Well, durn......

Or something like that.

Going into the game none of the "pundits" gave Purdue a chance but they hung in there and had several chances to tie or even take the lead but could never get over the hump. The Boilers needed to do several things well to win the game. They needed to play their normal really tough defense and they did that. They needed to hold their own in the rebounding but they got out rebounded by a fairly large margin (48-33) and they needed to shoot a pretty good percentage of their shots but they missed several open shots (that they normally hit) and had a lot of shots influenced by UConn's big center. They ended up shooting only 36% and they needed to be in the mid forties. They also fouled too many times (UConn out scored them 19-6 from the free throw line) which was a direct correlation with the fact that the UConn players were just bigger and stronger than the Purdue players.

Given all of that the guys showed that they were really competitive. And they have the advantage that their top six players are all underclassmen and will be back next year. And they have some pretty good looking recruits coming in. Things are looking good for Purdue basketball.

And on to the Sweet Sixteen!!!

Whew!!

Just barely! The Boilers built a big enough lead and then hung on at the end. Washington came back to within two points on several occasions but Purdue always found a way to push it back up to 4 or 6. And then they made enough free throws towards the end of the game and JaJuan Johnson had two very timely blocks to hang on. And, oh yeah, there was a GREAT story in the Indy paper about how JaJuan's mom's co-workers in the kitchen at one of the schools here in Carmel took up a collection and bought her (a single mom) an airplane ticket and a hotel room so she could go to the games in Portland, Ore.

And now they get to play the team from U Conn. Hmmmmmm.....

I guess you have to beat the really good teams if you want to win the tournament.

Big Ten Tournament Champions!!

After an up and down season (looking pretty good on occasion and down right terrible on others) the Purdue Boilermakers won the Big10 tournament today. They played three very good games and even though they fell behind in the second half today they came back and won. WooHoo!!

Of course, the NCAA tournament committee didn't exactly reward them. They must have watched the games last week. Purdue pretty well stunk up the last week of the season. So they have no one to blame but themselves. They ended up as a fifth seed (the tournament has a record of 5 seeds losing to 12 seeds in their first games). And if they win their first game they will likely have to play the Univ. of Washington in Portland Oregon. That's only about a three hour drive from the UW campus. And a plane flight from W. Lafayette. Ah well. If you are going to do anything in the tournament you have to beat good teams. They did at least get Thurs/Sat games so I don't have to worry about missing the game to go to the airport :-)

And now a couple of GIANT steps....

and then maybe we'll see how long it is until we can take the next one.

Last Friday I called and accepted a "tentative job offer" to be a Department of Defense (usually called DoD) employee working at Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center. It is a HUGE facility located about 25 miles southwest of Bloomington, Indiana. Step one...

And, last night I finished filling out a huge form of background info for the first part of the process to get my security clearance. Step two.....

I am not sure after talking to the nice lady in the security office this morning when they will actually start the process of doing the background checks. I thought before that they had to complete at least the first round before I could start working but she implied that they would only look at the paperwork itself but that I had to physically present myself (and get fingerprinted - I've never done that before) before they could actually start the background check. They stressed over and over again that I should present myself for that on the first day of work. So, anyway, at some point several folks are probably going to be getting phone calls.

So, as I understand it, the security folks will now give the HR folks a green light and then the HR folks have to send the paperwork back to the regional office (in Philly I think) and they have to do what ever it is they do and THEN we have to mutually agree on a start date. Which means in the meantime that I get to march in place for a while. Hurry up and wait.