Bobcats Win While Some Don’t Care to See It

A 32-15 run to end the game. A 23-3 run to put the game out of reach. Dunks, layups, noise, victory. And some just don’t care.

On a night where the Quinnipiac Men’s Basketball team erased a deficit and came back to blow out St. Francis (PA) 73-55, some just didn’t care to see it.

It was Irish Night, with t-shirts being handed out at entrance. Every college student loves free stuff — food, clothes, whatever — and tonight they took that to a different level. This team has improved to 7-2 in the NEC, and yet some people just went right towards the exits. That’s right — they came in, got their t-shirts, and went right to the exists. As I walked in a shuttle was filling with people leaving after happily getting their shirt and not caring about the game.

Yes, we set a season-high attendance of over 2,000. Yes, the student section was packed. But some fans just don’t care enough, and went home. And that’s really, really sad.

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WQAQ is Alive Out There…

Here’s WQAQ Sports’s Seth Rothman’s thoughts on the new chant policy.

Oh, and some guy named Jeremy is featured in it.

Don’t forget, Super Bowl predictions on Friday and an update tomorrow on Tiger Woods who’s playing over in Dubai this week on the European Tour.

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PGA Tour Digest Vol. 1 No. 7

This week the PGA Tour moves to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area for a Super-sized version of the FBR Open at the TPC at Scottsdale. Buoyed by the enormous crowds that will be in the Phoenix/Glendale, AZ for Super Bowl 42 organizers think that 600,000 people or more might attend the event.

The 16th hole there at the TPC at Scottsdale is the loudest hole in the PGA Tour. Over 200,000 people crowd that hole in numerous bleachers, with drunks and normal golf fans intertwined like nowhere else on Tour all year. In addition, good shots get cheered, but bad shots get booed. Needless to say, you better play well.

My pick: Phil Mickelson, who’s won here before and had a week to fully practice and get ready for this week.

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The Papers Are Alive Out There…

…as reported on the New Haven Register’s website:

“THE CHEER POLICE

Quinnipiac’s student section at the TD Banknorth Sports Center is quickly generating a reputation as one of the largest and loudest in the ECAC. But the school administration feels it has also become a bit too crass, and it took steps to tone down the vulgarities last weekend.

About an hour before the start of Friday’s game with Niagara, an athletic department representative went over some new ground rules with the student section, which included refraining from any word “that rhymes with ducks”. Later, there was a taped message on the video scoreboard from Pecknold asking fans to keep it clean.

“We’re not trying to take away the passion and the excitement of the fans in any way,” said Chuck Menke, Quinnipiac’s director of athletic communications. “We’re just trying to focus that passion and excitement in a way the university and the local community can be proud of.”

Student reaction was tepid. When the section continued to use the word “sucks” after each member of the opposing team was announced — a chant specifically addressed in the pregame announcement — a loud buzz sounded in attempt to drown out the cheer.

“Most of the students I’ve talked to aren’t happy,” Quinnipiac student Seth Rothman said. “A lot of the fun has been taken out of it. I think they all understand the message, but don’t like the methods, like using a horn or the megaphone siren to drown them out.””

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2 Losses – 4 Places Lost

As you would suspect when you lose to an out-of-conference opponent twice, you drop in the polls. And that’s exactly what happened to Quinnipiac Hockey.

Their 2 losses to Niagara this weekend but them 16th in the latest uscho.com poll, making all the more important this weekend’s games against ECAC opponents Union and RPI. It doesn’t help that both games are on the road.

And one more word about my story below about QU Athletics’s attempt to limit the student section’s actions. Steve Colvin is a fantastic guy. Some of you will know I competed last year in some of the contests he ran. I have nothing against Steve at all. He just phrased it in a way that I think epitomized how ridiculous this all is, and that’s why I put his name into the article.

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IS THERE ANYBODY ALIVE OUT THERE?

“I just want to hear some rhythm

I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices speaking in tongues”
–Radio Nowhere by Bruce Springsteen

In recent years the National Football League has been renamed by some the “No Fun League” for the league’s reducing allowance of post-touchdown celebrations and other entertainment the players displayed during the game. I have a sickening feeling that Quinnipiac is trying to do the same thing. College sports is supposed to be FUN — hearing the music, the noises, everyone yelling, just like with what Bruce asks for in Radio Nowhere — not attempting to be taken away so that a reputation for being “family friendly” stays intact.

Following complaints from parents and ECAC officials, Quinnipiac Athletics has taken steps to limit the amount of things the student section can say during a game. The problem is: it’s not going to work, and it’s driving students away.

In my opinion there are two separate issues at play. The first is the saying of derogatory chants and chants that include cursing. These I 100% do not condone and I think that most students, when sober, don’t condone them either. However, as I will mention below, when you add drunkenness to the equation, they’re hard to stop. I have a very simple solution to this issue: display a show of force with police officers and security, and throw of the offending parties out. Maybe that will teach them a message and stop those horrible chants from continuing.

My main problem is the next issue they’re trying to stop. Quoting Associate Director of Athletic Ticketing and Promotions Steve Colvin, Athletics is trying to prevent us from saying “the word that rhymes with ducks.” No longer can we say that word during player introductions of the opposing team, and no longer can we say it during “The Hey Song” after a goal. As a matter of fact, they’ve now deleted “The Hey Song” altogether. The energy, the excitement, gone.

There needs to be an understanding that this is COLLEGE. And that college students have FUN. We’re between 18-22 years old. We may cross the edge from time to time. But this isn’t a curse, isn’t a derogatory word. It’s just “the word that rhymes with ducks.”

In addition, due to the noise coming from drunk students (I don’t condone that either, I’m just stating fact), sober students, and excited fans, the players feed off it. The Quinnipiac Hockey players have one have talked about hearing the noise in the locker room before coming out onto the ice. They feed off that — they love that.

Word on the street is that people might not show up to these games because the fun will be taken out of the experience, at expense of making our experience more family friendly.

What a joke. Let us be college students again. No one, and I repeat no one is condoning the use of derogatory or curse words in chants, but please, just let us say “the word that rhymes with ducks.”

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Tiger Wins — What a Shocker

62 career victories – ties Arnold Palmer for 4th on the all-time list. 4 straight at the Buick Invitational. 3 straight on the PGA Tour. 8 shot victory.

Does anything change with Tiger Woods? Once again, on a course he loves — Torrey Pines — which happens to be where the 2008 United States Open is in June, he dominates the field.

He was #1 in putting this week, #2 in greens in regulation. He never ceases to amaze. He made a 57 foot 9 inch putt today that had 15 feet worth of break in it. All while havin a balky driver.

Only Tiger. Only Tiger.

This espn.com story is great, #’s 1-3 are specifically about Tiger, including how he never seems happy with his game, and that strive to perfection — the never ending quest — might be what keeps him so hungry, and makes him so great.

Tiger, maybe you can win the Grand Slam this year.

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CBS Sports’s golf coverage…

…is the best. Period, end of story.

I mentioned earlier in the week the announcers, from Marlboro’s own to Faldo to the on-course reporters, to everyone in between who use those CBS microphones to give us the best analysis anywhere. Coordinating Producer of Golf Lance Barrow and Director Steve Milton use creative graphics to propel stats onto the screen that are relevant. In addition they use the blimps at the RIGHT time, to not only show shots as they’re in the air, but to describe holes and show other neat things about the golf courses.

But they’re lucky, because they’ve now been blessed with two of the best tools of any of the networks that cover golf.

1) SwingVision - As described on the CBS Sports website, SwingVision “uses various high-speed cameras that shoot at 40,000 frames per second, capturing unique pictures such as the compression of a golf ball upon impact or the subtle nuances of a player’s swing.”

It has been nothing short of amazing to watch on a weekly basis. An Emmy-Award winner, the ability to dissect a player’s swing in slow-motion, the only true way to fix swing flaws in golf, has been amazing to watch. You can see, in clear and living color, what a certain player does, from Tiger Woods to Phil Mickelson to Vijay Singh to even former President Bush, to make their swing their own. And probably the coolest thing to see using the SwingVision camera is the compression of the ball — actually getting pushed smaller by the swing speed of a driver — something that had never been previously been seen in the history of golf on television.

During the PGA Championship last year CBS debuted a “mobile” version of SwingVision, enabling them to “super-slomo” chips, pitches, putts, and other shots from around the green. Just amazing.

2) Something they debuted just this week on CBS — Protracer — According to its website, “PROTRACER is a system for making the flight and trajectory of a golf ball visible in golf broadcasts and video recordings. Rather than merely calculating the path from the initial impact statistics, PROTRACER uses a patent pending combination of a CMOS sensor and advanced software analysis for detecting the true ball trajectory. While the ball is in air, superimposed graphics on the video stream shows the ball flight. This means that in the same picture the viewer can see the player, the golf course and the ball flight.”

What this has the ability to show, that nothing else has been able to, not even the blimp, is the effect that wind has on the flight and trajectory of the golf ball. I’ve played golf for 11 1/2 years now, so I know the effect, but I’m glad other viewers at home will now be able to see.

So this is all why CBS does the best golf coverage on TV, and oh by the way, it’s in High-Definition as well.

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Bobcats

Two different sports, one result.

Quinnipiac Men’s basketball (10-9 overall, 6-2 in conference) lost a heartbreaking loss to Sacred Heart yesterday, 75-74. Our senior star, DeMario Anderson scored a game high 30 points, but when his catch-and-shoot jumper rimmed out as time expired it was all for nothing. The loss dropped us to a tie for 3rd in the NEC conference standings, tied with Robert Morris, and trailing Wagner and the aforementioned Sacred Heart.

Quinnipiac Hockey couldn’t get it together last night, after the embarassing effort Friday night. Coupled with the dead crowd after the new peaceful-chant initiative (more on that coming soon), the 5-3 defeat by the hands (or sticks) of Niagara will most likely rule us out of an at-large bid for the NCAA, and put the pressure on us to continue hard in our ECAC Conference play.

Much more on these games can be found on the WQAQ Sports Site.

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Tiger, Tiger, Tiger

A perfect, bogey-free 66 yesterday gives Tiger Woods an 8 shot lead coming into today’s final round of the Buick Invitational. He owns the place, looking for his 6th victory and 4th straight in the event, and tying Arnold Palmer for 4th all-time on the wins list.

Something tells me a “W” is coming today.

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