ConnorNolte's Blog

Saturday Jan. 17th College basketball viewers guide

Wow. I just woke up and looked at the TV schedule and today is
probably the best basketball day of the season so far. Last weekend we
were on the road and the Saturday games looked like they'd be decent
games (FSU vs. Duke, Kentucky vs. Vandy, Michigan State vs. Kansas,
West Virginia vs. Marquette). They almost all turned out to be
blowouts. FSU made a late run and so did Vandy, but for the most part
even those games weren't really competitive.

Here's what I recommend watching:
12:00 PM: Notre Dame @ Syracuse. ESPN. This should be a good game.
After playing Notre Dame I know that they are a good team and have
talent up and down their roster. With the exception of Luke Harangody
and Tyrone Nash, Notre Dame is more of a finesse team. Their 3 man Ryan
Ayers is 6?7? and can get really hot from behind the 3 point line.
Their 4 man, Luke Zeller can also shoot 3s and has excellent touch.
Their PG Tory Jackson can also shoot and is extremely quick. Syracuse
seems to be the opposite. They try to dominate with their physical play
from pretty much every position on the floor. Devendorf is a great
shooter but only a couple other players on their team shoot much from
the outside. Onuaku has the second best FG percentages in the nation
and let me know if this is powerful enough for you. Jonny Flynn, however, might be the most physical on Syracuse. Don't believe me? I love how Flynn Plays the game. He plays with more heart and emotion than almost anybody in college basketball. Paul Harris is another guy
that can score the basketball with ease. Not much of an outside shooter
but is athletic and can make midrange shots all day.

1:30 PM. Georgetown @ Duke. ABC. Georgetown is coming off of a great
win over Syracuse. Duke most recently took care of Georgia Tech. Its
always fun to watch games at Cameron indoor and this is definitely the
highest profile non-conference home game for the Dukies. My brother was actually supposed to be at this game with some AAU teammates, but his high school team scheduled a game at the last minute.

3:30 PM. Wake Forest @ Clemson. ESPN. Clemson's LittleJohn Coliseum
might be the most underrated place to watch a basketball game in the
nation. I've been there 4 times. 3 times as a spectator, once as a
player. I'd like to forget about that 1 time as a player. I saw them lose to UNC last year on a a buzzer beater, beat BC last year, and take care of Alabama earlier this season.
I don't know much about Wake this year. I played against Aminu in high
school a little bit but thats about it. Clemson seems like they have a
lot of depth from what I saw at the Alabama game. They have shooters
and strength inside, a lethal combo. I also played against Tanner Smith
and if I'm not mistaken, he and Aminu used to be teammates at Wesleyan
before Aminu transferred to Norcross University.
Littlejohn will be an awesome environment for today's matchup. Our
shootaround is from 3-4 with pregame meal following so I won't get a
chance to watch the beginning of it. Keep your eyes out for Tarzan chilling under the basket. He's at every game.

8:00 PM. College of Charleston @ Furman. Comcast Sports. By now you
should be ready to watch some real basketball. College of Charleston
will be looking for some revenge after we beat them on TV at our place
last year. We'll be trying to make it a 2 game home winning streak
against CoC.

Other games of interest:

• 3:00 PM. Davidson @ Georgia Southern. SportsSouth.
• 3:30 PM. Arizona State @ UCLA. ABC.
• 4:00 PM. Illinois @ Michigan State. ESPN.
• 6:00 PM. Pittsburgh @ Louisville. ESPN.

I probably forgot some but this list should be good enough to
convince you to turn the TV on and enjoy some of the best basketball of
the year.

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An ugly win is still a win

Last night we played Berry College, an NAIA school from Rome, GA. I
have a great deal of respect for their coaching staff and their
players. They executed their Princeton style offense perfectly for a
majority of the game and they knocked down open shots.

The game started out like a nightmare. Aside from the 2 free throws
they gave us for dunking in warm-ups, the first half was unbelievable.
Two of their players were red hot and it seemed like their team missed
1 three pointer in the whole first half (they were actually 50%). One
time we had 4 guys under our basket the ball came off the rim awkwardly
and bounced right off of one of our guys laps into the hands of a Berry
player. It felt like if something could go wrong it did. We were down
by 9 at the half. To start the second half they went on another run and
went up by 15 at the 16 minute mark media time out. We finally started
playing with a sense of urgency as a unit and went on a 19-3 run. I
guess there are a number of ways you can look at the game in a negative
way, but at the end of the day, we won the game. It doesn't matter who
we were playing, we fought back from being down 15 and got the win.

After the game I overheard some of the most asinine comments I've
ever heard. Two people were talking and this is how the conversation
went:

• Person A: (Noting the Celtics t-shirt) So are you a Celtics fan?
• Person B: Yeah I'm a huge Kevin Garnett fan. I went to his
  basketball camp in Greenville when I was a kid. I was the only person
  at camp to ever score on him. I actually got recruited to play at
  Costal Carolina before I messed up my back.
• A: Oh wow. I was just wondering because I'm from Boston.
• B: Time out! You're from Boston? My best friend works at UCONN!!! I've been dying to go visit him up there.

Today we had a short practice that focused on shooting, weights, andfilms. I have an eye appointment tomorrow morning before our 1:00practice. I'll be back later on in the week, but until then, Mark Titus has inspired me to end all of my posts with youtube videos.
[You can see the youtube videos by going to connornolte.com]

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Just Rolled In To Nashville

We just got to the hotel in Nashville. ?Last week we had finals and I think I finished the term pretty strong academically. ?We lost to North Florida last Thursday. ?Thats all I'm going to say about that.

Yesterday we worked out in the morning and in the afternoon we made a trip to the Frazee Center in downtown Greenville. ?We got to hang out with some kids that were spending the afternoon at the center. ?The Frazee center provides a free after school program for kids and they focus on academics, character development, sportsmanship and emotional wellness. ?Most of all, I could tell that at the Frazee center the kids were able to relax and have fun and just be kids. ?I think it was a good opportunity for our team to get our minds off of our recent struggles and well, just be kids. ?Here are some pictures of our trip: Click the link for pictures

Tomorrow we're practicing in the early afternoon and having our 2nd annual Christmas gift exchange. ?Its basically a white elephant exchange. We are randomly put in order and when its your turn you can either steal a gift that was opened before you or you can open a new gift from the bag. ?Last year I got Escape from New York on DVD. ?I'll get back to you later on whether my gift this year can even hold a candle to that.

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A story worth passing on. Heath Miller: from one tight end to another...

Here's a story that I found too awesome to keep to myself. Its the kind of story that everybody should hear, but ends up getting no press. Unless ESPN is doing its Make-a-wish series, they don't have time for stuff like this.

Larry Hedden is a redshirt Junior Tight End for Furman's football team. In the purple and white scrimmage to kick off the football season he separated his shoulder and missed the first couple games of the season. Then in early October he lost his father to cancer. About a month later, in a game against Georgia Southern, he completely blew out his knee. Torn ACL, LCL, and PCL. On the sidelines they couldn't get his kneecap to stay in place. He had surgery and as far as I know his recovery is going smoothly. Unfortunately, the injury ended his football career.

We had practice today a 3:30 and had weight lifting immediately after. At one point in between sets, our strength coach told a few of us about a package Larry recently received in the mail. It was from Heath Miller, the tight end for the Pittsburgh Steelers. The package contained an autographed football and some other odds and ends. There was a note that said something like "From one tight end to another....Good luck recovering". I thought this was a really awesome gesture from Heath Miller. He's quickly become my favorite NFL tight end. Its never hard for me to cheer for someone that takes the time to do something like that. Like I said, I couldn't resist sharing this story. Larry and his family have had a rough year and are in my prayers and I encourage you to do the same.

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Playing Notre Dame

We took a bus to Charlotte at around 7:30 AM on Saturday morning. We were scheduled to fly out of Charlotte into Chicago and then take a bus down to South Bend, Indiana for our game against Notre Dame. We made it to South bend around 3 or so. We headed over to Notre Dame's arena for practice at 5:30. We got to the arena and started making our way through a tunnel to the empty arena floor when we got stopped by an arena employee. Apparently Coach Brey had decided that...

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