Category Archives: Sports

Posts about sports: primarily Big Ten basketball and football and Baltimore Orioles baseball

What is a successful season in sports?

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If you follow men’s college basketball at all, you’re certainly aware that my alma mater’s team was on the wrong end of an upset last weekend. It’s not hyperbolic to call it the worst upset in NCAA Tournament history. The team won its conference by three games and then went on to win the conference tournament for good measure. It has the National Player of the Year frontrunner. It reached a #1 ranking in the polls for a large portion of the season. But it got embarrassed in the first round by a team that only made the tournament because the rightful participant wasn’t eligible. Was this a successful season?

Purdue’s success (or lack)

Most Purdue fans seem to say “no”. I’m one of them, maybe. Purdue has more Big Ten titles than any other team. It’s nice to get another, but NCAA Tournament success has been more elusive. My parents hadn’t met the last time Purdue was in the men’s Final Four. In 18 seasons as head coach, Matt Painter has reached the Sweet 16 six times (including one Elite Eight appearance). Excluding 2020 which had no tournament (although it’s likely that Purdue might have missed the cut), Purdue is twice as likely to reach the Sweet 16 than to miss the tournament field. That sounds pretty successful.

But in the last three years, Purdue has lost to double-digit seeds — twice in the first round! Even though you have to earn a high seed to have the opportunity to get embarrassed like that, it’s hard to call that a success.

This was supposed to be a rebuilding year. Purdue was picked pre-season to finish in the middle of the conference. Instead, they went 21-1 in November through January. They not only won the conference outright, but by the largest margin in nearly a decade. In that context, it seems like a successful season.

That team down south

Indiana’s men’s basketball fans are asking the same question. The Indianapolis Star ran an article (subscribers only) asking “[w]as IU basketball’s season a success?” Like Purdue, IU had a dominant post player who put up historic numbers. Unlike Purdue, IU was predicted to win the conference (they finished in a tie for second). Unlike Purdue, IU didn’t win a regular season or tournament title. Neither the coach nor the star player received individual awards. Sounds like a disappointing season.

On the other hand, they lost a key player to Injury early in the season and a second one missed several games early in conference play. A team that started January on a three-game skid and 4-6 in the last 10 games pulled together to sweep their rivals (the aforementioned three-game-margin conference champs). That’s something to celebrate. And they made it to the second round of the tournament for the first time since 2016 after missing four in a row (they’d probably have made the 2020 tournament, had it happened). But this is a program that has won the NCAA Tournament five times, so making the second round is not particularly great by historical standards.

Was the 2022–23 season a success? As Tyler Tachman wrote in the Star,

The reality is the intricacies of this season make it difficult to put a singular, binding label on it right now. It is not an undoubted success, nor a clear failure. Perhaps it is somewhere in between.

What is success?

When I was 12, my Little League team went undefeated through the regular season. In the finals, we faced a team that had gone winless in the regular season but got hot at the end. They ended up beating us. Were they better? Probably not. We went on to win the district tournament — clobbering the team that was the consensus favorite — and finished with a 19-1 record. But we lost the league tournament.

Any single-elimination tournament involves a lot of luck. One bad night and you’re done. How often is the tournament champion truly the “best” team? You have to be good to win, but you also have to be very lucky. The former you can control, the latter you can’t.

If pressed, I’d choose having long-term success over a few good days in a row. Of course, I’d rather have both. As Purdue fans “sit in it” (as Matt Painter said) this off season, we have to think about what our expectations are and how we define success.

There’s no right answer here. I doubt we’ll even reach a general consensus. Nobody wants to lose, but maybe we’d all be a lot better off if we (meaning the broader culture) stopped using narrow, short-term definitions of success.

Ed. note: for further thoughts on this, I recommend Doug Masson’s “That Purdue loss” and “Indiana Basketball: 2022–23” posts (plus their comments). I repurposed my comment on the former for parts of this post.

Book review: Word Freak

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I wasn’t sure what I’d get when I started reading Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players by Stefan Fatsis. I’m a fan of the game, although I’ve never played it competitively. After reading this book, I never will.

It’s not that the book is bad. To the contrary, it’s surprisingly engaging. But the competitive game bears little resemblance to the game I play with friends. And the people who play at a high level? If Fatsis is to be taken at his word, they’re a pretty messed up bunch.

Can Fatsis be trusted, though? He’s hardly an objective observer. Instead of a distanced, sociological study, Fatsis immerses himself. He becomes what he studies, trying to achieve an expert ranking and befriending his subjects. Yet the way he describes them is hardly flattering. He paints them as a group of barely-functional obsessives.

Are they? Perhaps. It could be that he focused on the misfits because the normies don’t make for a good book. But whether or not the word freaks are representative of Scrabble’s top tier, Fatsis becomes one of them. Frankly, he does not paint himself in a very flattering light either. Although the arc of the book is his quest for an expert-level ranking, he’s not a sympathetic protagonist.

The history of the game is interesting. The strategies of the world’s top players are astounding. And the people are mostly pitiable. It makes for an interesting read, despite the length. But if you find yourself wanting to join that world, I think you should reconsider.

I’m not over college sports, but it’s different

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On Sunday, my friend Chris O’Donnell published a post titled “I’m over college sports“. Given the timing, I thought it was due to the fact that Purdue and Michigan held a men’s basketball game after a Purdue player tested positive for COVID-19 before the entire Michigan athletic department shut down for two weeks due to a COVID-19 outbreak. But “COVID” doesn’t appear in his post at all. Instead, he raises other very valid concerns about the state of Division I sports.

I don’t disagree with any of his points. I suppose I choose to ignore them so I can keep enjoying the games. But not being able to go to games has certainly changed things for me. Purdue football has been a “I’ll watch if I have nothing else going on” thing for me most of the last decade. For much of that time, I’ve chosen to listen to the radio broadcasts while I do something more useful with my Saturday.

Basketball is another story. I’ve had season tickets to Purdue men’s basketball for a long time and am an…enthusiastic fan. I’ve re-arranged my calendar more than once to accommodate going to a basketball game. But now that all of the games are TV-only, I’ve found that I haven’t watched nearly as much as I would otherwise.

I can’t see myself not going back to basketball games once the option is available. But other sports consumption…who can say?

Letter to Mayor Roswarski about the Loeb Stadium bid

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On Friday, I was contacted by my friend Dave Bangert at the Lafayette Journal & Courier to offer my opinion on the city’s open bid for baseball teams to play in Lafayette. The city is rebuilding the stadium and has decided that it should open a bid process. I mailed this letter to Mayor Roswarski earlier this week.

As a long-time Lafayette resident, I appreciate your desire to ensure the city gets the best value out of the money invested into the Loeb Stadium rebuild. But as a sports fan, I know that while it may be a business, it’s not just transactional. Sports fandom is built on tradition and loyalty, and it becomes a key part of the fan’s identity.

When I was a boy, I collected baseball cards as many youngsters do. With two younger sisters, I always dreamed of having a brother. You can imagine how thrilled I was when I ended up with cards for both Cal, Jr. and Billy Ripken—brothers who played on the same team! Not much after that, Cal broke Lou Gerhig’s consecutive game streak and suddenly I was a lifelong Baltimore Orioles fan. I had never been to Baltimore, I had no family ties to Maryland. But I made a connection and a fandom was born.

Now my kids have had the chance to form their own ties with a baseball team. The Lafayette Aviators have become an important part of their summers. But they don’t have to hope their local newspaper a thousand miles away carries updates. They get to go to games with their dad. They can run the bases. They experience what makes Lafayette not just the place we live, but the place we call home.

When the Aviators came to town, summer baseball had been gone from Lafayette for almost two decades. With the town in a baseball drought and a stadium that had history and not much else to offer, this team built something that the city can be proud of. For 30 days every summer, Lafayette gets affordable, family-friendly entertainment. When they’re on the road, we have a group of young men who represent our city well across the Midwest.

In my time as a ticket holder, I’ve made friends with those I see at Loeb stadium—fellow fans, concessionaires, club management. My kids love Ace the Aviator, and frequently ask me when he can come over for dinner.

I have lived in the Lafayette area for your entire tenure as mayor, so I know you will do what you feel is best for the city. But I implore you to remember that value is more than figures in a ledger. When all of the bids are in, I hope the city will evaluate them fairly and come to the conclusion that the Aviators aren’t a team that plays in Lafayette, they’re Lafayette’s team.

Dear P.J. Thompson

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Dear P.J. Thompson,

Yesterday, you played your last game in Mackey Arena. You have at least two games remaining in a Purdue uniform, and perhaps as many as nine more, but they will all be happen away from the friendly confines of Keady Court.

The regular season didn’t end quite like we all might have hoped. After a 19-game winning streak, three consecutive losses cost you a chance to repeat as Big Ten Champions. It’s not your fault, but it’s no coincidence that those games were ones where you disappeared from the stat sheets.

P.J., you will not make the NBA. You’re 5’10”. You’re not a flashy scorer. You’re not a steal machine. And yet, you’re perhaps the most important player on the team. And you’re surrounded by some really damn good basketball players.

But nobody in basketball is a more solid, reliable player than you are. Even though your assist rate has gone down significantly this year, you still had twice as many assists as turnovers. We all feel safe when the ball is in your hands. And though you don’t take too many three pointers, you make nearly half of them. And you seem to have a knack for hitting a big three at just the right time.

A deep tournament run is still possible. And it’s possible in part because you are a solid-but-not-great player who works hard, helps his teammates, and works hard some more. You’re exactly what a Purdue basketball player should be.

So enjoy the tournament. You’ve earned it. And thanks for four great years representing Purdue University.

Purdue Boilermakers: Big Ten champions

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The men’s basketball season ended for Purdue last night, with a close victory in Evanston against the Northwestern Wildcats. But in a sense, that game did not matter. No matter the outcome, Northwestern is likely to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history. More importantly (to me), Purdue had already secured the outright conference title. Purdue now has 23 Big Ten titles to its name, reclaiming sole possession of the lead after Indiana tied it up last year.

Speaking of Indiana, it was against the hated in-state rivals that the Boilermakers clinched a share of the title. To be able to secure a trophy at home, on senior night, against a bitter rival? That was a special treat for team and fans alike. When the final horn sounded, confetti burst from the ceiling and the trophy was presented to the team.

Confetti rains down after Purdue defeats Indiana and claims a share of the Big Ten title. February 28, 2017

The Purdue men’s basketball team celebrates with their trophy.

Earlier in the season, it seemed like Wisconsin had the title all but locked up. A few head-scratching losses by Purdue made the title seem out of reach. But Wisconsin was a paper tiger.

Despite holding the conference title record, it had been 21 years since the last time Purdue won the title outright (and seven years since the last title). Promising seasons in the early part of this decade were cut short by injury, or by underperformance, or by who knows what. A string of consecutive first-round wins in the NCAA tournament came to an end with heartbreaking losses in consecutive years. Purdue fans were hungry, so being able to celebrate a season that seemed destined for failure felt really good.

Up next, we hope, deep runs in the Big Ten tournament and the NCAA tournament.

Sports rules

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Not like “sports rules!”, but the rules of sport. My beloved Boilermakers went down to Bloomington and beat the Hoosiers on Thursday night. It was a joy to behold, with the exception of one weird call toward the end of the game. It’s been called a “blarge“. IU’s Thomas Bryant lowered his shoulder and barreled into Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan. One referee called a blocking foul on Swanigan, another called a charge against Bryant (it was a charge). As a result, the call was a double foul.

This turns out to be the correct way to handle it. It’s also really terrible. Those two calls are mutually-exclusive. Especially in this circumstance, because it caused each team’s best player to foul out in the final minutes of a close rivalry game.

But it got me thinking about how and why the rules of sports get changed. Major League Baseball is apparently considering a rule change to speed up extra innings. I hope that goes nowhere. In my mind, it’s a fundamental change to how the game is played. Ostensibly, it’s to shorten games. MLB has made several changes over the past few years to try to speed the game up.

But here’s the thing: I like baseball because it’s a slow game. Baseball is a deliberate game that invites conversation and statistical analysis in-game. I don’t mind rule changes, but they should be to improve the game. Speed isn’t automatically an improvement. It can even be a detriment.

Coach of the Year?

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On Monday night, the Big Ten conference announced the annual postseason honors for men’s basketball. It may come as no surprise that the Coach of the Year winners finished first (Bo Ryan in the coaches’ voting) and second (Mark Turgeon in the media voting) in the conference. Winning basketball games is a good way to get recognized for your coaching prowess. Some Purdue fans were upset that Matt Painter did not get recognized in light of the turnaround that his Boilermakers showed from the end of non-conference play.

After all, this is a team that finished last in the conference last year and was projected to finish toward the bottom again this year. Instead, after a string of embarrassing losses in December made the idea of an NCAA tournament bid nearly a pipe dream, the team got it together and finished in a tie for third place. Surely that is a sign of an excellent coaching job, right?

It is, but there’s a catch. Sure, Painter’s team exceeded expectations, but the expectations became low on his watch. It’s not like Painter inherited a depleted roster this year, as he did when he took over for Gene Keady a decade ago. Since walking into a 9-win season his first year, he had several teams that competed for a regular season title, one Big Ten Tournament winner, and two Sweet 16 appearances. The momentum was there, and for whatever reason (I’m inclined to say recruiting the wrong players for his system, among other reasons), the team slipped. Recruiting is part of the job, so why not reward a coach for having a roster talented enough to win the conference?

I understand that reasoning, but I’m not sure I agree with it. After all, the award is Coach of the Year, not Coach of the Years. The fact that Matt Painter wasn’t doing his job well enough for a few years shouldn’t handicap him now. But they don’t give me a ballot, and I can’t help but think those who reflexively vote for the top-performing teams regardless of expectations make a reasonable argument. After all, there are some coaches who can make a lot of the talent they have (Tim Miles last year), there are some coaches who can bring in talent but underperform (Tom Crean), but the successful coaches in the Big Ten are the ones who can get talented players and make the most of them (Ryan, Tom Izzo, Thad Matta). Matt Painter has shown the ability to do both, but not necessarily at the same time. If he can get both parts of the coaching duties in line, he’ll have plenty of awards to put on his trophy shelf.

Baseball and apple pie

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Baseball isn’t as popular as it used to be. That’s hardly news. Some, including incoming Commissioner Rob Manfred, have argued that it’s too slow-paced for modern American society. To that end, he’s talking about some rule changes. The first is a “pitch clock”, designed to keep the game moving along. I don’t find that particularly objectionable, thought it would certainly take some getting used to.

The second, more obnoxious change, would be to ban defensive shifts. Seriously? If the idea is to generate more offense (it’s been a pitcher’s game since the end of the steroid era), my response is “who cares?” If you want to see a lot of hits, show up for batting practice. I’ll admit that I tend to be biased in favor of defense in sports. I’d much rather see a great dive and throw to first than a home run. If the shift is a problem, perhaps batters should learn to hit to the opposite field. I’m looking forward to Manfred proposing that players have to stand still until the ball hits the ground. Perhaps if he were the NFL commissioner, we’d finally see the “5-second count” rule for blitzes.

Next up for Rob Manfred: eliminating the apples from apple pie so people can eat it faster.

Purdue fires Danny Hope

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It’s hardly news at this point (it’s been hours since Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke made the official announcement), and I don’t often write about sports here (frankly, I don’t often write here any more), but I wanted to assemble my thoughts about Danny Hope’s new-found unemployment.

I’ve been critical of Hope for a while, and was publicly in favor of firing him last year. My undergrad years mostly lined up with Kyle Orton’s time at quarterback and the last years of Joe Tiller’s successful period, so maybe my expectations were unrealistic. Or maybe not.

Danny Hope had four years as head coach (and a year before that to focus entirely on recruiting as the coach-in-waiting) to build the program. In some ways, he did just that: he improved recruiting from the end of the Tiller era, and player GPAs went up during his time as coach. The statistic that ended up mattering most was the fifth consecutive year of declining attendance.

I’ll readily admit that I’ve skipped purchasing football tickets the past two years for a variety of reasons. Time commitments and personal finances may have been the most compelling, but the on-field product did little to convince me to make the necessary arrangements. It’s not that the players lack talent or effort, although there have been occasions where the players made maddening errors (the 2011 team, in particular, was far more penalized than a veteran team should be). For the most part the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the coaches. Week after week, the team appeared unprepared. Week after week, halftime seemed to consist of an all-you-can-eat pasta buffet (how else can you explain the struggles that Hope’s teams routinely had in the third quarter? They certainly weren’t using that time to adjust to the way the game was going).

Under Danny Hope, Purdue could take two unbeaten teams down to the wire on the road or lose at home to MAC schools. Purdue could beat an Ohio State University or get embarrassed by Minnesota. Hope’s “best team” — a team with the talent and the schedule to win the B1G Leaders division — opened conference play with five straight losses. If not for the sanctions against aOSU and Penn State this year, Purdue’s 6-6 record would result in yet another Detroit bowl game. While any bowl game is better than no bowl game, it would be nice to see Purdue beat teams with a winning record from time-to-time.

Contrary to what Sally Hope said, I’ve never wished for Danny Hope to lose. I have tremendous respect for him as a person — he’s universally described as being a very friendly man, and the players obviously love him. I’ve always wanted Danny Hope’s time at Purdue to be very successful, but that’s not how it played out. Given the choice between losing cleanly and winning sleazily, I’ll take losing cleanly every time, but I refuse to accept that those are the only two options.

Danny Hope very obviously enjoyed being the head coach of a Big Ten program. His optimism was unflagging, at least until about a month ago. Hope enjoyed his work and he loved being with the players. The problem is that the talented players never seemed to get much better than when they first set foot on campus. In the end, Danny Hope was a great guy who was in way over his head. I wish him the best of luck wherever his next job is.