Category: sports

UH Volleyball

I started watching some UH volleyball, both the men and wahine. I haven’t watched a game for a long, long time. Two guys stand out for me on the men’s side: Rado Parapunov, who seems like Uv, part 2, and Colton Cowell. Cowell is listed as 6′ 1″, but he looks like a libero when he’s standing by his teammates–but the guy is explosive, both in terms of jumping and hitting. He can crank. I feel like I’m watching Karch Kiraly out there.

Regarding the wahine–why aren’t they playing? I wanted to see the frosh setter from Texas. My understanding is that Robin Ah Mow, when she first saw the setter said, “She’s the one I want to see run the offense for the next four years,” or something to that effect. It seems like Ah Mow (and Ljungquist) are doing well as coaches, which is totally awesome to see.

2021 NCAA Final Four (Men/Women)

Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to watch highlights. The highlights from the Arizona-UConn (women’s) game stood out to me. First, Aari MacDonald looked like Steph Curry, with some quick release and long-range shots. Second, the highlights don’t show Arizona’s defense, but I’m guessing it must have been good–or UConn was missing a lot of open shots or taking a lot of bad ones. I hope I can watch some of the remaining games.

Basketball Officiating

This is a thread to discuss basketball officiating. I recently watched a training video, and I was surprised by some of the correct calls. I wanted to get some feedback from Don and anyone else. (I’ll post the clip in the first post.)

The Impact of Ball Control on Football Defenses

For a long time, I’ve believed that a team’s offense can have a significant impact on the performance of a team’s defense. Specifically, better ball control of a team’s offense–which involves running a lot of time and plays, as well as protecting the football–will lead to better performance by the team’s defense–or at least least better ball control would create better conditions to play good defense, while bad ball control would do the opposite.

To examine these claims, I’ve turned to stats like time of possession (TOP), totals and averages, and the number of snaps by a team’s offense and defense. There might be other metrics, but those are the ones I recently looked at. This will be a thread to discuss and analyze this topic.