Thanks for making me look good, Other Gonzaga Grads

From Payscale.com (via Deadspin and Lion in Oil) comes a 2008 tourney bracket with winners decided by highest median salaries of each school’s graduates. As in real life, the Zags lost out to Davidson in the first round, but it turns out that your typical Gonzaga student makes a good living at $71,200 per. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how to figure out a median, or why it’s even a good statistical measure (advantages of having a sub-200 Math score on the SAT), but I will say that I won’t make that much money until I start robbing banks. Hey…robbing banks! I’ve got it!

So here’s to you, Mr. Super Rich Zag Alum Guy. Enjoy swimming in your giant pool of money.

Davidson…GRRRRR!

Hello friends. Long time no talk. I’m personally trying to get used to not having any games to write on or Heytvelts to complain about, and things aren’t going so smooth. I haven’t showered in like five days, I don’t eat anything except for banana chips and pizza crusts…I’m like Captain Willard at the beginning of Apocalypse Now.
If one thing can bring me out of my stupor and get on that season wrap-up I’ve been meaning to do, it’s those pesky Davidson Wildcats. The team that runs the celebrated Quintuple Screen for Curry offense is making a business of driving me nuts. Grr, Davidson. Grr! That you provide students with free laundry service has be oh so well-documented, and now I get to hear about you providing free tickets to the Sweet Sixteen? This is not college, man…this is some kind of free land, where everything is free. COMMUNISM!
You’ve probably by now adopted Davidson as your team for the rest of the tourney. Well, not me sister. You can have them and their cute free stuff…I’ll take West Virginia and their Makin’ Fun. Possibly drunk, probably cheating head coach or not, Makin’ Fun is better than free stuff any day*.

*Probably a lie. A bitter, bitter lie.

On the Most Underrated City in America

Memphis, Tennesse: home of Elvis, barbeque, and a pretty little disregard for standard laws regarding alcoholic consumption.
Quick digressional story on Memphis: La Rev Commenter Ro-& and I were in Memphis for the Zags’ 2001 first two games, including Calvary’s tip-in against Virginia. Apparently Memphis thinks it’s Canada, because we were both in our teens at the time, and we both were allowed to drink, both at bars and while walking around town. Cops were actually walking up to us, asking if we wanted a refill*. Any town with that kind of spirit is ok in my book.
Ok, so apparently, the Zags have a game tomorrow. First I’ve heard of it, but Iguess Memphis is the top-ranked team in the country. Weird.
I think most Zag fans are already calling this one a blowout. Maybe, maybe not, but I do know that last year’s less talented GU team took last year’s a little less talented Memphis team to OT, and nearly (and probably should have) won at the end. From last year’s game, add Heytvelt, Gray, Daye, and John Rambo (more on him in a little bit) to the Zags, and Derrick Rose to Memphis. What does all this mean? Nothing, but I’ll take my chances with thinking the Zags have more than a decent shot to pull of an upset.
Memphis looked very, very good in demoralizing Georgetown, and have spent pretty much every waking hour since destroying the Conference USA. This matchup makes so much sense for both teams, what with both of their conferences generally wasting space. As Eric Angevine from Storming the Floor said over at Deadspin today, “Hand it to the Zags, they’ll play anybody, anywhere.” Yeah, but somehow I don’t think Coach Few had it in mind to play 1990 UNLV. No Stacey Augmon here, but the Tigers do have Joey Dorsey, who has two things going for him in the “This Guy Would Probably Bite Off Your Head Just So He Could Drink Your Spinal Fluid” contest. First, his name is Joey, which, if you remember, was also what noted psychopath Albert Belle once went by. Second, he’s from Baltimore, which is, if you’ve never been, scary.
So what’s going to happen tomorrow? Memphis probably has the edge in every single category, and I would have to say this GU team has not yet shown any of the toughness that they did last year. But still…if a team with Pendo and Pargo can get the rest of the guys to tough it up, anything can happen.

PS- Memphis wins by 60. Give or take.

*May not have happened

Crabcakes and football…

If you’re like me, you think French Canadians are the funniest people in the world. Seriously, those guys make me laugh no matter what they’re doing. Take Crippler Cespedes, for example. Put someone else less French Canadian in a YouTube video, and it might not have such an impact.

I can only hope the folks at Marshall appreciate French Canada the way I do. Bon soir.

Bruce Pearl, I challenge you to a game of horseshoes? A game of horseshoes…

Longtime La Rev readers will remember my unhealthy fear of New York City. Just thinking about it gives me the shimmy shakes. Well, if I had an unhealthy fear of a person, it would be of Tennessee head coach/freak show Bruce Pearl. The guy is a crazy combo of Hank Scorpio and the Oxy Clean guy, and he freaks the hell out of me. In fact, in all the world, there are two people I hope I never run into in a dark alley, and one of them is Bruce Pearl (the other is Cheetara, but that’s a story for another day). So, you could say tomorrow’s game scares me a little bit. Not so much from a “How are the Zags going to keep up?” standpoint, but rather a “How am I going to avoid wetting myself before halftime?” standpoint. That would be embarassing. Speaking of awesome, a video:

Let John Rambo go

At Target the other day, I saw the complete set of Rambo movies for $15. Fifteen dollars! For Rambo! Fifteen was my assumed market value for First Blood alone, not for all three. So apparently, Rambo’s stock is down somewhat.
Speaking of Rambo stock being down, Ira Brown doesn’t get any time, huh? Maybe he’s not that good at basketball, I don’t know, but I do know that he jumped over a guy’s head, has a 130 mph fastball, and single-handedly liberated a Cambodian POW camp. He’s either John Rambo or one of the characters from Base Wars. If a guy like that can’t get on the floor, who can?
This Zag team is crazily close to having three unguardable players on the floor at any time. What better compliment to that lineup than Humanity’s Greatest Human? Coach Few, if you’re out there, let John Rambo go.

On "Where the Hell is That Damn Muse?"

Nothing to write….nothing to write…nothing to write nothing to write nothing to write…

Oh, I’m going to live-blog tonight’s Sugar Bear-Bullfrogs game, just because of the fact that Gonzaga playing UNC in sports is very funny to me. Only Jeebus knows how these live-blogs work, and probably by mid-first half, I’ll need at least some help from any one of the three Jebuses. But in any case, it should be an opportunity to make fun of Ehlo. Stop by at Halftime for the first half, whatever that means.

Oh, and this guy has a funny name.

Onward or whatever.

Finals? Oh, yeah…"finals."

I don’t know if Finals Week is the worst week of the season, but it’s close. The Zags historically play like crispy burnt butthole right after taking their finals, and to remedy that for this season, they scheduled the very much un-good University of Northern Colorado Fighting Bears. Seeing as my sister went to school at UNC, I feel I’m more than qualified to tell you everything there is to know about it, in note form, natch:
-If you think of snow-capped mountain peaks when you think of Colorado, you’re half right, because in actuallity, only about half of the state is in the mountains. The other half looks like Greeley, which is to say, it’s crappy. Greeley used to smell like cow manure, which is the exact opposite quality you want in a town. There is a Taco John’s, however, which is exactly the quality you want in a town. Apparently, they cleaned up the stockyards, because it smells only slightly like cow manure now. Which is good, especially when you’re eating tacos.
-Greeley is also home to something called the Greeley Stampede. It’s half country music festival, half super rodeo. A Woodstock for Republicans.
-Apparently, some guy known as “The Father of Radical Islam” went to UNC. Speaking of Woodstock for Republicans! (Tom Tancredo also graduated from UNC…not sure if there’s a coincidence or not. Oh, I kid, I kid.)
-I got a letter when I was in high school inviting me to apply to UNC. “Sign this letter, return it back to us, and consider yourself applied,” it said.
-Their dance team is known as the Sugar Bears. Now, that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.
-When told that UNC would be playing Gonzaga at the Kennel a few years ago, Sister of La Rev could not control her own laughter.
-As for UNC and their sports program, they used to do quite well in Division II, even winning a few national football championships. Then they moved up to D-I. Now, they all suck. Well, maybe not all of them. Their cheerleaders might be good (Cousin of La Rev might also be a UNC cheerleader…also, not sure if there’s a coincidence), but the rest of them have trouble in the hugely great Big Sky Conference. Actually, I have no idea how much of that is true…pretty much, I made it up. But their football team sucks now, I do know that.

That’s all I’ve got. I know some funny things about the hoops team as well, but if I use up all my info now, this Finals Week will be rather dusty.
Onward!

Chapter 7: People Who Are Crazy

Students who camp out for basketball games are crazy. Past crazy actually. What do you call someone who’s past crazy? A nutjob? Good…camping out for basketball games is nutjobby.

The Seattle P-I says anticipation is high for tonight’s MEGA-HUGE CLASH OF TITANIC TITANS. It is so high in fact, that some students started camping out on November 26. That was last Monday. I guess anticipation was so high that students actually got high enough to want to sleep outside for a week.
Apparently–at least judging by the flooded-out highways I keep seeing on the news–the Northwest is in the middle of a huge storm involving what probably amounts to multiple meters of rain. All this means is that, as the article said, students who camped out for tickets did so in puddles. Having been in Spokane during Puddle Season, I can say definitively that the absolute last thing it would make me want to do is camp. But, I am not high, so there you go.
If I were called upon to advise these poor, wayward nutjobs, I would urge them to cut out the camping and start practicing castle-storming or arsenal-storming or just storming in general. This way, they could storm the hell out of the ESPN offices and tell them to stop being nutjobs. Wait, what do you call someone who’s past a nutjob? A dickface? Good…then they can storm the ESPN offices and tell them to stop being dickfaces.

Screw you, ESPN, you bunch of dickfaces.

I got Philly YouTube fevah!

Boston’s going to be a sweet Revolutionary road trip (all kinds of reinactments on the docket…), but I’m pretty sad to be missing Philadelphia right now. Even though it’s less than two hours away, I’ve never been…if I were though, I’d be the nerd who passes the run up the art museum steps in favor of a trip to the National Constitution Center.
A little known fact about Philly: Philadelphians pronounce “water” as “wooter.” It’s funny.

Some videos?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b3mftcV0dY&rel=1">

Go Zags.