All-Star moments

I'm not watching the NFC-AFC Pro Bowl -- after all, Atlantic Coast Conference Sunday night basketball is on -- but I think the NFL has the right idea in staging pro football's All-Star game before the Super Bowl, while interest in pro football is at its highest.

Historically, it's been an afterthought, coming the week after the biggest game of the season. Seems to me there are more stories before the Pro Bowl about who made the rosters -- or who was snubbed -- than about the game itself.

And does anyone remember perhaps the most irrelevant of post-season events in pro sports, the Playoff Bowl (1959-1969), matching the second place teams in the Eastern and Western conferences in the NFL in the pre-merger days? It was played the week after the Pro Bowl, which followed the league championship game. Think the Jets and the Vikings playing a game two weeks after being eliminated from the playoffs, and then stifle a yawn.

Anyway, it just seems like the placement of the All-Star game in the middle of the season is perfect for hockey, basketball and baseball -- where each single game has less significance than the 16 big events that make up an NFL season. And I've always thought that the baseball and basketball All-Star games worked and hockey, not so much.

I haven't watched the NBA's All-Star game in a while, but growing up I made it a point to tune in because I thought it was the best of these All-Star affairs. The playground pickup game has always been an integral part of basketball culture. And any game that put Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, and Earl Monroe on the court at the same time was the best shirts-vs.-skins contest ever. The players seemed to enjoy playing it and it was fun watching them improvise.

Baseball, well, fans watch because it's baseball and you're an American, as the old ESPN ad campaign said. I've covered one, in Pittsburgh in 1994, complete with a gala featuring singing legend Tony Bennett. It was a big-time atmosphere and a good game, National League winning 8-7 in 10 innings. And also memorable as the last game of that strike-shortened season.

And about that NHL All-Star game. There won't be one this season because of the Winter Olympics and it's just as well. I've only seen one, and that was the one I covered as an NHL beat writer, back in 1993 at the old Forum in Montreal. On the plus side, it was fun just to be at the most famous arena in hockey, to get my picture taken on a Zamboni, and to shake hands with NHL Hall of Famer Bobby Hull at one of the pre-game parties. And I very nearly got to see another hockey legend, Maurice Richard, 71 years old at the time, trip on the ice and break the Stanley Cup.

Unfortunately, I also had to sit through the game, a 16-6 affair -- I forget which side won -- that didn't look much like regular-season hockey, or any other kind, some of my colleagues wrote.

There was precious little checking and only one 2-minute minor penalty on both teams combined. "Nobody wants to be the guy who ends somebody's career with a hit in the All-Star Game," I remember a colleague saying to me.

In short, these games are a great place to see future Hall of Famers all together in the same place, And usually they'll show why they're the best in the world at what they do. But they're not always going to deliver a fantastic finish.

The short and long of it

One of the seven elements of news value -- what makes something newsworthy -- is "oddity/novelty," I tell my beginning News Writing students.

I saw a good example in Wingate University's home women's basketball game against Tusculum on Saturday as we sent another team from Sports Reporting class to provide coverage. The visiting Pioneers must have the biggest disparity between their shortest and tallest players of just about any college basketball team in the country -- a fact which a colleague of mine who teaches psychology pointed out would make a good example for a statistics class in central tendency.

Their starting point guard is 4-foot-11 Jasmine Gunn, a speedy player who has a low, crouching style of dribbling that makes her difficult to guard by any living creature with two legs. At the other extreme is 6-foot-8 junior center Catherine Hintz, a formidable-looking young lady who doesn't have much of a vertical jump, but doesn't seem to much need it.

It gave Wingate fans the unusual experience of seeing someone who towered over the Bulldogs' own able and vastly-improving post woman, 6-foot-4 Stacie Rhodes. As a matter of fact, one of the more amusing sights in the game was the diminutive Gunn trying in vain to climb up Rhodes' back for a rebound early in the second half of the game, a 67-60 Tusculum victory.

My second straight -- and thankfully last -- three-game Saturday of the season finished at Belmont Abbey, always a favorite road destination for me. Go to this blog's entry of Feb. 21, 2009, for an account I wrote of a visit to this little Catholic school in Gaston County, N.C, where the legendary Al McGuire started his college basketball coaching career.

The Crusaders defeated Queens 83-76 in a Conference Carolinas' men's game at the Wheeler Center, a facility which provides a nice home court atmosphere. I'm not sure whether this nickname is new, but the student cheering section is called the "Red Sea," appropriate for a church-related school, I suppose. And I enjoyed their full-throated version of Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer," which they struck up towards the end of the game.

Senior guard Patrick Kuhlman's late three-pointer answered it for them, giving Belmont Abbey some game-turning cushion to the 74-73 lead it held at the time, and giving Queens a tough loss in a road game the Royals had played pretty well.

My 100th post: A happy hoops Saturday

“I even keep that basketball underneath my pillow. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep at night.” – from Cheech and Chong’s “Basketball Jones.”

OK, it’s obscure. But it seemed a fitting way to start this milestone blog post. I’m as hooked on basketball as the title character in that somewhat politically incorrect novelty tune from the Seventies. Click here and give it a play.

I spent Saturday the way I spend most Saturdays this time of year -- either watching or attending college basketball games. I've divided my Sports Reporting class into coverage teams to give them the experience of writing a game story and I sent the first group from the class to Wingate's South Atlantic Conference basketball doubleheader with Brevard. Results were a split, as the women won an easy 82-56 victory, an uptick on a real roller-coaster of a 9-7 season.

I couldn't stick around for all of the men's game, which Wingate lost 88-87. The Bulldogs (10-6) rallied from a 12-point haltime deficit to take the lead late in the game. But they couldn't hang on and missed a last-second shot for the win.

Odd statistic of the day #1: Brevard's top two scorers in the men's game had 33 and 30 points respectively. The other five players for the Tornados combined for 25.

I finished up the evening covering Queens' home game with Conference Carolinas rival Pfeiffer for The Charlotte Observer. Click here for my story.

I've written previously about Pfeiffer and Coach Dave Davis' unusual approach to the game. Click here for a little background on this system, which makes use of frequent five-for-five player substitutions. To describe the pace as "uptempo" would be an understatement.

This season, their record isn't spectacular (8-5 at this writing), but their offensive output certainly is. The Falcons are leading the nation's Division II teams in scoring, averaging 108.4 points per game. I know it's not the same thing, but in the NBA, only the Phoenix Suns are doing better than that.

The fewest points they've scored in a game is 83 in a loss to Belmont Abbey and they rang up 137 on Washington Adventist, a little NAIA school in the Washington, D.C. , area.

Queens hung with them for one entertaining half in Saturday's game. After 16 first-half lead changes Pfeiffer led 57-55 at halftime before pulling away in the second half for a 120-106 win.

Odd statistic of the day #2: Coaches will often look to a statistic called "bench points" to gauge the effectiveness of their non-starting players in a game. Points off the bench for Pfeiffer in this game: a staggering 100. The Pfeiffer athletic website led with this figure in its game report, and it's interesting but a bit misleading.

In that previous post, I compared the Pfeiffer system to ice hockey -- sending new sets of players into the game every one or two minutes, guaranteeing maximum effort during the time they're on the court. What Davis did Saturday was the hockey equivalent of sending out the second or third line, players whose primary role may be something other than scoring, to begin the game.

I'll have to talk about that one with the Sports Reporting students when we get to the class session on which statistics are meaningful and which aren't.

Cause for celebration

Is it unsportsmanlike to be too happy when your team has won a game? Or just uncool?

As a sports journalist and someone who has an academic interest in the sports world, I've always followed issues of sportsmanship -- mostly these days its struggle for existence.

Examples of bad behavior by fans and athletes toward their opponents and their opponents' supporters abound. (It always amused me during our stay in London in Fall 2008 that the football clubs there took special pains to designate exactly where one should sit in the stadium if they were a supporter of the visiting team -- usually well-separated from the backers of the home team, lest they be severely beaten, I'm guessing.

Anyway, I've been thinking about these issues lately in the aftermath of Clemson's 83-64 men's basketball victory over the University of North Carolina on Wednesday at Clemson. (Those of you who know me or read this blog know that I'm a Clemson alumnus. I do my best not to be overly partisan in this space, but forgive me in advance if I fail today.)

Clemson fans, mostly students I assume, drew much criticism following the game for rushing onto the court in celebration. It was the first Tiger victory over UNC in 10 tries, dating back to Jan. 31, 2004. Follow the link to an ESPN.com blogger's comments about this.

There are many arguments against these celebrations, starting with safety -- colleges have for many years discouraged the old "tearing down the goalposts" ritual for that reason. I've always been uneasy with it, because I've always believed that the fans' place is in the seats and the athlete's place is on the field or the court. When either invades the other's environment, it's inviting trouble -- see the Indiana Pacers brawl with Detroit Pistons fans from a few years back.

So was that post-game court storm necessary? No. Uncool? Yes, these sorts of things remind you of those 1940s movies about college life. But understandable? Totally.

Follow the link to look at the blog post I wrote last year about Clemson's sorry history in basketball against the Tar Heels. Clemson's win means that UNC now leads the all-time series 122-20. Unless they're still playing basketball in the year 2525 and there's also a major paradigm shift in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Tigers will never come close to evening it up. The blogger who wrote about Clemson's "inferiority complex" against the Heels has a point.

Of course, if you're in love with a juggernaut, you'll never know that feeling. It has always seemed to me that there's a minimal downside to being a fan of the North Carolinas, Kentuckys and Kansases of the world. Older readers may remember the saying from baseball in the 1950s that "rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel." You don't much have to deal with adversity. But when you do lose, the folks that beat you will act like it's a big deal. Because it is.

Collectively, Tar Heel Nation has historically not responded to the rare Clemson victories with a lot of magnaminity. Then-UNC coach Matt Doherty complained bitterly about what seemed to be a needless time out called by Clemson coach Larry Shyatt with 4 seconds left in the Tigers' 75-65 upset of the No. 1-ranked Tar Heels at Littlejohn Coliseum on Feb. 18, 2001. Shyatt admitted that time out was called solely to let the players and fans savor the moment. Unsportsmanlike? Well, you could make that case. But, again, understandable.

And message boards and post-story comments have been filled with grumpy rationalizing about Wednesday by the light blue-clad faithful -- much playing of the "We have five national championships -- you, none" card. And many condescendingly mocked the court-storming at the end:

"You act like you never won a game." "We don't storm the court when we beat the No. 12 team in the country in a game where we were favored," as Clemson was.

Again, those arguments display a disregard for history. All the Tar Heels have generally had to do in most seasons to beat the Tigers is show up. And even on some nights when Clemson has played well, they've managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It hasn't been pretty.

So let me hasten to add that I appreciate the UNC fans of my acquaintance who have graciously congratulated me for a game well-played by my team and just let it go at that.

I thought that Clemson coach Oliver Purnell, always a level-headed sort, had a healthy perspective on his team's victory. His message was one that all basketball coaches know in their heart of hearts. In this sport you have to -- or get to, as the case may be -- move on, You can't celebrate or can't mope because there isn't time.

In just a few minutes, Clemson tips off a game against N.C. State in Raleigh, where wins have been historically hard for the Tigers to come by. The Tar Heels, 1-5 away from home, head back to the safety of the Dean Smith Center for a game at 2 today, but the opponent is a dangerous Georgia Tech team.

It's a new day and a new game.