#298 - well screw you too

The top 4 seeds in the 2009 NCAA Women's Volleyball Tournament:

1. Penn St.
2. Texas
3. Florida St.
4. Stanford

you think football fans are the only ones who have to worry about the BCS?

Hawai'i has been ranked #3 in the AVCA coaches poll pretty much all year and they got slammed with the No. 12 seed while Florida St. (#14 in the polls) somehow snags the No. 3 seed? both Hawai'i and Florida St. have identical 28-2 records, but Hawai'i's two loses came to legitimate #2 Texas and #11 California, while Florida St. lost to #15 Florida and unranked Georgia Tech. Hawai'i has wins over #6 Stanford, #9 UCLA, and #22 St. Louis. Florida St. has only one quality win... over #5 Illinois. how does this happen? three letters... RPI.

what the heck is RPI? and how is it determined? i'll tell you how.. it's determined behind the closed doors of the NCAA... and what happens at the NCAA apparently stays at the NCAA. but let's take this from another perspective... the BCS.

in how many different sports does the NCAA have to fail with in order to instigate some kind of change with the BCS? obviously the deficiencies are most apparent in football, with perhaps an undefeated boise state (at No. 6 in the BCS polls) crossing their fingers to get a BCS berth with undefeated TCU (No. 4) a step ahead of them. now, in my opinion, there should only be one undefeated team in the country (if any) in ANY sport at the end of a season. and with this football bowl system, heck, we could have as many as four at the end of this season. there absolutely needs to be a playoff system in place for college football. if they can do it at the FCS level, sure they can do it at the FBS level. Just a little elite 8 bracket and you can get the winners of each BCS conference in there with 2 at-large bids from the mid-majors (although I would prefer just a straight up top 8 in the rankings).

but, i digress... women's volleyball DOES have a championship tournament, and it's a healthy 64-team field. but let's look at who's in this year:

Pac-10 (8 out of 10 teams): can you believe everyone except Arizona St. and Oregon St. got in? sure, they're a high-caliber conference for volleyball, but Washington St. was 6-12 in conference... really?

4. Stanford (hosting)
6. Washington
8. UCLA (hosting)
9. California
14. Oregon
ur. USC (hosting)
ur. Arizona
ur. Washington St.

Big-10 (6 out of 11 teams): sure you've got Penn St., definately No. 1, but the rest of them are unimpressive. Illinois, the second team in the conference was 16-4 in conference play... does that mean the conference was good or that Illinois was bad? of course Penn St. is good (i would even say "awesome"), but if they're beating everyone up 3-0 in the conference tournament, how can you continue to vouch for those other teams?

1. Penn St. (hosting)
5. Illinois (hosting)
11. Minnesota
13. Michigan (hosting)
ur. Ohio St. (hosting)
ur. Michigan St.

Big-12 (6 out of 12 teams): Baylor, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M all have 11-9 conference records... again, sure the competition is tough... but that's 9 loses... even if you lose to the top 3 teams twice each, that's only 6 loses, where do the other 3 loses come from?

2. Texas (hosting)
7. Iowa St. (hosting)
10. Nebraska (hosting)
ur. Baylor
ur. Oklahoma
ur. Texas A&M

ACC (5 out of 12 teams): how do you give Florida St. a No. 3 seed when they're ranked #14 and none of the other teams in the conference are good enough to warrant a seed? answer = ?? Florida St. was #3 in the RPI and Hawai'i was #22 so I guess that's the reason, but how the heck do they come up with those RPIs?

3. Florida St. (hosting)
ur. Duke
ur. Georgia Tech
ur. Clemson
ur. Miami

so... bottom line. lots of big winners and big losers by the NCAA. but the good news is... it's still a tournament. win and move on, lose and go home. Hawai'i's team this year is really good so I've got no doubt they'll prove those NCAA bastards wrong with that No. 12 seed. so let's take a look at Hawai'i's bracket.

first round at USC
# 16 USC (21-9) vs. Oklahoma (18-11)
New Mexico (20-9) vs. #3/No. 12 Hawai'i (28-2)

New Mexico has loses to Baylor, TCU (twice), #19 Arizona, Tulane, #23 Colorado St. (twice), BYU, and UNLV. quality wins? NONE! Oklahoma also has a bunch of loses to unranked opponents and USC went 4-7 vs. ranked opponents. so you gotta figure USC advances, and then Hawai'i has a tricky match-up playing USC at USC. but Hawai'i beat USC handily last year in the same round of the NCAA tournament, and Hawai'i is much better this year.

so WHEN Hawai'i beats USC, it goes to the regionals at Stanford where they are penciled in to face No. 5 Illinois, who's had a good year, their only loses came to #1 Penn St (twice), #14 Florida St. #13 Minnesota, and Michigan St. still, the way Hawai'i looks, i'm definately calling the "on-paper" upset there (really wouldn't be an upset because in the rankings Hawai'i is #3 and Illinois is #5) but still a great match-up at a neutral court. the winner of that match i'm thinking will take on No. 4 Stanford, who Hawai'i beat earlier this year, but Stanford is not the same team as when Hawai'i beat them 3-0 in september, re: Alix Klineman is healthy. when Hawai'i played Stanford, Klineman (who Hawai'i heavily recruited out of high school) was still coming back from injury, but (as Stanford always seems to do) they have finished the season out strong, capturing the Pac-10 title out-right (over an-equally good Washington team) so that Hawai'i vs. Stanford rematch looks awfully compelling, that's what i'll be wishing for come the second week of december...

as for the rest of the field... Penn St. looks just about unstoppable, but there's a reason why they play the game! that's why i love sports, you still gotta play and even if you're 99.9% favored on paper, you still gotta win, and in a tournament bracket like this, there are no second chances. nevertheless, i'm thinking that Penn St. will win easily the first two rounds, have a tricky match-up vs. Florida at Florida in the regionals, but then run into the winner of California/UCLA in the regional finals, win that, have another tough match against either Hawai'i/Stanford in the final four and then face Texas in the championship match (along the way, I see Texas facing Nebraska and Washington (who beats Minnesota and has a Pac-10 showdown with Oregon in the regional finals after Oregon takes out Florida St.).

there are only 4 teams that i think can take out Penn St (currently on something like a 96-match win streak after winning the NCAA championships the last two years, both over stanford)... Texas, Stanford, Hawai'i, and Washington. Washington has to get through Texas first (assuming Texas handles Nebraska, which i think they will), i think Washington has the serving and backcourt defense to trouble Texas so they've got a shot i think, but then to pick off Texas and them Penn St. will be a tough request. Texas looks almost as awesome as Penn St, Destinee Hooker and Megan Hodge cancel each other out, as does Alisha Glass and Ashley Engle (although in contrasting styles). i think texas' passing is a little more of a weakness than Penn St. and actually they just lost in their last regular season game of the year to unranked Kansas 0-3 (that was a late-surprise) so i still think Penn St has the edge, but in a championship match who knows? Stanford with Klineman ON has a shot at Penn St, although this time it won't be in the championship match. Hawai'i, if it passes money and get all of its' players clicking like it can and has many times during this season, can pull out the upset and go all the way this year i believe (and i've not said that since the kim willoughby days, so you know that's saying something). this year they've got the serving, passing, ball-control, and hitting to take them to the championship. the only thing they've got to worry about is height and blocking. Hawai'i has to work hard against the monsterously tall teams that they'll see in the post-season, but they've got the skill to attack them, it's gonna come down to match-ups and i think if Hawai'i is on it's game, we're gonna have a lot to watch before christmas...

GO BOWS!

ps - update, they interviewed dave shoji during the women's basketball game tonight and he was just as upset as i am (i think jim leahey even a little more). his theory? whoever is making these NCAA decisions are not volleyball people. it seems as if they went strictly by the RPI, not only with seeding, but also with selecting at-large teams. now that i look at it, yup, it looks like they just went right down the RPI list with no thought to who the teams were playing (who's on a "hot streak," what happened in the conference tournaments, etc). so, screw you NCAA (yet again)... but we'll show you... we'll show you all the way to the final four!

GO BOWS!

UPDATE!: on man, how much more upset am i? i just read this article on the NCAA's own website written by a volleyball analyst and even he is blasting the "selection committee" on their tournament decisions! they way the bracket breaks-down, the picks and the seedings closely follow the RPI, just as i've said, but the last RPI rankings produced were on Nov. 22nd... NOT EVEN COUNTING RESULTS FROM THE END OF THE SEASON (and, more importantly, the conference championship tournaments) GAMES THAT WERE PLAYED LAST WEEK! wtf?! how can you completely discount the last week of play and make your selections strictly on rankings from a week earlier? go read that article, at least someone over there has some sense... sheesh.

#297 - i want to go to there

okay, so no new big news that the past month or two have been kind of a downer, so i've been looking for some things to lighten my mood. furlough fridays have helped a bit (more specifically, going surfing more often has helped). getting out of the house (although i love my house) has also helped. but i've been looking for something more than the usual picker-uppers. then i got an email advertising this:

and after seeing that, i was decided. i am finally going to see relient k in concert. taking a look at the tour dates, i was looking at a few options, vegas (that's a pretty easy trip, plus lots of other things to do there independently), san diego (ever since going there for the asha convention i've been wanting to go back... but, i don't know anyone there and it'd be pretty depressing going there solo), and salem, oregon. vegas would've been the easiest (especially since i'd be off of work during that time), but i decided it was finally time to visit my super awesome friend brandi in oregon. so that was it. with that i decided to take a trip to PORTLAND!

so after skipping my usual over-exhaustive research and thinking and planning processes, i decided it was time to take action. details can be worked out later. i needed to stop thinking and start doing. i bought my plane tickets and concert tickets and i'm all set. i put in my personal leave at work, confirmed plans to not be here and i'm gone, that's it, i'm doing.

now... now that everything's bought and paid for, now it's time to plan what to do! brandi, i'm giving you full green-light authority to be portland expert here, i obey all your suggestions and you have total veto power over anything that i think is cool but actually might not be. she already wrote me a tentative awesome portland things to do list on her blog so i'm looking through all her suggestions and they all look great. along with those things, i think the things that i'm most amped about doing are:

1. renting a car - not that i'm really amped about it, but i still need to do it and so i'm writing it down here so i don't forget
2. relient k concert - okay, as you can see on the flyer, relient k is actually NOT the head-liner (i can't say i really like toby mac, but i do know some of his songs, but it matters not as long as relient k is somewhere in there), but it's gonna be awesome, just before christmas with songs from their christmas album and their latest album (forget and not slow down) which i've been listening to in my car everyday since i got it
3. portland eats! - man every single website brandi posted makes me salivate... i'm really gonna enjoy eating well in portland
4. beer + movies? - it happens in portland! finally, a city with some common sense
5. oregon coast/scenery - even though i love the beaches, i am really looking forward to seeing the northwest landscape. it's so different from any kind of forest that i'd see here and there's something even almost enchanting about the rain and gloominess of the weather (of course, we'll see about that when i'm freezing cold and getting soaked, but until then...)
6. weird portland - i guess a big tourist pull in portland is that everyone is kinda kooky. so going to the saturday market or seeing all the arts and everything just around the city will probably be kinda cool

okay, i still have lots to research, but let's take things one at a time... first off, i got our concert tickets in the mail, woo hoo!

lots more coming... this is just the beginning!

#296 - NOOO!!! DOLLHOUSE!!! CANCELED!!!

how sad am i that those idiots at fox are gonna cancel dollhouse? so sad that i couldn't even write about it for four days. so sad that in my haste to find a picture of dollhouse to put on this blog all i could find was this heavily-airbrushed promo picture that completely undermines the intelligence of the actual show itself. so sad that i pulled a "kathleen" and actually wrote a letter of complaint to the fox network like a weird old man writing an angry letter to the noisy bar across the street from his home.

now, this isn't my finest piece of work, i admit, but in the heat of the moment i scribbled this email out on my computer and sent it in without editing, purposefully, because i believe that bad grammar and "twitter"-type punctuation further conveys my anger at the fox network stupidity. but anywhere here's what i wrote:

dammit fox, can't you recognize a good thing when you've got it? here you've got Joss Whedon creating a wonderously clever show in Dollhouse, then you condemn it to friday nights and wonder why it's not getting the ratings you were hoping for? no shit, sherlock. did you notice the dvr ratings, or more specifically, did you notice the huge boost in ratings that Dollhouse got from viewers who record the show to watch it back (over and over again) when they get home from their friday nights out? of course you probably did, but i guess none of that matters when you've got crappy re-runs to air in the friday night death spot instead huh?

nevermind that this has happened to Joss Whedon before with Firefly, but I thought that this time fox would realize what a gem of writing, casting, and intelligence they've got with Dollhouse. perhaps it is not the kind of show that any random viewer can just pick up and watch. but why penalize those of us viewers who actually FOLLOW a show? a show that has a start and an ending point to each season. one with a story-arc that actually makes sense. well, i guess the ironic thing is that now we will have a definate END to the storyline, at least we can be thankful that fox has given Joss enough time to tweek-out an actual series finale. but still, how many times does it have to be reinforced in me that network television does not care about a quality product? it's depressing. who's going to have the guts to stand by a quality show?

here's what they wrote back:

ALL 13 episodes in the 2nd Season will air as promised

DOLLHOUSE will air 2-Hour episodes on FRI 12/4, 12/11 & 12/18 (8-10pm ET/PT) - then return after the holidays on FRI 1/8, 1/15 & 1/22 - to complete the full Season 2 order of 13 episodes!!

We have given the producers enough time to bring closure in the 13th episode.

ASKFOX

obviously that was a bot... and automatic reply message. but it's better than nothing. and that's what i now have to believe. "it's better than nothing."

december will be dollhouse month, with two new episodes each friday and joss whedon will have time to craft out a semi-series ending in the last two episodes (that aren't shot yet) in january. still, i can't help thinking that someone still dropped the ball on this one. sure, dollhouse got a lot of promotion from fox, with their dollhouse/terminator lead-ups, but it all seems kinda empty when you still stick dollhouse in the friday death spot, then pull it completely from november sweeps so it doesn't even get a chance to boost your ratings. i mean, i don't think i've ever seen a dollhouse re-run, wouldn't that help solve all fox's reported problems of people not being able to follow the storyline/characters? i mean, how many reruns of bones have they shown in the last two months? seriously people...

grrr... i'm going to be upset with fox for a LONG time about this one. first firefly, then terminator, now dollhouse. at least i get to watch dollhouse until it's abbreviated ending. plus we still get to see summer glau in her dollhouse episodes, and if watching joss whedon shows has taught me anything, it's that love = pain, and just when the viewers start loving a character, that means it's time to kill them off! haha, so i guess it was a fitting end for dollhouse after all...


(but really not!)

#295 - when a good joke becomes an even greater reality

last april thinkgeek.com put this item up for sale as one of it's april fool's jokes. so many people actually tried to order it (thinking that it was a real product) that thinkgeek.com wrote to george lucas trying to get the rights to make it. and seven months later one nerdy joke becomes a beautiful reality...

#294 - go bows!

i don't think i've posted about uh wahine volleyball yet this year, which is surprising to me because they are pretty fricken' awesome this year. i guess i've been kinda down the past few years because the team has been kinda of mediocre (of course, "mediocre" for UH vball is still stellar for pretty much all of the rest of the country). i really started watching vball in the 90's... i don't think i've ever watched a game in klum gym (in person), but i've been to the stan sherrif center from the beginning (when it was called the special events arena). the first team i really remember following was the 1995 team (i think they lost in the NCAA regional finals to florida) and was really into it when the 1996 team went to the final four (losing to stanford in the championship match). i watched the 1998 team beat BYU in the record setting longest women's volleyball match ever (a little over 3 and a half hours) in the WAC championship. i was crushed when the 1999 team (with heather bown) fell to texas a&m in the NCAA regionals in hawaii (i was there) when the final four was gonna be played in hawaii (that was also my first year as a student at UH). i coasted through all the great times during 2000-2003 with kim willoughby, lily kahumoku, maya gustin, jennifer carey, lauren duggins, etc, and went to all the "big" matches every year (those were the good ole days, 3 final four appearances in 4 years). i kept the faith through good regular seasons but disappointing "big match" loses during the kamana'o years 2004-2006 (except for that AWESOME win in the NCAA regionals at the stan sherrif over USC on my birthday!). i suffered through 2007 with the loss to utah state and middle tennesse to end the season in only the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament. i rebounded last year with kanani danielson, the spectacular 5-set win over washington, and the return of the famous hawaii ball-control. and this year i revel in the awesome-ness that is again rainbow wahine volleyball.

okay, well if that didn't sound creepy-obsessed enough yet, here's why i think this year's team is (finally!) another final four national championship contender:

1. serving - this year's team has got serving coming from all directions, aneli cubi-otineru's blistering jump serve, tough floaters from stephanie brant, amber kaufman, dani mafua, and jayme lee. on top of the tough serving, it's also very consistent, and when they're not getting aces they're forcing bad passes (also, UH's net play on overpasses has been stellar, i can only remember seeing one net violation on an overpass all year).

2. passing - with danielson, cubi-otineru, and liz ka'aihue returning hawai'i's ball control to hawai'i standards, they can finally run an offense...

3. quick tempo offense - whatever mafua lacks in creativity or decision-making (or whatever dave shoji lacks there), she makes up in setting a GREAT quick tempo offense. while i'd love to see more tandem plays, like the double-quick or the x-play, you gotta give mafua credit for pushing the tempo and getting her hitters one-on-one blockers a great percentage of the time. while i'd love to see more variety in the sets (why not include the d-set? where's the 31-set been all year?) and defiantely more involvement from the middles, you can't fault an offense that's plus-.300 and 3rd in the nation in hitting percentage.

4. blocking - with the addition of brittany hewitt (and even forsythe) it just seems like all of hawai'i's blocking has gotten better, which is probably why their digs don't show up in the national stats... they're getting a lot of touches off the block, that's a great thing.

5. all-court attack - one thing definately different from the last few years to this one is the all-court attack. remember 2002 & 2003? remember the diversity? remember getting four or five players in double digit kills? well, the games are shorter now (and the wahine are getting points in all kinds of ways), but still they are spreading the wealth. and what's even more impressive is that they're banging away from every corner of the court. the opponents are under constant fire. hawai'i players are more ready to take a rip at any time, from anywhere on court and that's an intimidating thing to see on the other side of the net.

so yeah, i know you've still got penn state up there, undefeated (for like, two years) in the top spot, but i still think UH has a great shot this year. of course, any of those top PAC-10 teams can pull an upset, and texas (although they just lost to iowa state) has destinee hooker and ashley engle so even if they get in passing trouble, heck they just throw it high and outside and hooker goes up and over everyone to put the ball down. but this year's team is the first one since the kim & lily days that i really think they can grab that national championship in december. a little ways to go before then, first of all, sunday is senior night, and i really think that this year's seniors will be hard to replace to have a great team again next year:

amber kaufman - she's my favorite. cause she gets angry! haha, plus you can't tell from tv, but man she skies! well, she's also a high jumper, even went to the US olympic trials (she placed 12th). i feel kinda bad for her because she was supposed to redshirt her freshman year, but there were so many injuries that year that she had to be "activated" halfway through the year and even then didn't get that much playing time. just imagine if she had one more year to play, woo, she'd be all-american i'm sure! heck, i'd put her on my all-american team this year just for that jump, man, tv doesn't do some things justice.

i remember hearing about cubi-otineru out of high school and i was thinking she was gonna be great from the start. then she didn't go straight to UH and i kinda forgot about her, i thought it was a big loss (like how jennifer saleamua ended up going to all-american status at nebraska after pulling out of UH), but what do you know she came back again and the hype was for real. finally UH has an ACTUAL right-side attack! plus the ball-handling skills and general smart play, she was a good one for sure. again, it's just too bad she didn't have a full career at UH, but that's how sports go right?

just take a look at stephanie brant. transfered from UC santa barbara where she made conference all-freshman, got thrust into that tough 2007 season, but still played pretty great, now is a spectacular server & defensive player. i love players who can dig, and she does it a great job right-side digging.

she's cute right? haha, okay well she's good too. it's just too bad she's so short, i'm sure she would've been the starting libero, but that's just the darn thing with sports, sometimes even if you're skilled, you can't beat another half-a-foot in height. even though she's backrow, a taller player just covers more ground. it's too bad, but as a sub she's still a great defender.

i always wonder if players who were starters for their old teams (like fowler for arkansas) regret transfering to a back-up role for a better team. then again, now she gets to be on a national championship contender team, so i guess that answers that question huh?

great group of seniors i think. even though there's a lot of talent coming back next year, i really think with these seniors hawai'i has a great shot at the national championship... only time will tell though... and i'll be watching!

go bows!

#293 - halloween

little mac is back!

so, halloween turned out pretty good after all. it started pretty darn good actually, our team had our last tennis match saturday morning... i dressed up for the halloween match as a confident man (not a wuss, like usual) and finally won my first match, woo hoo! it was pretty tight though, we (my mixed doubles partner and i) were playing well in the first set, won that 6-4, then we were pretty even in the second set, but broke the lady's serve to go up 6-5 and then it was up to me to serve it out... i remember having at least one match point, but man then we cracked! we lost that game and i think were so bummed at ourselves that we tanked in the tie-break also, losing 4-7. but my partner is super competitive and that kinda parter really helps me because i fold sometimes, but she's fiesty so that helped me pick up my confidence again and we totally rebounded in the 3rd set tie-break (we play a super-tiebreak to 10 points in place of a full 3rd set) and blew them away 10-2 for my first win! the other team was nice though (which you don't get all the time, unfortunately), we had some good rallies and they didn't cheat too much, haha, anyway, it was a fun match and a great way to start a halloween that i kinda just wanted to get through.

so after post-match lunch and drinks i was feeling much better about the rest of the night. got home, took a shower, made dinner, then went to listen to the UH vball game on the radio and completely fell asleep on the couch! man, i must be getting old, a little sun and beer at lunch and i konk-out. anyway, but dinner was good and we played some wii punch-out (insert action shot:and i even got some trick-or-treaters this year. well, maybe about 12-15, but that's like 3x as many as last year, i almost gave out a whole bowl of candy (of course, i was grabbing the candy by the handful, but almost a whole bowl...).

ended up not going out to chinatown afterwards, i was feeling pretty beat from the long day (damn, i must be getting old), so i plopped down on the couch to watch a bit of ghost adventures (live!) on dvr and fell asleep. oh well, it was a pretty fun halloween anyway...