West Bend East baseball - '98 videos

Andy emailed me Saturday to let me know that Robby Jansen had begun putting their old West Bend East baseball videos up on YouTube. This one is a sectional game against Cedarburg.



I watched the top of the first, in which my brother (top) goes in as a courtesy runner, takes third on a Mike Mueller single to right, then scores on a double steal. Pretty cool.

For those of you that didn't know, even though Andy's teams never won a state title, they were still pretty damn good, and set the standard for power hitting by a high school team.

Wisconsin-Minnesota thoughts ... not worth much

All year long, I've run into friends, family and co-workers the day after Badger games and said "Didja see the Badger game last night?" All too often, the response has been "No ..." with me realizing "Oh, that's right, you don't get the Big Ten Network."

Now I know how it feels. We're at Blue Harbor Resort in Sheboygan for our annual winter family outing, spending a lot of time at the place's waterpark, which Will loves. The place has Time Warner cable, which of course doesn't have the Big Ten Network. Worse yet, the only radios we have in the joint, alarm clocks, did not pick up any AM stations. So we were essentially flying blind and deaf for today's game, tracking the score on the Internet before falling asleep.

Just woke up and "saw" us pull away at the end, good thing, because a loss to Minnesota in Madison might have ruined my weekend. Here's what I know from watching the play-by-play, box score, and Brian Lucas's courtside blog.

-Before the game I read that J-Bo hurt his leg in practice yesterday and was doubtful for today. Good thing he did.

-Love the balanced scoring, four guys scoring 11 points and one scoring 12. Six guys took between five and eight field goals attempts. On the year we have six guys averaging between 7.5 and 12.7 points per game. As we saw earlier this season, it's not just the type of scoring that leads to nights like this, but different guys going for 20-plus.

-We're really taking this "we make more free throws than our opponents attempt" thing seriously, eh? Shot 33 today?

-Glad to see we held Tollackson to four points. In one of our games last year he was scoring on us in the post really effectively, limited only by foul trouble, but he didn't really hurt us in our games this year. Could be as much Tubby's system and playing time patterns as anything.

-Pop seemed to have a soild game, although I haven't seen assist and turnover numbers yet.

-Mike Kelley was the honorary captain today, and brought his son Mike Jr. along. Nick, whose dad and stepmom are friends with Kelley's parents, tells me Mike also has four children, and that Kelley's parents have more than 30 grandchildren already. Prolific.

Good to Great

About a month ago my company scheduled an offsite strategic planning meeting. Part of our preparation for the planning was to read the Jim Collins book Good to Great, so I did on my flight to Germany. Then the meeting got canceled. Still, it was a good read, and I thought sevearl of the book's main tenets are applicable to Badger sports.

In a nutshell, the book was a scientific analysis of why some companies, like Kimberly-Clark, Phillip Morris, and Walgreens, outperform the market after years of middling results, while other comparable companies plod along. Some of the traits these successful companies shared were humble leaders, people put in the right places, and focusing on something they can be the best in the world at. Let's look at this from a UW athletics point of view.

Humble leaders: I'm going to put Pat Richter in this class. The guy is obviously incredible, from his days as an athlete to his days in business to his days running our athletic department. Yet you never heard him glorifying himself in public. Barry Alvarez had/has an ego, but you didn't hear him using the first person to describe the program's accomplishments. Dick Bennett and Bo Ryan are as self-effacing as they come.

Put the right people in the right places: Credit Donna Shalala for this one, getting Richter on board to lead the resurrection. But there were lots of other people responsible for doing off-the-field work required in a successful athletic program: Al Fish, Joel Maturi, Jamie Pollard, John Chadima, Steve Malchow, Rob Jansen, and lots of others. ;) These are the ones who monetize all of UW athletics' assets, who communicate a consistent message to the public, who hire other talented people at the lower levels.

Do what you can be best at: In the book the author cites Phillip Morris, which decided to be the best damn tobacco company in the world, not one that got distracted by diversifying into peripheral businesses (although they did that successfully later). No matter how you feel about the ethics of this, you can't deny that they've succeeded, and been immensely profitable along the way.

Let's apply this to UW sports. What could they be best in the world, or at least one of the best in the country, at? Alvarez built the football program with the goal of being the best in the country at running the ball. He figured that he could get linemen from the Midwest and a few good backs and build an identity. Sure, many talented receivers languished under this offensive approach, but it lifted the program to three Rose Bowl titles in six years, unprecedented success.

The basketball program under Bennett and Ryan has been the best in the world at defending and controlling tempo. Sure, many talented offensive players have had their games suppressed under this approach, but it lifted the program to a Final Four and a string of 20-win seasons and NCAA appearances that would have been a pipe dream 20 years ago.

Running a successful athletic program is like running a successful business, and we should be thankful that ours has been run as one of the best in the country for the last 18 years.

Big thanks to my brother-in-law Tony Sorgi, er, Nick, whose computer I'm using to write this.

Next Man Up

I've read a few books since the holidays, and figured this would be a good time
to write some short reviews. Today's book: Next Man Up, by John Feinstein, which I started on my flight home from Germany and finished last weekend.

Faithful readers may recall my review of another Feinstein work, The Last Dance, was not glowing. Too much Duke and Carolina, not enough for anyone else. Next Man Up was much, much better, vintage Feinstein.

Feinstein was granted access to the Baltimore Ravens for their 2004 season, and delivers a behind-the-scenes look at an NFL franchise that is unprecedented today. It starts with the owner, Steve Bisciotti, who bought the franchise from Burch's favorite family, the Modells. Bisciotti seems like a really good guy, a sharp contrast to Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who must have farted on Feinstein's chair at a game at some point - Feinstein just hates him and delivers anecdote after anecdote about what an ass Snyder is.

Ozzie Newsome is another key player, he's just one of the all-around good guys in the NFL and a terrific general manager. Great drafter. Brian Billick is the star. I've always been split on how I felt about him as a coach - he's an offensive coach at heart whose Baltimore teams consistently had subpar offenses but awesome defenses. He comes across as a very tech-savvy, media-savvy guy.

The 2004 season was a tumultuous one for the Ravens. It started in the offseason when Terrell Owens refused to report to Baltimore and ended up with the Eagles. Jamal Lewis was in the midst of his alleged drug deal troubles. Deion Sanders came out of retirement (remember that?) and spent most of the season hurt. Todd Heap was hurt much of the year. Kyle Boller struggled in his first year as a full-time starter. Ed Reed became a superstar. They missed the playoffs, but with all their injuries - Ray Lewis had a broken wrist, Jonathan Ogden and Matt Flynn were hurt as well - it wasn't surprising.

Several former Badgers make the book. Casey Rabach steps in and plays most of the year on the line because of injuries, although he was considered a starting-caliber player to begin with (he signed with Washington after the season). Ed Hartwell plays alongside Ray Lewis, although he isn't mentioned much. And Mike Solwold is on-again off-again as a long snapper. Feinstein much have really hit it off with Solwold, he comes across as a helluva guy. The next year the Ravens' regular long snapper was replaced by former Badger Matt Katula.

(Brief Solwold anecdote: Freshman year in Sullivan Hall, we lived on the same floor as Mike Samuel and Ryan Sondrup. One weekend they hosted Solwold and Mark Zander - a quarterback recruit who, like Hartwell, ended up transferring to Western Illinois. They stopped in our room for some beers and Madden/NHL '95, seemed to have a good time. Solwold, then a junior and a top five tight end recruit nationally, committed the next week, the earliest commit under Alvarez. Solwold didn't do much in his UW career at tight end, but was a terrific long snapper, as evidenced by his NFL career.)

Back to the book - great read, couldn't put it down. Reminded me of Season on the Brink, only with Billick playing the role of Bobby Knight. I haven't read too many good NFL books, but this is the best. I recommend it.

Wisconsin-Indiana thoughts

Wow, what a great win! As disappointed as I was Saturday - losing a game I expected us to win - tonight's win is even sweeter - winning a game I was sure we'd lose. My quick initial thoughts:

-Felt like the Texas game.
-Butch now has a signature moment as a Badger.
-On the day their coach was confirmed a cheater and a liar, Indiana did not deserve to win.

-Butch came up huge late, but to me it was Flowers and Bohannon who were the heroes. Flowers had a great offensive first half and did a nice job on Gordon, even though he ended up with 23 points. J-Bo, obviously, had the breakout shooting game we've all been waiting for, at just the right time!

-You know why J-Bo and Flowers were knocking down those 3-pointers? Because they caught the ball ready to shoot, not catching it and waiting for the defenders to get on them like sometimes happens when we're being so deliberate. Today's ironic headline: The Cap Times' "J-Bo not just a gunner anymore." It was a well-reasoned story, but I was happy he came out gunning tonight!

-In the pregame, Gene Keady said Indiana would come out playing zone, so I expected them to be good at it. Not the case. We had tons of wide-open looks in the early going, even if they were perimeter shots, just didn't make them. I made a note that if we lost, it was because we didn't take advantage of their poor early defense.

-Love the resilience in the first half. The shots weren't falling, White was killing us, even the fat kid scored a couple times - but we never let it get out of control.

-D.J. White is a really good player, but he looked like Wilt Freaking Chamberlain in the first half. It reminded me of the Sweet 16 game five years ago against Kentucky where Marques Estill ate us alive and Bo refused to double down on him. In this game, that refusal paid off - White slowed down in the second half and they were just 3-for-13 on 3-pointers.

-IU is talented, but missing something that makes a good team an elite team. Probably defensive stoppers - we scored only 66 points, but I think we had a very good offensive game.

-Schwib emailed me earlier today about the Kelvin Sampson news, and he compared it to our Shoe Box game against Western Michigan. Very similar, good call. Indiana knew this guy was in trouble when they hired him, now they've got to deal with his continued naughty behavior. Will they fire him? Apparently they can do it without buying him out. Makes you wonder more about Gordon's de-commit from Illinois ... bet Illini fans are having a field day with this.

-Stiemsma played some good minutes in the first half on both ends.

-Krabby once again hit the boards hard, and had a nice bank shot, but was again tentative finishing around the basket. Here's a comparison for you: Joe Krabbenhoft is the Badgers' Dennis Rodman, pre-bug out.

-Jim Sorgi in the house! In this mug shot he looks like a cross between my brother-in-law Nick and Tony Romo.

-After Saturday's mess, I thought this game was very well-officiated. We only shot five free throws, but only deserved that many, shot mostly jumpers. They shot 20 because they attacked the rim. The key was that the refs let our guys play defense on Gordon without sending him to the line time after time like NBA refs to with Dwayne Wade.

-Gordon and Wade: an apt comparison? I envision Gordon as an NBA point guard, but Wade makes a go of it at roughly the same height (6-4).

-Great play by Landry to tip in his own miss. We hit the offensive boards well all night.

-As mentioned at the top, really happy for Butch. He's been here for some great teams and great games, and stepped up big - he wanted that last shot. He was wonderful against Texas - but everyone will remember Flowers' shot and steal. He was big against Pitt in Madison last year, but I remember Alando. Here's his moment to remember - even if it was a bank shot!

Thought it was funny that Larrivee called him the Polar Bear, though ESPN/Lavin/Musberger had copyright on that.

-That's our seventh road win this year. Today's email said that we had the fifth-most road wins of any major conference school in the last two years - perhaps a better indicator of program strength than home court dominance.

-Another 20-win season, five-for-seven under Bo - should have been six if not for that loss to North Dakota State. Who would have thought this was possible 15 years ago?

Alumni basketball game

On his short radio segment tonight following our local news, Bo was talking to LePay about the alumni basketball game, which was played Saturday before the UW-Purdue game. They talked for a while in generalities about how special it is, the great guys, yadda yadda yadda.

In Brian Lucas's courtside blog for the actual game I found this mention of the alumni game:

Tonight's honorary captain is Charlie Wills. He was part of the alumni game that took place earlier today. Sean Mason led all scorers with 19 points to lead the Red team to victory. Dave Mader paced the White team with 16 points.

Not surprising that Mason could still fill it up. That wasn't a bad two-person class - Mason and Sean Dougherty - was it?

Earlier in the week Lucas's daily email mentioned other notables:

... rumored to be in attendance include Clayton Hanson, Dave Mader, David Burkemper, Sean Mason and Charlies Wills ...

What was Burkemper, the ref? Lord knows he's got the whistle.

The game got me thinking about what my dream UW alumni game would be - with guys playing in the shape I'm guessing they're in nowadays, so Joe Franklin and Wes Matthews probably wouldn't qualify. Here's my matchup:

Cardinal: Devin Harris, Sean Mason, Michael Finley, Sean Dougherty, Mike Wilkinson

White: Kammron Taylor, Roy Boone, Kirk Penney, Alando Tucker, Rashard Griffith

Who do you think wins that matchup?

The Cap Times, they are a changin'

Regular readers of Badgercentric know that we value The Capital Times, Madison's afternoon newspaper, for its UW sports coverage. Sure, it doesn't hurt that some of our good friends and former colleagues work there, but even if we didn't know them, we'd still read the stories for comprehensive coverage of our favorite teams.

If you haven't heard about it by now, there are big changes afoot at TCT, announced late last week. Cap Times editor Paul Fanlund, in a video announcement, says TCT will change from a afternoon newspaper published six days a week to an Internet newspaper published seven days a week. Read the story for full details.

As a longtime newspaper junkie, it wasn't hard to see this coming. Afternoon papers are a difficult sell in today's 24/7 news cycle with an endless; newspapers, period, are a difficult sell. Look at me - I used to work in daily newspapers, but don't subscribe to any, and read 4-5 per day online.

The decision to continue with any print product is puzzling, even if it is primarily opinion and arts content. I'll give TCT execs the benefit of the doubt, but my gut says the TCT portion of the State Journal will be easily overlooked, although the TCT's left-leaning opinion pages will probably retain a following going forward.

It appears that while TCT will retain a decent-sized sports staff (and we're confident management will make the proper decisions about which staffers to retain), there is no way they can produce the volume of print coverage they did before. This is not a bad thing. It gives TCT the opportunity to revolutionize professional coverage of sports. Here's what I would recommend:

-Focus on what you can be the best in the world at (a tenet of Good to Great, an interesting book I read on my recent flight, that I will recap later). Forget about spending any staff resources on covering the Packers or Brewers, AP feeds will suffice. Either:

-Devote all your resources to covering local sports: high school, home talent baseball, youth, Badger State Games, etc. Going hyperlocal is a strategy many larger newspapers are pursuing nowadays. But this would be hard to sell advertising around by itself, so:

-Throw your entire staff into covering University of Wisconsin athletics, with a heavy emphasis on the three top revenue-producing sports: football, men's basketball, men's hockey. Maybe not even hockey. That's what locals want, but it's also what UW alumni and fans worldwide want, too. We're an attractive demographic to web advertisers. With five or six guys covering the Badgers full-time, you could blow the State Journal and Journal Sentinel out of the water. Then, on top of the traditional stories you write, get into:

-Video - not hard, do lots of it. Create a mini-Badger TV network.

-Audio - ditto.

-Blog like you mean it, not the afterthought it is now. Be more timely, more provocative. Use it for quick hitters, like Dave Heller's "catching up with" UW alumni features for the Journal Sentinel.

-Be quicker. Right now, the Journal Sentinel and message boards seem to be better places to find breaking Badger news, however limited it might be.

-Build a community, including a message board that could rival any currently out there.

-Consistently cover recruiting like no other major media outlet. Not just this Phil Fritz stuff, well-written, reported recruiting news.

-As regular readers of this blog would know, I also think increased alumni coverage is desirable. Either we went to school with these guys, or they played on teams that made us happy - what are they doing now?

Aside from the unfortunate fact that some true professional journalists will lose their jobs in this transition, I am excited to see what The Cap Times comes up with here. All of us in publishing are trying to figure out the Internet, still, and the trick is to make it its own distinct product, not just a different form of your the product. Now, TCT won't even have a print product to compare itself to, which will be terrifying, but also liberating.

Guten morgen

Well, I think all the pilsener and wienerschnitzel has been flushed from my system, and I'm ready to write about my week in Berlin. What a trip!

In the purest sense, I was there for a coin show - the World Money Fair. Our company was promoting our full array of coin and paper money media properties, especially NumisMaster, our shiny new website that we think is best in class. We were also presenting our Coin of the Year Awards, which go out to mints from around the world. China was the honored country at the event, and they brought along my new friends in this picture.

Thankfully, we ventured out of the convention center a number of times. Some of it was for business related to the coin show. Our friends at the Royal Canadian Mint invited us to a reception at the Canadian Embassy, a gorgeous, modern architectural marvel built in a location where the Berlin Wall used to reside. We toured the Berlin Mint, and were able to catch 2-Euro coins coming off the line. A friend of ours at the German Ministry of Finance invited us to a press event at the Bundeskanzlerin, the German equivalent of the White House, where we came into close proximity with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Bundeskanzlerin was another magnificent modern building, sprinkled with the sort of old world elements you'd expect to see in Europe.

Aside from that, we were able to venture into small neighborhoods and take the train (subway workers are on strike) to downtown shopping areas, thoroughly enjoying it all. A personal highlight for me was walking into a dingy little comic book shop and finding the latest issue of Comics Buyer's Guide, with my name listed on the masthead. The punk teenager standing next to me didn't share my enthusiasm.

All in all, the people were so friendly. I expected the German mindset to be very serious, curt, especially toward Americans, but that was not the case at all. Most spoke English enough to help us get by, some were downright fluent. The food was terrific. One complaint: few water fountains or the type of bottled water we typically drink - mostly mineral water, yuck - which often left me feeling dehydrated.

Germany was not at the top of my list of places to visit in Europe, but it proved to be a wonderful destination, and I would not hesitate to go back.

Our team: Dave Harper, Tom Michael, Lisa Bellavin, and me at the Canadian Embassy. My past experience with work travel was proven true again: Canadians know how to have a good time.

This car, about as long as my legs, is apparently called the Smart Car. My suggestion, Death Trap, probably would have been nixed by the marketing department. People take this thing on the freeway - brave people.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel. I have no idea what she said, but it went over well with the press.

Folks lined up around the block for the right to walk around the perimeter of the dome resting atop the Reichstag, Germany's legislative building.

Pretty sure this is where the German Cabinet meets. Lots of candy and drinks on the table; dehydrated, I was eying up a bottle of orange juice when a young, serious-looking security guard gave me a look that suggested taking the bottle would lead me to a less beautiful room in the Bundeskanzlerin.

Apparently over 12,000 people attended the World Money Fair. Most of them had showered in the past week.

Our Coin of the Year event attracted press from Italy, Latvia, Germany and elsewhere. It was paparazzi-esque, unusual for a coin show; we did have Miley Cyrus handing out the awards.

Coaching tree update

Quick update on a couple Badger football coaching tree developments while I was gone:

-Joe Rudolph, who was one of the underrated standouts on the first Alvarez Rose Bowl team, has joined the staff as tight ends coach. He was most recently on Bill Callahan's staff at Nebraska in the same capacity.

-Dan McCarney was named Florida's assistant head coach. That's pretty huge for Mac, a testament to the respect he has amongst coaches that Urban Meyer would give him this title a little more than a year after winning the national title.

Wisconsin-Purdue thoughts

Feeling pretty raw about this one. Earlier today I was thinking about how confident I was about this game - a rare emotion for me when it comes to big Badger games. But after the close loss in West Lafayette in which we played poorly, I thought the Kohl Center/big game factor would lift us to a comfortable win.

If only. We are not built to come from behind, as Tim McCormick noted correctly on the broadcast, and were never able to get over the hump. Getting down by double digits in the second half against a team that isn't going to implode is a sure recipe for a loss.

First the obligatory gracious words for the victors. Purdue shot well, was scrappy on defense, and didn't let the Kohl Center beat them. They're coming of age sooner than anyone expected, should end up a top 15 or even top 10 team this season.

But man ... we shot 32 percent, allowed them to shot 52 percent, had so many horrible turnovers, left their 3-point shooters open, pushed or backed off on offense at the wrong times, and fell victim to some bad calls and non-calls.

This loss unfolded over such a long time that I experienced all five stages of grief: denial ("we'll still come back ... they can't keep shooting this well"), anger ("that Hummel geek can't keep knocking down 3s ... call the f#$%ing travel!"), bargaining ("if we go stop-score-stop-score-stop-score it's tied ... if I watch the primary coverage on CNN instead of the game we'll cut into their lead"), depression ("I can't believe that after only losing to Illinois at the Kohl in Big Ten play under Bo, this is the second conference team to beat us"), and acceptance ("you know what? 9-2 in the conference, probably ranked in the top 12 on Monday - that's much better than where I thought we'd be at this stage.")

As satisfying as it is to categorize my emotions from a basketball game into the Kubler-Ross model, I'd rather be drinking a Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat and toasting the win that put us in the driver's seat for the Big Ten crown.

-Had a knot in my stomach when their grimy center hit those 3-pointers to start the game, sort of like when Gorney hit several jumpers to start the Iowa game.

-Not going to blame the loss on this, but that was a poorly officiated game. The area in which I thought the refs were consistently off were missing Purdue players shuffling their feet. In the first half, Hummel hit a 3 to stop a rally after traveling twice on the possession. In the second half, Kramer slips and falls, we get called for a foul and a technical, then Calasan knocks down J-Bo with on an illegal screen, none of the calls going our way. (What the hell was that technical about? The TV broadcast never sufficiently found out.) Late in the second half Kramer had a three-point play on a phantom foul call on Flowers.

Yes, they got called for 25 fouls and we shot 33 free throws, but that was appropriate given the style of hands-on defense Purdue played - which limited our penetration and open perimeter looks.

-Pop had a really bad game. It looked like he tweaked his ankle early without anyone noting it, but it's so hard to tell how much it affects him. He wasn't able to get separation for jumpers, which may have been a combination of a slight injury and good, long defenders on him.

-Four points was the deficit hump we couldn't get over. At 26-22 Hummel hit that three after going for a walk. At 59-55 Hughes drove and unwisely put up a shot that was easily blocked. At 64-60 Krabby missed a free throw (you just knew we weren't going to go 33-for-33), Hughes missed a 3, and we committed a turnover. At 69-65 Hughes was stripped and Grant dunked going the other way. At any one of those a conversion could have shifted the balance.

At Indiana on Wednesday, can't imagine that will be a cakewalk.