Month: October 2023

One of my favorite movies was on today, Searching for Bobby Fischer; Joe Mantegna is a sportswriter who is surprised to find out that his 11-year old son is a chess prodigy. It is a great movie: Mantegna, Ben Kingsley, Lawrence Fishburne, William H Macy.

Anyway, when I was in 8th grade 50 years ago, chess was a big deal. Bobby Fischer was a quirky chess grandmaster who was playing Russian Boris Spassky for the world title, and it got a ton of attention— for a couple years in the early 70’s, chess was a big deal.

A friend of my parents had taught me how to play; in May of 1973, there was a tournament of all the Catholic grade schools in Albany County, probably 50 or so kids on a Saturday morning. Two kids from our school went; I had never beaten the other kid. Ever.

So our 8th grade teacher picks us up at the other kid’s house to go to the tournament, but we played a game before he got there, and I beat him. This had never happened before.

We get to the tournament, played in a ratty old gym, and the games begin. I won my first game, but the other kid, who seriously was a much better player than me, he got beat and just like that, he was eliminated. He very rarely played sports as a kid, and the competition apparently wasn’t his thing. I sucked at sports, but enjoyed playing.

Thinking about it, it was a lot like the scenes in this movie; just a bunch of nerdy kids hunched over chess boards, studying their moves.

While my parents’ friend taught me how to play chess, I had my own ideas, which weren’t better ideas, but I was incapable of grinding out moves, playing patterns, the way great players do.

I just played fast, got my queen out as quickly as possible, tried to do damage with the queen, and it often got people off their games, because it was different.

So I win two more games, and now there are a lot fewer kids in the gym; my 4th game, the board is set up with plastic chess pieces. My opponent requests that we switch to a wooden chess set, a classic Bobby Fischer mind game move, which I had no idea of at the time.

He crushed me, not even close and my teacher took the two of us home. I was happy that at least I won a few games— had never played in a tournament before.

The phone rings in our house and it is a nun from the chess tournament; I had lost, but I wasn’t done playing yet, there were still games to be played to determine who won the championship, so my father drove me back to the gym and he had to sit there watching his nerdy kid play chess.

I won two more games, and the whole event came down to this: I was playing this girl in the last game of the tournament. If she won, she won the championship and I finished 3rd.

If I won, the jerk who beat me won the championship and I finished 2nd. (don’t ask, I can’t remember how/why they ran the tournament like this, but they did)

Seriously, I didn’t like that kid after he beat me; I went over to look at the 2nd/3rd place prizes. If the 3rd place prize was good, I was considering losing on purpose so he wouldn’t win the tournament, but the 3rd place prize was cruddy, and the 2nd place prize was this small plastic scroll that at least looked like a trophy, so I tried to win.

(This is where I realize that I was an over-thinker, even at age 13)

Anyway, we sit down and play the last game; my opponent was very nervous; her hand was shaking when she moved her chess pieces. It didn’t take long to beat her, and the jerk won the championship trophy.

50 years later, the small plastic scroll is still hanging in my living room. That was a fun day. 

— Florida Atlantic made a miraculous run to the Final Four last year, then somehow kept both their head coach and all their players, as they move up from Conference USA to the AAC.

AAC lost three teams to the Big X, added six other teams. 

Tulsa went 5-25 last year, then cleaned house; they have only one scholarship player returning.

— San Diego State beat FAU 72-71 in national semi-final, then lost to UConn in the national title game; they lost five 5th-year players from last year’s team, but re-tooled with some transfers and still figure to be prominent in the Mountain West race.

San Jose State had their first winning season since 2011.

Only new coach in Mountain West is Utah State’s Danny Sprinkle, who takes over from Ryan Odom, who bolted to Virginia Commonwealth.

— Atlantic 15 was #13 conference LY, tied for their worst ranking ever- they only got one team into the NCAA’s. VCU had won nine in a row heading into March Madness, but lost 63-51 to Saint Mary’s in their first round game. 

VCU coach Rhoades jumped from VCU to Penn State, a strange decision (Penn State will have an almost all-new roster this year). Penn State is a football school; VCU is a basketball school, you’d think a basketball coach would much rather be there.

— Big 14 hasn’t won a national championship since 2000, when Michigan State won; they didn’t have a team in the Elite 8 the last two years, had only four Sweet 16 teams the last three years. 

Purdue gets big man Zach Edey back; they figure to be very good again.

— Since 2015, five of the 15 ACC basketball teams have made it to a Final Four.

— CAA is now the Coastal Athletic Association, not the Colonial; last year they slipped from the #14 league to the #26 league- they had seven of their teams finish outside the top 300. There is a new CAA team this year; the Campbell Camels.

— Word of the Day: Continuity— the unbroken and consistent existence or operation of something over a period of time.

— BYU has bolted from the WCC to the Big 12, leaving the WCC with nine teams (for now).

Last year, Portland Pilots had players from eight different countries.

— Big X had seven teams in the NCAA’s last year; they add four new teams this year, the year before Texas/Oklahoma bolt to the SEC, then they’ll have 16 teams next year, when lot of the old Pac-12 teams join the league. 

Josh Eilert is interim coach at West Virginia, replacing Hall of Famer Bob Huggins; he’ll try to win enough games to get the interim tag removed.

— Big West was the #15 league LY; after being the #30 league in 2020, they’ve been #15-19-15 the three years since then.

Cal-Northridge hired Andy Newman, the league’s only new coach this year.

Cal-Davis player Drew Carter used to be a quarterback at Colorado; he threw 12 passes for the Buffaloes in 2021. I’m told that Colorado has a new football coach now, and his son is the QB, so Carter is at Cal-Davis playing basketball now.

— Princeton got to the Sweet 16 last year, upsetting Arizona/Missouri; they were the 4th Ivy League team to make the Sweet 16, the first since Cornell in 2010.

When Magic Johnson/Larry Bird played in the Final Four in 1979, one of the other two teams in the Final Four that year was the Penn Quakers.

— Rick Pitino is the new coach at St John’s; he overhauled the roster, with nine players hitting the road, as Pitino added 10 new players, including two guys from the Ivy League.

St John’s hasn’t made the NCAA’s since 2019; they’ve made it twice since 2011, it would be really surprising if Pitino doesn’t make them a perennial top 25 team.

— Tobin Anderson replaced Pitino at Iona; he led Fairleigh Dickinson to the NCAA’s LY, where they upset Purdue.

Iona has been in six of the last seven NCAA Tournaments, so there are big expectations in New Rochelle, but they have only one player back from last year- they added 12 new players. 

Today we’re looking at how NFL offenses do on their first drive of each half; four games for each team, so eight drives for everyone.

First drive of a game:
Who game plans best during the week?
— 49ers have three TD’s and FG on their first drive of a game, 24 points (41 plays, 255 yards).

Denver has three TD’s on their first drives (35 plays, 236 yards)

Rams have two TD’s, two FG’s on their first drive (44 plays, 248 yards)

— Miami is averaging 10.8 yards/play on its opening drives (28 plays, 302 yards); they’ve scored two TD’s and field goal on those drives.

— Minnesota’s offense has run 21 plays for 129 yards on opening drives, but the opponents’ defense has outscored the Viking offense, 7-0, thanks to a 99-yard pick-6. Not good.

— Giants/Browns have both been outscored 7-3 on their first drives. Giants gave up a blocked FG for a TD, Browns gave up a defensive TD.

— In their four games, Jets have run 14 plays for 32 yards on their first drive.
Steelers have run 17 plays for 24 yards.
Jaguars have run 22 plays for 71 yards.

None of those teams have scored on an opening drive.

First drive of second half:
Who makes the best offensive adjustments at halftime?
— Green Bay has three TD’s on their first drive of 2nd half (29 plays, 222 yards)
Eagles have two TDs, two FG’s on their first drive of 2nd half (34 plays, 160 yards)

— Dallas has run 45 plays for 234 yards on their first drive of 3rd quarter, but scored only one TD- they kicked three FG’s, too.

— Surprisingly, Arizona has run 33 plays for 227 yards, scoring 18 points, part of why they’re 3-1 against the spread already.

— Buffalo has run 36 plays for 208 yards, but only has a TD and a FG to show for it.

— Detroit has run only 10 plays for 12 yards on its first 3rd quarter drive; three 3/outs and a lost fumble. They only gained 84 yards on 16 plays on their first drive of the game, surprising.

— There are four teams who haven’t scored on their first drive of third quarter:
Denver 20 plays, 129 yards
Detroit 10 plays, 12 yards
Houston 19 plays, 14 yards
Las Vegas 23 plays, 79 yards, 2 INT’s.

First drive of all eight halves:
— Rams/Eagles play each other this week; they also share the NFL lead with 33 points scored on their first drive of a half.

Dolphins, Packers, 49ers are next, with 31 points each.

— Dallas has gained 446 yards on 79 plays (29 points) on their first drive of a half, the most yards of any team, followed by the Rams (77 plays, 438 yards), Eagles (76 plays, 425 yards)

— Giants have run 71 plays for 320 yards, good for 10 points, but they also gave up a TD on a blocked FG, so they’re only +3 in points on first drives.

— Vikings have run 47 plays for 236 yards, scoring a TD, giving up a TD to the defense.

— Houston Texans have run total of 41 plays for only 83 yards on their first drive of a half, fewest yards in the league. 

Detroit, surprisingly, has run 26 plays for only 96 yards.

NFL games are relatively short (nine or so drives per team); the first drive of each half makes up maybe 20-25% of all drives, which is significant.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at which defenses do best/worst in this situation.