letabrotherspeak

Nike blows the doors off of Adidas and Under Armour in terms of sales of shoes and apparel. Adidas is slipping globally and Nike is really starting to gain a major foothold in Europe, particularly with soccer. UA is probably passing Adidas in the USA with apparel and still needs to make some hay with their shoes. Adidas is in a big time slump across the board.

Aside from the games at NKU last week, I would say this game had the largest crowd for any high school game this year, including boys games. The game was a tale of two halves and Holmes just dug themselves too big of a hole. They had a couple of great looks to tie but they rolled out. Credit Holy Cross for hanging in there. I thought the "big game" feel had Holmes really tight early and Holy Cross's experience in the region and playing on the big stage helped them early and they were able to establish an early lead by burying some perimeter shots plus their zone forced Holmes into some rushed shots and careless turnovers. Going forward I think Holmes had a lot of success with their 2-2-1 press in the second half and became more and more aggressive with it as Holy Cross started making longer passes. I would also think that they should look to pullup and shoot some 10 footers rather than going right into the teeth of the Holy Cross defense. Holy Cross has 3 guards that can handle the ball plus a couple of big girls to help with pressure release. A very entertaining game and I am still very surprised at the size of the crowd. I figured that there would be a lot of fans in attendance, but never thought it would be that full.

It sounds like the Bulldogs just got taken to the woodshed tonight. It will be interesting to see the final shooting percentages. Holmes will have to regroup quickly, because they are in a tough stretch of games right now. Mason making a statement for the the 10th Region folks?

Weird game with the two big runs each team had, until midpoint third quarter. I thought Coach Listerman and staff's decision to go to a 1-2-2 three quarter court trap bothered Cooper and took them out of what they had success with in the second quarter. That defense effectively changed the course of the game. Holmes was able to get some turnovers and and converted them into points. James Bolden is so much fun to watch and he had a really solid game. He had some really nifty passes including a handful or very nice passes in tight quarters in transition. Rod Avery played well as well. He's a spindly kid but has good hands and was to handle some tough passes in transition to convert. Andrew Arnold does the dirty work and played really solid all night long. Holmes's offense has been starting to come together over the last few weeks and they will need their defense to progress if they want to challenge for the region.

NCC is tight as a drum when they play CovCath. They opened the game tight taking quick rushed shots and not handling the ball very well. NCC's bigs do not do a good job of posting or re-posting or simply screening away when there is denial. It is like they have self-created pressure and don't take the time on offense to feed it to McDonald. Credit CovCath's guards for applying ball pressure, but NCC simply doesn't pound the ball to the post enough. McDonald spends too much time on the key reversing the ball and not effectively diving to the post. I think the loss of Pangallo limits them in the halfcourt taking away a potential driver to the basket and and effective post feeder. CCH scraps and Theobald and Flood are solid players. To me the turning point in the game was after the basket and one, plus the taunting, NCC missed 2 straight free throws and I don't think they scored on the ensuing possession. They played catch up the rest of the way.

I'm going to go with....

Any truth to the rumor that Lamar Dawson may graduate early from USC and finish his last year at UK?

#23 Louisville Male is 6-6 this year. No real big wins of note for them on their resume.

That would certainly be a killer for Stoops and company, if Marrow decides to bolt. The only hope UK has is that MB has been willing to loosen the purse strings with Stoops and staff.

Lane isn't going anywhere unless he gets a head coaching position. He did a really good job this year with a first year QB. The problem to me, is that he has such a huge ego and hates Urban Meyer he simply go too cute tonight with the playcalling. Urban wasn't going to let Cooper beat him deep. I thought that the Bama OL was controlling the OSU DL. They had really controlled Bosa for most of the night. Henry was getting huge chunks of yardage from the get go. Yet Kiffin still tried to do a bunch of stuff in the pass game. I would have thought they could have hammered the run to open up the pass game. Especially after the terrible punt that OSU had in which set up Bama inside the 30. Henry was averaging 8 yards per carry. In addition, his play calling didn't help his defense out any. I think ego got the best of him tonight and he just didn't stick with the run and hammer it at OSU.

I thought the movie was OK. Unbroken is a tough book to put into film, IMO. It glossed over the last 20% of the book and tried to tie that up with some captioning at the end. For me one of the most moving parts of the book was the last 20% of the book when he was dealing with his PTSD and then recovery from it. In the book, when he was racing to leave the tent revival being led by Billy Graham and was stopped cold by the sermon and his thoughts drifted to when he was at sea praying to God to get him through the ordeal was a powerful piece and ultimately the turning point in the rest of his life. Jolie tried to capture that a bit in one scene when they were in the raft, but it was kind of left untied. The camaraderie developed amongst LZ and the other POW's never really broke through in the film like it did in the book. All in all it really is a tough book to capture in a single film. I thought Jolie did a decent job and I thought she did a pretty decent job.

The knock on UGA has been that they don't stick with the running game when they should and try to get too cute with the pass at times when they are mauling people up front and are opening holes for Gurley and now Chubb. With Bobo gone to the CSU, it will be interesting to see where Richt goes with his next hire for OC. I would imagine there is some heat building on Richt, despite a high number of wins each year. Some of it is offense goes away from the run, but you can see that when you have an Aaron Murray at the controls. Defensively, they have been up and down and have gone through some defensive coordinators. They were glad to give UL Todd Grantham. Pruitt has had some good games, but consistency has been an issue. No doubt the talent is there. Louisville had a fairly solid year. Defensively, I thought they were a tad overrated and that they really hadn't faced a lot of really strong offenses. I figured UGa would give them trouble up front and be able to run the ball and Chubb did.

My youngest has gotten into it and we went back in the fall for a Smackdown taping. It was the first one I had been to since the Great American Bash in Riverfront. I thought about going but since it was a house show, I didn't figure many stars would be there. TAC if you have some WWE hookups in the future, i am able and willing.

It comes down to turnovers. You can't have turnovers like the Bengals do in games of this magnitude. On the first INT, AJ totally cut off a route and stopped. Went with double move and stopped. The second pick was a high throw, but great receivers make that catch. Maybe he is still hurt, maybe he was afraid to get hit, I don't know. However, AJ fumbled a ball at a key time when it was a weak hit. Simply, it comes down to turnovers.

Cal was ripping into Andrew Harrison after taking him out and going into a timeout. Not sure if that is the one people are referring to, but he was ripping him for leaving the huddle. He dropped a few expletives about not leaving the huddle. Overall, it was a very good win for UK. In general, Chris Jones is not the type of point guard who is going to get you set up in the half court but will flourish in the open court when they are turning people over and getting into transition. His feigning of blows to the face is hilarious. He had another one where he feigned getting hit by H5 on a drive and literally grabbed his jaw and flung himself backwards. Wayne Blackshear is the modern day Derrick Hord of UK. All kinds of hype and stars coming out of high school. He has not really materialized. He to me is the key of how far UL will go this year. The Ville never got into one of their patented runs that they usually have during a game. Credit UK defense and rebounding. Devin Booker is a better defender than I would have ever imagined coming out of high school. Trey Lyles is skilled and smooth and will mix it up too on the glass. All in all just another step of continuing to improve.

There was a huge charge call on Corey Pouncy, in transition that negated a basket late in that game. Jerry Marshall also had his full court desperation heave at horn hit the front of the rim. Holmes had beaten Cross by 32 and 27 earlier that year. Some felt the 1991 Holmes team was better than the 90 team that went to the finals. Cross was no slouch that year, they made it to the state semifinals. There were some monster battles between Cross and Holmes in late 80's early 90's. In 1988, Holmes upset Cross in semis and then upset Campbell in their own gym to claim region. The 1989 region semi had Cross winning 96-95.

The Holmes/NCC regular season game from two years ago was a whale of a game. NCC controlled the game and then Bolden went crazy in the 4th quarter and hit a deep bomb to put Holmes up and then Pangallo drilled a pull-up jumper to send it to OT. NCC won in OT. As for the 1979 Region Final, if I recall correctly, Holmes had a lead into the 4th quarter and Reynolds Flynn decided to start stalling. Highlands got some momentum and it carried to the end of the game. 1989 Region Semis at Holmes. Holy Cross beat Holmes something like 96-94 and that game may have taken a lot of starch out of Holy Cross, because they were upset the next night by the upstart Scott Eagles. I do recall a game, from like 1979 and Holmes played Bryan Station with Mel Turpin and company and Bryan Station won something like 104-102. Someone out there may recall some of these older games, but there has been a lot of good ones over the years. This time of the year, makes me miss the old Famous Recipe Classic.

Bulldogs get some consolation...Ballard. What factored into the BE comeback?

What defense is BE playing? Man or zone?

Is the big kid still out for Madison Central?

Nice win for the Pioneers. Are the football players finding their rhythm?

This is crazy. Is this the same Boone team that lost to Newport by 26?

Good win for the Pioneers. It will be interesting to see how the Pioneers fare at the Oldham County tournament. It looks like a pretty competitive field.

Ashland could very well be 0-9 when they return home to play Covington Holy Cross in the AIT. What is the issue at Blazer? Is it a major dip in talent?

Who is Dixie getting back from the football team?