ConnorNolte's Blog

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.

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]

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.

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...

Last night we had our game vs. Dartmouth. Early on in the game we went up 18-13, forcing them to call a timeout. They then went on a 17-2 run. I think at halftime we were down by 10. We had something like 4 turnovers in a row in the beginning of the second half. Despite that, the most we were down in the second half was 12 points. We went on some big runs down the stretch and I hit a three to cut their lead to 1 with like 7 minutes left and a 3 with 40 seconds left to cut their lead to 2. At the end of their game, their best player had the ball in the middle of the floor around half court. I was guarding him. There was a 5 second differential between the shot clock and the game clock and with about 25 seconds he made a move and I let him get by me going to his right and he made a layup. A couple of my teammates told me they were late in giving help and that it was their fault. I haven't seen the film but bottom line, I shouldn't have let him get by me at all, much less with his strong hand. It was a disappointing loss because we are a better team than the way we are playing. This was definitely a winnable game for our team. If you are a college basketball fan you are probably watching the Notre Dame - UNC game that's going on as I type this. I'm watching it too but I'm probably looking at different things than you. This is because our next game is against Notre Dame. I'll probably be guarding Ryan Ayers. I have a strange connection with Ayers actually. I've never met him but it turns out that (stick with me here) one of my best friends from high school's brother was a good friend of Ayers in middle school somewhere in PA I think. Notre Dame is a great team and we are aware that they might be slightly favored in this game (wink wink). We are practicing tomorrow morning and coach is having the team over for Thanksgiving dinner. Last year the whole team went and we had a great time. The food was great and it was nice to just hang out. We had a game the day after Thanksgiving last year so it didn't make sense for any of us to go home. This year we don't play until Sunday so coach is letting those of us that live within a couple hours go home and come back for an evening practice on Friday. I haven't been home in a while so I'm really looking forward to seeing my family. I'll be back later with more on our preparation for the ND game. Happy Thanksgiving.

We woke up early flew from Greenville to Detroit at 9am on Monday morning. We had a short layover in Detroit and flew to Pittsburgh around 1:30. We practiced at Duquesne from 6:30 to about 8. Pittsburgh is a pretty cool place. I like seeing different parts of the country. Its always fun to imagine where I would be going to school had I grown up somewhere else. We got up early and had a shootaround this morning around 8:30. After practice and the shootaround I had a good feeling about the game. The arena was a little old but besides a few dead spots on the floor, the court and rims felt pretty good. We went over personnel again after our pregame meal and we felt like we matched up pretty well with them. The didn't shoot the ball overly well in their first few games so we decided we wanted to focus on keeping the ball out of the paint and have them shoot from the outside rather than get easy buckets in the paint. Duquesne started off the game on fire. They hit 3 threes en route to a 11-2 start and shot the 3 pretty well for the whole game. They also were really good at getting around the basket and dumping the ball off to a slasher. I came in off the bench and played one of my better halves of basketball in the first half. I hit a couple of threes, hit a pull up jumper, and was 2/2 on free throws. I also had a few assists and a couple rebounds. We went into halftime down by 9. I didn't have a great second half. I turned the ball over twice in back to back possessions and on the second turnover I got a foul called on me as I chased down my turnover. We cut the lead to 6 at one point in the second half but I think that was the closest we got. It was a disappointing game, but the good news is we don't have time to let it get us down. We play at Dartmouth on Tuesday night. I'm gonna call it a night since our wake up call is coming at 4:15 AM. Yes you read that right - 4:15 AM. Dartmouth isn't that easy to get to and I guess the selection of flights was limited. We don't rent out an entire plane like the big boys.

Yesterday we had the day off from practice. I had a few errands to take care of so I took advantage of the afternoon. I got my haircut and went to Walmart to restock my room's food and Gatorade supply. The Salvation Army bell ringers were outside the doors collecting donations and there were numerous Christmas displays throughout the store. They were also playing Christmas music. Is it just me or is it a little early for Christmas music? Time really is flying and I can't believe that its already November 19th, but I don't start thinking about Christmas until my calendar says December. Today is probably one of the busier days I've had this year. I had class from 9:30-10:30. Got some lunch around 12. Had class from 12:30-1:30. Had a computer science lab from 2:30-4:30 and practice at 5:30. In my public speaking class we had an interesting assignment. Todays topic was Eulogies. Our assignment was to give a eulogy at our own funeral. I didn't present mine today but I wrote the outline and it was really weird. I have no idea what I am going to do with my life so it was hard to imagine what somebody would say about my life. I'm going out to eat tonight at a pizza place in downtown Greenville, Bellacinos with a couple of my teammates. I get to sleep in tomorrow so I'm looking forward to that.

Tomorrow we play Emory, a D3 team from Atlanta. We had a good practice today and I think everybody is just ready to get the season underway. We've had a long time to think about our 7-23 record from last year. Last season wasn't fun for anybody and we've been working hard since last year's conference tournament loss to Elon to prevent it from happening again. I watched the Jets-Pats game tonight. It was awesome to see Favre lead the Jets to the overtime win. Its amazing how many times he has led his team to victory in the 4th quarter and OT. I still can't believe the Packers kicked him to the curb. I realized I won't be in class on Monday considering we're playing at Charleston Southern that night. This means that I have to do the flash animation project that's due Monday in Computer Science tomorrow instead of at the last minute on Sunday night like I would have done. I'm using a picture of me shooting a free throw and making the ball move across the picture simulating a shot. I'll put it on here sometime if I can figure out how to do it.

Here is a list of 3 players I'm looking forward to watching this season. I played against all 3 of them in high school and can't wait to see how they do this year. For pictures of me with these guys head over to www.connornolte.com or click the link. Gani Lawal - Georgia Tech: I had the opportunity to play with and against Gani while I was in high school. I played on the same team as him at a Rivals.com Georgia Hoops Showcase the summer before our Junior years of high school. We were in the last game of the day and it pitted Gani up against J.J. Hickson at the center position. This game represented everything wrong with AAU politics in Georgia. Gani played for the Georgia Stars throughout high school and J.J. played with the Worldwide Renegades. Representatives from both AAU crews went back and forth all game. Apparently JJ scored 50. This was our 3rd game of the day and there was hardly transition defense played. Probably 14-20 of those points from JJ came on uncontested dunks. Nobody seems to remember that Gani and my team ended up winning, they only bring up JJ scoring 50. Anyways, I'm looking for Gani to have a great season at Tech this year. He is a class act and one of the nicest guys I've played against. Chris Allen- Michigan State: Chris Allen is probably tied with Stephen Curry as the best shooter I've ever seen. He doesn't miss. His Meadowcreek team knocked my Milton team out of the state playoffs in the sweet sixteen to end my Junior season. Even though I'm a Wisconsin fan, I can't wait to see Chris succeed in the Big Ten. He may not be the first option on that team considering he's part of a very talented Spartan group, but I think he'll find ways to put up good numbers. Chris Singleton - Florida State: I played against Chris Singleton for his Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years in high school. He played at Cherokee High School, a team in our region. He was a Mickey D's All American last year. I'm not gonna lie, I though he was a great player and I knew he'd go play at a big school, but I never would have guessed he'd be a McDonalds All-American. I'm very interested to see how he does against ACC competition.