THE END OF THE WORLD AND COLLEGE HOOPS

This last Saturday while sitting in church, I was thumbing through the bulletin when I came across an interesting hand out.  It was a group who is attempting to translate the Bible into every known language, and probably some unknown languages as well.   In this handout, it stated that around 350 million people still did not have the Bible in their own language.  This number seemed rather large at first, but as I began to digest this information, it struck me that this is a rather small number compared to the 6 billion that currently are estimated to live on the earth.  In fact that's around 5.83% of the world population that do not have the Bible in their language.  So here is my question, what happens when all those people get the Bible in their language!  Will all people on all the earth be considered to have heard the word?  Will this be the end?  Can this happen by December 31, 2012?  I guess we will have to wait a few years and see how this all pans out.

In hoops news, NCAA basketball is just around the corner and I cannot wait!  I think this will be a really good year outside of the disappointing injury to Robbie Hummel, who I thought would have an outstanding season and pro career but now faces a very tough season of rehab.  I have been reading through the conference previews on ESPN and couldn't help but notice a short clip in which Seth Greenberg, the coach at Virgina Tech, was still crying about last years no bid to the tourney.  This made me sad as I like Greenberg (he has a great DVD out on defensive stance) and think he is a pretty decent coach.  But geez guy, give it a rest.

He still feels as though the numbers are not high enough to the NCAA National Championship tourney.  He went on to say that while 68 is better and 96 is too high there should be a number in the middle to make everyone happy.  I guess my request to Virgina Tech would be to actually play someone i the pre-season so that those 26 wins have some substance behind them or get somewhere in your conference tourney like everyone else has to do.  I am guessing that games against Kansas St, Purdue and Mississippi St will help them a little.  They are also playing Campbell University in there season opener, which has my 2nd favorite college mascot behind the Youngstown St Penguins.  Go Fighting Camels!!!


I did a small amount of research into the percentage of teams that typically make it to the post season in the "Big" sporting events (NBA, MLB, NFL, and College Football).  This is what I came up with, the MLB has 8 of its 30 teams into post season (26/7%), NFL 12 of 32 (37.5%), NBA 16 of 30 (53.3%), NCAA Football 70 of 119 (58.5%), and NCAA D1 basketball 68/437 (19.5%).  I have to admit I has a little surprised by this,  even D2 is slightly better with 64 of 281 teams (22/7%).  But not nearly as rough as  D3, which only takes 61 out of a whopping 449 teams (13.5%)! Although not totally sure those all have basketball programs.  D1 basketball is on the lower spectrum of teams that get the post season from the extremes of D3 and the laughable NBA and College Football (to be bowl eligible in football all you have to do is be at .500 record, almost as sad the the NBA which has sub .500 teams in the playoffs).

So what does this say about the tourney?  Do we need to increase the numbers?  Should we be fighting about  a middle of the pack Big Ten or a  number 2 team in the Patriot league deserving to get a bid (think Northwestern and Bucknell least year)?  We will have to see how the "last 4 out" goes this year and just hope that Greenberg can win a few games so that he can get a bid and stop crying.  Watering down a product that makes a huge amount of money for the NCAA seems pretty dumb right now, but I guess they have a wide variety of people to please but you want to keep your product healthy and profitable you better be careful.

PLAY OF THE WEEK

This is what I came up with this past week, let me know what you think, named after Purdue because of some stolen concepts from notes I was looking at

 

Plee of the Week:

Can someone please buy me a copy of Walberg's Half-Court DVD?  Also maybe some play creator software....

Came up with this on Monday, think it will work?  Only time will tell...

The year I coached as WWU assistant guys coach, what a professional!

Coaching JV at WWVA with my good friend Kevin Hardesty!  

IT'S ALL HAPPENING AGAIN

For the past few weeks (in reality the last few months) I have been gearing up to start the basketball season.  I am coaching at Rogers Adventist School, as the 7th-8th head coach and Walla Walla Valley Academy, as a JV head coach and varsity assistant.  I have been writing up practices plans, drawing up inbounds plays, and re-evaluating our defense.  And now, its about to take me over for another 5 months and if you include being a big time college fan make it 6 months.  Even though I dream about it at home, breaks at work and while spending time with friends, it always seems to sneak up on me.  Not that I wouldn't say I am unprepared, it just seems unreal that we are about to start another season.

If I am forced to, I can think back through the web of time and remember my 1st season as a coach.  I has the freshman coach at WWVA in 2005-2006.  I think about the nervous phone call I made to Coach Schafer to ask about coaching there.  He graciously allowed me to coach for him at the entry level Freshman job.  We practice with the JV team at Rogers gym and it was a fiasco.  Too many kids and to say that the coaching staff was  inexperienced would be like saying Jordan might have a chance of beating Betty White in a game of 1 on 1.  I learned a lot that year and had great kids even though we didn't experience much success, a nice way of saying we had a totally defeated season, they taught me how little I knew about coaching and the preparation it takes to have a successful team (and that means way more then just how many wins you get). 

This year I feel a lot different heading into the season although I still feel that same sense of unpredictability I felt that season.  Which guys will stand out in the crowd?  What inbounds play will be a total flop?  Will we meet our goals by the end of the season?  I really do have answers to these questions, but that's OK.  I love this time of year, it's the previews to the movies, it's the last few moments right before you get to Disneyland.  The not knowing maybe the best part of the season, but that's about over now and on Monday at 3:00pm we start the knowing and I can't wait.