Clancy's 5th Birthday Video

I'm about three weeks overdue in posting this. It's video highlights from Clancy's 5th birthday party at Crenshaw Gym.

Somewhere in Middle America

Work took me to Omaha, Nebraska for the first time in my life this week. Unfortunately I can't seem to shake that Counting Crows song, "Omaha" from continuously running thru my head. However, that is pretty much the most positive thing I can say about my trip to Omaha. That and the guy I saw in the airport with probably the coolest mullet I have ever seen. Truly business in the front and party in the back. Really wishing at that moment I had a camera phone.

I still don't get why the College World Series is played there every year but the people who attend it always seem to have a great time. It's the flattest place I've ever been, it's cold and windy and there are hardly any Starbucks there. Luckily it was a quick trip.

Not nearly as much fun as the trip Tricia and I took last week to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Most couples probably would have gone to some tropical location but not us, we're just not warm weather beach types. We took off to the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington ... in February. The weather was a bit chilly and rainy at times, but frankly it didn't bother us at all, we were just enjoying the scenery and hanging out sans kids.

This is right outside the Friday Harbor House where we stayed. Highly recommend it if you're ever in Friday Harbor. Good romantic getaway type spot, wouldn't necessarily call it kid friendly however. Below is the hotel and a couple of shots of the town from vantage point of the Ferry we came in on.

Devils Split in Bay Area

It's never a good situation when your big man gets his fourth foul with 17:25 to play in the game. It's even worse when you're going up against a front line that has twin seven footers. Devils's center Jeff Pendergraph had to sit when he was called for a VERY questionable offensive foul early in the second half and from that point forward it was all Stanford.

The lack of an aggressive big man in the middle made it very difficult for James Harden to penetrate the lane and do what he's been doing over the last 10 games -- scoring at will. Stanford was able to collapse on Harden every time and rendered him ineffective offensively in the second half. On the other end of the court, ASU had no answer for Brooke Lopez who scored easily on Eric Boateng every time he was fed the ball in the post. I'm starting to see why Duke wasn't too broken up over Boateng transferring after his freshman season.

While the loss to Stanford was disappointing, a split in the Bay area speaks to the progress the Devils are making in hoops. Their biggest challenge right now is depth and as the season wears on, that will probably be their glaring weakness. Which begs the question, what happened to Christian Polk? The guy was the closest thing we had to a consistent outside threat last season and now he doesn't even see the court. He must have ticked Sendek off pretty bad.

Kevin O'Neill Can't Burst My Bubble

"He (James Harden) did a great job,'' Arizona interim head coach Kevin O'Neill said. "He initiates contact. The guy is going to be a high draft pick, if I were to guess. I thought our guys did a decent job on him a couple of times.''

Plant all the thoughts in Harden's head that you want O'Neill, but it still doesn't change the fact that we finally beat U of Tucson for the first time in 12 tries. This was a big monkey to get off the team's back and will hopefully go a long way in building some momentum for a program that has long underachieved.

I still see the Devils as a .500 team in conference when all is said and done this season, but who knows, maybe Harden is one of those special players this program has been waiting on for a long time that can carry the team to some unexpected heights.

Devil hoops hitting their stride

I was able to watch the Devils play Oregon State today on FSN. Great game if you're a Sun Devils' fan. It has been a while since a Sun Devil hoops team was this much fun to watch. You probably have to go back to the early Frieder days with Jamal Faulkner, Stevin Smith, Lynn Collins and Mario Bennett for a Devils team that was competitive and fun to watch.


The Devils definitely play some solid interior defense thanks to the zone but if a team gets hot from the outside, it can be exploited. However, going into the season, everyone knew the Devils would play solid D. It was the offense that was a question. James Harden living up to the hype has helped address any concerns about the offense. He makes everyone around him better.

Wednesday night's game against Tucson should be interesting. I'm sure they will be a little ticked off coming into the game after losing to Oregon, a team ASU beat last Thursday. Either way, the rivalry should at least be a bit more competitive than it has been in the past. Also, the proof is there that the program is progressing - the win over Xavier and quick conference start represent a huge improvement over last season.

Unrelated note - nice going Erickson in nabbing Gerrell Robinson away from the Irish. Looks like we're on our way to having a Top 25 recruiting class.

Kirk Herbstreit hates ASU and the Pac-10

Well, maybe "hate" is a bit extreme, but if anyone watched ESPN's Holiday Bowl broadcast, it's hard not to walk away thinking that Herbstreit, one of ESPN's top college football analysts, has some bias against the Pac-10 and ASU.

I've had a week now to get over the thrashing the Longhorns put on the Devils. Unfortunately, this loss has some long-term ramifications for me personally. Living in the Austin area and working with several Longhorn alums, it will be a while before I can talk trash against the Longhorns. I will continue to proudly wear the maroon and gold but do so knowing that every time I do, some random Longhorn fan will be quick to remind me of their pinnacle moment from what was ultimately an underachieving 2007 Texas football season for them.

Before ranting further on the broadcast of the game, here are some of my other random observations:

• How does an offensive line with the experience that ASU's had (three grad students starting) have such awful pass protection. I have always heard from people who know much more about football than I do that talent is a critical piece, chemistry on the offensive line is equally important. This line has played together for a few years now so it would seem chemistry should not be an issue. That means there was either a lack of talent/depth on the O-line or....
• Horrible O-line schemes and coaching. The Washington State game in early October was really the first game I can remember where our pass protection weaknesses were exploited and continued to get worse throughout the remainder of the season. Why didn't the coaching staff ever adjust? Would it kill them to use an H-back or plug one of our linebackers in at fullback to block?
• I really hope Erickson makes the QB competition wide-open come spring practice. Rudy should assume nothing, hopefully he will mature a bit more during the off-season. Danny Sullivan showed some poise in his few series but keep in mind the game was pretty much over by that point, but he did at least make it somewhat interesting, cutting the score to 10 with a few minutes left.
• If Kyle Williams can play well more consistently than he did this season, the Devils should have one of the top two receiving corps in the Pac-10. Seemed like the WRs were bailing Rudy out time and time again. A stark contrast from last season. This group of receivers definitely matured a lot over last season.
  

Now about the broadcast. I was really fired up going into this season that ESPN was going to start broadcasting Pac-10 games and we wouldn't have to continually endure the high school quality broadcasts on FSN. Unfortunately after having to listen to Herbstreit and his ongoing bias toward the Big 10, consistently picking against ASU and then his apparent lies about Rudy Carpenter's trash talking during the Holiday Bowl broadcast, I was actually missing Petros Papadakis.

Note to ESPN, just because Bob Davie's kid is a walk-on at ASU, it doesn't mean you have to make the guy your second string sideline reporter since he happens to be at the game.

Favorite Music from 2007

As the year winds down I've seen a lot of "best of" lists when it comes to music from 2007. These lists are obviously comprised of songs and/or albums that were released in 2007.

This of course got me thinking about what my personal favorites from the year were. However, I soon realized that most of the new music I started listening to consistently in 2007 didn't necessarily come out during the year, but was new to me. In some cases it was 20+ years old. The following is not in any particular order and in some cases is not a specific song or album but rather an artist.

1. "Beyond the Neighbourhood" - Athlete
This was one of the few ones on my list that came out this past year. Their album "Tourist" still remains one of my overall favorites.

2. Badly Drawn Boy - I can remember hearing the song "You were right" a few years ago but never knew who sang it. I came across it when I was on Hype Machine one day and ended up checking out a lot of other BDB songs. All good stuff. BDB did have an album come out in 2007 called "Born in the UK" but "Have You Fed the Fish" is the by far his best in my opinion.

3. "Sundress" - Ben Kweller
This is one of those cases where I liked this particular song a lot, listened to it over and over. Unfortunately I could never really get into any of his other stuff.

4. Joy Division
I had always been a big New Order fan but could never really get into their precursor band Joy Division other than the song their probably most well-known for, "Love will Tear us Apart." Then I watched the movie "Control" in November which is a biopic on the late Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division. The movie itself was pretty good but it of course feature a huge dose of Joy Division songs. After watching the movie, Joy Division became a regular on my workout playlist. I could listen to "Transmission" over and over again.

5. "Mockingbird" - Derek Webb
I love the way Derek sings about his faith and puts it the context of everyday issues. He isn't the most subtle guy with respect to how he feels about something, just check out these lyrics to "A King and a Kingdom" - there are two great lies that i’ve heard:“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican

6. "Mr. Lemons" - Glen Phillips
Although I continue to be a huge fan of the former Toad the Wet Sprocket lead singer, when this album first came out in mid-2006, it really didn't do much for me. Then there was a few days of brutal commutes a couple of months back that I was listening to nothing but GP and the Mr. Lemon's songs really spoke to me. The lyrics to most of the songs had a very spiritual undertone to them, particularly "Everything but you" and "Thank You."

7. "Nothing Left to Lose" - Mat Kearney
The title song hooked me on this album. Took a little while before I could appreciate it but the strong lyrics did it for me. Kearney is one of the best Christian songwriters I have heard in a while.

8. "We were dead before the ship sank" - Modest Mouse
I could listen to "Dashboard" over and over again. Former Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr joined the group for this one and put these guys over the top in my opinion.

9. "Boxer" - The National
One of those artists I constantly heard thanks to satellite radio. Never got tired of hearing "Start a War."

10. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir
Great band out of Chicago but you would think they're from Ireland. Kind of have a bit of Chieftains sound to them.

11. "Our Ill Wills" - Shout Out Louds
Everytime I hear their lead singer, it makes me want to watch Austin Powers Goldmember. Lead singer sings with a heavy dutch/scandanavian accent, but it's not so bad that you can't understand what he's saying.