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Basketball

Basketball Is Ugly When a Team Can’t Shoot

Brad Stevens has a great quote about basketball that I believe applies to the 2017-18 Fighting Irish. “You have to earn your right to win the game with effort and togetherness,” he said. Stevens neglected to mention that a team that can’t shoot doesn’t have many options. Effort, toughness, rebounding, defense… Those are important, but…

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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The games are raison d’être for a basketball team; but simultaneously, they are mere steps in the unfolding story of a season that begins in the summer and, in all but a handful of cases, ends with a tournament loss. Roles are determined early in the process. Some leaders are appointed while others emerge. The…

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Winning Plays

If you follow college basketball even a little, you know that the Notre Dame men’s basketball team won the Maui Classic tournament. Early season tournaments aren’t the biggest deal in the world, not compared to the NCAA Tournament or the ACC Tournament; but it’s a challenging format that is a good test of mettle as…

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Wonder, Think & Know: Thanksgiving edition

Even if Mike Royko had said “Some things you wonder, some things you think, and some things you just know”, there’s no way he would have said it about Thanksgiving.  Everyone knows what they’re thankful for today, and that includes yours truly.  So allow me to lay a little protocol on you, my audience, regarding…

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How Sweet It Is

It took longer than I thought to come up with a title for this article … an article I’ve waited a very very long time to write.  Hell Yes seemed too trite.  About Damn Time too crotchety.  Happy in Pants?  Too unprofessional.  So I settled on Jackie Gleason’s favorite, because it seems the most fitting….

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