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Time to Get Properly Pumped

By
Max Univers
on April 9, 2009 11:37 AM |
Announcer: Good evening. And welcome again to "Pumping Up With Klaus & Mouse", the informative training program for the serious weightlifter. 

Mouse: Hello! We're back! 

Klaus: I am Klaus. 

Mouse: And I am Mouse. 

Together: And we just want to.. Pump.. [ clap ] ..you up! 

Klaus: Alright. But before we can pump you up tonight, we have to answer a piece of viewer mail. 

Mouse: Ya. Ya. This is a letter we received from a Max Univers. I'll only read an excerpt, so I don't go into his loser details. "Dear Klaus & Mouse: I have recently seen your.. mo-.. mo-" 

Klaus: Moronic. 

Mouse: "...Your moronic show, and have wondered why you don't open your own gym to train basketball players. Maybe you are too stupid." [ crumples letter ] You know, maybe you thought this letter would make us angry; but it only makes us sad. 

Klaus: Really, ya. We are sad, you know, because anyone who calls us "stupid" is really just jealous. Because their coach looks at us, then looks at his players, and realzies his team is full of little girly-men! 

Mouse: Ya. Ya, girly-men. Hear me now and believe me later - but don't think about it ever, because, if you try to think, you might cause a flabalanche! 

Klaus: Ya! 

Mouse: Poor little girly-men, alone in their hilltop girly-gym! 

Klaus: Sorry, Mr. Girly-Man, but here's a treat for your fans! 

[ Klaus & Mouse flex their muscles egotistically ] 

Klaus: Alright. 

Mouse: Oh, and thank you so much for the letter. [ puts crumpled letter in his mouth and swallows ] 

Klaus: Ya! Ya, don't think for a minute he's not eating it, because believe me he is! 

Mouse: That was one delicious piece of girly-man. 

Klaus: Ya! You know, but we're not here to eat. We're here to... 

Together: Pump.. [ clap ] ..you up!

(Based on an original script from Saturday Night Live)
Continue reading Time to Get Properly Pumped.

Cavel Witter Leaves Team

By
Max Univers
on April 5, 2009 1:01 AM |
Rumors that junior guard Cavel Witter would be leaving the Jays at the end of the season have been rampant for weeks. Now that those rumors have been corroborated by actual sources contacted by actual reporters, and Witter has in fact made it official that he will transfer for his senior season, its no longer mere speculation, so lets examine it a bit further.

Witter transfered into Creighton from the Kansas City area, a juco player in the same recruiting class as Booker Woodfox -- although Witter played just one season in juco. Lost in all of the Booker talk was the fact that, before this past season, if you had to pick a player to have a breakout season, you'd have likely tabbed Witter over Woodfox. I know I would have. Their 2007-08 campaigns showed Woodfox to be a solid if unspectacular player, and Witter to be an explosive if inconsistent player.

Unfortunately, we know how the story ends: Woodfox became the MVC Player of the Year and an All-American, while Witter became buried on the bench and will not even finish his eligibility at Creighton.

He was never a fabulous defender, and his style of point guard play was a change-up from the standard pass-first style Dana Altman traditionally recruits, but man, could Witter score when he was hot! For a player who was never a regular starter, his ability to score played a huge role in three of the biggest wins of his two seasons at Creighton.
Continue reading Cavel Witter Leaves Team.

Kenneth Elaborates...Sorta

By
Max Univers
on April 1, 2009 12:42 PM |
So, apparently Kenneth Kenny "Doc" Sadler is taking some heat over his comments about how playing Creighton does them no good. No less a source than Kenneth himself told the media that he's received emails and calls from "tons of folks" upset at both his tone and his words. He sat down with KETV to elaborate, and presumably, have the chance to backtrack.

But this being Kenneth, he offered no apologies, instead expanding his comments and digging an even deeper hole for himself with both Bluejay fans and, apparently, level-headed Huskers too.

You can watch the interview here, and you should, because the circuitous route he takes in explaining himself is fascinating. I'm not sure what he means by saying the Huskers would be better off playing Duke than Creighton, because that's a horrible analogy. Given their pedigree, pretty much everyone would be better off playing Duke. But Duke isn't gonna play Nebraska any more than they're going to play Creighton -- or pretty much any team is either of their conferences, for that matter.

Be sure not to miss his little white lie at the very beginning where he changes his story to claim the entire conversation started after a question about playing TWICE A YEAR. If that's actually true, than either the reporter (and every media outlet in Nebraska) is lying, or Kenneth has changed his story to paint himself in a better light. I don't know which and I won't speculate. But someone is not being truthful here.

Oh, and I've heard Dana Altman say on multiple occasions, both in person and in print, that he'd like to play twice, so for Kenneth to claim Dana has told him otherwise in private is insulting, disingenuous and wrong.

I did have a good laugh towards the end, though, as he tries so valiantly to pitch himself as a philanthropist, playing Creighton out of the kindness of his heart. That's gold.
Continue reading Kenneth Elaborates...Sorta.

Booker Woodfox, All-American

By
Max Univers
on March 30, 2009 5:12 PM |
If you're an honorable mention All-American, do you still list yourself as an All-American on your resume? I mean, most news outlets only list the First and Second Teams, and the players mentioned honorably are covered only in their hometown papers and blogs.

I say "Hell Yes". There are roughly 4,000 players in Division 1 Basketball, and around 50 of them are named All-Americans by the Associated Press. That's just over 1%.

Booker Woodfox, the Jays' guard from Lewisville, Texas, was named an All-American on Monday, placing him among the Top 1% of players in Division 1 hoops. I'd say that's cause for celebration, even if it is "just" an honorable mention. There's a litany of players considered among the Bluejay Bouguoise who weren't All-Americans (at least, not as named by the Associated Press, which is the only one that really matters, despite the litany of lesser awards listed in the media guide).

Sir Rodney Buford was. Kyle Korver was.

But Nate Funk and Anthony Tolliver were not. Ben Walker and Ryan Sears were not. Chad Gallagher and Bob Harstad were not.

Booker Woodfox is, and forever will be, an All-American.
Continue reading Booker Woodfox, All-American.

The Inventor of Mini-Donuts Dies

By
Max Univers
on March 25, 2009 11:33 PM |
You can imagine my surprise and trepidation when I logged onto the Bluejay Cafe message board tonight and saw my handle as the title of a thread on the front page:

Sad Day for All, Especially Polyfro

Needless to say, I immediately clicked on this thread, curious to see what I was supposed to be sad about. It had been a good day, I'd thought: I'd supervised a commercial shoot that day, and after getting home, managed to make pancakes in a frying pan without burning them. Don't laugh. This is a tougher task than you imagine it to be. Without a griddle, pancakes are damn hard to cook.

I wouldn't classify it as a great day, but it certainly wasn't a sad day. I wondered what the writer of the thread, a loyal reader who goes by the handle "Jayball", knew about my day that I didn't. There's three things someone can do to piss me off post haste:

Spill my beer, steal my mini-donuts, and disrespect either Creighton or the Minnesota Twins. Do any of those three, and we're going to have trouble with a capital T, as a country western star once sang.

Add a temporary fourth item to that list.

Edward Anderson, inventor of the Lil' Orbits automatic donut machine and the man who perfected the batter that went with it, died at the age of 78. The inventor of the mini-donut, dead!

As I wrote on the message board:
Continue reading The Inventor of Mini-Donuts Dies.

Kenneth Stirs The Pot (Again)

By
Max Univers
on March 24, 2009 8:41 PM |
"A loss to Creighton hurts us. A win over Creighton, the only thing it does is make our fans happy. It doesn't help you come Selection Sunday. That's just the way it is."

Those words from Kenneth Kenny "Doc" Sadler, head coach of Nebraska, just the latest in a slew of pot-stirring comments about Creighton from the Head Red. Or at least, that's the version that the Omaha World-Herald printed in a front-page story today. Since Day One, Sadler has taken opportunity after opportunity to take shots at the team down the road. An interesting tact to take, considering the fans he's speaking to tend to believe that school is irrelevant and the inferior program (despite ample facts to the contrary).

Having not grown up in this area, I don't have the deep-seated hatred of Nebraska that native Creightonians do. My attitude is more of indifference; the only reason I pay any more attention to them than, say, Iowa State or Missouri is because the Jays play them every year. I don't care for Sadler, but that's got nothing to do with Nebraska, per se. I didn't like Steve Alford or Bruce Weber, either. Its funny, all three coaches had something in common:

All three made no secret of their hatred for Creighton.
Continue reading Kenneth Stirs The Pot (Again).

Upon Further Reflection...

By
Max Univers
on March 17, 2009 2:51 PM |
Lots of things have been written here and elsewhere in the aftermath of Sunday's disappointment, and the inevitable backlash has begun. You wouldn't believe the emails I've been getting -- I could become a pretty successful freelance joke writer just by recycling the material I've received the last two days. I feel the need to explain something:

I can't speak for everyone, and wouldn't presume to do so, but I don't think Creighton feels a sense of entitlement or that the NCAA Tournament bid was "stolen" from them. I don't think this is a conspiracy, nor do I believe that the NCAA is some over-arching cartel that is out to get the mid-major team. Its disappointing that the criteria favored by the committee is increasingly advantageous to "major" teams. But there's no conspiracy here.

On Saturday after Creighton got hammered by Illinois State, I remember telling someone "Well, there goes the NCAA tourney bid." It was quite a discussion that night, with me, the eternal optimist, strangely playing the role of Negative Noonan. There were chinks in Creighton's armor I figured the committee, armed with a blowout in their last game, wouldn't ignore: a BAD home to Drake, non-conference losses to non-Tournament teams, and no marquee win. In other words, they were a bubble team. Win that game, they're not a bubble team. They lost it, though, and badly.

Did Arizona have chinks in their armor? Absolutely, and I outlined many of them here over the  weekend. Same deal with every team on the bubble. That's why they were on the bubble in the first place. If they had sterling resumes, they'd be locks and someone else would be on the bubble.
Continue reading Upon Further Reflection....

A Tale of Two Coaches

By
Max Univers
on March 16, 2009 11:15 PM |
Two fellow Valley coaches had public comments in the aftermath of Selection Sunday. See if you can decipher who said which comment.

Coach X: "Am I upset that the league didn't get more than one team in? Yes. Am I upset that Creighton didn't get in? I won't say what I feel about that."

Coach Z: "What's very frustrating is to listen to the criticism that Creighton took, that we all take. You can never satisfy that. We can never get the Lakers on our schedule three times a year. It's not going to happen. So if that's the criteria, we cannot win that game."

After the jump...
Continue reading A Tale of Two Coaches.

Stood Up

By
Max Univers
on March 15, 2009 8:20 PM |
Joe Lunardi finally missed one in his final bracket, and wouldn't you know it, it was Creighton that he was wrong about. There's a couple of schools of thought about what happened to Creighton today, both of which contain puke-inducing unpleasantries.

One: the Jays were the proverbial "Last Team In", and were bumped for Mississippi State when the otherwise NIT-bound school won the SEC Tournament and thus, the automatic bid.

Two: the Jays were much further down the pecking order than any of the pundits believed, and had been out of the discussion pretty much all week.

I tend to believe it was the second scenario, hard as that is to digest. Mississippi State winning removed Penn State or Auburn from the field, not Creighton or St. Mary's. There were only four mid-major at large bids, and the 11/12 seeds that used to go to those schools are now going to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, etc. Those teams never used to get double-digit seeds. In the post-George Mason world, they do. Fewer and fewer mid-majors in the field leads to fewer chances one or two of them advance to the second weekend, or, God forbid, the third weekend. Every year the number of those teams getting in gets smaller, and that's what is upsetting to me.

Taking a step back, Creighton didn't have a fabulous resume. But the mid-majors that did have a good resume got screwed too, and that doesn't bode well for years when Creighton DOES have a great resume. The 2001 team that got an at-large doesn't get that chance in this environment; the 2003 team doesn't get a top-six seed in this environment. Wichita State doesn't get a favorable draw leading to a Sweet 16 run in this environment. It just doesn't happen, and that's really, really upsetting to me. I'm not upset over Creighton so much as I am about mid-majors in general.

Does this impact recruiting? Does it affect attendance? Valid questions with difficult answers.

This entire scenario is insulting, its demeaning and perhaps worst of all, its a wet dream for Jay Bilas and Digger Phelps. And as you know, anything that makes those two clowns happy is automatically "List of Things That Piss Me Off List".

*****

In my Selection Sunday Primer, I noted teams to be wary of seeing on the board. That list was gleaned from lots of sources, and was not as far out of left field as it wound up seeming.

"If one of the group consisting of Penn State, Auburn, Florida and Arizona shows up, its an ominous sign. If two of that group show up, its curtains."

When Arizona showed up in the very first region that was revealed, it was like getting punched in the stomach by 1985 Dolph Lundgren. Arizona was probably the worst team of that group, so them getting a bid was like getting a crisp meat burrito shoved up my butt. Thanks to some random Husker troll on the Bluejay Cafe for that insulting analogy, incidentally. I swore I'd steal it and use it eventually, and here I am mere days later, doing just that. Thanks.

Surprisingly, none of the other three in that group got in. But lots of other bad things did happen. Minnesota and Wisconsin got in with double-digit seeds, meaning they were closer to the bubble than we'd been led to believe. San Diego State and St. Mary's didn't get in, but Maryland did.

And around 5:40, it was official: Creighton, their 26 wins and conference co-championship were stood up for the dance.
Continue reading Stood Up.

Selection Sunday Primer

By
Max Univers
on March 15, 2009 12:15 PM |
Creighton is going to be one of the last four teams in, or the last four teams out. Its very close, and depending on which prediction you believe, they're barely in or barely out. Fortunately, the decision has already been made. Unfortunately, we won't find out until 5 PM.

When those brackets are revealed, there are four teams Jays fans do not want to see. If one of the group consisting of Penn State, Auburn, Florida and Arizona shows up, its an ominous sign. If two of that group show up, its curtains. Either scenario means the Selection Committee valued # of wins over RPI Top 50/Top 100 teams rather than winning percentage, and probably overall Strength of Schedule. Both of those stats inherently reward BCS teams, and hurt Mid-Majors.

There are three additional teams Jays fans don't want to see, at least not until Creighton's name has been revealed: San Diego State, Saint Mary's, and Maryland are all bubble teams that probably are grouped around Creighton. These teams getting a bid gives us no insight into the motives of the committee, but each team from this group that gets in leaves one fewer spot for Creighton to take.

We pretty much know who the "last" bubble teams are. The higher they're seeded, the narrower the bubble. Watching where they get seeded, if they get in, will also give us an indication as to the Jays' fate. If Big Ten bubble teams Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin not only get in but get single-digit seeds, its bad news for Creighton. And if mid-majors we know will be getting bids such as Xavier, Dayton and Utah are seeded 8 or lower, that's also bad news for the Jays.

The Selection Committee chairman told CBS this morning that the field is already decided on, and that seeding those 64 teams is all that remains. I believe that's true, and that they also know which team will be removed from the board should Mississippi State win the SEC title and steal a bid.

Is Creighton one of those teams that is in? If you like reading between the lines and believing conspiracy theories, ESPN has been giving us a lot to chew on today. Internet rumors have been around for years that Joe Lunardi has inside information on Selection Sunday -- his incredible reputation for being correct is based on his last posted bracket, which always goes up an hour before the brackets are revealed. Almost every year, he has one or two suspicious changes in that last bracket that seem to indicate some kind of insider info.

Based on ESPN's arguments today, I think they already have that info. They attacked Creighton and defended Arizona to an unbelievable degree. While barely mentioning Maryland, Penn State and San Diego State, they spent an entire segment attempting to assassinate the Creighton resume while pumping false life into Arizona's. Why do that?

Joe Lunardi got his insider info as the bracket was completed last night, and ESPN knows who's in and who's out. They're making Creighton the poster child for Mid-Major at-large bids, and Arizona the poster child for BCS snubs.

Of course, this is all speculation. A few hours from now, it will all be moot and we'll know for sure whether we'll be preparing excuses to get out of work Thursday/Friday for a game, or whether we'll be waiting in line at Morrison Stadium for *** tickets.

You bet.
« CBS Sports BlogPoll | Main Index | Archives | Polyfro Flashback »

Max Univers (not his real name) is a graphic designer and author of two books, neither of which you’ve probably heard of. A 2001 graduate of Creighton University’s Journalism program, Max takes time out of his busy nightlife to share his thoughts on Jays hoops here during the season.

Why Univers? Its his favorite font, plus it just sounds really cool as a surname.

Why Polyfro? Years and years ago, Max had a giant afro wig that he wore as part of a Halloween costume. Not wishing to retire its giant fro awesomeness after the holiday, he began wearing the wig out in public as part of his everyday ensemble. One night at a dance club, the DJ called out the moniker over the soundsystem. Max thought it sounded cool, and purchased the URL shortly thereafter.

More questions? Send me an email: max-at-polyfro-dot-com. I like jokes, story tips, and generally all correspondence involving Bluejay athletics. Emails that point out how stupid I am and/or where I should go after I die are not encouraged.

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