Reports of Nate Funk's demise have been greatly exaggerated. He'd been 20-64 from the field in the last five games, and just 3-26 from behind the arc. And he had just two points -- on two free-throws -- in the first half of last night's first-round contest in Hawaii. But in the second half, holy baloney, he lit it up. 20 points on 8-11 shooting, including 4-5 from behind the arc. His last shot was from Korver range, 30 feet out as the shot clock was set to expire.
Its amazing what good shooting does for a team. Creighton suddenly plays well, and beats Valparaiso by 25. They played with intensity of both ends of the floor, disrupting and contesting almost every Valpo shot attempt while knocking down open looks on their own end. At the final horn, Creighton had shot over 50% from the field for the first time all year.
The 13-2 to start the second half was the best stretch of play they've put together all year. Valpo didn't know what hit them -- and before the under-16 timeout, a 7 point halftime lead had swelled to 18. From there, Valpo made a run or two, but was never closer than 13 the rest of the way and ultimately fell 68-43.
That's all good stuff, but what I really want to talk about is the clowns doing the game on TV. God bless Cox, to their eternal credit they figured out a satellite uplink to get the game feed from a local Hawaii TV station and throw it on Cox 2. But I have never seen two worse announcers in my lifetime, and I've watched more games than there are numbers to count them.
I should qualify this by saying that whenever the game starts at 11:30 pm local time (7:30 Hawaii time), I'm going to be slightly punchy anyway. If I've been at the bar for 5 hours before tip-off, I'll be even slightly more so. And if the announcer looks and sounds like James Lipton's brother -- complete with Lipton signatures such as weird comments, ironic laughter and over-enunciation of words -- I'm going to be incredibly punchy.
Here's where the 1am bartime in Nebraska sucks -- when a game starts at 11:30, you can't go to the bar to watch it. If I'd been at the bar, I don't hear Soupy and his inane call of the game, and you might have gotten a story about the actual game.
You bet.
So I get home from the bar at 11:29, and turn on Cox 2 only to discover the previous game ran late. So the between-games satellite bumper is up, with a graphic saying "Broadcast will begin at 11:39 pm", which was curious because the broadcast was originating from Hawaii. Whatever. The audio was an endless loop promo for Big Island Candies -- Try our new Corn Crunch Bars! Call us or go online to BigIslandCandies.com to order! -- for five minutes. It was strangely hypnotic, when I wasn't laughing hysterically trying to mimic the cheesy-announcer voice.
Its worth noting that their on-screen graphics were the Fox Sports Net graphics -- circa 1999. That's right folks, from the last millennium, not one but TWO revisions ago. And every logo on the screen was stretched out of proportion. That, and the Big Island Candies Cheesy Announcer Voice Guy, were double-teaming to drive me nuts.
Then the broadcast began. I cannot even explain the awesomeness of their 1982-inspired opening animation. It was like a Duran Duran video, only it wasn't making me hungry like a wolf, it was just making me sick. I wish I had DVR'd the game so I could put this on YouTube.
The first shot we see is the announcing team of Jim Leahey (Soupy) and Artie Wilson (T.C.). Props if you can figure out why I'm calling Artie "TC".
Soupy is nervous, glancing at his notes, never once looking into the camera.
"The Kray Ton Bluejays are coached by...(glancing at notes)...(still looking for it)...Dana Altman."
The "Kray Ton" pronunciation never ceased to be hilarious. It would be tempting to say he simply put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable, but what he was really doing was turning it into two discrete words, one syllable each.
The Kray Ton point guard, Josh Dottsler, is coming off knee surgery.
Kray Ton has a lot of fans here in the building. Why wouldn't you want to leave Omaha, Nebraska?
Manny Gahkoo from Paris, Frahnce is into the Kray Ton lineup, replacing Tolliver.
Pierce Hibb-na just checked into the Kray Ton lineup, and his man has already torched him for 8 points! (Sorry, I embellished this one. But I couldn't remember anything he said about Hibma, other than the fact that Soupy kept turning the "M" into an "N". Not sure whether Pierce Hibna is any better than Pierce Hibma, but it would appear he's a bit quicker...must be because the N has one fewer stroke than an M. Oh, and for the record, Pierce is a good guy who works hard, but he just gets beat an awful lot on defense for my taste.)
Valpo had a player whose last name was Mbaye, and he played almost the entire game. The way Soupy called Mbaye's name, it sounded like "Hibma". I caught myself a half-dozen times saying, "Hibma's in the game?" Not cool, getting me all worked up for nothing. Eventually, I figured out Mbaye was not Hibma but Mbaye, and Hibna was not Mbaye but Hibma. Got that? It took me a while too, don't worry.
Soupy was enamored with player's nationalities. Gahkoo was never just Gakou, he was "Manny Gahkoo from Paris, Frahnce". And it wasn't just Kray Ton.
Valpo's Calem MacLeod is from New Zealand. I learned this because Soupy told me six times.
Moussa Mbaye (not to be confused with Pierce Hibma or his bizarro twin, Pierce Hibna) is from Dakar, Senegal. Thank you Soupy.
Urule Igbavboa, whose name Soupy pronounced about six different ways, had a great Afro and his name is admittedly pretty tough to pronounce, so I'll let it slide.
They also had a guy named Samuel Haanpaa, who as Soupy told us 19 times, is a native of Finland. Soupy, channelling Harry Caray, also told us, "Its pronounced Haa-nn-paa. In Hawaiian, it would be Haa-aan-paa."
Wow. Just...wow. If he'd said to TC, "You know, Haanpaa spelled backwards is Aapnaah", or yelled out "Holy Cow!", you might have had a fighting chance of convincing me it actually was Larry Caray, the less-talented oft-forgot younger half-brother of Harry who was banished to the Islands in 1963 so he wouldn't disparage the family name by working games in the Continental 48.
Soupy: "You know, Shawn Huff is a native of Finland."
TC: "He is? You know who else is?"
Soupy: "Samuel Haanpaa is a native of Finland."
TC: "Yes!"
Soupy: "You know, Huff spelled backwards is Ffah."
***
So on that note, lets get the Heee-Haw Player of the Game awarded and get outta here. Its tempting to genetically combine Mbaye, Hibna and Hibma to concoct the greatest bench player in D1 hoops, not to mention so I could name Moussa Hibmbaye my POTG. But I don't know enough about science to do that.
Nate Funk it is, then. 22 points, 8-11 shooting, 4-5 from three-point range. Nice. You bet.
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