Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

It was 9 years ago yesterday when Illinois knocked off #1 Indiana on this play . I was at Buffalo Wild Wings in Bloomington with a friend watching this game. It got me thinking of where I was for other memorable college basketball moments. Most of these involve my Illini, but there's some from other teams as well. March 5, 1989. Nick Anderson's buzzer beater against Indiana . I was in the dorms at Illinois watching this game. My roommate was so excited that he ran up and down the hall of the dorms.  March 12, 2009. UConn vs Syracuse in the Big East Tournament . Six overtimes. The game was close the whole time until UConn ran out of steam in the 6th overtime. I was in my house in Colorado watching the game. Saw the whole thing - couldn't get myself to go to bed until it was over. December 1, 2004. #3 Illinois destroys #1 Wake Forest . I was at Buffalo Wild Wings in Longmont with some friends. This was the game that made me think this team could win a national championship, w...

 I got an email to explore my Google Maps timeline. I checked it out and noticed there was a "dot" out in the ocean west of Oregon. Decided to check it out. Apparently, according to Google, back in August of 2017 I "drove" 1,993 miles in 21 minutes to that location. Coming home was even more impressive - 1,986 miles in 3 minutes. That's 39,720 miles per hour or a little over Mach 51 (speed of sound - Mach 1 - is 767.269 miles per hour)

This happened a couple of days ago, but today is my first chance to write about it. Wisconsin beat Nebraska in a thrilling 5-set match to win the NCAA Women's Volleyball championship. The thing that was strange to me was an eerie familiarity in the national semifinals. In 2015 I went to the men's Final Four in Indianapolis. That year, in the semifinals, Wisconsin beat undefeated and top-ranked Kentucky to move to the championship. This year, Wisconsin beat undefeated and top-ranked Louisville (from the state of Kentucky) to move to the championship. The similarities end there, though - in 2015 the men's team couldn't take home the championship after falling to Duke. This was Wisconsin's first NCAA Women's Volleyball championship, which is cool to see. The Big Ten is normally pretty dominant in women's volleyball, which makes it kind of difficult for a different team from the conference to become champion.

If I'm not mistaken, this the first time in the history of the AP poll that Purdue has been ranked 1. And it was unanimous as well. They are really good this year, so it is well deserved. There are the only Big Ten team in the top 15, but there are 3 other teams ranked towards the bottom of the top 25 with Illinois just on the outside looking in.  And Colorado State (a team I follow since I lived in that area for 10 years) is just on the outside of the AP poll at 26. 

The college basketball season started last night. Fans were in the stands, as opposed to the COVID year last year with few or no fans. Although COVID is still around, things are starting to get back to normal now.  Illinois won its season opener against Jackson State. Illinois State won a tight game against North Carolina Wilmington. Northern Illinois shocked a lot of people by winning at Washington as a 19.5 point underdog. As far as ranked teams go, 15th ranked Houston needed overtime to beat Hofstra, Mercer was leading 16th ranked Arkansas in the second half before Arkansas pulled away, 17th ranked Ohio State needed a last second bucket to beat Akron, and 25th ranked Virginia lost to Navy at home.

 I had the idea this year of going on 1 or 2 college basketball road trips. The whole purpose is to see multiple games over a weekend. We established some loose rules about the trip: They had to be on a weekend when my friend didn't have his kids The locations have to be driving distance to central Illinois We have to see at least 3 games in the trip - at least 2 on Saturday and then one either Friday or Sunday (or both, if it works out). Division 1 teams are the priority, but if there's room in the schedule, we aren't against seeing a D2/D3/NAIA game or two. After looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 275 schedules, here's the possibilities we came up with: December 17-18-19: Friday 12/17: Franklin College (D3, Indiana) 7:00 Saturday 12/18: Cincinnati vs Texas Southern 12:00, Xavier vs Marquette 4:00 Sunday 12/19: Illinois-Chicago vs Northern Illinois 1:00 January 14-15-16: Friday 1/14: Purdue vs Nebraska 6:30 Saturday 1/15: Marquette vs Seton Hall 11:00, UW-Milw...

 I just realized that I didn't post a single thing in the month of August. Just really nothing going on noteworthy in my life right now. I went camping in in mid-August, which was nice to get away for a couple of days.

 Last Saturday was my annual golf get-together with friends from High School. It was the first time since the fourth member of our group passed away last September. It was bitter-sweet remembering him and playing golf on a beautiful day. Wish I could say my golf was beautiful. It was the worst round of golf I've played in at least 15 years. I am normally a low 40's per 9 golfer and can sometimes shoot in the 70's for 18, although I'm normally a low to mid 80's. I shot 51 on the front and 50 on the back for a final score of 101. I really couldn't do anything right - drives were mostly horrible, flubbed several easy approach shots, putted terribly (42 putts in 18 holes), and so on. Needless to say, I didn't win the tournament this year - that means I continue the longest streak of the remaining 3 without a victory (2017 was my last win). Next year will be the 30th anniversary of the event, although there was one year it was cancelled, so it will be the 29th pl...

We've seen a lot of rain over the past several days. From Thursday the 24th to Saturday the 26th, there's been anywhere from 7 to 10 inches of rain in a 3 day period (different locations near me had 7.35", 8.6", and 10.57" in official gauges). Our house sits on a little bit of a hill, so we haven't had any issues. The sump pump has kept up, and everything is dry inside the house. Others are not so lucky. Several of the streams and lakes around town are busting at the seams. With the storms over those 3 days, there were 2 different tornado warnings. Fortunately, the tornado warnings were because of doppler radar detecting rotation, rather than actual tornadoes being witnessed by spotters. And there's rain in the forecast (potential) for the next couple of days. Hopefully that rain holds off and we can dry things out a little bit here.

 The US Open concluded yesterday and Sunday started out with a lot of promise. After a few holes, there were several people close to the lead. There was one point where 13 people were within 3 shots of the lead and, of those 15, were all of the top 5 in the world ranking and 2 additional players that had won multiple majors each.  At another point, there were 4 players tied for the lead and 6 players 1 shot behind. But then, one by one, the wheels fell off almost everyone in the back 9. Most players it was early in the back 9, and we were left with just 2 players - Louis Oosthuizen and Jon Rahm. Jon finished at -6 and Louis had a bogey on 17 that dropped him 2 shots back, so it was a pretty anti-climatic finish after the great start of the day. There was a ball in a tree (Mackenzie Hughes), a quadruple-bogey by a contender (Bryson DeChambeau), a drive out of bounds by another contender (Justin Thomas, the #2 player in the world), a double-bogey by the #4 player in the world, a...

 After not camping at all in 2020 due to the pandemic, we've already made 1 trip this year and have 2 more scheduled. Hopefully going to have at least 1 or 2 additional trips before packing it up for the year. It's nice to get the camper out of hibernation and on the road. We even got new tires for the camper this year (just the 2 main tires - didn't do the spare).

Congratulations to Phil Mickelson becoming the oldest player to ever win a golf major by winning the PGA at age 50. He also set the record for the most years between victories at the same major at 16 years (2005 was the last time he won the PGA). The most remarkable stat that I heard was that on a very pivotal hole (the 16th), he had the longest drive of the day at 366 yards. When the pressure was on late in the round not only did he deliver, but he delivered better than anyone else did on Sunday. At 50 years old. After he had a bogey on the first hole Sunday, I thought it was going to be a long day for him. He didn't have a great round, but nobody else in close contention did either, and he ended up winning by 2 stokes.

Congratulations to Baylor winning the NCAA Championship. The game did not even come close to living up to its hype. It featured undefeated #1 Gonzaga and the 2-loss #2 Baylor Bears. It was the highest winning percentage for a championship game ever. The teams were supposed to play in December when they were ranked #1 and #2, but the game was canceled due to COVID-19 issues a couple of hours before the game.  Baylor started the game 9-0 and it was 11-1 at the first media time out. There was only a short period of time in the second half when the margin was under 10 points. Baylor led by 10 at halftime and ended up winning by 16, 86-70. The game was under 159.5 points, which is fitting because the unders dominated this tournament. Out of the 67 games, 40 of them went under. That's 60%. And Gonzaga was the favorite (lost the game outright) which means that underdogs were 35-32 against the spread and underdogs won the game outright 23 times. That's 34%, which is really high for und...

  William Hill sports book was doing a promo for new customers. Get a "free" bet of up to $300. If you lose the bet, you get your bet back in site credit. This means you have to "bet through" that amount. So, if you lose the $300 bet, you have to make 15 separate bets of $20 each before you can close your account. I went 50/50 with a friend of mine and we chose a 4 point underdog to win outright at +165. They ended up winning an incredibly stress-filled game and we won $495. It was a great win for us.

Today is the last day of the college basketball regular season. Quite a few games were cancelled because of COVID-19. Usually at the end of the regular season there are a bunch of 20-win teams. This year there are 20 out of 357 NCAA division 1 teams.  Illinois had a great regular season. 20 wins, 6 losses. Second place in the Big Ten conference. It looks like they will earn a top seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament (the bracket is announced one week from today). They are 1 of 4 teams to be ranked in the top 10 nationally in both offensive and defensive efficiency - Gonzaga, Michigan, and Houston are the other 3. That metric is normally a sign of a national championship - 10 of the last 12 national champions have ranked in the top 7 in offense and all have been ranked in the top 20 in defense. Illinois, Michigan, and Gonzaga are the only 3 teams that fit into that group this year.  Since there was no NCAA tournament last year, people are little more excited than usual for Marc...

Last year the NCAA basketball tournament was cancelled due to COVID-19. This year they are isolating it to Indianapolis and doing some other things to keep players and coaches, etc. safe. Today the TV schedule was announced. It looks pretty similar to other years, but the first four games are all on the same night instead of on consecutive nights. And the tournament itself is pushed back a few days. Usually the round of 64 games are Thursday and Friday, this year they are Friday and Saturday. That means that I don't have to take 2 days of vacation this year to watch the games - I'll just take Friday off. Here are the times (all times Central): First Four Thursday 3/18 at 4:00, 5:20, 7:30, and 8:50 Friday/Saturday First Round games 3/19 and 3/20 at 11:00, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30, 1:45, 2:20, 2:50, 3:20, 5:15, 6:00 (x 2), 6:15, 8:10, 8:30, 8:45, and 8:50 Sunday/Monday Second Round games 3/21 and 3/22 at 11:00, 1:30, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 6:30, 7:30, and 8:30 (I won't be taking Monday...

 We bit the bullet a few days ago and got rid of all TV providers and are only going with streaming now. A few years ago we switched from Comcast to a local company called Metronet, but still included TV. Then, once the introductory prices went back up, we switched back to Comcast because the package of TV+Internet was cheaper. Now, after that contract was up, we switched back to Metronet, but with an Internet-only package. We're using only streaming services for TV.  So far it's been decent. There is the occasional time when there's buffering on the TV, but it's minor and goes away fairly quickly. The speeds seem to work well for us and we haven't had really any issues, but we're also only a few days into this new way of watching TV.

People generally know about winning the grand slam in golf - victories in the 4 major tournaments (US Open, Masters, British Open, PGA). There have been 5 players who have done it in history - Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player have done it. Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods won each of those majors at least 3 times so they are each 3 times grand slam winners. Any discussion about the greatest golfer of all time comes down to those 2 golfers. In addition to winning the majors, there is a thing called the "second slam" where you get second place in all four majors. There have been 8 players who have done this. Craig Wood, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen, and Dustin Johnson are 7 of those. What about Tiger and Jack? Tiger hasn't gotten second place in all the majors. Jack, in addition to winning the grand slam three times over, has won the second slam 4 times over. In my mind, that closes the argument. Tiger has won a lot of tournament...

In a normal year, the college basketball season would have started by now. With this being 2020 and all, it's starting the day before Thanksgiving. I'm an Illinois fan. I'm not a season ticket holder, but I know people who are and I buy 2-3 games a year off of them to go watch. Illinois is ranked 8th in the nation in the pre-season. I can't imagine what it would be like to be one of these people who invested all the time and money over the last however-many years hoping this team would eventually be good, and now they are good and you can't go to the games because of COVID-19. What a bummer. I'm sure the Iowa fans and season ticket holders feel the same way. At least I'll be able to watch the games on TV. And I'd rather they be good than bad, even if I can't see them in person.

I noticed over the weekend that I haven't been on a plane since July of last year. I highly doubt that I'll be on a plane the rest of 2020. That will be a span of at least 16 months between flights. I started my current job in March of 2007. It started out as a travel job - going to customer sites. In recent years things have been more remote, but I've still had periodic trips. Going back to early 2000, when I moved to Colorado, I would fly back to Illinois at least once a year if not more. I don't have records for the 1990's, but my wife and I are fans of vacations and most certainly took flights at least once a year going back to our marriage in 1997.  All this means that I'm guessing it's been 25 or more years since I've gone this long without being on a plane.