Recent Game Recaps

CHICAGO -- First of all, chat today. When that happens, I will be in a different place, far from here.

Flying today is going a lot better than the last first flight of the season. Almost missed my air ride this morning out of rainy Providence, though -- Joan as security woman ran my wallet through the X-ray three times, before she finally found the Victronox Swiss army card with the three-quarter inch blade that's far better suited to picking toejam than murdering stewardesses. She had to check with her supervisor, but I let her have it as a reward for her mad CSI skills. It was something in the way she said, "A-ha!"

Now, safely laid over and watching the planes land at Midway's A concourse, I contemplate my status as a member of the final generation to smoke legally on a commercial jetliner. It makes me a little past due, like Don Draper is going to feel in season six of Mad Men if it ever gets made.

I'm also remembering a conversation I had yesterday afternoon. Someone I met once at a game and gave my business card to called to chat (after this, he probably won't do so ever again). He noticed that DAVIDSON, NC is listed as my next stop. So, naturally, we talked about Stephen Curry, about how he's Iron Man, the Punisher and Hellboy all in one man.

Then came the glamorous traveling-writer talk, at least what some people might imagine it to be like. Was I staying in the Charlotte Marriott he had stayed at once, how about that CLT airport. I explained that I'm flying into Indianapolis, driving 600 miles south and crashing at a truck stop on the way. If I'm lucky, I won't miss shootaround. Well, that doesn't make any sense.

I might have explained that I'm also going to the Wooden Tradition next Saturday in Indianapolis to see Davidson again (as well as Saint Mary's and Southern Illinois -- it's a mid-major bonanza) before turning the car back in on Sunday the 21st. In the interim, I get see five other games. Instead, I listened to a unsolicited business plan for a recruiting website that's really going to be great. I mean, really awesome. It's going to have everything.

I've come into contact with a number of people who have wasted my time with their big plans. In my old job as a dream enabler, they balked at the cost of making them come true. I guess I didn't lose my internal entrepreneur magnet. Somewhere over Syracuse this morning, I realized I have completely lost patience when it comes to dreamers. Seriously... don't tell me what you're going to do, tell me exactly how you're going to do it. Trust me, I have the patience for that -- I can get 600 words out of a layover.

Plans and goals might fit on bumperstickers, but what sticks them to the vehicle is complicated polymer adhesives that require patient explanation as to how they work. Too often, glue is taken for granted.

Basketball, like website management, is a profession full of idea-men and true architects, and it's just as difficult to tell them apart. Chances are that your school has, at one time, hired a new head coach who preached "tough defense" and "getting after it," then proceeded to recruit Best Athlete Available and turned the program into more of a chaotic clusterhump than it was before he arrived. That story usually ends with the coach getting fired, and wondering why. Or maybe he's still there, and maybe you've been wasting quality time calling for his head on a message board. You could have used that time to change the world.

All I'm saying is, demand detail. Better yet, insist on beautiful, intricate, Sistine Chapel detail. If you don't have the patience or attention span for it, take a yoga class. Life's too short for short answers.

U'useless Stat of the Day

Last night's G!O!T!N! wasn't really that much of a G! at all. In the Sun Belt conference opener, Middle Tennessee put the hammer down on Troy, outrebounding the tiny Trojans by 16 and winning easily 81-53.

Sixteen boards is a healthy, meat-fed, big-boy rebounding advantage. But was that the best of the season? Not even close. Overwhelming glass-cleaning performances are usually reserved for power-conference teams when they're facing us sub-Red Liners (the 56-29 advantage rung up by Duke over Georgia Southern on the second day of the season hasn't been topped yet in Division I-only games), but there have been some spectacular windshield-v.-bug displays in mid-on-mid action.

On Nov. 28, UC Irvine of the Big West managed only 18 boards. Idaho, formerly of the BWC and now in the WAC, had 47. That's a 29-rebound advantage, and it resulted in a double-up 101-47 win.