many people don't take that path because of a fear of rejection. They're afraid that they won't be cool, funny, witty, smart, etc. enough to impress someone. I think that where that can be overcome is the realization that rejection isn't anything that will crush you. Making the leap is all upside.

I still am not 100% in running the system. But I'm trying to get there. We'll see how it goes.

-Chairman

Press Release:

I'm back.

A Big Thank You

I think that with the record number of comments from my last post, I need to thank all of my wonderful readers. Yes, both of you. With those two comments, we have actually quadrupled our readership to 2 readers. This is an incredible day for us here in the Board Room. We've been giving high fives all round for the entire day. I think that this essentially validates my career as a blogger. It is an incredible feeling to be on top of the world, holding the pose, sinking the last jumper, and beating John Stockton like a rented wife, er mule.

Which is why I am here to say that as of today, I, of sound body and unstable mind, am 99%retiring from the world of professional blogging.

-Chairman

Forgive Those Who Tresspass Against Us

It's funny sometimes. Sometimes the most skilled individuals don't always work together to be the best team. Some people just have a knack of being a team player. Others don't. We know that it takes a special talent to be a Michael Jordan, or the Alpha. Not everyone has that ability. And it also takes a very high level of talent to be Scottie Pippen, or the Beta. Everyone else on the Bulls took on a special role, like Steve Kerr or Bill Wennington. Now here's the thing that's interesting to me. If Michael Jordan were on a team with someone like Wilt Chamberlain, where Wilt would be the Alpha, it's doubtful that MJ could take on the Beta role and have the team excel. It would be nearly impossible to convince MJ to become a role player. However, we do see many examples of where the Beta becomes the Alpha, with a relatively high level of success. For example, Scottie Pippen was able to be an Alpha when MJ was gone, and Pippen even became a role player later on in his career and was actually a very valuable member of some good teams. On the other hand, we all would prefer to forget MJ in Washington. So, in some ways, you see that not all Alphas are created equal. There are Alphas that have a very rigid set of abilities, and others that can go back and forth to play whatever role is needed.

So, we're out at the bars on Saturday. Me, CJ, and Jigga meet up with DE, The Fitz, and MTS at 11. First of all, it's nice going out with our Euro friends (The Fitz is from Norway, while MTS is from Sweden). They have much larger bankrolls than we do, so they buy quite a bit. Of course, this is interesting when they are intending to get blitzed and want everyone to go along for the ride. It went something like this. Me, CJ and Jigga walk in, and I get us each a beer and a shot to open up the night. Immediately, MTS buys everyone a shot. A few minutes later, he decides to buy us all another shot. We're all hanging out and talking for a bit, when DE and MTS peel off for a second. I decide that I need another beer, and after I get it, I drift over to catch up with DE and MTS. MTS decides that we need more shots. I buy this round, since MTS bought the last one for all of us. MTS immediately buys another round of shots to make up for me buying the previous one. So, within an hour, we've put away 2 beers and 4 shots. Happily, the shots are all weak, mixed shots. Basically, they were T-Bombs, which are like a 3/4 shot of Ciclon and some Red Bull, all for $1.50. But, taken in large quantities, it adds up. It may even multiply or go exponential at some point.

Anyway, a little while later me and DE are off talking to some girls at the bar (more on this later), MTS finds us, and drags us all off to the bar for more shots. So, instead of just buying each of us a shot, I think that he just give the bartender like $20 and gets 12 shots on a server's tray. So, we each end up doing 2 shots off of the tray. The thing was, as the night went on, MTS did this 3 more times. I'm guessing that I ended up doing something like 13 of those damned T-bombs, to go along with the 2 beers and a vodka and Red Bull at the end of the night. And the worst part is that it wasn't even the alcohol that got to me. I think that it was the acid in the Red Bull that tore up my stomach. I think that I'm still shitting Red Bull now, almost 24 hours later.

Moral of story? Beware when MTS is buying shots a tray at a time.

So what does this have to do with trespassing? Nothing. But it works its way in. See, DE is one of those guys who never goes into battle without a backup plan. Or a Plan C. Or D. And maybe even E. He's been sort of playing the game with this girl H. It's been this constant struggle to gain the upper hand in the evolving relationship. It's this game of not being the last one to call, not being the one that seems dependent, etc. It's pretty amazing, actually, in an awesome sort of way. In fact, one of the standard plays that we have is to take a peek, and if we see H, to call up Command Central, so that we can decide what play to send in. For example, I saw H on Saturday. "Dude. H is here." "Really? Let's start working the room." So, once we see that H is there, the play was to go hit on girls, and eventually walk by H with some random girls. And for those of you who may think that this is shallow, you may be right. But it's also effective.

As an aisde, we know that DE has something going on with H. Now, for most of us that would mean that H is basically off limits. Easy call, right? But for whatever reason, The Fitz has to go over to talk to H. See, even if he isn't making a play on H, it still makes whatever DE is doing seem awkward. I believe that the correct play is for the entire team to stonewall H, nothing more than a "hello, how are you, I'm fine" type of conversation. Instead, he's off, and largely ruining whatever play DE had set up. I think that we'll need to talk about that at some point.

Anyway, to set up our play, we wander off and start talking to these two girls, one of whom DE knew, named R, and her friend C. So, DE is talking to R, and I'm running interference on C. C was pretty cute, but she didn't seem to be the sort that was going to a be much action, so I wasn't really putting on the full court press. Which was good. Because I got the "hey, you're my TA." Which is often a death knell. But I played it alright, and the conversation actually stayed alive. That is, until MTS dragged us all over to force us to drink. I actually ran into another one of my students (check that, one of my students recognized me as I was talking to people). And I actually managed to escape without her either slapping me or throwing a drink on me. I chalk that up as a victory.

The rest of the night was alright. Individually, I think that we were OK. How it worked out was that MTS was just buying drinks like crazy and not really working much game. The Fitz always seems to run solo missions. And DE needed someone to run wing, so I went off with him, while CJ and Jigga were doing their thing. I think that this isn't a bad plan overall, though we need to get DE to slow down a bit at times. I think that he goes off too fast sometimes trying to make up for lost time. And the other thing that we need to do is to get CJ to not get shaken up and lose confidence. But we'll iron that out. I think that we need to call a "players only" meeting at some point so that we can go over some of the things that we're doing, and figure out how we can improve our play. We actually did pretty poorly as a team, since we had different moments where people left their wingmen, where people weren't sharing the Alpha role, where no one wanted to be the Beta, and where we were just off our games.

Anyway, just one more week of class left to go. Crazy. Just have to survive a few more days.

-Chairman

Discovery and Progress

I think that our Illini have had a big week. Two wins against two good programs. Obviously, the North Carolina win was big (and looks even bigger with their win at Kentucky today). But, few people remember that two years ago, when we lost to Duke in the Sweet 16, it was Xavier who to lost to Duke in the Elite 8. And some others may remember when we rebuffed in our efforts to land Thad Matta, he was the coach at Xavier. And while Xavier was off last season, they returned all of their major players from last year. So this wasn't a pushover game for us. In fact, I don't think that we'll have many pushover games with this team.

It goes without saying that Auggie played great today. But you almost expect his 14 points and 10 rebounds every game. What I like about the game is that Marcus Arnold showed up in the 2nd half. I think that this is the first time I've seen him without the knee brace, so maybe this is a turning point. He was tough. Played well, boarded well, and used his body to draw fouls and create in the paint. If we can get Pruitt to play a bit better, we could have 3 solid bigs to go to, which is huge for us. Also, we were able to win without shooting well from outside. We were 6-21 (29%) from beyond the arc, and only 20-49 (41%) overall. We won this game with defense and aggressive interior play in the 2nd half. Just like the team last year, I think that our defense will keep us in just about any game this year. And going into the season, I thought that the interior game was going to be our bright spot w/ Auggie, Pruitt, and Arnold rotating through the 4 and 5 spots.

Some things need to be worked on. We still need to get the rotation ironed out and work Jamar Smith into the offense a little more. We also need to make sure that McBride doesn't disappear on us. ButDee still isn't hitting. Part of it is that he's missing some tough layups. The other part is that he's still playing mad bomber at times. The announcers made a good point that goes with my comment about Dee being a better spot up shooter than off the dribble. It's all about the footwork. When you square up, you lose a split second of separation between you and the defender. But your accuracy goes from like 20% to %50. Some guys were able to square up in the air and adjust for the drift (Rip Hamilton with the mid-range jumper or Reggie Miller and Mark Price with the 3), but very few are able to. When Dee was able to square up and get into the shot, he made those two in a row to get us back into it at the start of the 2nd half.

Regardless, we're 7-0, and looking alright. We'll be no worse than 11-3, and probably 13-1 or 14-0 going into Big Ten play. Next up? Arkansas-Little Rock and G'Town, both at home. Should be able to defend home court.

Until then.

-Chairman

If You Have to Sneak Out of Class Early...

...you probably shouldn't slip in the aisle and take a full spill.

This actually happened today in our marketing lecture. Class of 325. Probably 240 were there. The class finds out that the material wasn't going to be covered on the exam. People try to quietly sneak out. Towards the back, there were these three girls that had put on their coats and were ready to go. So, a little break in the action, and they're off. They all get up, and start to leave. Only the first girl just completely wipes out on her way out. Boom! Hilarious. Needless to say, I was trying to keep from laughing loudly.

The thing is, I'm getting more an more annoyed at our business undergrads. There's this feeling of entitlement. I don't think that you saw it in engineering. We knew the game. Just don't be an idiot, and you'll get a B. Get within a couple points of the class average, and you'll get your B. You've got to beat the class average by 5 or 6 points if you want an A. With these kids, it seems that the vast majority of them just want to get the grade without putting in the work or learning the material. I can count on one hand the number of people that have come to office hours this semester for extra help. But sure enough, after the 2nd midterm, when grades were down (only down a little bit, actually), the bitching and moaning started. Oh well. This makes me yearn for the day that I get tenure and stop giving a damn.

Anyway, off to bed. We'll see how the next week runs.

-Chairman