A post for Jenna

Yep, just because she asked :-)

Playing with Raley is good. She went to see the Dr. today. Pretty good all round apparently but I will leave that update to her mommy (hint, hint).

I shovelled a LOT of compost yesterday but Dan and I together only made it through about half of the rather large pile in the front yard. Apparently, the city "advertises" this as mulch but a much better definition would be "ground up leaves compost". Not much sticks and bark. More leaves than anything. It would be really good stuff if you wanted to roto-till it into your garden. It will keep the weeds down though and in a year it will all be gone. But so will Dan and Sarah. So it will work out.

Awww shucks....

Well, the Boilermakers couldn't quite pull off a trip to the Sweet 16 but I think that they far exceeded most reasonable expectations for this year.

But next year could/should be even better. Out of their top nine guys they only lose one senior who only averaged about 10 minutes per game (except in the tournament where he finally started playing much better than he had for the previous two seasons). They have back all five of the starters. And they should be all a year older, bigger and smarter. One of their biggest "problems" this year was the inability to finish "strong" around the basket. When they got a rebound they often got the "putback" blocked. Next year I hope that they will be much better rebounding in general.

And who knows maybe by next year Brighthouse will even have the Big Ten Network so that I don't have to be such a regular at BW3.

That was refreshing!!

A lot of the pundits kept talking about how 'Baylor scores a lot of points' & 'The Big 12 is a lot "quicker" game than the Big 10' & 'The Boilermakers are all so young they will be "dazzled" by the big stage'. And of course, the young "slow" Boilers came out and scored 46 points in the first half (and blew a golden opportunity at the end of the half) and were up by 19. I don't think that the Big12 must play much defense. The Boilermakers had lots of wide open three point shots and they were clearly very frustrated that they couldn't do the "one pass and shoot" offense.

Purdue kind of struggled for a couple of streches in the second half but the lead never got under 10 and in fact the final (90-79) might have been as close as Baylor got.

On to the second round against Xavier. I don't know much about them but they are the #3 seed in the bracket and Purdue is the #6. Apparently, the committee that seeded the bracket thought that they are better (I did hear that they are very "similar" to Purdue just "older"). Hopefully, Purdue's defense can frustrate them too. That game is Saturday @ 4:45 (ET) or so. Please don't call during the game :-)

THUD!!

That is the sound Purdue made in the BigTen Tournament. Hopefully, they "learn" from this that tournament play requires a bit more effort.

They didn't "show up" at the beginning of the game and let the Illini have some early success. When they tried to "turn it on" they just couldn't get it done. And, they let a 31% 3 point shooter go 6 for 6 on 3 pointers for the day. And just enough bone head plays at the end to let them get the game to overtime (Purdue led by 5 with 90 seconds to go in regulation time).

Sigh. I let them get my hopes up again....

I think that they really need to "find" an inside presence before they will do much. I don't know if that means that Jajuan Johnson needs to grow into his body he is a freshman that plays like it (unlike some of his teammates) or if they need to go out and find a "big" body.

Ah well, at least I at pretty sure that they are going to the NCAA tournement just not as highly seeded as I would have hoped.

And now we have conformation!!!

Welcome to the world Raley!

At 7:18 this evening I became a Grandpa. I bet you'll hear more about her here soon.

Yeah for good times!!

Fabulous!! Purdue won and IU lost. That is the very definiton of a good day.

Then at 8 this morning we got a call that means that today could be even better! But so far we are still waiting for conformation.....

I think that I saw that coming....

For those that don't keep up on such things the Boilers lost in overtime tonight.

Sorry to say but Purdue's young guys just haven't learned how hard you have to go to get wins on the road in the BigTen. Of course, it was a very emotional game for the Buckeyes too. They needed it and in the end wanted it more than the Boilers. Their seniors knew that they needed to win this game to revive their hopes of getting in the NCAA tournament. Hopefully, though this will be that "wake-up" call that gets the young Boilers focused because real soon now they start the "lose and go home" part of the season.

I have to say that it sure seemed that Purdue's shooters were "off" tonight. And, tOSU didn't take advantage of their size inside as much as they could have. Wierd game. Who knows maybe they will meet again in Indy.

A new year (and a little help)

When I started writing this blog I said it would probably involve four things, my family, hot air ballooning, bicycling and Purdue sports.

Today is the time to add the first post about one of those topics. About 4 o'clock I looked at one of the TV channels that said the local temperature was 68 degrees. I decided that it was time to get out the bike. I did some streching and added air to the tires and proceeded around the neighborhood just to see if I could remember how. A whole whopping 4.4 miles in 18:45 for a average of only 14.3 mph. But after not riding since October not so bad. It got the juices flowing and I sure didn't want to overdo it and regret it in the morning. Once I get in "shape" (I know it doesn't look like I have been in shape for the last twenty years) I should be able to ride my nine mile loop in just a touch over 30 minutes (or almost 18 miles an hour) and for longer rides (30+ miles) at 16.5 or 17 mph. Looking ahead it is supposed to be near 50 next weekend too. If it is sunny I might get another ride in then. So my total distance for the year so far is 4.4 miles. I'll see what I can do to add to that.

On another of the four topics the IU Hoosiers got creamed by Michigan State today. This was their third loss in the conference. Purdue and Wisconsin still only have two losses apiece. There MIGHT be a conference championship in the Boilers future. I am looking forward to the game on Tuesday :-)

Another one down...

In all honesty the Boilers should have won the game today and they did. It was a little tense in the first half as they didn't play very good defense and didn't shoot the ball very well. That seems to be a recipe for a bad game. But they did much better on both counts in the second half and won rather easily. Now comes probably the toughest remaining game. They have to go to Columbus and play some team in red and silver (or maybe scarlet and grey...or something like that :-). Some how I think that will get a rise out of somebody.