Washington Waddler

Whatever the source, it’s the kind of desperation move that’s easy to believe the Bruins might make. That’s a program that’s lacked an identity for so long that fishing expeditions have become 2nd nature.

Getting to be that hairsplitting time for poll rankings as the season starts to move into its final games. About now, provincial prejudice and bias starts to trump objectivity among rah-rah poll voters. Like fans who will side with their conference after their team is no longer in play, the east coast-centered sports media voters apparently will side with any team east of the Mississippi River. Oregon’s youthful inconsistency in home losses to inferior teams (Oregon State and LMU) most likely came into play to justify their hairsplitting.

One of the things I love about softball is how every pitcher has to stay mentally engaged, even when they’re pulled, since they may be called upon again in relief. No heading for the showers for starter Elise Sokolsky who had to reenter in order to save her own start when reliever Lyndsey Grein got in trouble. This requirement that every pitcher stay involved creates a team dynamic that seems unique to softball.

Guess the guy should be glad he didn’t have an Adidas tattoo as well.

Nothing like a little home cooking to get things back on track.

Ma’ake is beginning to mature at the plate, getting patient, and leaving the low, inside stuff alone. Because of that, she’s making better contact, and her power is translating higher percentage pitches into home runs, even on partial follow-through. Potentially, she’s the most dangerous bat the team has seen in years.

For the past three games, “best shots” is correct. Except for the USC series, the team has not faced opponents who have ‘a little something else’ at stake when they face us. The Buckeyes - no matter the sport - want to put us in ‘our place’, while Portland was the first experience this season playing an in-house opponent with upset intentions - like the softball loss to the Beavers. As Wasikowski said, we made mistakes against the Pilots, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort, it was a lack of execution. While it’s no excuse, I try to bear in mind that of our 18 member pitching staff, 8 are freshmen. Mark is not soft pedaling, but neither is he hammering. I agree with his damage control approach of putting this behind us, and getting back to the practice field. At this moment, it’s just time for encouragement.

Dismantling and recycling a small American city? Wow. But could be the pilot project for how to resolve the problem of Corvallis?

Good thing we’ve got a strong staff. Other than right now, Buckeyes don’t look like much of a measuring stick. Not to look ahead, but interested in our match-up with Iowa, not to mention the Bruins and mutts.

One of the many side effects of Terminal Entitlement is a distaste for the passionate. Such displays are regarded as gauche.

A sidebar regarding Growlers and their pilot training. Living on the North Olympic Penunsula, I see or hear (depending on cloud cover) Growlers almost daily. That’s because the Olympic Mts are a primary training site. ‘Targets’ are placed and repositioned daily on remote logging roads to test and challenge pilot aptitude locating and ‘destroying’ ground installations. To simulate carrier take-offs and landings, the Navy base on Whidbey Island (roughly 50 miles east of where I live) near Coupville has a runway that approximates any aircraft carrier length they may have to use. While I’m certainly no authority on military aircraft, my minuscule grasp of jet propulsion suggests carrier craft require a more direct thrust system in order to achieve downforce ratings capable of fully-loaded carrier based take-offs. Similar to the open-header system of a race car, this creates a whole lot of noise; hence, the name Growler. While we certainly know when Growler squadrons are on their way to and from targets, they’re at flight elevation; and, excepting the exceptionally sensitive, don’t bother us much. That’s not the case for home owners on flight paths around Coupville. It’s loud. But, most understand it’s what comes with the territory: the price one pays for the best military in the world. A small handful raise a big stink online and in the local media, but they’re written off as retiree out-of-towners who didn’t do their homework before buying. Always some of those.

It helps to remember that there wasn’t anything particularly special or unique about MacArthur Court at the time it was built. It was a fairly standard design for the day. It only became special as the result of other universities replacing those worn-out arenas with higher capacity, more modern styles that unfortunately lacked the acoustic properties of the older designs. Everyone’s had a special something in their life (clothing, car, etc) that eventually wore out. Give Matt Court the time, team and fan energy, and it may just surprise us. The USC and Indiana games gave a hint of that.

Being that college football is now NFL Jr, the trajectory for spring games may likely follow the same policy path of fan entertainment sans injury installed by the NFL for the Pro Bowl. Anyone for flag football?

One of the things I like best about Dana is that he’s willing to treat his players like adults - whether they are or not. Scolding and sending them to their bedrooms without supper like Cronin is just not his style. Wait and see.

You can always play defense.

Teaching involves both the emotions and the intellect of students. In a perfect world, behavioral issues dominate only during the early grades, slowly giving way to intellectual knowledge as students gain control of their emotions and mature. In a perfect world. These day, teachers know you’d best be ready for anything coming through the classroom door. At times, this seems most apparent in school sports, but only because our attention rests there more often than it does the classroom. In this day and age, on any given team, the wide range of mature behavior among athletes is positively mind boggling. That’s why coaches who can juggle both behavior and the play book in developing student athletes are so highly prized. John Calipari and Mick Cronin come to mind. Dana Altman does not. Like any coach, Altman is most successful when he has a high level of sustained mental focus among his players; ie, emotional maturity. But unlike Calipari or Cronin, when he doesn’t, he doesn’t want to go there.

His personality hits pretty close to home for what this is mostly about. Anyone who doesn’t recall CK’s barbed hook wit that would land and gut anyone or thing in his sights has a selective memory. Just like his approach to football, he took no prisoners. It’s just that we weren’t on the receiving end in those days. Expecting fealty from anyone no longer associated with your team is just kidding yourself, especially when it’s a coach who - unlike players - is expected to be a voice for the program. No one likes being on the receiving end of Chip’s one liners, but that’s life. Water off a Duck’s back.

Who’d of thunk there were that many Carolinas, and that they all hate one another enough to vote that many times?

Good assement, but pretty much leaves me where I was before: what are the Ducks’ “shortcomings”, and how do we learn to handle such situations, “largely specific to that moment and that matchup”?

They kept talking about how they wanted to replicate Mac in building a new arena. Maybe that’s all they had in mind?

Always felt that to be a top O (or D) coordinator requires the personality traits of a chess player. Knowing your opposite’s play book and response tendencies is fundamental homework. That’s why George Patton is a good example of a great coordinator (“I read your book Rommel!”). That said, it’s the players that still have to execute it. Because the two quarterbacks through which we view much of Stein’s performance were such polar opposites, it’s hard at this time to judge him fairly. Nix’s ‘go for it’ impulse as opposed to Gabriel’s more cerebral ‘play the %’ approach (not to mention size difference) made for very different approaches to the game. And, that doesn’t take into consideration RBs and receivers, and the playbook/tendencies of their counterparts. Maybe with Moore we’ll get a better feel for his abilities. Right now, for me, the jury is still out.

Ref bias aside, I think you just have to accept that the first stop of any two game B1G east swing is likely going to be affected by jet lag. Players are just not going to be ‘on’ in the same way they’ll be in the 2nd game. 1st game jet lag is going to make it harder to shift gears and pressure opponents without fouling. Might be more what happened to Cronin’s team when they dug themselves into that hole with the Terps. It’s just a fact of life that basketball scheduling doesn’t allow for cushion days to get players adjusted.

Plus, he’d also get to add an eye patch to his wardrobe.

I’m not one for excuse making, but I can’t quite get past the feeling that duhOSU was motivated not only by two losses in a row to us, plus the twin Rose Bowl trophies of CFP quarterfinal & (for them) the ‘real’ B1G championship, but by being the default representative of the traditional Big Ten members looking to see this west coast upstart put in its place for having made a mockery of their long, proud tradition in only one season.

The thing I like best about this coming championship is how Ohio State has worked themselves into the unquestionable role of favorite. They are now like Oregon sitting at 13-0 with nothing but themselves to look at in the mirror. No more Ducks or SEC losses to churn the bile. Norte Dame, on the other hand, is an underdog wild card, a team and program that is truly feeling it for the first time in 37 years. That sort of pent-up and unleashed motivation can make for a very unpredictable game. On paper, the Irish probably have no case for being on the same field with the Buckeyes. On paper.