Sports

CCU Baseball...Serious Start

Count me among the people who were really impressed by CCU's two wins over Kentucky and win over North Carolina.  A loss to James Madison is not something you want sitting on your resume, but with 4 games in 3 days, it's an understandable slip up.

I spoke to CCU coach Gary Gilmore today, though, and he made a great point...in baseball, especially when you compare it to shorter seasons like basketball or football, three big wins can be easily forgotten with a few losses.

So while it's exciting to see the Chants with such a great start, you need an ever bigger grain of salt to take it all with when you're looking at a long, grinding baseball season.

Match Play Brackets Out

http://i.cdn.turner.com/pgatour/docs/accenture-match-play.pdf

Dustin Johnson is a 12 seed, playing Steve Stricker in the first round...talk about two guys playing great golf right now.

Who do I want to win?

Here's a common question I get when I'm out covering local high school or college games...who do I want to win?

As corny and cop-out-ish as it sounds, as a journalist, I don't allow myself to root for any team.  In high schools, I get to know players, coaches and fans throughout the year, but I still stay detached enough so that I'm just an impartial observer, telling you guys about what happened.

That said, I'll admit to wanting a few things to happen:

1)  No injuries.  That's pretty self-explanatory...you never want to see anyone hurt.

2)  A lot of action.  The more that happens, the better.  In the case of high school sports, when I have to cover two or three games in a single night, if there's a lot of action in the first quarter and I can get on the road to the next game (or back to the station to edit/write), that's great.

3)  A close game/good finish.  If I am able to be there for the end of the game, I'd like it to be close.  In basketball, when there's 2:30 on the clock, a team's down by 12 and fouling every possession and that 2:30 takes 20 minutes to complete...it's rough.

4)  Individual players to perform well.  That can be confused with wanting a team to win, but it's not.  Knowing these players throughout the year, I know these are good kids...and it's really great to see them do well.

Tommy Bowden--Behind the Answers

If you caught our interview with former Clemson coach Tommy Bowden on WMBF News at 6 (and 11), you saw he avoided answering all questions regarding his past at Clemson or his future career.  (If you missed it, you can see it and read about it here: Web Story)

I believe this reflects some still sore feelings over his departure.  The reason I say that is that Bowden is a skilled, media-savvy (former) coach.  If he wanted to, he could've Bill Belichick-ed away all the answers...i.e.

Q:  Where is your career heading?

A:  I'm enjoying the time with my family now and I'm in no rush to make a decision.

That's a good example of "saying something but saying nothing."  Athletes and coaches do this all the time.  It's annoying.

Instead, Coach Bowden elected to...simply...not answer the question.  If he wanted to just throw out some coach-speak, that would be one thing and just tell me he wasn't interested in talking (understandable, who likes getting interviewed right after a flight?)...but flat-out refusal to answer?  Sounds to me like there are still some hurt feelings...even if it doesn't sound like much.