Starting Five
Dietrick, the leading scorer and rebounder on the last undefeated women’s team in the nation, grew up in Wellesley, Mass., just 73 miles northeast of Storrs.
1. Insert Lazy Rocky 3 Soundtrack Reference or Lazier Katy Perry Lyric Reference Here
Last night No. 2 Connecticut (23-1), to no one’s surprise, wiped the court with undefeated and No. 1 South Carolina (22-1 now) in Storrs. It was a 25-point blowout snowplowing, 87-62. UConn’s only loss this season was at Stanford, which has had the Huskies’ number in Maples Pavilion of late.
I write “to no one’s surprise” because ESPN2 had an hour-long Geno Auriemma doc ready to air immediately after the game. I guess they still could have run it after a Huskies loss, but they knew that wasn’t happening.
Anyway, UConn (“Unparalleled Excellence in Women’s Hoops: Now Available in Storrs”) is the best team in women’s college basketball (again). The last undefeated team, though, is Princeton. The 16th-ranked Tigers, 21-0, are third in the nation in Scoring Margin –behind UConn and South Carolina–and earlier this season defeated Michigan by 30 points in Ann Arbor.
Two of the Tigers’ best players are leading scorer Blake Dietrick (15.0 ppg), who also leads in assists, and leading rebounder Annie Tarakchian (8.7 rig). But the gal you may hear the most about during the national news pieces is Leslie Robinson. Why? Her uncle is the President of the United States.
p.s. The last winless team in Division I is UC-Santa Barbara (0-21), which used to be a perennial entrant into the women’s tourney.
2. Run, Forrest, Run
Brannigan (N) has gotten feelers from Duke and Georgetown, among others.
This is Mikey Brannigan, a high school senior from Long Island. Mikey has autism. He also runs a 4:07 mile. Has Tom Rinaldi showed up at his door yet? Brannigan will be competing in the Boys Mile at the Millrose Games in Harlem on Saturday. If you are anywhere near New York City and want to fall in love with attending a live sporting event again, I cannot strongly enough suggest that you make it to the 168th Street Armory on Saturday to watch Brannigan and some of the world’s premier track-and-field athletes compete. You won’t be sorry.
p.s. It occurs to me that Laura Branigan (“Gloria”) also hailed from Long Island, but she only had two “n’s” in her surname. Oh, well.
3. Jimmy Thing
I like Jimmy Fallon, the person.
I like Jimmy Fallon, the musician/performer.
I find most of his show painfully insipid. I get it: I’m not a Millennial. NBC doesn’t care. Anyway….
4. Death By a Thousand White Lies
Allison, dad’s aim is true (we think)
The latest Brian Williams’ tall tale comes courtesy of Red Bank, N.J., (currently known as “Red Hot Red Bank”). Williams claims that in the 1970s, he was selling Christmas trees there and was then robbed at gunpoint.
I grew up in the neighboring town, Middletown, which is also Williams’ hometown. Red Bank is the town in which I attended elementary school. Is it possible that Williams was robbed at gunpoint? Definitely. Red Bank is a relatively big town in the area–it’s no Colt’s Neck. But still, this is just another Williams’ claim, now coming to light, that cannot be proven (at least it cannot be disproven).
It’s very easy to like B-Dub. Everyone at NBC does. I did the one or two times I met him. He definitely has a presence. Still, I don’t think this is going to end well for him.
Interesting to see how Williams’ good friend, Jon Stewart, handled this. He uses some silly word play at first, then gives a Colbert-ian “wag of the finger” to him. But then he finishes with a rebuke for all media that got most of details of Iraq War wrong. But that’s irrelevant here, Jon.
5. Martin-izing
Martin’s performance of “King Tut” was SNL’s watershed moment. After that, the show was a fixture of pop culture.
“Some people have a way with words. Others…not have way.”
That’s from Steve Martin, and it’s one of my all-time favorite lines. While he didn’t use it on Saturday Night Live, Martin has appeared on SNL more times –27–than any non-cast member. And only Alec Baldwin, who’s hosted 16 times, has hosted more than Martin (15).
I’ll try to add a little SNL note every day this week heading up to Saturday night’s 40th Anniversary celebration.
Here’s a nice little montage, too. Love the Norm MacDonald joke about women.
Remote Patrol
Gentleman’s Agreement
TCM 8 p.m.
or
Kentucky at LSU
ESPN 7 p.m.
Why, I oughta… That was the good thing about suits. You could grab a guy by the lapels a lot more.
You can either watch the 1947 Best Picture winner at the Oscars, starring Gregory Peck, or you can watch Kentucky’s undefeated season go down in flames at LSU. By the way, 21 years ago, I still recall watching it, Rick Pitino took the Wildcats to Baton Rouge and they came all the way back from 31 down in the second half to win. One of the craziest games I’ve ever seen.
I enjoy watching Geno & the UConn women bb team as I enjoy watching excellence. However, I have also always felt that having ONE (or at most 2) women’s basketball teams be so dominant is bad for the sport, in that it stunts the development of other school’s teams. It has taken YEARS for even half a dozen of the women’s teams to be competitive at the top. And even now, a top female h.s. player is probably going to end up in Storrs, if Geno wants her. Hmmmm, maybe ‘affirmative action’ should be imposed.
Anyhoo, question for you since you know Geno so well – how would you compare him with Dean Smith as a bb coach AND post-collegiate career mentor of all his former players?
I read your piece on Fallon & it made me laugh. First, because your AARP Welcome letter is surely in the mail. Actually, I’m not sure if humor is a generational thing or just personal taste. I do know my 90 year old dad HATES Letterman. He can rant for half an hour how much he “hates” him. Whenever I try to get him to say ‘why’, he just keeps spewing Dave ‘s “not funny!”. He’s felt this since Letterman 1st got his CBS show. All these years I’ve figured it was the sarcastic humor that my dad finds so distasteful. In your case, I think you gravitate to “verbal” humor, especially witty & fast banter, whereas Fallon’s humor is physical. I actually get a kick out of Fallon’s antics but rarely watch the show. You are correct – his show is NOT a “talk show’, it is more old-style variety show. That millennials think this is NEW makes me laugh even more than Fallon.
NBC suspending Brian Williams for 6 months says a lot about how far the network “news” shows have fallen. I like Brian Williams, he seems someone you’d like to have a beer with. Doesn’t matter, he should be fired. You can’t make stuff up, embellish, sort of remember, and not pay the consequences. And now it appears that its more than just one isolated incident. The fact that NBC refuses to fire him says a great deal, frankly I don’t know how they can continue to call themselves a news organization, just another wing of the entertainment division. I guess they just hope that in 6 months we won’t remember anything and welcome BW back with open arms.
I think you’ve made a very smart point on Fallon. We DVR Fallon-Kimmel-Conan-Letterman each night but rarely have time to jump back and watch, save a guest we like a lot.
But I am consistently impressed by Fallon’s ability to produce a must-see clip on social media. Just today, I watched him play “Catchphrase” with Colin Firth, Jack McBrayer and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. You worried, going in, they’d have too many jokes set up it’d seem rehearsed; you wished afterwards they’d have set a few more up than they did. Laugh-out-loud funny at times, but slow at others, like any good SNL alum.
I’m quick with the 30-seconds-forward button in most things I watch off the DVR — the Grammys lasted less than an hour for me, and I’ll kill off a late-night bit one minute in without it taking much unfunniness.
To that extent, Fallon is doing his job well. It falls short of the 60-minute standards we had 20 years ago when you started worrying Letterman would enjoy one interview so much he wouldn’t get another guest in before the show was up. But in today’s world, he’s doing really well …