Saturday, November 1, 2008

Well, things are not as far along as I had hoped.  We won 2 and lost two.  Both wins were easy and one of those was a ‘B’ game or whatever.  Similarly we were not really in either of the games we lost.  It was a disappointing day, but far from a hopeless one.  Both sides of our ball need to make strides.  Those steps are far from impossible for us to take, but we need to alter some of our culture right now because we are not imposing our will on others the way we need to.  When our talent level is clearly better we do fine and look dominant, but when we have to step up to someplace new, we come close but we do not get the job all done.  We have our moments of almost and oh-so-close, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades and we aren’t doing them.

ASU 9 – CSU 5

We came out okay, but we can’t match up very well on face-offs sometimes and that was the case this morning against Arizona State, and by the time we solved that part of the puzzle it was too late.  We didn’t capitalize on some hard work on offense early in the game and then all game long as well.  Sometimes it was because our shot selection was not quite good enough or because we didn’t ‘kill’ the finish part.  Then we let the Devils into our kitchen with one move on their next trip down or whatever and then one of their stars beat our goalie with a shot that our goalie had no chance to keep away from the net.  That won’t do.  We have to help our goalie make saves.  A team cannot just expect the net minder to make great saves.  It is a process that leads to the save, one based on mutual defensive work and trust.  Right now the shield I want our defense to be has some dents and holes in it.  We are not connected like the iron chain we need to be.

Another problem, and I credit ASU for this as well, but every time we got a goal or some momentum of any kind in this early game, they answered by shoving one down our throat.  They answered!  This is a good quality for a team to have.

Thoughts after the game for me were that we chased them on the scoreboard, making it hard to dictate any kind of game tempo.  We are squeezing the life out of games like this by not CARPE DIUMING, by not jumping on the moment and riding the hell out of it.  It feels at times like we as a team are playing not to lose.  This is not the ‘look’ I want us to have, so I have work to do, don’t I?

CSU 10 WESTMINSTER  3

This game started right after the ASU one finished, and it was an easy win for our us, orchestrated by many that hadn’t played in the first game, but it did not cleanse the bad taste in my mouth that I had from an hour earlier.

CSU 13 UTAH STATE 3

USU is a Division I team, but as with the previous game our talent level was way higher than the opponent’s was.  We played pretty well and with emotion.  I gave a sermon prior to this one, with most reference being to the last one against ASU and what had happened..  Maybe I should have saved that for before the BYU test at the end of the day.  My feelings were that a few of our stars were giving great effort but they were not always keeping the best interests of our team concept in mind.  Another thing I expressed was that ‘I’ had let two players on the other team beat us.  They were great players, but at the same time I have always taken pride in our CSU ability as a team to never let ‘individuals’ beat us and in my opinion to a large degree I or we let that happen in that first game of the day.

Anyway the USU game was pretty methodical, but then we were not tested very severely in any lacrosse way.

BYU 8  CSU 3

It was de ja vu all over again.  Every time we have played the Cougars lately we are down 3 or whatever before I take a swig of water and then we chase the scoreboard again.  They, too, replied to our momentum changing messages by scoring and shutting us up, although we did get two in a row late to get within 2, but we had no one that could or I had no plan that would alter the state of this game.

I think in this one BYU exposed us a little, too.  They had us reverting to a panic mode on our clears for one thing.  The end result of that was that we had very few possessions and they worked at and were successful at limiting our opportunities in general.

WHERE TO NOW ST. PETER?

I believe this team has to take a far greater personal commitment to the process of improvement and much of this is controllable. Here is my take on it: If we do not come to practice better in the spring than we did in the fall, then nothing will change, period.  No excuses are available.  Either we have real goals to chase or we do not.  I think it is kind of up to them because we are not in a place, for whatever reason, where we can run over teams with talent alone anymore.

Friday, October 31, 2008

VEGAS REVIVAL

We are sitting in the 'barn' at Ft. Collins/Loveland Airport waiting to board Allegiant Air #465 to Las Vegas.  We have done this many times over the years now.  It amazes me that this airline has just the one main Ft. Collins route, and that is basically the daily ‘milk run’ to Vegas.  I think they also fly to Fargo.  They have one flight going and one coming on any given day, and that’s pretty much it.  Yet here they remain Allegiantly viable here in the Fort somehow year after year.

ADRENALINE TIME

It’s been a good and fun Fall season. Tomorrow is final exam time.  We have progressed at times and at other times not-so-much.  We have defined a lot of what players have what roles.  I declare us better already than we were last year, but then I guess we shall find out more about if that is true tomorrow.  At any rate I have had enough of my own orations. I have watched them practice and analyzed potential enough.  I have sufficiently made the rounds over the last weeks trying to connect with each and every one of them (players o’ mine) at least a little and with some a lot.  We have practiced DOG and SIXTY-ONE and HAMMER.  They have cleared and counter attacked our drills for weeks.  They all know what we do and a lot about when or why we do this thing or that as well.  So, what is my point?   My urge is just for let’s go do this.  There is nothing left to it but to do it and tomorrow finally will bring that about.  We have had some games this fall and all, and we have had some really good scrimmages sprinkled in our practices all along too, but just the same we are all ready to do all this stuff we do every day against someone else, someone new.  We want the speed and pace that only comes with live intercollegiate competition.

TO MAKE IT STRESS FREE, RISP BY 10/28/08

My beloved Phillies are the world champions of Major League baseball.  One might think that the way ‘my’ Phillies dominated their post-season opponents would have allowed me to enjoy the whole thing more as it went along.  The Phillies had three teams to vanquish, three series’ to win, and they lost only twice in the 13 total games played in the postseason.  This was against the best of the best in baseball, and it all eventually settled nicely into a 4-1 series victory over the Devil Rays from Tampa Bay in THE World Series (The Rays play home games in St. Petersburg. What up with that?). 

Stress free could hardly be the description of my demeanor during this second season, however.  I never overflowed with confidence, and not for one minute, not until the final out was recorded as they say.  Many times during games I could not even watch the other team’s batter up at the plate, the stress of each individual pitch being just too much for me to constantly bear without leaving the room or closing my eyes upon occasion. 

My wife thinks I’m pathetic with all this rampant, pretty much unchecked, unbridled emotional outpouring for a team of any kind, not to mention that they are a team from a city that I never lived in at all and only lived near to up until 1967.  Come to think of it I have not been loyal to anything else for 41 years.  Ada doesn’t say the word pathetic, she says simply, “Come on, Philip”, which actually means something like, “Flip, you ARE pathetic.  I can’t believe you care more about this than your wife and children.  Get it together or I will pretend I don’t know you”. 

I try not to watch the game with Ada around.  You see she is ‘channeled’ and that’s all good, but she makes me crazy with her almost always accurate predictions.  For example she knew and predicted Tampa was going to tie up (at least) that rain game that was game 5, which they did.  I could have killed her, like as if it was somehow her fault.  By the way that suspended game that basically started over in the bottom of the sixth a few days later was really one of the cooler game dynamics that I have seen in all my years of the baseball fandom.

RED SUCKS I mean SOX NATION

One of my friends, one who is closer to my age than are most of my ‘friends’ saw me a few weeks ago with a Phillies hat on and he intimated that somehow I was a bandwagon Phillie baseball fan.  I could have slugged him.  Just because he is one of millions of that type doesn’t mean I am.  I was offended.  For one thing it meant that he knows me not.  For another thing I am not like his ilk, the ones that come out of the New England woodwork somewhere with their Red Sox caps ready to go just in case the Sox win the pennant. I suffer annually and have suffered often over the years.

I am so superstitious with baseball that it is ridiculous.  I dare say nothing until it was over.

Now that it is I say that I am amazed by how much the media TALKS about anything and or everything.  I know it is their job, but they try to make every thing be something and in my humble opinion many things are in reality nothing.  Still I love the immediacy and urgency of the events like the World Series, things that define the essence of winning and losing and are reflected in all the ranting, whining and analyzing that comes with games of magnitude.

So all World Series long the talkers kept sort of bagging and ragging on the Phillies and their ‘ineptitude’ with the famous RUNNERS IN SCORING POSITION statistic, as in we didn't do so good at that.  I have waited to publicly address this issue, but now I feel safe in doing so.  We phinally won. We (Phillies) might have had only like 2 hits in 50 at bats or whatever with runners in scoring position at one point in the series, but I clearly prefer that scenario to having the mere 6 runners that the Rays got to second base over the same span, even if they got a few hits in those situations.  Just like with lacrosse where I preach the truth that opportunity will serve you far more than not having it.  If, for example, we play great defense and error-free lacrosse as much as possible we will increase our offensive chances.  With that kind of opportunity comes all the things that help your team get better. 

BESBOL BEEN BERRY BERRY GOOD TO ME

Ultimately the Phillies scored in every possible way over the course of the post-season in spite of how hard the experts tried to pigeon hole or ‘type’ this team with all their colorful statistics.  My assessment is that this Phillie team in the final analysis had more than sufficient pitching which is a complete necessity for the ‘defense’ of baseball, but they also showed their greatness as a team by the way they came out with a very diverse batting line-up and they battled the other pitcher in almost every at bat all year.  They never gave in to the opponent.  They tried to bring the pressure to the other team through the batter’s box all year long.  Then of course they ‘backed it up’ with the ultimate guy in the bullpen that finished every close game with a SAVE.  Yes, it was pretty exciting and very cool to see my team being a good team playing its best when it mattered the most.

INSIDE THE NUMBERS

I know you can’t put too much stock in things that I do anyway, and that by the way includes the stock market, but I have a very positive numerical take and my little place in the whole Phillie thing.  For whatever reason they have been my first love for all of my years as we now know.  I got my love of baseball from my mother.  There can be no doubt of this.  In my case it was not a macho hand-me-down thing.  She absolutely loved baseball.  She would tell me how she used to listen to the games on the radio when she was pregnant with me in 1952, 28 years before the Phillies won in 1980. She was 28 years old when she had me in 1952.  When the Phillies first won a world series in 1980 she was 56 and I was 28.  How long ago was 1980?  Twenty-eight years ago.  How old am I now?  I am 56.  That’s all I got, and besides my mother fell in love with Harry Carey in later life (cable) and she died a frustrated Chicago Cub fan, so I don’t know what to say about all that.  I will say that the Phillies winning made me think more and loving thoughts about my mother and God knows that can never be a bad thing.

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