There are losses and then there are LOSSES. Teams that have NCAA-asperations do not lose by double digits to the last-place team in the league. And if they blow a 10-point lead in the second half of that game, getting outscored by one player in the half -- well, that's bad. I'm an optimistic fan to the end, but even I can't spin that one.
Tuesday night, the Jays went into Normal, Illinois looking to rebound from a disappointing home loss to Drexel in the BracketBuster. Normal is a place where the Jays have traditionally struggled, but those teams they struggled against were Kevin Stallings' coached Redbird squads. Not the Porter Moser-led lower division finishers of late.
It was also the first time in the last 15 games that the game wasn't televised. For me, this couldn't have set up better. Over the weekend, I'd gone out on a first date with a girl I met earlier in the week. Now, if you didn't do anything too heinous to mess up the first date and she actually wants to go out again, you do what you can to make that happen on her schedule. Her schedule said Tuesday night. Great. No really, that's fantastic. Tuesday it is. (Damn it!)
If the game had been on TV, the decision would have been more difficult. Or at least, it might have been a decision I had to make. As it was, the game wasn't on anyway, and given the choice between listening to T. Scott call the game on the radio, or go out on a date...well, I chose the latter. Obviously.
When we got to the restaurant, I noticed (because hey, I notice these things) the bar had the Michigan State-Wisconsin game on their tiny TV, and the ESPN Bottom Line was flashing the Jays score every so often. The first score I saw: Creighton 35, Illinois State 25, Halftime. "Awesome", I thought. The Jays are on their way to a win, I can concentrate on other things.
I would steal glances from time to time at the TV, which was situated perhaps 100' from our table -- nowhere even remotely close, and the only one in the joint. Good thing I have superhuman eyesight, and a fortuitous ability to know when to glance for the score on the Bottom Line.
Its not that tough, and I'll share my secret, free of charge! ESPN's Bottom Line scores are all driven from a database, and each one is shown for the same duration: roughly 4 seconds. Additionally, the scores of big games are always in the same order -- first the games involving ranked teams, then other games of note, and finally minor games which are not shown on every rotation. If your game is one of those "minor" games, its trickier to follow. That's where Creighton used to be. Now they're part of the major rotation, so all you need to figure out is which games immediately preceed the CU score, and doing some remedial track coach math, you can figure out how many seconds until the next score update.
Good lord, I am an immense dork. But it did work. Sadly, every score update was worse than the last. The lead was shrinking, until finally Illinois State went ahead. At the 3 minute mark, they were still losing -- What was I supposed to do?
Leave the table to go somewhere and call a buddy to have him hold the phone up to a radio, thereby hearing the end of the game but sabotaging the date? Take a bullet, suck it up and stay at the table, find out about the end with a emotionless Bottom Line score update?
I stayed at the table, sucked it up, and because sometimes its just not your day, the date still ended very poorly AND the Jays lost. Everybody's a loser on this night. I should have just gone to do the phone-to-the-radio dance, because at least it would have saved me the $12 that Chocolate Truffle Crap Dessert cost me. Apparently she has no interest in going out again. And after the loss, the Jays might be done too.
Some nights you just can't win.
You bet.
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