In what will likely be our last collaboration of the year, Phil from Save the Shield and I have put together our picks for final Regular Season power poll for Southeastern Conference Hoops.
We’ve taken the last couple of weeks off as, to be honest, there’s been almost no movement in the SEC and things really aren’t terribly fluid. There was a moment where folks thought Vandy might challenge Kentackalacky and a brief glimmer of hope that one of the Mississippi teams might actually represent the SEC West well enough to earn an at large. Sadly, neither came to fruition. Now, everything rests in Nashville where Florida needs to win two games and Mississippi State and Ole Miss each need to win three (AKA win it all) in order to make the NCAA tournament.
Before the list, we first have the awards (with runner’s up).
Player of the Year – Demarcus Cousins, Kentucky (runner up: John Wall, Kentucky)
Freshman of the Year – Demarcus Cousins, Kentucky (runner up: John Wall, Kentucky)
Coach of the Year – Kevin Stallings, Vanderbilt (runner up: Bruce Pearl, Tennessee)
Anyway, Phil’s and my picks are after the jump.Read more…
It’s been quite well publicized that Admiral Ackbar is up for the role of mascot for the University of Mississippi, but it isn’t real news anymore until the Taiwanese go all CGI on the news (see, e.g., the Tiger Woods Accident and Spanking footage, as previously chronicled by this site).
My only advice to the good admiral is that this is a trap. The Ole Miss football team is the bottom of the barrel. They’ve got a “student”-athlete who can’t read (“He’s a good boy, he just can’t read“). They try to pretend they can compete in the West, but since Eli left they’ve been closer to Mississippi State than LSU and Bama. And you’ll be leading a fan base that had no problem for years with the idea of waving the Confederate Flag that represented to many African Americans a symbol of oppression and racism (regardless of the fact that it may have represented something different to those representing it).
An English version of the video, after the jump. Read more…
Steve Tchiengang might be the baddest mofo on an SEC basketball court, but he’s also a nice, kind and generous soul off the court. That’s reflected on his Twitter account which he updates regularly.
Steve really brought the pain in both games against Kentucky, playing hard, physical defense and pounding the boards.
Sometimes his posts are just a little hard to follow without context:
How bout this monkey on sportsnation that is waiting? Kind of freaky.
@AWalk24 u ain’t going to like it much if u keep playing with me hahah. Give me tht Jesus piece n I will stop bothering u.
But mostly they’re just reflective of the awesomeness that is Steve T:
I’m mesmerized by what I’m watching in this class. There are some crazy stuffs in this world.
An american man kicked off the plane for smelling bad… Thts funny n terrible hahahah
a friend asked me “who u play on saturday” n i say “UK” and she replied “Why are u going all the way to United Kingdom?” tht made me laugh
If you want to follow a kickass athlete with a positive outlook on life and a penchant for updating the Twitter world on the everyday goings-on of a true student-athlete, you need to follow Steve T.
For those unfamiliar with Rémi Gaillard, he is the king of Euro pranksters. His videos are downright awesome and carry a decided sports and furry themed vibe. To celebrate ten years of making the videos, he posted a compilation of some of his favorite moments:
I wasn’t really wild about last night’s episode. It was a Sayid based episode that focused on themes of evils (with minor contrasts to goodness); however, the story was somewhat dragging at times. In the Island timeline, we have the confrontation between Not-John (as I have decided to call him, the homage should be self evident) and the Temple people, with Sayid as a pawn of each side. In the alternate universe, we see a more placid Sayid as he tries to accept his past and the fact that he pushed his Nadia into marrying his brother.
The one interesting element of the episode that I caught was an allusion (though I admit this may be imagined on my part) to the idea of a creation egg. First, why I think there’s some legitimacy here: we have two pretty decent references to eggs. Martin Keamy is eating eggs and offers them to Sayid. Additionally, we see Sayid trying to piece back together a broken vase, implying a Humpty Dumpty type of concept. Yeah, I know I might be stretching, but hear me out. But ultimately my idea is based on the fact that I keep coming back to the Dogon religion each time I hear Dogen’s name.
Egg creation or “world egg” theory exists in many cultures; however, a couple of the most prominent include the Dogon myth in which the creator begins creation by placing two embryonic sets of twins in an egg. The two male twins represent good and evil, with Yurugu serving as the sinner and temptor and Nommo as the undefiled brother. As a side note, the creation myth includes the concept of escaping the egg too early (as Yurugu did) and trying to return to roll back the effects of that escape. Other religions such as the Pangu involve the breaking of the egg with the Yin and the Yang of good and evil separated by the hemispheres of the egg.
Information is Beautiful has come up with a great, interactive infographic that goes over the evidence and efficacy of various “Snake Oils” for treating specific health concerns. What’s even cooler is that you can sort the infographic to seek specific information about an ailment — if you’re a home remedy person, you may even want to bookmark this one.
Sonny Gray will look to lead Vanderbilt as the Friday guy in 2010.
I’m quite excited to be out in Los Angeles this weekend for the first live college baseball I’ll have seen since last May’s disastrous series loss to Todd Raleigh’s Volunteer team (a weekend which caused such concern over the illegal bats used by the Vols, that composite barrel bats are now illegal). Anyway, enough of my loathing of all things Orange in baseball, the Black and Gold of Vanderbilt got going over the weekend and it was a dandy. The Commodores played host to the Niagara Purple Eagles, but were far from hospitable on the diamond.
Behind a strong pitching performance from the King (Sonny Gray), the Dores easily took the opener, 9-0. The bats then really woke up with a 16-2 thumping on Saturday, complemented by a solid start from Taylor Hill. Sunday was bloody with the Dores laying into the Purple Eagles with 25 unanswered runs after Niagara jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Big Jack Armstrong had some tough luck and was a little wild as the starter.
On Tuesday, Austin Peay came across town to the Hawk and gave Vandy all we could ask for. They threw a former weekend starter named Vicini who was coming off of an injury plagued season. He was healthy, shutting the Dores down through 6 before giving way. Chase Reid, Richie Goodenow and Russ Brewer were all really dominant for the Dores on the hill and Andrew Giobbi won it in the 10th with an RBI single, for a 2-1 win. Not quite the dominating performance of the weekend, but it’s sometimes nice to just get a nail biter win, especially before a top flight tournament against three NCAA caliber teams, including a showdown with the top pro prospect in NCAA baseball (UCLA’s Gerritt Cole).
The past week was the first look at some key newcomers, such as Mike “#YAZ!” Yastrzemski, Regan “Little Flash” Flaherty and Connor “I Don’t Have a Nickname Yet” Harrell, the three freshman leading the battle to fill the outfield spots vacated by Steven Liddle and Jonathan White. My thoughts on them and the rest of the team follow the jump in this, my Vanderbilt Baseball Preview for 2010. Read more…
Dear LOST, please make sure Claire looks only like this.
On their Twitter feeds, Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse implied we would be in for a tour de force when we revisited the brother and sister duo of Jack Shephard and Claire Littleton, played by Matthew Fox and Emilie de Raven… mmm… Emilie de Raven.Pause for a few minutes to reflect, and then convince self that it’s creepy to pause any longer… ok… back up again… back to the Quick Hits.
Anyways, I actually wasn’t as impressed with de Raven’s turn as Danielle Rousseau 2.0.First, one should never attempt to make Emilie de Raven not hot.You’ll fail, and just make us mad.Second, Emilie de Raven may be fantastic to look at, but she actually just doesn’t have the acting chops to pull of true crazy.Her hut scenes with Jin and the prisoner Other were carried by Jin and the need to promote the storyline; however, throughout it was a bit hard not to compare (and not favorably, at that) de Raven’s performance next to Mira Furlan’s Rousseau.
The most intriguing aspect of Claire’s crazy was her being convinced (apparently by her “friend”) that Aaron was being held by the Others at the Temple.This driving element was directly at odds with Rousseau, who had given up on Alex being alive – despite the fact that Ben was leading the Others and had been the one to kidnap Alex.
24 has been pretty standard relative to prior seasons, so far.
I’ve been a bit delinquent in my 24 reporting. I watching the 22:00 and 23:00 episodes last week but didn’t report in the initial thoughts. A shame that is, because the second of those two episodes included the perfect exchange of 24 dialogue. Jack Bauer interrupts a call between the President and the head of CTU to inform her that he, as he does every season, needs to cut a complete immunity deal with a terrorist mastermind to obtain information that is certain to prove useless in the grand scheme of things.
Notwithstanding the efficacy (or failure) of Jack’s negotiation tactics, relative to his torture tactics, Allison Taylor could not have been happier to speak with him, commenting that she was [paraphrasing] “Sorry it had taken so long for her to speak directly with [Jack] on the phone.” This comment absolutely sums up 24 in one simple soundbite.
