Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Break's over

Well, after a nice 2 week hiatus from teaching and from blogging, I'm back. Classes start tomorrow, which means I've got a WHOLE lot to do today, but here's a post anyway.

Not gonna strain myself with a big post today, but here's some random notes:

Cardinals Notes

Mark Mulder is still considered his options, which according to the Star-Telegram out of Texas currently include the Rangers, Cardinals and the Indians. Most of the other reports have stated the competition is down to Texas and St. Louis. I'd like to see him back, especially now that our options are dwindling. Mulder's offers appear to be around 2 years/8M guaranteed with a boatload of incentives.

Other options for the rotation include Ohka and Piniero. Ugh. Please Walt! Sign Mulder and/or Weaver! On the Weaver front, there appears to be absolutely no news to speak of. That does seem to be Jocketty's way though, keeping things as quiet as possible.

Bulls Notes

Good news on a scary story: Bulls NBDL prospect Martynas Andriuskevicius attended practice with the Bulls recently after suffering major health complications stemming from a fight in practice with his NBDL team, the Dakota Wizards. Andriuskevicius was basically cold-cocked and dropped to the floor unconscious, hitting his head again rather harshly on the floor. He lost all verbal communications skills for a time and his hearing and speech are still not 100%. He says he does not intend to press charges against the player, Awvee Storey, but his agent does not rule out this possibility.

Other good news: At 19-12, the Bulls are percentage points behind Detroit for 1st in the CEntral and would start the playoffs today as the #2 seed. Their point differential of +5.2 ppg is the best in the Eastern Conference and 5th best in the NBA. As John Hollinger of ESPN.com(Sorry, you have to have Insider to actually view this article) states, "Believe it or not, victory margin is a stronger indicator of future win-loss record than a team's win-loss record, and normally a team with Chicago's victory margin would be 20-8, not 16-12." Currently, by the NBA RPI, the Bulls are playing three games better than their record indicates they are, as their expected W-L at this point is 22-9.

College Hoops Notes

This is not a proud time to claim my alma mater. Despite my fanship of the Illini, I am actually a graduate of Western Illinois University, a school that usually puts out a strong D1-AA football team, but that pretty much puts out a real stinker in basketball every year. Currently, they are 329th in RPI and 305th in Jeff Sagarin's rankings. When you consider there are 336 teams in Division 1, this is downright pathetic.

Props to the Big 10! Right now, in those same Jeff Sagarin ratings, they would likely have 6 teams in the dance. The conference is currently ranked 4th overall, and Wisconsin(6th), Ohio State(24th), Indiana(25th), Purdue(30th), MSU(33rd) and Illinois(41th) would all likely make the dance. Not that this is hugely unusual, but this looked to be a down year for the Big 10, with Illinois taking a big step downward, and only Wisconsin and Ohio State looking like they really had the pedigree to do ANYTHING in March. Time to knock on wood though, because there's still conference season, and I could see Purdue putting up a 5-11 record and falling out of the tourney.

That's all for now. I'll probably be writing more on college hoops and some on the Bulls as we go into the early months where baseball news is really hard to find.

70 days until first round action begins!

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