Saturday, December 29, 2007

So long, Josh

Well, I was going to make a post on Cincy's 56-50 win over Miami of Ohio tonight. I went over to Josh Katzowitz's blog to see if he mentioned the point spread for the game. I didn't find that, but I found out that The Post is shutting down and Katzowitz is going to be out of a job. If you remember my first post, you know that I don't live anywhere Cincinnati ... I have no idea about the newspaper dynamic there or anything like that. But I had really come to enjoy Katzowitz's blog over the last few months.

Personally, I've always felt things are going to make a shift to the internet. It's inevitable. We're certainly seeing signs of that as virtually ever major newspaper has a website and writers like Katzowitz are blogging. It's simply a more effective way to do the job. Breaking news is easy to report ... the interaction with fans is great.

What can sometimes be forgotten, at least for me, is that real people are actually affected by this stuff. It's not just newspapers vs. blogs/internet. It's a guy like this losing a job. Anyway, based on what I've read on his blog, I'm sure Josh won't take long to find a job in the newspaper industry if that's what he wishes. Hopefully, he'll start up another blog (I don't know if he's still going to cover UC sports, but that would be awesome). His game updates were way faster than espn's and his commentary was always insightful and interesting. I'm going to miss the blog.

So this stranger just wanted to wish you well, Josh. Best wishes ...

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I promise I'll have some updates to the per 40 minutes stats sometime relatively soon. Relatively soon for this blog is sometime before 2009 ; ). I'll also try to do some stuff with per possession stats and maybe actually start to post on a somewhat regular basis sometime soon, as well.

Anyway, it's good to see the Bearcats pick up the win tonight. From the box score, it didn't really seem like an overly impressive performance (especially considering the opponent). At this point, however, a win is a win. They really impressed me against Xavier and Memphis (and losing by 8 to NC State doesn't seem bad either, although I didn't see that one). Maybe this is the start to an impressive little run. They are certainly a little better than I expected and may actually make some noise here as we enter Big East play. We'll see, I guess.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Just short against Xavier

Yea, I'm still here ...

Well, that was a pretty impressive performance on the road against a good Xavier team. I mean it was an ugly game all around, at least offensively. The difference basically came down to Xavier getting to the line 6 times more than Cincinnati and converting 7 more free throws. The Bearcats shot the 3 ball well, going 8-18 from downtown. They were terrible from 2 with a 30% shooting percentage (14-47). Hopefully, Gentry is okay after that collision.

I don't really have much else right now. It was a tough loss. A frustrating one. But in the end, you really have to be impressed that they hung with them that long and had a legit chance to win. It certainly doesn't get easier with Memphis coming up Wednesday.

I'll start updating some per 40 minute stats and maybe some per possession stats as the season goes on.