June 17, 2008
Pickup Culture
Fun hoops piece in the LA Times Sunday (true, I am rooting for the Celtics in the Boston-LA matchup now ongoing, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the opponents' local paper). It’s about women playing pickup basketball with guys, a situation I have a lot of experience with. So has the author, Melissa Rohlin. She describes the phenomenon perfectly, particularly the “male dilemma.”
Say you’re the guy matched up with the one female player: Do you play hard and risk looking like a jerk, or do you back off and get beat and consequently embarrassed? I’ve felt this dynamic at play myself. I'm usually the smallest player out there; I'm not necessarily the worst. I try to match up with the person closest in size (that’s gonna be a smaller guy, who may have unresolved issues there anyway), or someone who doesn’t love to live in the post. If somebody’s bigger and stronger than me, they’re stupid not to use that in playing against me. If somebody’s bigger and stronger than me, they’re an asshole to use that in trying to hurt me, shove me around, or discourage me from playing. I’ve run into both those kinds of stupidity, and just as much straight-up play, thankfully. One big guy swatted a shot attempt of mine halfway across the gym, and then said, “Sorry,” kind of sheepishly. That’s at least a happier medium … acknowledging the awkwardness but not letting it affect the play. We could both laugh about it.
Rohlin talks about the issue of even getting into the game, sometimes. I haven’t run into that so much, but haven’t tried to join in many new games where I don’t already know somebody. One place where I did, I got a distinct feeling that some of the guys feared a feminization of the game. (It's a run where supposedly Doug Flutie plays sometimes, but not that day.) There was one other woman there, a college player. Size and skill-wise, it didn’t make real sense for me to be guarding her, but we were both female so it was a foregone conclusion. At some point in the game I stepped on the back of her heel and pulled her shoe off. I said, “Oop, sorry,” while continuing to play. Some guy nearby barked, “Hey! We don’t say 'sorry' here!”
For a variety of reasons (like cost and location, but including that benighted attitude), I didn’t go back there.
In the LA Times article, Rohlin quotes another ball-playing friend of hers, which sums up the inclusion issue and the whole scenario, really:
Guys who are good at basketball, she said, are inclusive and encourage women to join. Guys who are insecure about their basketball skills, well, they are insecure, period.
14:45 Posted in Basketball , Community of Athletes , Games , Leisure | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
June 01, 2008
Ball Around the World
Been meaning to post this for awhile. My friend N sent me by U.S. Postal Service an article cut out of the New York Times, claiming her days as a crazy, newspaper-clipping lady were just beginning. I think it's great. I wish people would do it more. It’s somehow more endearing and idiosyncratic than being sent a link to an online story. Which is basically what I’m doing here.
The Times article was called Traveling, and Always Shooting, and told the story of Noel and Angelina Andreoni (who took the picture posted here), and their life of traipsing about the world shooting photos and baskets wherever they went. They had been working ordinary jobs in somewhat ordinary Las Vegas when they decided there had to be more to life. As the Times reports:
Angelina loved photography; Noel loved basketball. But Noel said he realized that they probably wouldn’t make a living at either. “But we can still pursue those passions,” he said. “We said, ‘Let’s get back to what we enjoy and do it.’ And because we can do it, we’ve become very good at passing that message on.”I love the notion of a passion like that. I love the leitmotif of doing a particular activity in many and varied and unlikely places. I love the evidence that you can break out of the ordinary if you want to make it happen. I don’t love the fuzzy realization I have that I once would have craved doing what the Andreonis do, but not so much anymore … or not right now. Is it age? Or situation? Or an acceptance of dogged reality? Makes me feel like a mollusk, but I can still admire and vicariously enjoy the trip around the world with a basketball.
See more pictures on the Andreonis' website Shoot the Ball.
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November 28, 2007
Bad Cheer
Since the season of cheer is here, I will complain about it. Not the season, no. The cheering. And not actually the cheering, it's the dancing.
We lucked into going to the Boston Celtics' opening home game at the Garden on Nov. 3. Great seats, great spirit in the place, great local celebrity spotting, great playing by the rejuvenated Cs, great time. The one blot on the whole thing is the Celtics Dancers (I think they're called). I'm sure they're probably earnest young women seeking a career in entertainment. Maybe it's their big break. But a) ugh, they're not very good and b) do we have to sexualize everything? and c) when we sexualize everything, does it have to be in an irrelevant, robotic, stamped-from-a-press kind of way? I would have less of an issue with real cheerleaders, leaders of cheers who toss in some acrobatics to keep it interesting. But the Jumbotron and electronics now lead the masses in cheers. We get women in a narrow range of skin tones, with long hair ironed flat, slim but without muscle definition in their polyester briefs, posturing in suggestive ways to some mostly quite old tunes.
If we spectators are such cretins that we need to be visually entertained every minute, let's rely more on "Lucky" the fully human mascot who is surprisingly charismatic and gymnastical. Or show some replays on the big screen. Or troop out again the various local kids' talent acts that seem to make an appearance at every game. Or get some guys to dance too, c'mon, equal opportunity exploitation.
I find the dancers' presence embarrassing for everyone. I suppose maybe some people like watching them bounce out and shimmy unathletically. There's got to be some bottom line (pardon bad pun) reason the franchise would undertake it. Do they think it's gonna sell more tickets? Now that they have a powerful team of players, I think not.
Most embarrassing is how, on opening night, the organization dedicated the parquet to the late great Red Auerbach, and not long after that the dancers were out in the first of their five costume changes. You notice dancers are a recent thing with the Celtics--since just before Auerbach's death. That's partly because he reportedly had said, in regard to team dancers, "Over my dead body."
Completely nonironically, that is where those dancers are now, skipping about the Red Auerbach parquet.
I tip my hat, conversely, to Russell Crowe. He's a part owner of a rugby team in Australia, where he has sacked the dancing cheerleaders. He told ESPN, "We examined game day and wanted to contemporize and make the focus [on] football." A team of percussionists will replace the cheerleaders, the club announced last February. The club's website invited drummers to audition.
22:35 Posted in Basketball , issues & ethics , Spectating , Sports | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
June 02, 2007
Barack on Basketball
I recently finished reading Barak Obama’s memoir, Dreams of My Father, written in 1995. I’m prone to like the guy anyway, and the fact that he can string a few sentences together gracefully and tell a really good story endears him to me even more. As does knowing he’s a fellow hoops enthusiast, who says he played (like me) “with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited talent.”
Here’s what he says about what he found in the game, besides friends, a self-defining attitude, and respect:
…A way of being together when the game was tight and the sweat broke and the best players stopped worrying about their points and the worst players got swept up in the moment and the score only mattered because that’s how you sustained the trance. In the middle of which you might make a move or a pass that surprised even you, so that even the guy guarding you had to smile, as if to say, “Damn…”
Every sport has its sublime moments, which share something in common, but all are shaped differently. There’s the fun of it.
(Obama only devotes two pages of his 442-page book to basketball; don’t want to give anyone the impression they should read it if they are looking for insights on the game. You should read it though, for a candid and compelling family history and surprisingly uncomfortable look at race today.)
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March 01, 2007
Broadcaster's Error Not as Bad as Apology
My friend over at Hoopstips.com wrote a smart piece about Celtics' radio commentator Cedric Maxwell's recent gaffe, where he cried, "Go back to the kitchen," after a call by NBA official Violet Palmer. He apparently didn't like the call. In fact, when his co-host tried to defuse him, he went on to rant: "Go back to the kitchen and cook me some bacon and eggs!"
Part of me wants to let such crap slide, but another part says nuh-uh. If we don't take a moment to point out the idiocy of it, how's it ever going to get better? Well, Maxwell apologized in his next broadcast, but maybe shouldn't have bothered.
I tried to e-mail the parent company of the radio station he broadcasts for, but interestingly, there was no address indicated anywhere on this 21st century media company's site. But I'm sure we the audience mean the world to them. So, I took a guess at a generic address, and sent the following e-mail, borrowing conceptually from the discussion on Hoopstips.
Hello Entercom,
Not sure if anyone will get this message as I am guessing at an address. There is no apparent way of contacting anyone from your company online. Even the "contact us" page is devoid of an ombudsman's or even generic e-mail address. Nor is there anything on your "community" page to allow anyone from the "community" to say hello or give you any feedback.
I wanted to let you know how disappointed I was in the apology offered by Cedric Maxwell in his broadcast last night regarding his rude comments in a previous broadcast about referee Violet Palmer. It was the most rote and insincere sounding apology I can imagine. Almost more insulting than the original comment in its dismissive irrelevance.
I have always been fond of Maxwell as a player and anouncer. Though I thought his comments dissing Violet Palmer for a perceived bad call by saying, "Go back to the kitchen" were stupid and obnoxious, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. People make mistakes and say dumb and insulting things that may not seem so dumb and insulting to them when they come out of their mouths. For all I know, Maxwell and Palmer are great pals and she frequently cooks him bacon and eggs. But it's totally inappropriate to say, "Go back to the kitchen and make me some bacon and eggs," or anything like that in a public forum. Unless perhaps her job just previous to being an NBA ref was as a cook and that fact were well known.
If you care about the community that you proudly claim to connect with and serve, you should make it known: that whatever people's benighted personal beliefs or bad taste in humor may be, they should not use your airwaves to spread ideas such as that certain types of people are not welcome in certain professions...
It's part of a referee's job to get criticized. Call them stupid, blind, biased, incompetent... those are, as a friend says, equal opportunity insults. Imagine other "minorities" that a ref might belong to, and conjure up equivalent derogatory "go back to the [fill in the blank]" remarks. I think they would sound pretty appalling.
I've heard that Maxwell was actually trying to imitate another notoriously ref-blasting anouncer when he made his comments... I could even buy that, since I'm familiar with the anouncer he was probably imitating. But, still, his apology should be a better recognition of how his "humor" may have been misinterpreted as representing his own real ideas or those of the people he represents. And that it could have hurt people beyond the ref in question. Would this have cost him so much?
His apology, “If I said anything that might have been insensitive or sexist in any way, then I apologize, because she has worked extremely hard to get where she is now,” being couched in the conditional, seems mostly to suggest that anyone offended by his telling a woman official to go back to the kitchen is being ridiculous. And he only apologizes IF he said "anything" (like he didn't know what it might have been?) that was insensitive or sexist. And all of that because Violet Palmer has worked hard. Not because it was a stupid thing to say or doesn't really represent his true feelings.
Something a little more substantive is in order. Not to punish Maxwell, because well, he's probably worked hard to get where he is now. And like Palmer, he does a great job with an occasional mistake. But to counter his ugly message with something that might be a useful antidote, maybe just a public service anouncement of some kind that would encourage women in sports careers. I'm reminded of a Nike ad from several years ago, which took as content statistics about girls in sports. It wasn't these stats exactly (these come from Women's Sports Jobs), but a positive message along these lines.
Girls who participate in sports get better grades and are more likely to graduate.
Girls who play sports are less likely to get pregnant at an early age.
Girls who participate in sports are less likely to use drugs or to stay in an abusive relationship.
Girls who participate in sports experience greater self-esteem, increased self confidence and a more positive body image.
Just a thought. Thanks for reading.
23:33 Posted in Basketball , Spectating , Television & Radio | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
January 09, 2007
Issues in Sports
My brother-in-law once removed (my brother’s wife’s brother) wrote an op-ed that was published in the Gainesville Sun recently. He makes the interesting observation that we often suspend the criminal code inside the confines of an athletic competition, and maybe that's not good. In short, if hotheads (or dimwits) brawl on the basketball court, perhaps they should be charged with assault and battery and treated like you or I would if we did such a thing on the street, and not just given a six-week vacation in which to work on their abs and celebrity endorsements. Maybe that would set an example that would make them chill. Not a bad point. I suppose some of the tolerance for the violence comes out of western sports’ gladiatorial past. There is some unspoken suspension of real world for the special rules of the ring. But, indeed, there are children watching, and what they’re learning isn’t, “It’s all right to punch someone who bumps into you,” but, “It’s all right to punch someone if you’re a valuable celebrity.” I’m glad Bobby wrote the piece; it’s easy for bad sportsmanship to become ho-hum, and it shouldn’t. He didn’t say in the article, and maybe it goes without saying, but he’s a lawyer himself.
On a different but not-too-different topic, I heard an intriguing piece on Marketplace this evening on my way to basketball practice. It was about big money sports and so-called student athletes. Everyone decries scholarship athletes getting wined and dined and otherwise materially spoiled by boosters or whoever it is that gets cars for them or apartments for their mothers or whatever all it is. (Again, here’s a state of things that’s probably bad, but not as bad as global warming, the war in Iraq, or the absence of a walk button at the crosswalk between my two work buildings, so if we have to triage the things we get up in arms about, this one doesn’t occupy my mind all that often. But still…) This commentator, Dwayne Ballen, took a different tack: If sports is such monstrously big business that head coaches of, well, just say, college football teams playing in a “national championship” (quotes to acknowledge BCS critics) make more than $2 million per annum, shouldn’t the players who do the real work get a little something out of it? He suggests setting up trusts for them that they can’t access till they graduate. Or if they don’t graduate, until they’re 30 years old (aaaancient to a college kid). And they can get more if they get good grades. I think it’s a very good idea. Not everyone goes on to huge salaries in professional sports, though they alter their lives to pursue it. If they’re the revenue producers for these big schools, yeah, why not give them a tiny slice of the pie?
Meanwhile, climate change continues apace. Temps in the 70s in Massachusetts this past weekend. Which was January 6 and 7, if you weren't paying attention. Now, while balmy air on a jacketless day feels undeniably pleasant to one’s body, if you think about it at all, it’s quite disturbing to the mind. It makes me sad how little anyone thinks about it at all. The reliably idiotic local news was all delirious about it in a giggly way, interviewing people dining out on the street in downtown Boston. Hello? Think about the polar bears, could you? If you like this so well, move to Georgia or something. Some of us want to ski! And keep the slate-colored juncos coming back. And to quit plucking ticks off the dogs in the midst of the freaking winter.
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May 23, 2006
Basketball Camp for Grown-Ups
You notice I didn’t say “fantasy camp.” If you want to hob-nob for a few days with Michael Jordan (for $17,500), with Mike Krzyzweski (for $10,000), or with Rick Barry (for $2,195—yeah, well, Rick Barry), or other basketball names of variously faded glories, they’re out there. By the copywriting in the promos, it’s unclear whether women are welcome at these camps. Don’t know what they’d do if you signed up with a gender neutral name and then just showed up….
But, you’ve gotta ask, at thousands per day are you paying for good coaching, or the brush with fame? I would love to find a sponsor to send me to all of these camps for comparison’s sake. See how they stack up instructionally as well as in their openness to the female camper.
I think I’m qualified because I’m kind of opinionated. I’m fundamentally sound (so I’m told). I’m used to playing with mostly guys. And I have a superb benchmark for an adult basketball camp.
I recently came back from attending the Never Too Late Basketball Camp in Lakeside, Michigan (less than two hours’ drive from Chicago, on the shores of Lake Michigan). There’s something cleansing and invigorating about so much basketball packed into a few days, temporarily replacing the other worries and minutiae that clutter the mind. A really great coach to player ratio means lots of attention to your progress. And while these coaches may not be regulars on ESPN Classic, they know their stuff.
I have to admit, I’ve been to this camp a few times. A couple of years ago, before I had this blog, I wrote about it, in hopes of selling the story to some Lake Michigan area lifestyle magazine or something--anything really. Guess I didn’t find the right outlet, so I’ll fish the document out and post it in here. Might as well get some use out of it, no? Even though, written as a compact (sort of) article, and not a rambling blog, it sounds…what is it? Affected? Too studied? Just bad? My apologies if so.
(I’ve annotated it with some updated information.)
You Need a Coach
NEWS FLASH: I am not going to be invited to the next WNBA tryout. Nor will I be recruited to any Division I, II, or III college program. Or even make my high school varsity team.
Why? Because I am 42 years old.
But I’ve got the hoops jones of any promising 13 year-old, so even though all signs point to its being too late, I try to ignore them. I only started playing ten years ago, so in my basketball life, I am a mere youth, right? I just know I want to play hard and often, develop my game all I can before I really slow down, so that when, I mean, if that happens, I’ll actually have some skill to fall back on. It’s hard, though, to do that by yourself, or in weekly pickup games with all their quirky personalities and bad habits.
Given all that, I was naturally attracted to the notion (as well as the name) of Never Too Late Basketball Camps and the organization’s weekend-long intensive playing clinic for adults. It was downright irresistible. So I signed up.
And after 11 hours of hoops over the course of 36, I was glad I did. This isn't your touch-the-celebrity fantasy camp kind of thing. This was a "citizens'" gig, with high-school has-beens, city league wannabes, and earnest students of the game pushing themselves on the court like any Five Star campers.
There were more than a dozen of us campers, aged 23-53. What made otherwise sane adults want to leave home and hearth behind to spend a weekend doing the kind of drills you might remember from gym class...and then some? Plain old love of the game.
Specifically, for example, Liz, a 32 year-old elementary school teacher, said she wanted to become more of an offensive threat in her Chicago league games. Terry, a 46 year-old tax attorney also from the Chicago area, took up basketball when his kids started to play, and he didn’t know what they were talking about. He’s been to a few NTL camps and returned to refresh his skills. Johnny, a grad student from Ohio, back for his second NTL camp, wanted to get a better grip on where to go on the court during a game. Arthur, a lawyer from New Jersey, went to spend a weekend hanging out and playing hoops with his college buddy John, a Chicago area engineer, and his high school buddy Lloyd, a professor and musician. You see?
Whatever we went for, what we all got was a hoops-lovers getaway: A weekend of play-eat-sleep in a charming spot. (We stayed at The Lakeside Inn in Michigan’s Harbor Country, and played at nearby River Valley High School.) That in itself would have been fabulous, even if we were just playing pickup at both ends of the day. But added to it was the incalculable thrill of the learning curve—just the opposite of a roller coaster, with the ride up the uphill slope bringing immense satisfaction. That we owed to our own efforts, of course, and particularly to the coaching staff.
These may not be household names, but they are the real deal: Steve Bzomowski, former Division I player, Harvard University coach, and scout for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Greg Tonagel, former NCAA starter and student-coach with the Valparaiso Crusaders, and [now, since 2005] current head coach of the Indiana Wesleyan University Wildcats. Not to mention coach of the year in his conference. They were joined [in 2005 and 2006] by Tonagel’s brother Joel, an earnest and talented point guard, with an enviable comfort in coaching people twice his age.
As for what makes a good coach, I could say knowledge, a perceptive eye, and the ability to communicate and motivate. Or I could describe Bzomowski, a tornado of energy and sly wit, who can both describe and demonstrate the moves he’s teaching with equal artistry. The founder of Never Too Late, he is a master of breaking down complex processes into learnable skills. “I don’t think anybody has broken down the lay-up as far as I have,” Bzomowski said in a reflective moment, and it’s true. He’s got it down to the molecular level: Where to put your feet, how to grip the ball, how the last dribble should sound, what to aim at, where to look…. He can get a total novice shooting sweet lay-ups in half an hour—I saw it happen.
At camp’s first practice on Friday night we all warmed up a little diffidently, working hard at making the moves we’ve kind of got look smooth while trying to absorb the barrage of information being fired at us. First of all, the rules of engagement: Respect each other’s physical and emotional safety. Then a high-speed fusillade of essentials about how to best execute a lay-up, where to go after you’ve passed a ball, how to get a good spin on your chest pass, what a good screen looks like and where to set it.
Definite overload for the group still trying to learn each other’s names, but as the weekend progressed you could see it as part of a grand scheme for imparting as much hoops knowledge as possible. Like dumping all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the table before going back to turn them over, sort them out and start to make sense of them.
We campers had to repair to the Red Arrow Road House afterward to cool our brains.
These coaches are what every athlete (and every learner of anything) needs. They’re demanding, utterly focused on the present, ready to drive you hard and make you laugh. A dash of goofiness puts the intensity in perspective. While teaching defensive concepts, Bzomowski emphasized keeping an eye on the ball. “Never turn to follow. Instead look back to see.” He said it again for good measure. “Never turn to follow. Instead look back to see.” And hearing the Emily Dickinson rhythm of his statement, he broke into song: “I love playing defense. Defense is for me!” The more laconic Tonagel had some poetry for learning defense too: “You reach? I teach.”
They do know how to teach. Bzomowski is the king of analogies, able to make lightning quick comparisons between basketball and other possibly more familiar activities, especially other sports. He alluded to football, baseball, swimming, gymnastics, track, bowling, horseracing, even Monopoly (“You’ve got to value the post. It’s Boardwalk and Park Place”) and chess (“Hey, don’t just stand there like you’re waiting for a bus. Be ready. Bend your knees. All athletes bend their knees. Even chess players”).
You know, that made people laugh, and that loosened them up enough to actually bend their knees!
Anyone involved in pedagogy can tell you laughter is an unmatched medium for learning. Both Bzomowski’s and Tonagel’s styles—though quite different—put humor to good use. In imparting their basketball wisdom, Bzomowski’s exciting alacrity and Tonagel’s calm intensity brought out chuckles and developed cumulative in-jokes that united the diverse group.
“Wait. Stop, Tamika,” Bzomowski said to a player bringing the ball upcourt and trying to get a play started in too much of a hurry. “You’re the point guard. It’s like being the pitcher. If you’re a pitcher, are you going to throw your fastball before the shortstop’s in place? You know? You’re Pedro Martinez and you start winging that thing while Garciaparra’s still walking to his spot?” [OK, see, I wrote it in 2004!] That helped make clear what shouldn’t happen.
And revealed Never Too Late’s Boston origins. The Larry Bird allusions were frequent, and became the source of amusement. But between Bzomowski’s and Tonagel’s experiences playing, coaching, and studying the game, they could back up any point with an anecdote or comment from coaches or players from the last 40 years. Though a quarter-century apart in age, the two coaches speak the same language—that of walking basketball encyclopediae, with personal experience. Tonagel can tell you what it’s like to play against Carmelo Anthony. Bzomowski what it’s like to play with Charlie Yelverton. (Or to coach Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan—no kidding.)
By Sunday, as we said our goodbyes and see-you-next-years (because camp will return there next spring, in case you missed it this time…) on the Lakeside Inn porch, we hated to go. Beat as we were, we wished there was more. “Steve, if you ever have a five-day camp, sign me up,” said Liz, and others of us nodded. We were heading to our cars exhausted, instructed, and completely inspired for the play ahead.
What I discovered at camp, besides a sharper between-the-legs dribble, was that no matter how long you've been driving around in the same old gear, you can shift, you can make a change, you can learn something, even get better. You just need a catalyst, and the best kind is a coach.
###
For another look at what a Never Too Late camp is like, check out the coverage it got in Fast Company magazine a few years back.
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April 09, 2006
Slumps
Man, I hate a slump. As a latecomer to basketball, I had a nice long exhilarating ride up the learning curve. It’s flattened out in recent years, and been pocked by frequent slumps, sometimes in overall play, but most markedly in shooting.
And this current slump is more like a kettlehole. The underlying geological weakness of my shot suddenly eroded away and the thin crust of earth that appeared solid gives out and there’s nothing there. And down in the bottom of the hole no apparent means to get out. It is really very dismal and discouraging.
I was just touring the Web a little to see if anyone had any particular advice on getting out of a slump (keep shooting, is all I’ve ever heard (but at this point that's getting embarrassing)). I had slumps in rowing, too, where for days I felt I couldn’t get my oar in the water sharply (the catch) or couldn’t synch my power drive with others’. I think I'd attribute it to overtraining, fatigue, or overthinking in rowing. Don’t know what the cause is in basketball. Didn’t find any answers online, either, though I did stumble across an amusing hoops site called Setshot: Basketball for the Aging and Infirm, about one guy's ongoing love of the game. And there’s a site for coaches (and by extrapolation, the self-coached) called The Coach’s Clipboard, that would be useful for someone inexperienced who’s impulsively volunteered (or been roped in) to coach their kids. But no silver bullet for shooting the shooting slump.
Probably I should be searching psychology websites for how to break out of it. What do you think?
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April 05, 2006
Duke Outcoached
I watched last night’s exciting NCAA women’s final hoops match-up of Duke and Maryland with a friend who has been a basketball coach at college and other levels himself.
When it looked like Maryland was about to finally close the gap he said with a sudden realization, “I think Duke’s being outcoached.” We had both noticed Maryland coach Brenda Frese’s animation and smiling enthusiasm in the second half, which Maryland started with a 10 point deficit and then fell further behind. “I bet she’s trying to get them to loosen up,” he’d said. And it sure looked like it. While Duke’s Gail Goestenkors wasn’t sitting idly by, she looked more grim as the game proceeded, and less dynamic. Duke’s players appeared to talk to each other on the bench during time-outs while Maryland players were in group huddles. And it sure looked like Frese’s attitude worked, as Maryland came from down 13 to stay within 0-4 points for many long minutes. “Big comebacks take a lot out of you,” my friend observed warily. And there’s the psychological danger for players of feeling that, once having caught up, they had done their job.
The players on both sides were great, making it a fun game to watch (far more engaging than the men’s final, for example). You can read all the details in many sports pages. Maryland got a little lucky, too, with some pretty ill-considered shots actually falling in.
“I hope she can keep that up for the overtime,” he added, when regulation ended in a tie. Meaning the coach, not any of the players. And again it looked like she did. Later she was quoted as saying, “Overtime is their time; I didn’t say anything.” We wondered what she had said during halftime, because, well, we were watching in a bar and without sound…. Checking out SportsCenter later, we heard the lockerroom recording of her saying, “I know you all have 20 more minutes of great basketball in you. I just came down the hall and heard them—you know what they’re doing? Celebrating. They’re celebrating.”
Perfect, said my friend.
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