There's a lot of excitement from people wearing purple here in Lawrence. Of course, purple isn't the favorite color here - in fact, it's the most hated color, worn by arch-rival Kansas State. Folks here are nice but you do get a few double takes as you walk around historic Memorial Stadium -- the first collegiate stadium built west of the Mississippi River.
Quick notes ... assistant track and field coach Mike Heimerman, a native of Kansas, helped equipment guru Chuck Bourg drive the equipment truck up from Natchitoches. Mike is very excited, to say the least ... former NSU athletes here include former football players Dan Chase, Shelley Dickie and Gil Gilson (and, of course, Britt Brittain with the Demon Sports Network) and former Demon baseball pitcher Will McGuffey, who has been working with a minor league baseball team in Nebraska just eliminated from the playoffs last night in St. Paul, Minn.
Demon Sports Network engineer/stat guru Davey Antilley and I had the chance to tour fabled Allen Fieldhouse where the Jayhawks basketball team plays ... one of America's great sports venues. It sits on James Naismith Drive -- the inventor of basketball coached here, and is buried here. His successor was Phog Allen, for whom the fieldhouse is named.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Hoop scoop
Updates on Demon basketball coaches current and past …
… head coach Mike McConathy has been invited to be grand marshal of the Marthaville Heritage Festival Parade Saturday, Sept. 16 (later that day, the Demon football team plays its home opener against Delaware State at Turpin Stadium). He gets to throw candy to the crowd, and perhaps other goodies, too. Somehow I think there may be a Demon basketball T-shirt or two sailing out of his hands during the parade.
… Gabe Carter, a graduate assistant manager and a valued member of the basketball staff for the past two seasons, has waded through the job market all summer long, and has managed to stay in college basketball. The Arkansas native is now part of the basketball staff at Olney Central Community College in Olney, IL.
In an e-mail to friends and colleagues, Carter said in “my time at Northwestern, I learned so much as a coach, student, and person … and would like to thank you all. Hope to see or hear from you in the future.” Gabe was a class act and is certainly going to be a fine coach. His girlfriend is former Demon Angel Nettie Krepper, so we know Carter can recruit.
… Carter replaced Paul Weir on the Demons’ staff. Weir, you might remember, moved to Iowa as an administrative assistant in late spring 2005 after helping the Demons win their first Southland Conference championship.
Paul was on the Iowa bench last March 17 when the Demons rallied from 17 down in the last eight minutes and beat the Hawkeyes 64-63 on Jermaine Wallace’s last-second 3-pointer. He was already in agony all week long, trying to reconcile his competitive drive and his job with his emotions and pride in what the Demons had accomplished. Weir had become very close, as Carter did, with the Demon players and coaching staff. Throughout the 2005-06 season, he remained in close contact with the coaching staff at NSU. Can you imagine his conflicted feelings in the hours and days after NSU’s St. Patrick’s Day surprise?
So it was nice to see Tuesday that Iowa head coach Steve Alford has promoted Weir to the “director of basketball operations” job for the Hawkeyes. Former NSU sports information director Steve Roe (1981-85), who handles basketball for the Iowa SID office in his hometown of Iowa City, forwarded the announcement of Weir’s promotion.
Paul got his master’s in sport administration before heading to Iowa, and now is working on a doctoral degree.
… head coach Mike McConathy has been invited to be grand marshal of the Marthaville Heritage Festival Parade Saturday, Sept. 16 (later that day, the Demon football team plays its home opener against Delaware State at Turpin Stadium). He gets to throw candy to the crowd, and perhaps other goodies, too. Somehow I think there may be a Demon basketball T-shirt or two sailing out of his hands during the parade.
… Gabe Carter, a graduate assistant manager and a valued member of the basketball staff for the past two seasons, has waded through the job market all summer long, and has managed to stay in college basketball. The Arkansas native is now part of the basketball staff at Olney Central Community College in Olney, IL.
In an e-mail to friends and colleagues, Carter said in “my time at Northwestern, I learned so much as a coach, student, and person … and would like to thank you all. Hope to see or hear from you in the future.” Gabe was a class act and is certainly going to be a fine coach. His girlfriend is former Demon Angel Nettie Krepper, so we know Carter can recruit.
… Carter replaced Paul Weir on the Demons’ staff. Weir, you might remember, moved to Iowa as an administrative assistant in late spring 2005 after helping the Demons win their first Southland Conference championship.
Paul was on the Iowa bench last March 17 when the Demons rallied from 17 down in the last eight minutes and beat the Hawkeyes 64-63 on Jermaine Wallace’s last-second 3-pointer. He was already in agony all week long, trying to reconcile his competitive drive and his job with his emotions and pride in what the Demons had accomplished. Weir had become very close, as Carter did, with the Demon players and coaching staff. Throughout the 2005-06 season, he remained in close contact with the coaching staff at NSU. Can you imagine his conflicted feelings in the hours and days after NSU’s St. Patrick’s Day surprise?
So it was nice to see Tuesday that Iowa head coach Steve Alford has promoted Weir to the “director of basketball operations” job for the Hawkeyes. Former NSU sports information director Steve Roe (1981-85), who handles basketball for the Iowa SID office in his hometown of Iowa City, forwarded the announcement of Weir’s promotion.
Paul got his master’s in sport administration before heading to Iowa, and now is working on a doctoral degree.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Demon Football Things to Watch
Just a few things I will be eager to see when the season kicks off Saturday in Lawrence with the temperature in the mid 80s...
The Demon Pups: There is a lot of youth on this Demon team, with just seven seniors. I want to see how the kids play when they face another team for the first time, especially one the caliber of Kansas.
The OL: Perhaps the biggest question mark on the team, but also one with a ton of talent. There is no other unit in football that has to rely on each other so much, and there will be a lot of new starters and new guys leaning on each other. This unit could become very good...hopefully very soon.
QB: After a tremendous spring and fall camp, Roch Charpentier has made this a battle between he and Ricky Joe Meeks. Who will step up and seize control of the game? Head Coach Scott Stoker demands a lot of his QBs, let's see who can best handle those demands.
RB: Who totes the note? There are five guys with great talent back there, it's just a matter of who steps up. Massey, Skidmore, Lawrence, Earl or Etheridge?
Purple Swarm: Clearly the defense will need to help the offense out in the early going. They play a unique brand of defense and have a lot of potential playmakers behind the guys on front.
Ed Queen: Maybe my biggest player to watch. Watching Ed limp around last year trying to play through the sports hernia was painful. Now that he is healthy and ready to go, can he regain the form of two years ago, when he was dominant? And what does his presence do for Tory Collins? Surely they will go a long way in keeping double teams off of each other to make plays in the backfield.
Attitude: Much has been made of this team being very focused on the team concept, burying egos for the good of the team. I will be interested in how they respond to success or adversity. What will they do if they have a big lead, or protecting a small one? What happens when they get down quickly or a couple of bad plays happen in a row? Attitude could mean a lot to this team.
Those are some of the things that I will be keeping my eye on, and hopefully we will be able to give you some indication on how those are going.
Oh, did I mention the mid-80s temperature?
See you on the radio!
The Demon Pups: There is a lot of youth on this Demon team, with just seven seniors. I want to see how the kids play when they face another team for the first time, especially one the caliber of Kansas.
The OL: Perhaps the biggest question mark on the team, but also one with a ton of talent. There is no other unit in football that has to rely on each other so much, and there will be a lot of new starters and new guys leaning on each other. This unit could become very good...hopefully very soon.
QB: After a tremendous spring and fall camp, Roch Charpentier has made this a battle between he and Ricky Joe Meeks. Who will step up and seize control of the game? Head Coach Scott Stoker demands a lot of his QBs, let's see who can best handle those demands.
RB: Who totes the note? There are five guys with great talent back there, it's just a matter of who steps up. Massey, Skidmore, Lawrence, Earl or Etheridge?
Purple Swarm: Clearly the defense will need to help the offense out in the early going. They play a unique brand of defense and have a lot of potential playmakers behind the guys on front.
Ed Queen: Maybe my biggest player to watch. Watching Ed limp around last year trying to play through the sports hernia was painful. Now that he is healthy and ready to go, can he regain the form of two years ago, when he was dominant? And what does his presence do for Tory Collins? Surely they will go a long way in keeping double teams off of each other to make plays in the backfield.
Attitude: Much has been made of this team being very focused on the team concept, burying egos for the good of the team. I will be interested in how they respond to success or adversity. What will they do if they have a big lead, or protecting a small one? What happens when they get down quickly or a couple of bad plays happen in a row? Attitude could mean a lot to this team.
Those are some of the things that I will be keeping my eye on, and hopefully we will be able to give you some indication on how those are going.
Oh, did I mention the mid-80s temperature?
See you on the radio!
Coach B and the Lady Demons start with a win
Being superstitious, and super energetic, helped new Lady Demon volleyball coach Brittany Uffelman win her head coaching debut Tuesday night.
Ever since she took bus trips with her dad’s high school wrestling powerhouse in Wyoming as a child, Brittany has sat in the front right seat of the first row of any bus she rides. Leaving Tuesday afternoon for the season opener at Louisiana-Lafayette, coach Uffelman claimed that seat.
The lucky charm helped. Her team played poorly in its debut, she thought, especially in the first two games against a Lady Cajun squad that was playing its fourth match of the year. ULL took the first two games.
Uffelman was stern and passionate, players say, in her three-minute talk to the team before game three. The Lady Demons pulled together and swept the three remaining games to take the match, beating the Lady Cajuns for the third straight year.
The team pulled back into the Prather Coliseum lot shortly after midnight. The players scurred off to bed, due back to the weight room at 6:45 a.m. for a workout.
Coach B didn’t wait that long. She jogged the two miles across Cane River to her home in east Natchitoches.
Ever since she took bus trips with her dad’s high school wrestling powerhouse in Wyoming as a child, Brittany has sat in the front right seat of the first row of any bus she rides. Leaving Tuesday afternoon for the season opener at Louisiana-Lafayette, coach Uffelman claimed that seat.
The lucky charm helped. Her team played poorly in its debut, she thought, especially in the first two games against a Lady Cajun squad that was playing its fourth match of the year. ULL took the first two games.
Uffelman was stern and passionate, players say, in her three-minute talk to the team before game three. The Lady Demons pulled together and swept the three remaining games to take the match, beating the Lady Cajuns for the third straight year.
The team pulled back into the Prather Coliseum lot shortly after midnight. The players scurred off to bed, due back to the weight room at 6:45 a.m. for a workout.
Coach B didn’t wait that long. She jogged the two miles across Cane River to her home in east Natchitoches.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
The ladies still love Lanny
Since his appearance on the ABC TV show "The Bachelor" two years ago, the ladies of the world haven't forgotten former Demon linebacker Lanny Lawrence. If you don't know, or don't remember, check out the Demon Dust archives for the Feb. 13, 2004 story about Lanny's fan club.
What was a tsunami of inquiries pleading for us to get the girls in contact with their "ideal man," is now, at least on campus, a mere trickle of e-mails that pop in from time to time. It's not quite that calm in Lanny's world -- the internet doesn't allow us to fade away, and some fans are quite persistent.
Our most recent request came from Brazil over the weekend. Dani is going to college and doing a class project about reality shows. "Lanny is the favorite here, at my college," she writes. Could we give her Lanny's e-mail address? Please?
If I had a dollar for every one of those we got two years ago ... we could dome Turpin Stadium. OK, that's over the top, but we did get hundreds of requests to reach Lanny. We got pictures. We got poems ... and we forwarded them all his way -- when his e-mail box wasn't full.
There was no chance he could answer them all. We didn't see the half of it, he says. But occasionally, for one good reason or another, none of it having to do with romance, Lanny would reply.
As he said in an e-mail replying to our latest inquiry, "my goodness, will it never end?"
No, he knows, and so do we. But sometimes, he does write back. This time, because it was for a class project, he did.
He also tells us that his close friend and all-time Demon baseball pitching appearances king David "Bulldog" Balcer, our own version of Orel Hershisher on the hill, has moved to Minnesota. Balcer, recently the ticket guru at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, is now director of ticketing for the Target Center in Minneapolis.
Lanny is trying to join a lot of former Demon teammates like Brian Whaley, Will Broussard, Roy Locks and Germond Williams at next weekend's NSU-Baylor football game in Waco. Lanny is helping coach his brother's high school team, which has a game next Saturday, but he's trying to make both events.
What was a tsunami of inquiries pleading for us to get the girls in contact with their "ideal man," is now, at least on campus, a mere trickle of e-mails that pop in from time to time. It's not quite that calm in Lanny's world -- the internet doesn't allow us to fade away, and some fans are quite persistent.
Our most recent request came from Brazil over the weekend. Dani is going to college and doing a class project about reality shows. "Lanny is the favorite here, at my college," she writes. Could we give her Lanny's e-mail address? Please?
If I had a dollar for every one of those we got two years ago ... we could dome Turpin Stadium. OK, that's over the top, but we did get hundreds of requests to reach Lanny. We got pictures. We got poems ... and we forwarded them all his way -- when his e-mail box wasn't full.
There was no chance he could answer them all. We didn't see the half of it, he says. But occasionally, for one good reason or another, none of it having to do with romance, Lanny would reply.
As he said in an e-mail replying to our latest inquiry, "my goodness, will it never end?"
No, he knows, and so do we. But sometimes, he does write back. This time, because it was for a class project, he did.
He also tells us that his close friend and all-time Demon baseball pitching appearances king David "Bulldog" Balcer, our own version of Orel Hershisher on the hill, has moved to Minnesota. Balcer, recently the ticket guru at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, is now director of ticketing for the Target Center in Minneapolis.
Lanny is trying to join a lot of former Demon teammates like Brian Whaley, Will Broussard, Roy Locks and Germond Williams at next weekend's NSU-Baylor football game in Waco. Lanny is helping coach his brother's high school team, which has a game next Saturday, but he's trying to make both events.
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