Christmas Wishes from Sons of Pepe
With Watch, Monitor, Don't on pause thanks to the schedule, some season's greetings
I sat down to write this week’s Watch, Monitor, Don’t (read by dozens—tell your friends!) and quickly realized it wasn’t my imagination; there’s really not much on the slate during Christmas, including (gasp!) a December Saturday completely devoid of Division I basketball. If that seems like it should be illegal to you, help get me on the ballot in your district and together we can create a world that forces amateur student-athletes away from home during the holidays so we can be amused by our televisions. Oh yes, we can.
But just because we can’t watch much basketball—although there is a SCINTILLATING Iona-Seattle matchup Friday afternoon for one and all, and 18th-ranked Indiana hosts Kennesaw State in a bit of a trap game later in the evening—doesn’t mean we can’t think about it, talk about it, dream about it, miss its sights and sounds…
[drifts off into a weird daydream]
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Whoops. Anyway.
College basketball has spent much of December being buck wild with itself; did y’all know Loyola Marymount has a transitive win over Duke? The Lions beat Wake Forest in Jamaica and the Demon Deacons knocked off the Blue Devils earlier this week. Remember when dopes like me thought Creighton was a legitimate threat to make the Final Four? In Joe Lunardi’s latest bracket, the Blue Jays were in the First Four in Dayton. The Illinois bandwagon slammed into a guardrail and burst into flame; fortunately, all passengers were thrown clear of the wreckage ahead of the explosion. Clemson—Clemson—has 10 wins already. In basketball! Apparently on purpose!
So in lieu of trying to manufacture a Watch, Monitor, Don’t out of this skeleton schedule, we’re going to hand out some Christmas wishes for college basketball programs.
Colby, this is dorky as all get out why are you doing this?
Because it’s the season, dammit. Get festive. Slip on a dumb sweater and hide in a corner at gatherings. It’s tradition, you mongrels; as Wayne said, we don’t f*** with tradition.
For Creighton, the continued good health of Ryan Kalkbrenner. The big missed Creighton’s last three games—close losses to BYU, Arizona State and Marquette, kind of—before returning to action Thursday and leading the Blue Jays to a spanking of Butler. Kalkbrenner’s presence makes everyone on that team better because of what he can do on both ends of the floor—less is required of Ryan Nembhard as a scorer, leaving him free to create, and Kalkbrenner combined with the talents of Baylor Scheierman and Arthur Kaluma give Creighton an edge on the glass they clearly missed without the Florissant, Missouri native (minus-32 rebounding margin over the games he missed; plus-18 against Butler). I still believe, Creighton.