[NU Sports] Please unsubscribe me. Thanks.

[Jonathan Michael Hawkins]

On Mon, 6 Feb 2006, Martinitis at aol.com wrote:
> And they are getting just too negative for my blood as well.

<sigh>

Well, that's true.  Between focusing entirely on "The Curse" and the "I 
Love Jay Mariotti and Rick Telander [oh, and Fire Randy Walker, too!]" 
Brigade, I'm not sure how much of a "fan" list this is any more.  It used 
to be like 100% fan.  Maybe now it's 70% fan, 30% "I went to NU and have 
found that incessant negativity wins friends and influences people".

I'm pretty sure I could write "the weather's so nice out today" on the 
list and someone would come back with "No thanks to Randy Walker.  And if 
Mark Murphy doesn't fire him soon I'm going to continue to give my West 
Lot pass away to Michigan fans". ;-)

Okay, enough joking about.  For real, here's some positive ideas and 
commentary:

It's worth noting, and this is partially my fault, no one wrote in to talk 
about our 'Cats incredibly heart-filled performance on Saturday against 
Michigan State at home.  I'll try to rectify that - I was at the game and 
had a great time.

We lost, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a time when everyone played with 
the kind of guts and emotion that were displayed out there on the court on 
Saturday night.

We couldn't seem to get our open shots to fall as much as we wanted them 
to, but we did create those open looks and also gave MSU fits on defense. 
Most of the guys out there looked like they had the fires of hell behind 
their eyes.  At one point Cote was bending over under the basket to tie 
his shoe or something, MSU had gotten the rebound and was about to go down 
the court, and Vedran shoved some MSU guy who'd pissed him off.  The 
Spartan guy goes flying *over* Cote and lands in a heap.  No call. 
Vedran was on fire with anger and passion.  He fouled out with 2 minutes 
left, leaving to a prolonged standing ovation.

That no-call was typical of the evening, actually.  The referees were just 
horrid on both sides of the ball, but it certainly made the game more 
interesting.  Levels of ire increased on both sides due to the poor 
officiating, to the point where MSU tried to get into a fight with us at 
the end of the first half.  Michael Jenkins got a regular old foul (under 
the limit), but then there were offsetting technicals for fighting after 
the foul, and then one of the MSU assistant coaches got into it, which 
resulted in them having two Ts to our one.  So Vedran took two free throws 
and made them both.  Michigan State got the ball after that for Jenkins' 
original foul.  We were quite amused.

Moore drained some nice looking threes, and I think Carmody may be warming 
up to Cote - some of the postgame comments to Eanet indicated that we 
should probably see much more play time out of him in the rest of the 
season.  He went from 6 minutes vs. Indiana to 19 in Saturday's game.

Usually losses just crush me and leave me feeling tired and depressed, but 
this one was so entertaining and scrappy I just couldn't feel bad about 
it.

Hopefully we can translate that passion and intensity into some wins 
against lesser Big Ten teams than MSU.

Go 'Cats,

Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan Michael Hawkins
<http://www.jomiha.com>