By popular demand, I give you: Logan!

Awww.

No, she didn’t go topless (thank God)… and no, she won’t be winning American Idol anytime soon, but still… this is pretty cool:

As a native of Connecticut, I’m required by state law to hate Pat Summitt, but still… that’s awesome.

P.S. Don’t miss the shot in the video of UT football coach Phil Fulmer picking his nose.

The Buffalo Sabres and Ottawa Senators had a massive brawl last night after a late hit on Sabres captain Chris Drury. Here’s how Bfloblog summed things up:

The Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres had the crowd at the HSBC Arena buzzing with hard hits, fights, goals, and an eventual Sabres win in a shootout, as Buffalo beat Ottawa 6-5. The news of a potentially serious injury to team captain and leader Chris Drury now hangs over the team, as he was blown up by a Chris Neil check long after he had gotten rid of the puck. The resulting brawl after Drury left the ice was one for the ages, and the Sabres, who have recently had their heart and toughness questioned by some fans and commentators, can be proud of the way they stuck up for their captain. …

With exactly 14:59 left on the clock, Chris Drury fired a little wrister at [Ottawa goalie Ray] Emery to keep the puck in the zone. Two seconds later he was lying on the ice, blood pouring from his forehead as the result of his head bouncing off the HSBC ice. All that was compliments of Ottawa goon Chris Neil, who decided to level Drury with a shoulder long after the puck was gone from the captain’s stick. Drew Stafford immediately went after Neil, getting his ass kicked in the process. But the victor really was Drew Stafford, in showing he is ready for the NHL by defending his captain. His getting sweatered by Neil won’t soon be forgotten by Buffalo fans.

Watching it happen in real-time, I turned to Mark and said “He’s f***ing done”, meaning Drury, as I saw him land on his head and bounce in a most unnatural way. The fact he stood up and skated off on his own power sent the crowd into a frenzy; a frenzy that was only exacerbated when Ruff sent Adam Mair, Andrew Peters, and Patrick Kaleta [Buffalo’s “tough guy” line -ed.] over the boards for the next shift. Kaleta started chopping on Dany Heatley, who immediately offered Kaleta a ride home after the game. The officials broke that one up, but they kind of looked like the refs in Slap Shot as they anticipated the brawl, but knew they were powerless to stop it. Indeed, they were.

After the faceoff, Mair started two-handing Spezza, while Peters tried some sort of bizarre half-nelson takedown on Heatley. Mair did all right on Spezza until Volchekov jumped in, and after that I lost track of what was happening. Emery and [Sabres goalie Martin] Biron went at it as they did some sort of bizarre goalie equipment-stripping before Emery handed Marty his lunch. Peters, after tugging with some Sen player, decided to throw a few at Emery, who couldn’t stop laughing (until Peters tagged him - then he got serious). Meanwhile, Kaleta got his ass beat by Phillips, and Lindy Ruff jumped down into the box between the benches and challenged Bryan Murray to a brawl. Murray wisely remained on his side of the glass as Ruff screamed “Don’t go after our f***ing captain.”

Here’s the deal. The hit was clean from a non-elbow perspective, but it was clearly late. In his post game presser, Neil said Drury should know better than to “skate with his head down.” Pardon me, d**khead, but he had just shot the puck. You take a late shot at a player who just shot a puck, a player who is known around the league for his class and adherence to the “code,” and you deserve whatever happens after that. The Sabres did what they had to do immediately afterward, and if Bryan Murray wants to be a bitch about it, then let him. Frankly, I have lost all respect for Chris Neil, because there are some players you just don’t throw that shot at. Drury is one of those guys.

Here’s the Buffalo News article. And here’s the another video clip of the fight, with different announcers. ESPN’s video is also worth watching, for Barry Melrose’s commentary and the coaches’ postgame comments.

Oh, yeah, and the game? As Bfloblog mentioned, Buffalo won it in a shootout — with the winning score coming from Drew Stafford, the guy who went after Neil right after the hit on Drury. Nice.

There will be a rematch tomorrow night in Ottawa. Fasten your seat belts.

Here’s the new Shrek the Third trailer. It’s one of those cases where I feel like they’re giving too much away, but whatever, I’m still looking forward to it.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, The Simpsons trailer. (Hat tip: Andrew Hiller on both.)

What about Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End? There ought to be a trailer for that out soon. In fact, it’s odd that it hasn’t already been released. For now, here are a couple of images, a mostly useless Disney Channel clip, and some mild spoilers.

[NOTE: You can read all three “BracketBusters Experience” posts, from start to finish, here.]

After being rescued by Butler coeds from a snowy vehicular doom, and after soaking in the majesty of Hinkle Fieldhouse and the glory of front-row seats, it was time to play some basketball.

Actually, before I start talking about the game itself, here’s a nifty pregame video — which I should have included in “Part II,” but I didn’t think of it — to set the scene. First you hear the Salukis cheering section chanting “S-I-U” as their team takes the floor, but they’re quickly drowned out by Butler fans’ boos… which are in turn quickly replaced by wild cheers as the Bulldogs enter the arena. And then comes a clip of the Butler player introductions.

Pretty cool.

Really, though, the video doesn’t do it justice. As Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star wrote:

Being at Hinkle on Saturday was not a job, really; it was an honor. The place was hot, old Boston Garden hot, and it was hopping, filled to the top with Butler’s first sellout since 2003. There was an undeniable Cameron Indoor Stadium feel to the place, except for all the visiting team’s fans filling the corner of the old barn.

The absolutely electric atmosphere in that place is the biggest reason why I ended up “switching sides” and rooting for Butler (having arrived with my loyalties split maybe 55% to 45% for SIU). Early in the game, I was torn about who to root for, but I realized that if it came down to a final possession and Butler was going for the win, there was no way I wouldn’t root for the result that would cause the “Dawg Pound” at Hinkle Fieldhouse to go completely crazy… because that would just be so awesome. So, about midway through the first half (with the Bulldogs trailing by 6 points or so), I decided to jump on the Butler bandwagon right then and there.

Anyway… coming in, my fear was that the game would be so defense-oriented as to be painful to watch. Kyle Whelliston had predicted “the best 35-33 game ever,” and Andy Glockner had mused that the matchup might induce comas in casual viewers. But it quickly became apparent that those fears were exaggerated. These teams were, as advertised, very good at playing defense — it was, as SIU star Jamaal Tatum told SI’s Luke Winn, “the blue-collar matchup in college basketball” — but they also knew how to score points, even against the other’s suffocating “D.”

Besides, given the setting, the game almost couldn’t help being exciting. The slightest momentum shift in Butler’s favor sent the crowd into a frenzy, and the slightest shift in the other direction produced a mighty roar from the sizeable SIU cheering section. Here a video clip where you can get a sense of the seesawing momentum late in the first half:

Unfortunately, in the second half, the referees became an uncomfortably large part of the story, calling an extremely close game with tit-for-tat ticky-tack fouls on both ends of the floor. It was even-handed, IMHO, but it was disruptive to the flow of the game, and honestly, resulted in more points than probably should have been scored, since good, disruptive defense would often result in a foul being called.

One of the more memorable officiating moments was an absolutely horrible foul call on a clean block by Butler’s Mike Campbell with 7:01 to go, disrupting an 8-1 Butler run that had cut SIU’s lead to 49-47. The officials obviously realized their mistake, as they promptly did a classic “make-up call” on the next Butler possession, but the damage was done: the Bulldogs lost their momentum, and SIU started slowly rebuilding its lead.

But it was the general whistle-happiness, more than any individual call, that negatively impacted the game. And I’m not just saying that because I was rooting for Butler and the home crowd was booing every call that went against the Bulldogs. Neutral observers noticed, too. Sports reporters rarely mention the officiating in their articles unless there’s some specific controversial call late in the game, but in this case, several columnists mentioned the referees’ overall frustrating pattern in their write-ups. For example, the Star’s Kravitz wrote, “The second half got bogged down by a trio of officials who called a foul on every possession, whistling both teams a total of 34 times in the second half.” Kravitz added that “the game didn’t ultimately suffer that much from it,” but Kyle Whelliston didn’t seem so sure of that:

The real difference in a contest that lasted nearly 2½ hours was what happened when time stopped altogether. With all the tooth-and-nail physical play around the paint, whistles were abundant, and SIU outpaced its hosts 27-19 in made free throws. One of the key rules of the BracketBusters format is that the visiting conference brings its officials (to counter home-court advantage), but Butler head coach Todd Lickliter was diplomatic about the 26 fouls the Missouri Valley officiating crew called against his team, a regulation game season-high.

More on what Lickliter said in a second, but first, here’s a video of a pretty typical second-half possession: an entertaining standoff between the offense and defense, followed by a whistle.

I’m not criticizing that particular call, but in general, I wish the refs had let ‘em play more. And so, I’m sure, did Butler star A.J. Graves, who — as if feeling ill and vomiting in the first half wasn’t bad enough — picked up his fourth and fifth fouls late in the game on a pair of ticky-tack calls, and was forced to sit out the final minutes as Butler almost came back to win. I wasn’t videotaping when he fouled out, but here’s the crowd and bench reaction to his fourth foul:

Now, I’d love to blame this all on the refs, but I actually need to take a moment here to criticize Butler’s coach. I’m certainly not suggesting that he’s a bad coach generally, but his handling of the second-half officiating really left something to be desired, as the Bulldogs simply did not adequately adjust to the way the game was being called. This was particularly evident on Graves’s last foul.

To set the scene: With 2:44 remaining, Graves hit two free throws (he’s virtually automatic from the line, having missed five FTs all year) to cut Southern Illinois’ lead to 62-56. Now the Bulldogs needed a defensive stop or, ideally, a turnover. They decided to pressure the ball, which makes a lot of sense, but was obviously risky because of those whistle-happy refs. What made it particularly risky was that Graves, the star player whom Butler was obviously going to want on the floor in the game’s final moments, was the one pressuring the ball, even though he already had four fouls. As I watched him step up his agressive defense on SIU’s Jamaal Tatum, 45 feet from the basket, I felt sort of like how you feel in that split-second when you realize a beverage is about to spill, but you can’t do anything about it. I thought to myself, “Oh no, he’s going to get called for a foul!” Not that he necessarily deserved it, but that was just how the refs were calling the game. And, sure enough, a half-second later, the ref blew the whistle. Graves was done.

My first question for Coach Lickliter, if I had a seat at the postgame press conference, would have been: Why on earth did you have Graves pressuring the ball on that possession? You knew the refs were calling a very close game, so you had to know he was taking a serious risk of drawing his fifth foul, even just by playing run-of-the-mill aggressive pressure defense and trying to force a turnover. Obviously you needed to put pressure on SIU in that situation, but surely someone else on the team could have played that role, so that Graves could stay in the game and be ready when you needed him to score a potential game-winning basket down the stretch!

But alas, Graves drew the assignment, Tatum drew the foul, and it was all over for Butler’s star. He spent the rest of the game a few feet away from Becky and me, watching from the bench.

Of course, the Bulldogs didn’t just roll over when Graves fouled out. In fact, to their great credit, they managed to mount a real attempt at a last-minute comeback, even though Graves’s absence presumably made it easier for SIU’s defenders to focus on the Bulldogs’ other shooters. (They — possibly in combination with the flu — had been very effective at bottling up Graves all night, holding him to 1-for-8 shooting.)

The crucial moment came between in a 12-second stretch with less than two minutes left. At 1:41, with the Salukis up 63-57, SIU’s Bryan Mullins had a three-pointer at the shot-clock buzzer rim out; if it had gone in, that probably effectively ends the game right there. Butler’s Mike Green grabbed the rebound, the Bulldogs quickly moved it up the floor, and Brandon Crone hit a three-pointer with 1:29 remaining, cutting Southern Illinois’s lead to 63-60. The crowd went wild. We had ourselves a ballgame!

Southern Illinois hit a pair of foul shots to get the lead up to 65-60, but Butler answered with two FTs of its own to cut it back to 65-62 — and then the Bulldogs almost forced a turnover on the inbounds pass, which would have given them the ball with 20 seconds left in a one-possession game. But the ref ruled that Green fouled Tatum an instant before Tatum lost the ball out-of-bounds. You can watch that dramatic sequence here:

Tatum sank both free throws to stretch the lead back to 67-62. A few more tit-for-tat free throws later, the game was over; the Bulldogs never did get the ball in their hands with a deficit three points or less in the closing seconds. The final score was 68-64.

Here’s a photo of the handshake line after the game; the player hunched over, supported by a teammate, is Green, who moments earlier had collapsed to the floor after losing the ball in the final seconds and being unable to get off a shot.

All in all, it was a great game. The Sporting News called it “mid-major basketball at its finest,” but I’m not sure the qualifier is necessary. Kravitz said it well:

This game, the first in Hinkle’s long history in which Butler and its opponent were both nationally ranked, was not as good as advertised.

It was better.

Southern Illinois won, and so did college basketball. Throughout the country, ESPN2 viewers saw two teams that have a chance of making a mess of millions of brackets come NCAA Tournament time.

When Lickliter came to the postgame news conference, he was hard-pressed to find the right words. Then the disappointment temporarily gave way to sheer appreciation. He had been part of something pretty special.

“We saw two top-20 teams compete for 40 minutes, and we saw guys make plays that were terrific,” he said. “I just can’t imagine there’s been a harder fought, better game throughout the course of this season. Two really nice teams. Two teams that share the ball. Two teams that guard.

“It’s difficult. I guess it tests you. But I don’t think we have anything to be ashamed about. They were a little better than us. I sure would like to see them again.”

He paused.

“Maybe in Atlanta (at the Final Four),” Lickliter said, smiling. “That would be nice.”

Wouldn’t it, though?

Anyway, Becky and I had a great time. (Pay no attention to the Missouri Valley Conference shirt in the photo below; I was rooting for Butler by the time this picture was taken. Hehe.)

Unlike the Missouri Valley tournament last March, which was fun in spite of the ugly basketball being played (those teams were just absolutely exhausted from all the regular-season battles, and they played like it), this was an afternoon of hoops where we could genuinely enjoy the quality of play, on both sides of the ball.

There’s one definite similarity to the MVC tourney, though: just like I felt a sense of “ownership” when Bradley and Wichita State made Sweet 16 runs last year after we saw them play in Arch Madness, you can bet I’ll be rooting especially hard for the Salukis and Bulldogs next month. Well, unless they come up against USC, Notre Dame or Gonzaga, of course. :)

Anyway… you can view my full gallery of photos here. Here are a few particularly notable ones that I didn’t manage to work into this or either of the posts. In the first one, note ESPN’s Rick Majerus in the background. (That’s Coach Lickliter adjusting his tie in the foreground.)

Again, the full gallery is here. And here again are the links to Part I and Part II of my “BracketBusters Experience” write-up.

UPDATE: You can read all three “BracketBusters Experience” posts, all at once, here.

I blogged yesterday about the death of Dermot O’Reilly, the Newfoundland folk singer who wrote and sang the poetic ballad West Country Lady, one of the favorite songs of my childhood. I was immediately saddened to learn of his passing because that song has always had such a special place in my heart, but until I started reading the various online eulogies, I had no idea of the profound influence that O’Reilly and his band, Ryan’s Fancy, had on the Newfie music scene.

This video from the 2004 East Coast Music Awards — a Ryan’s Fancy retrospective narrated by Great Big Sea, and also featuring a singer from another one of my favorite Canadian bands, the Barra MacNeils — does a good job of explaining it:

(Hat tip: Mandolin Jen, who also links to this video of O’Reilly recently performing live. She appears to have gotten both videos from RyansFancy.com.)

GBS member Bob Hallett, who just last month penned a lengthly paean to the profound influence that Ryan’s Fancy had on Newfoundland folk music, is prominently quoted in this article about O’Reilly, prominently featuring some lengthy quotes from Hallett says:

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It’s just B-roll footage, but there I am in my blue coat, looking down at my digital camera, checking out some of the photos I’d just taken at the site of the gas leak:

Here’s a picture of the Fox 28 cameraman. I think I took it a few moments after he took his footage of me. At the time, I wasn’t sure what channel he was working for.

(Hat tip: Em. I wasn’t watching the news when it first aired, but she told me I was on it, so I taped the 2:00 AM rebroadcast.)

Observant viewers will notice that I’m not wearing the infamous velcro shoes. They’ve been largely out of commission the last few weeks, in favor of the shoes you see above: my warmer and vastly more water-resistant (and snow-resistant) hiking boots.

Anyway, here are a few of my photos from the scene:

Full gallery here.

[Bumped to top -ed., 11:30 PM]

The new college basketball rankings are out, and this Saturday’s Southern Illinois @ Butler BracketBusters game will be a battle of #13 vs. #16 or #12 vs. #15, depending on which poll you believe. Sweet.

Meanwhile, after losing by 5 at then-#2 UCLA, USC dropped from #19 to #22 in the AP poll and #21 to #23 in the coaches’ poll. Oh well, at least they’re still ranked. Notre Dame dropped from #21 to unranked (effectively #28) in the coaches’ poll, and from effectively #28 to receiving no votes whatsoever in the AP poll. Following up a loss to South Florida with a loss to DePaul will do that to you.

Neither ‘SC nor ND play again until Thursday. Of more immediate importance is a game between two teams getting no votes in either poll: Santa Clara @ Gonzaga, tonight at midnight at ESPN2. It’s a battle for the West Coast Conference lead, and quite possibly a last stand for the Zags in terms of their NCAA at-large hopes. Also on the line is Gonzaga’s 50-game home winning streak, the longest in the nation by far. You think both teams will be a little bit psyched up for this game?

In order to get myself psyched up, I offer once again this video clip of “what may be the single greatest dunk in Gonzaga history,” by Jeremy Pargo against St. Mary’s on Saturday. I blogged it yesterday, but it was buried after the jump, and it really deserves to see the light of day. So…

Here’s a higher-quality video, but it’s from SportsCenter, so it lacks the real-time call. Either way: Nice.

GO ZAGS!!

Becky and I just got back to South Bend from Chicago. For reasons that we shan’t be getting into here (nothing bad), we actually didn’t end up participating in the Architecture Tour Pub Crawl, but we had a great weekend anyway. Here are a couple of pictures from our trip to the Shedd Aquarium today:


Is it just me, or does this fish look a bit like Professor Rodes?

A tiny little starfish. God bless the “macro” setting on my camera.

And now, I invite you to insert your own awkward segue from aquarium pictures to a college-basketball roundup here. An extensive review of yesterday’s cross-country orgy of hoops action, including video of one of the most awesome dunks you’ll ever see in a college game, follows after the jump.

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Watching the UConn-Syracuse game on ESPN tonight, I found myself reminiscing about one of the most memorable moments of last basketball season, when Orange coach Jim Boeheim responded to accusations that Gerry McNamara is “overrated” by saying that his team “wouldn’t have won 10 f***ing games” without McNamara. I tried to find a clip of the infamous press conference on YouTube or Google Video, but all I found was this crappy one. So I did a bit more digging, found this video from Syracuse.com, figured out how to download it, uncovered a hidden uncensored version, cropped it down to the relevant part, and uploaded it to YouTube myself. The result: sweet, sweet f***ing memories. WARNING: Profanity!

This isn’t new, but I stumbled on it last night on Google Video. It’s basically the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix teaser trailer, but with a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews interspersed in between the trailer scenes. In fact, it’s not “basically” that, it’s precisely that. Anyway, enjoy:

That movie will be Part 1 of the Great July Pottergasm of 2007. :)

At halftime, I predicted that Budweiser’s dalmatian commercial would win USA Today’s Ad Meter because “the people who do the Ad Meter tend to like sappy ads involving animals.” I wasn’t far off. The dalmatian spot finished second to a fourth-quarter commercial involving crabs worshipping a Budweiser cooler:

Personally, I thought that ad was clever but not great. (More than anything, it reminded me of the South Park episode with the giant cow clock.) I would have given first place to the 10-second Letterman & Oprah spot, but then I love Dave — and besides, I don’t think CBS’s in-house ads are eligible to win Ad Meter.

Anyway, here’s the complete list. Anheuser-Busch wins for the ninth straight year, and gets 7 out of the top 10. Edgier ads like the Snickers accidental man-kiss and the Doritos “cleanup on register 6” didn’t do as well, which is also pretty typical for Ad Meter.

Garmin’s weird paper-map monster ad — declared “Worst. Super Bowl Commercial. Ever.” by a fellow viewer at the party I was at — finished in the bottom five. But the award for least popular commercial of the day goes to Salesgenie.com for its lame, forgettable ad about… uh… I already forgot what it’s about. Some sort of website, I guess.

You can view — and rank — all the ads here.

For those who (like me, until today) haven’t been following this nonsense with high-school basketball phenom (and USC superstar-to-be) O.J. Mayo “shoving” a referee, this video should bring you up to speed:

source file

That’s from WOWK-TV in West Virginia. Here, via Luke Winn, is the YouTube clip of the whole incident:

Also, this article is worth reading, particularly for quotes like “As a neutral bystander, this was the most biased referee I have ever seen” and “I think O.J. Mayo should have controlled himself better. But this ref took a dive. He wasn’t pushed.”

Anyway, here’s the latest on the kerfuffle. You gotta love it when stories about high-school sports involve District Court judges.

(Hat tip: AO.)

Here are some more photos of this white, wintry day at Notre Dame. A few samples:

P.S. Apropos of that last picture, here’s yet another Robbie-running-around-in-the-snow video for your viewing pleasure:

Here are some more photos of this morning’s snowstorm. Scroll down for the most recent ones.

The radar view of the system is quite impressive. At 6:52 AM, minutes before the above video was taken, it looked a bit like some kind of lake-effect mini-hurricane:

You can view the latest radar in motion here; an archived version of the 4:13 AM to 10:40 AM loop is after the jump.

[UPDATE, 9:29 AM: From the National Weather Service:

MORE SNOW & BLOWING SNOW ON THE WAY.

A PAIR OF SYSTEMS WILL MOVE ACROSS THE AREA THROUGH EARLY TONIGHT, BRINGING MORE LAKE EFFECT SNOW TO THE AREA. AS THE SYSTEMS MOVE OVER LAKE MICHIGAN, THEY WILL PICK UP ADDITIONAL MOISTURE AND HELP ENHANCE SNOWFALL AMOUNTS. GIVEN THE RELATIVELY DRY SNOW AND BRISK CONDITIONS, BLOWING & DRIFTING SNOW CAN BE EXPECTED. THE SNOW SHOULD DIMINISH AFTERNOON THEN REDEVELOP EARLY THIS EVENING.

Lovely.]

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