Sunday, March 11th, 2012

What a long weekend so far...
All weekend long I have been down in Des Moines at a continuing education course at the Mercy South Physical Therapy location for lectures and lab sessions about manual therapy and the lumbar spine.  It was actually a very good course to take as it was a good refresher of my manual skills and showed me a few different techniques to use at work.  Still it was hard to sit through class from 8 to 5 each day this weekend. 

One thing that made it worse was that on Saturday morning while I was in class I had a text message from Elizabeth which said to call my parents ASAP.  Ok, that doesn't sound good.  I get a break in class and call my mom's cell... and my aunt Deb answers and explains to me that my dad is being transported to Sioux Falls hospital, and they are not sure exactly what happened yet.  OH SHIT.  She tells me just to wait until they can update me further.  Turns out that he just had a bad allergic reaction to medicine and was fine shortly after he reached the Spencer hospital.  They just sent him on to Sioux Falls to run tests and clear everything.  At first when he collapsed at home people were worried that he had a heart attack.  Very scarry. 

Another thing to note about today is that it's Selection Sunday.  The NCAA tournament is finally set!  Until this Thursday, March 15th, PUBLIC ENEMY #1 = CONNECTICUT.  That's right.  Iowa State earned the #8 seed in the South region and will match up against the #9 UConn Huskies. 

Right now I'm not sure exactly how happy I am about this match-up.  Overall, it seems that ISU was given a very difficult draw in the tournament.  They ended up as an 8 which is just what I didn't want because it means they have a very small chance to reach the Sweet 16.  Then UConn is a tough draw for a 9 seed.  They are the defending national champions of all things, and they are very well coached. 

To be honset though, I would like to have ISU match up against teams that are at least noteworthy (defending national champs qualify).  The other 9 seeds ended up being Saint Louis, Alabama, and Southern Miss.  I think UConn is a harder match-up than the other 9 seeds, but if we were playing Saint Louis I really wouldn't be as excited about it.  Southern Miss would have been fun just because their coach used to be our coach. 

If Iowa State is lucky enough to advance past UConn, they will have to play the overall highest #1 seed, Kentucky.  It looks like we have our work cut out for us.

Monday, March 5th, 2012

I just wanted to document that today is the first day since November 15th, 2005 that the Iowa State Cyclone men's basketball team has been ranked by the Associated Press.  YAY!!  Finally, a little bit of respect for my Cyclones!  They have deserved to be ranked all year.  They cracked the top-25 with a ranking of #25. 

Since my last blog, the Cyclones have also garnered a few more accolades. 

• Coach Fred Hoiberg was voted Co-Big 12 Coach of the Year by the coaches.
• Royce White has been voted Big 12 Newcomer of the Year by the Big 12 coaches.
• Royce White was selected to the All-Big 12 first team.
• Scott Christopherson was selected to the All-Big 12 third team.
• Chris Allen and Melvin Ejim received honerable mention selections.

Thank goodness that they are finally receiving some well earned respect!!

Saturday, March 3rd, 2012

WOW.  I love my Cyclones!  They just wrapped up their 2011-2012 men's basketball regular season with a huge victory at home over Baylor (ranked #9 AP, #10 ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll).  It's too bad that we didn't make it over for the game today.  It seems like this past year I've missed all of the best games (football vs Oklahoma State, the basketball game tonight, and their win over Kansas earlier this year).  Oh well.  I don't mind watching them win big games on TV. 

So what I really wanted to talk about today now that their regular season is finished is to compare the accomplishments that this year's squad has achieved compared to previous teams.  Fred Hoiberg has really done a nice job as coach to turn this team around.  It's nice to see us finally beat some teams that we haven't had much luck against for a while.  It's nice to finally have a respectable basketball team, and it will be great to go back to the NCAA tournament later this month!!  To start with, I just want to list ISU's conference wins this year along side the last year we defeated said opponent.  Keep in mind that it is currently 2012! 

March 3rd: ISU beats #9 Baylor at home 80-72.  (last home win vs Baylor 2010-11 season)
February 25th: ISU wins @ Kansas State 65-61.  (last road win vs KSU 2009-10 season)
February 22nd: ISU beats Texas Tech at home 72-54. (last home win vs TTU 2008-09)
January 18th: ISU beats Oklahoma State at home 71-68. (last home win vs OSU 2007-08)
February 18th: ISU beats Oklahoma at home 80-69.  (last home win vs Oklahoma 2006-07)
January 31st: ISU defeats Kansas State at home 72-70. (last home win vs KSU 2005-06)
January 4th: ISU beats Texas at home77-71 (last home win vs Texas 2003-04)
January 28th: ISU upsets #5 Kansas at home 72-64.  (last home win vs Kansas 2003-04)
February 11th: ISU beats Texas A&M at home 69-46. (last home win vs A&M 2003-04)
January 7th: ISU wins @ Texas A&M 74-50. (last road win vs A&M 2002-03)... I was in high school still!
January 21st: ISU wins @ Texas Tech 76-52. (last road win vs TTU 1999-2000)... remember the Y2K scare?
February 4th: ISU wins @ Oklahoma 77-70. (last road win vs Oklahoma 1995-96)... Wow.  Bill Clinton was re-elected that year over Bob Dole.  The movie Independence Day was the year's top grossing film.  I would have been in 6th grade.

Those are a few long streaks that have ended.  Other noteworthy accomplishments this year:
Winning season... sadly the first since 2005-06.
12 conference wins... the most since 2000-01 (we were 13-3 that year, regular season conference champs).
NCAA Tournament berth... the last for Iowa State was 2004-05.
Defeated a top-10 nationally ranked team... last was #5 Kansas State 2009-10.
Defeated two top-10 nationally ranked teams... 2000-2001 was the last year when we beat Kansas twice.

Hopefully their list of accomplishments for the year continues to grow!!  GO STATE!

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

HAPPY LEAP DAY!!

I just think that this is such a fun day... anything that only happens once every 4 years is so rare that it's fun!  I should say happy 21st birthday to Paul Lindgren!!! 

So while I was at work this morning I spent a little time looking up information about leap days.  I learned that back in the old days, women could only propose to their men on leap days.  Maybe this is common knowledge, but I thought it was interesting.  The reason that we have a leap year in the first place is because a year isn't exactly 365 days long.  It's actually 365 days, 5 hours, and 49 minutes.  So it actually takes a little more fine tuning to our callender than just adding a day every four years.  I found out that every 100 years we skip a leap year (except for every 400 years where we still have a leep year).  So in the years 1800 and 1900 there was no leap day, but in 2000 there was.  Maybe it's just me, but I think that's pretty interesting.

Another fun thing that Elizabeth and I did today was go out for sushi with Erick down at Tokyo Steak House in Ankeny.  I was very proud of Elizabeth because she was adventurous and willing to try something out of the norm.  We split a couple of fancy rolls (one of them was tempura fried), and then I also ordered a spicy salmon roll and a eel with avacodo roll.  Elizabeth added a Philadelphia roll.  It was very yummy.  Maybe going out for sushi could be a fun tradition that we do every leap day?  Kind of like how we make homemade pizza for Valentines day.  I enjoy little traditions like that.  I'm guessing that since it only comes around about once every 4 years that by the next leap day we will be lucky to remember this tradition anyways! 

Love you Elizabeth.

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

Ok, so I still have basketball on the brain, and I have some time to blog about it.  I can't wait to see who Iowa State will play in the NCAA tournament, and what their seed will be.  It's been so long since ISU has made the tournament... I almost forgot how much fun it is to see them make it!  Right now, according ot Joe Lunardi's bracketology projection as of February 20th, he has ISU as a #9 seed matched up with #8 Saint Louis in the first round.  I really hope that we are not an 8 or a 9 seed because that would put us in a death-match with a #1 seed in the second round if we would advance.  Really there is still quite a bit of basketball left to be played, and I think that Iowa State could end up being anything from a #7 to a #11 seed.  Just my opinion.  If that's the case, we would also play a team with a seed of 6 through 10.  Who might that be?

According to the most recent bracketology, these would be the teams:
#6 seed: Murray State, Notre Dame, New Mexico, Creighton
#7 seed: Vanderbilt, Gonzaga, St. Mary's, San Diego State
#8 seeds: Memphis, Southern Miss, Virginia, Saint Louis
#9 Seeds: Kansas State, Mississippi State, California, Iowa State
#10 Seeds: Harvard, Purdue, Alabama, West Virginia

More than likely, the team that we will face will be someone other than these teams.  But who knows?  Murray State has been highly ranked all year, so they would be fun to play.  No chance that we would play Kansas State since we are in the same conference.  Harvard or Gonzaga would be fun match-ups.  I hate Notre Dame, so I hope we don't play them.  I would hate to lose to the Irish.  A match-up with Creighton would be interesting since their star Doug McDermott is the son of former ISU coach Greg McDermott.  I hope we don't play West Virginia either since we will be seeing plenty of them starting next year when the join the Big 12.  I just hope that we are not an 8 or 9 seed, we play some team that we never get to see and would be a fun match-up, and I would love us to just win at least one game in the tournament.  Sweet 16 would be amazing.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

Ok this is YET ANOTHER post about an Iowa State Cyclone men's basketball win.  This time the victim was Texas Tech, 72-54. 

Before the game today I met up with Jeremy Seago, and we went out for some delicious chinese at "New China" located next to the west Hy-Vee in Ames. 

My orange chicken was delicious!

Now I had just bought a new camera which can take "panorama" pictures... so I was having fun with that feture.  Kind of cool, no? But enough of our pre-game meal... onto the basketball pictures!

The view from our seats in section 213.

Another panoramic picture... this one inside Hilton. 

The student section had a lot of funny giant heads that they were waving around when Texas Tech was shooting free throws.  I have no idea who this is.

Here Scott Christopherson is about to launch a 3 from the wing... which he made BTW.

My customary picture with the final score.  Cyclones WIN!!!  If you can't read it, my shirt says "Ames, don't knock it till you RIOT".

Jeremy with the final score... but the cool part is that we also see Coach Hoiberg in the bottom right as he is leaving the court!!

Even though this was an expected win for the Cyclones, it was very important as it gave them 20 wins for the season and 10 conference wins.  Iowa State has not achieved the 20-win mark for 8 years and has not won 10 conference games since 2001.  This was Jeremy's first time watching an Iowa State game, so I was glad that he could see a good win.  The last thing that I will remember from this game was all of the great dunks.  The best I think was when Royce White dribbled between a defender's legs and dunked!  Royce came close to a triple-double by notching 13 points, 10 rebounds, and 8 assists.

Check out some great dunks from the game here.

Saturday, February 11th, 2012

Today Matthew Kovarna and I went to Hilton Coliseum where we watched Iowa State dominate the Texas A&M Aggies, 69-46. 

This game was not nearly as stressful as the last one that Elizabeth and I went to.  In fact the entire second half was kind of boring... in a good way.  I won't be the one to complain about a blow out conference win for the Cyclones!  This game marks the final regular season Big 12 conference game between Iowa State and Texas A&M, and it will likely be the last time they play for a very long time.  That is unless they meet up in the Big 12 conference tournament later this season. 

The crowd today was a good one.  This was the 3rd sell-out crowd of the season at Hilton (Kansas and Iowa were the others).  A few times it got pretty loud, but for the most part there wasn't much to go crazy about.  Royce White and Anthony Booker had a few big dunks that were fun, and Chris Allen led all scorers with 25 points.  Iowa State's largest lead was 33 points, but after we put our subs in the final score ended up being a little closer. 

Just before tip-off.

There was a very good crowd at the game; almost no empty seats!

ISU had a great game defensively as they held the Aggies to under 20 points in the first half.

Kovarna with the final score: Cyclones 69, Aggies 46.

There were "Go Cyclones" cards placed on all of the seats before the game.

Another fun note about today's game was the chants that the crowd was making at the end of the game.  Everyone was chanting "S-E-C" and then "Na na na na, hey, hey, hey, Goodbye".