Finals suck, and ya, so does this blog

...but just for now.

After an overly excited Berk Tits Hoo-Ha-Ha shot out Michigan football articles like rapid-fire onto this blog during its very young beginning, Balls Out quickly made a turn for the worse. The last several weeks this blog has been deader than a doorknob, a goth party, a buckeye's asshole after a night of pleasure - woa, maybe thats taking it a little too far. Yes, its a good concept, Yes, its a great forum to post our retarded opinions about the sports we care way too much about, and Yes, it must continue....BUT, it must be changed (only for the better of course).

Side Note: Please excuse my insanity at this hour - if you could not tell by the blog title, I am in the middle of reading period before finals and am way too jacked up on coffee and 5.....5 hr....5 hr Lenergyyyy (any...any...any)

Anyway, my opinion for change is simple - I think the biggest problem is that expectations for this site were shot through the roof. This is not the next mgoblog or the next Sports Guy (homo) website. The door must be opened for more sarcastic articles, weird videos and our opinions on it, and the like - all sports related of course (not like any of us have other interests). Articles of course should continue to be written and posted, but this way I think the blog will generate more activity and our HUGE fan base will no longer be anxiously awaiting the next Justin Turner recruitment article.

Having said that (yes Ben, I know you used this joke before), in all honesty, this blog has serious potential and if the contribution level steps up over the summer, the professionalism and seriousness can always be amped up. For now at least, let the good times roll...I dono, I'm just sayin'.

And I will leave you with this nostalgic video from the Walnut House DVR:

BIG STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVE

I fucking love steve lavin. LOVE. there are a million reasons to worship the man like pooplick worships the cock. the slick back hair, the raspy voice, the unnecessary and excessive in-game boxing/fishing references, the 10-1 record in the first two rounds of the tournament, the cute asian girlfriend, the lunch dates with grandpa art, the 7 former recruits in the league- none of which showed a millimeter of improvement during their time in westwood, the rediculous luck it took to get the ucla job with 0 head coaching experience and most importantly, the kissing of the ref after knocking off #1 arizona in 1997. HE FUCKING KISSED A REF (im still searching for the youtube video but it happened. instead check out lavs not so subtle reaction at the 20 second mark of this Rick Majerus [fat] video)

that is why st johns recent hiring of the man the myth the legend is by far the most significant news of this boring week-long tournament break. his name alone instantly brings this program back to relevance and his ability to "work the living room" will have the red storm back in the big dance within 2 years. People love to rip on the lav, and his last year in LA was a mess, but lets not forget the facts: 6 straight 21+ win seasons, 5 sweet sixteens in a span of 6 years (only matched by coach k at duke), the aforementioned 10-1 record in the first two rounds, and the slickest hair in the business.

For all the shit he gets, Steve Lavin is a good coach and an even better person. St. Johns is lucky to get the man, and NYC has no idea what stevey fresh has in store. I'm just fighting back tears thinking about how lonely brent mussberger and all of espn is going to be without him.

A Tribute to Stu-Dawg

Ever since I was old enough to watch TV, I have been watching sports with my dad. We watched the Bulls dynasty of the 90s together, we watched the Yankee dynasty of the 90s and continue to spill into the 2000s, we watched the Kobe-Shaq Lakers' dynasty and the blossoming Kobe-Pau dynasty (still in progress). We saw the good times in sports and we saw the truly awful times: the Yankee collapse in 2004 (the Boston Red Sox were all on steroids so it partially doesn't count), the Detroilet Pit-stains championship in 2004, the Red Sox World Series in 2007, the Celtics championship in 2008, and the Yankees missing the playoffs in 2008 after 13 straight trips to the postseason. Everything that has happened in the world of sports, I can pinpoint exactly as to where I was watching it with my dad.

This past week my dad has been in the hospital, in preparation for open-heart surgery to repair a ruptured valve. THANK G-D, the surgery went well and my dad is going to make a full recovery. But, could there be a better time to spend in the hospital watching TV all day than last week and most of next week? My dad watched every single conference tournament, spanning from the elite Big East tournament to the putrid Puke-10 tournament and everything in between. Sitting in the hospital room watching with my dad, I was fortunate enough to hear his basketball words of wisdom about the upcoming Big Dance and I will impart those thoughts onto you.

1) The Big East is far-and-above the best conference in college basketball. After watching the Big Ten tournament, he said that not only is Ohio State mediocre (I love my dad) but that AT LEAST four teams in the Big East (Syracuse, Georgetown, West Virginia, and Villanova) would "crush them."

2) Syracuse is the team to beat in the tournament. Despite Arinze Onuaku's injury in the game versus Georgetown, he said they looked dominant and by far the best team in basketball. Other than Duke, they have the best coach and that's monumental come tourney time.


3) If not Syracuse, then Kansas. Growing up, my dad and I used to play one-on-one and whenever he would "sky" for a rebound or do a post-move, he would yell "CHAMBERLAIN," (his favorite player of all time) like an announcer. My dad has always had a great appreciation for big-men (no homo). He loved Chamberlain, Olajuwon, Robinson, and Shaq, he respected Russell, obsessed over Walton, and hated Kareem. He has really enjoyed watching Kevin Love play, saying he is a "throw back" center and accurately predicted him being in top-five in rebounding all season. Having said that, my dad believes that Cole Aldrich will be absolutely dominant in the tournament and will be a great NBA player, so don't count out Kansas. He thinks that the combination of Collins and Aldrich will be tough to beat in the tournament, but who hasn't said that.


4) If you are up by three with time winding down in the game, FOUL!!!!!!!!! Nothing pains my dad more than when a team is up by three and doesn't foul. Whether it is 8-year old basketball at Balboa Recreation Center to the NBA, my dad has ALWAYS been a huge proponent of fouling and winning the game on the free-throw line. It doesn't matter if the team is shooting 0% from the three-point line (and they think they're getting LeBron, haha), you should foul no matter what. According to the Stu-Dawg, if you are too stupid not to foul then you deserve to lose the game.


So while my dad recovers from surgery, I will have the luxury of watching the tournament with him. And while some people believe that there is more to life other than sports, nothing has created greater father-son memories for me than the time I spent with my dad watching sports.

College Sports and Castles to the Sky

I first heard the term "Building Castles to the Sky" in a financial economics textbook that was explaining how market bubbles occur. The idea was that when things start to go well, traders step away from reality and build ever higher expectations, laying brick after brick atop the castle. But, inevitably, the walls will get too high and come tumbling down: the bursting of the bubble.

Well I've come to realize that college sports work in much of the same way. As Michigan fans, all of the contributors to this blog have built their share of castles to the sky; some with reason, like the stacked 2006 football team, and some made of irrational false hope, like the young, unpredictable 2009 Wolverines.

Then came this season's basketball team. With a surprisingly strong finish to last year, including a run into the second round of the NCAA Tournament, falling to the National Player of the Year, Michigan fans thought they had lain a solid foundation and started gathering those stones. A poor start to the season that saw the Wolverines drop 3 games early slowed down our build, but then we beat UConn and a Turner-less Ohio State at Crisler Arena, so the castle continued to grow.

After a less than perfect game against Iowa yesterday, Michigan saw itself down late against OSU today, but all of a sudden Manny Harris showed up to play. We rode the wave of Manny's 22 second-half points to a 2 point lead with 2.2 seconds left in the game (apparently 2 is not our lucky number). As I was dusting off that throne in the clouds and engraving the word FRESH into it, this happened:

There it was. Evan Turner, the frontrunner for National Player of the Year, delivered the final blow that brought our castle crashing down. And I was left sitting on my couch, mocking myself because I had already started to play out the scenario where we went on to win the Big Ten Tourney and march our way into the NCAAs.

Now our season is over. The football season ended much less abruptly, with its castle coming down brick by brick as we failed to win that last game to earn a bowl invite, and honestly, I don't yet know which was worse.

As we look forward toward next year, I have to make this clear: I still believe in John Beilein. I still believe in Rich Rodriguez, and in both of their abilities to bring success to Michigan sports programs. But maybe next year I'll think twice before I pull out the bricks and mortar at the start of the season.

Oh the times they are a changin'

In fourth grade I sat next to Matt Williams.

I hated Matt.

Not because Matt was mean, Matt was a very nice guy. In fact, Matt was the kind of guy that would give away his Italian Dunkers at lunch. And not because Matt was weird, Matt played sports and liked trading cards and didn't smell. He quarterbacked one of the four teams that played two-hand-touch at recess.

No, I hated Matt because three out of the five days of the school week, Matt dawned a green-n-yellow-number-four jersey. Matt supported the team that I had been born hating, the team that dominated the NFC Central for a decade, the team that won the Superbowl that year.

At the root of my hatred - for that team, not Matt - stood a 6'2" 222 lb. gunslinger. Between the beginning of fourth grade and the end of my junior year of college (12ish years) I watched countless gunslinger milestone moments, hundreds of sportscasters and announcers literally drop down on all fours and suck the gunslinger's seemingly massive cock, and one "HE DID WHAAAT?" His smile made me cringe, his interviews made me puke, and his childlike antics on the field made me want to bring a shotgun to the annual rivalry game between MY team and his team.

A couple retirements and unretirements and a biceps surgery later, that same fucking gunslinger was escorted from a private jet to a Denali and driven straight into MY team's training camp to become MY team's quarterback.

fuck-my-fucking-life. insane-o-man meets bizarro-world meets YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!

I went to ten of MY team's games that year - nine regular season and one playoff, and I booed the gunslinger every single time he took the field.

Then MY team went down to New Orleans for a championship game.

Again, I booed the gunslinger (through the television).

The game went back and forth and the ball ended up in the gunslinger's hand with two minutes left as the game was tied.

With my shirt drenched in sweat and my left hand filled with hair that I yanked out of my head during the previous three-plus quarters of football, I sent a text to my mom who was in New Orleans with MY team.

Favre's got it, I believe in him. It's his team now.

Cue Paul Allen, KFAN radio, Minneapolis, MN

-------

I saw Matt over Thanksgiving vacation. He was sporting a grey hoodie, jeans, and white sneakers. I asked him, "Hey man, where's the jersey?"

"Favre's a Viking. I can't wear that anymore."

More Lakers: The Kobe Numbers

DISCLAIMER: I am not a statistician or an analyst, so all statistical analysis that follows in this post is elementary at best. If you're a stats junkie who is going to gripe about confidence intervals or z-values, or if you think the Lakers are infallible and deserve no criticism, might I suggest this post about memories and high hopes for Cleveland sports teams.

I am a graduate student, which means that in addition to working an unpaid internship 3 days a week, my classes fall on Tuesday and Thursday nights, which tend to be prime NBA viewing time. When the game is on TNT or I can't get away with watching ESPN360 in a small class, I have to keep up with the gamecasts online or on my phone, which means watching lots of varying numbers on my screen. During this latest Lakers skid, now their worst in over 2 years, a thought struck: man Kobe is taking lot of shots, and the Lakers don't look better off because of it.

So I pulled up espn.com and Microsoft Excel and started testing this theory, I quickly realized that there was something to it. Leaving out the first 12 games of the season when Pau Gasol was injured (your leading scorer is naturally going to take more shots when your second scorer is out), Kobe takes a significantly higher proportion of shots in losses than he does in wins. To be exact, Kobe averages 31.9% of all Lakers' Field Goals Attempted in losses, and only 23.9% of FGAs in wins.

So while other contributors to this blog are debating the play of the Laker bigs, who IMO are playing quite well this season, I have one piece of advice for the Lakers as they keep moving toward the playoffs: give it up, Kobe. Literally. No need to see shot attempt numbers like last night against Orlando (30 of the team's 88). I think that 24's supporting cast talent has increased significantly over the past few years, and now the star needs to let his teammates step up and help him get through big games if he wants to keep those rings coming.

Counter to Benjamin Berkley

While Ben does bring up a great point about the Lakers and their team defense, the views he makes about Andrew Bynum's defense are not fairly accurate. Yes, Bynum did pick up some stupid fouls yesterday against the Orlando Magic (just because he was in foul trouble on a national televised game, does not mean he takes bad fouls every game). But, in only 20 minutes of playing time he blocked 4 shots. We need to remember that he was playing Dwight Howard, who is according to most people, the best Center in the NBA today.

Andrew Bynum has picked up his game this year. He is staying healthy (cross your fingers) and learning to play with Pau Gasol, which has not happened too many times since February 2008. Bynum has done a better job of not picking up fouls and staying on the court. He has only fouled out twice this season, which is understandable because he does play center the last line of defense. He also has not had the help of Derek Fisher or Jordan Farmar as point guards light up the Lakers on a nightly basis. He does need to work on his rebounding though because it has been inconsistent all year. Sometimes he will have 15 rebounds, other nights only 3 rebounds.

For the Los Angeles Lakers to even think about repeating as NBA Champs, they need to start playing better team defense and stop thinking they can just turn on the switch when the postseason begins. That mean everyone from Andrew Bynum to Lamar Odom to Shannon Brown, even Adam Morrison, needs to stop being complacent and understand that every team wants to knock off the defending champs.

Andrew Bynum has been the most criticized Laker this entire season, which seems unfair as we all need to remember he is still only 22 years old, played very sparingly in high school, and has come back from 2 major knee injuries the last 2 seasons. The young man has matured and still has vast potential, but his critics are just too harsh. Too many fans want to put the blame on his shoulders. The Lakers, and their fans, need to realize that this is not 2001 and we are not just going to start destroying teams in the playoffs. The Lakers need to figure out their issues over the next 19 games so they can be ready to defend that NBA Title.