Sports Night everynight...

Wednesday Night Music Club: I know that when I think of Thanksgiving, I think of covers of old Dolly Parton songs. Ok, maybe not quite that but it is really tough to make a segue into this one. I'm not even sure why this came to mind other than I think I was talking about Mindy Smith to someone a few weeks ago and I figured that she was someone I should promote in this space. If anything, she has a new Christmas album out that is supposed to be really good so if you like this song and want to get in the holiday spirit, there's the first item on your shopping list. After, of course, stopping by Kohl's at four in the morning.

Seriously, Kohl's is having a 4 AM sale on Friday. To anyone who is shopping for me, I am nowhere near important enough to shop for at four in the morning. Unless you are actually coming back from a bar there is no legitimate reason to be awake at four in the morning.

Ok, in lieu of actual topics tonight I'm going to respond to some of the comments on the last few posts...

On the play of Jimmy Claussen, I have seen a few comparisons of Claussen's numbers to Quinn's and yes, numerically speaking they look the same. But, and it really pains me to imply that this could ever be the case, numbers aren't the whole story. While Brady Quinn was not a good quarterback as a freshman at least I was confident that he was, in fact, a quarterback. There was promise there and while he was getting his ass kicked you at least saw a glimmer of hope.

I don't see that with Claussen even though I was one of his biggest backers coming into the season. The guy has a great arm (better than his brothers) and was raised to be a quarterback. The thing is he just doesn't seem to be smart back there. While at the game Saturday there were plays where I knew precisely who he was throwing to because as soon as the ball was snapped that is all he looked at and was oblivious to other receivers or defensive lineman. When the guy who never played football in his life can read your eyes something is horribly wrong.

And the other thing that really bothers me is that while he is officially a true freshman the dude is 20 years old. His birthday is a few weeks after mine. Do you know what I was doing when I was 20? I was a junior in electrical engineering at Illinois, not taking intro to everything classes at Notre Dame. That just really bothers me. Physically you are pretty much what you are going to be at 20 and sure, he can get smarter at football but it's a lot different than if he was an 18 year old freshman. Maybe it's just me but that really bugs me in terms of his development.

I did decide not to live blog the Duke-Illinois game last night mainly because I didn't feel like subjecting everyone to a post consisting of "Brian Randle just fouled someone", "For crying out loud, can we hit a freaking jumper" and "It's nice to know that I have more athletic ability than Jordan's kid." I'll start on the Illinois side. The team looked better than I had imagined but even that wasn't very good. They are fifteen deep except that there really isn't any difference between the best guy and the fifteenth guy. That's not a good thing. They showed promise and played good defense most of the night but there isn't a superstar on that team. I'm hoping that they find a flow and sneak into the tournament but that might not happen. Heck, it's never a good sign when the coach's dog needs knee surgery.

As for Duke they definitely look like a better team than last year. That's not saying much as last year's squad was not the worst Duke team I ever saw but definitely the most painful to watch. They just played ugly basketball with none of the style that made me follow the team in the first place. It was hacking defense and slow, ponderous offense. This year's squad shows more promise and athleticism with additions of some freshmen who appear to be both talented and already hated. Cheering for Duke is kind of like cheering for Microsoft in that regard. Greg Paulus still plays point guard like he is running a wishbone offense and he really makes me miss the days of Bobby Hurley running the offense while simultaneously smoking a cigarette.

Speaking of wishbones, have a happy Thanksgiving everyone.