Today Jodie went 2 for 6, and the rest of the team went 0 for 12.

Liggins has now missed his 16th consecutive 3 pt. shot — he has not hit one since the Lamar game (not to mention getting burned repeatedly on defense, and committing two charges today — this was definitely not one of his better games).

Porter’s move to the point seems to have completely negated what was once dead-eye shooting, and I was more than distressed to see Landon Sloan miss four open threes in a row. Something is amiss in that department for our guys. Maybe it’s just a numbers game, and we will now have eight great games in a row — who knows?

Defense was not so good initially, but it was good to see Porter shut down their hot hand once the coaches switched him over, and Sloan did a great defensive job as well. Funny to see Perry have two of his OWN shots blocked today!

Turnovers are obviously less of an issue now. Jodie is much better, and at the point, over the last four games these are the Assist to Turnover Ratios:

Mike Porter: 21 Assists, 6 Turnovers
DeAndre Liggins: 11 Assists, 14 Turnovers

That makes DeAndre look a little worse than he is, I think, although the charges and the missed defensive assignments were a little irritating today, and obviously he needs to hit a three one of these days, or just stop shooting it. But he is doing much, much better at not throwing the ball away.

Patrick is back, period. I may have to re-evaluate my prediction that he would play next year as well.

Hit 40% of his 3-pt FGA.

But what was said about my coach by the original poster was a lot more of a personal attack than anything I responded with.

Different blogs have different protocol, and in attempting to discern the posting protocol for this site, I took my cue from the things you and/or Ken Howlett have said about me and my comments at one time or another. After you review them, I would be interested in your evaluation of what rule of decorum seems to be suggested by them.

You (by which I mean you or Ken) have on various occasions written that my opinions are (1) "transparent nonsense," (2) "laughable", (3) "foolishness", (4) "wrongheaded", (5) a "rant", (6) "full of hyperbole," (7) "false conclusions provided under the façade of reasoning," (8) "95% supposition masqueraded as fact," (9) "10,000 logical fallacies in 11 or 12 paragraphs of foolishness," and, (10) "a silly tirade that makes no sense to anyone but you."

I leave it to you to say what standard of civility these comments reflect. One could argue that they are not the words of a cordial and gracious host, and that they would seem grossly at odds with the standard you espouse for others. Obviously, they provide something less than compelling argument, and do not contribute to the discussion in any useful way. They have value only as weapons of overt discourtesy and pique.

Nor did you stop at this great miscongeniality. While claiming that the site solicits opinions of all stripes, you have said of me, "I don’t care what you think . . . and I doubt anyone else does, either." You have said, "I am dead sick and tired of hearing you." You have boasted that your own comments were designed to "teach [me] a lesson in humility" — this from a man (you, Tru) who pontificates about "fisking [my] screed," and vainly posts that his own comments are "nearly irrefutable." You have commented that my refutation of your opinion was "obvious only to you, if even that can be said." It is not clear what that last comment was supposed to mean, but from the context one can only conclude that it was not designed to celebrate the diversity I bring to the site.

Nor was this the extent of your efforts to illustrate for me the rules of proper decorum on this site. You once advised me, with great condescension, "Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back, pal." I guess you thought my name was "Pal," or that referencing me with that epithet was an expression of fellowship and magnanimity.

You further said of me, "You couldn’t eviscerate a dead hog with help from a professional butcher." I think that was supposed to be an attempt at great wit. You lectured me that bad games "happen to freshmen. Apparently you don’t know that. Now you do." Perhaps you believed that to be witty, but if there is manner and courtesy in that response, it does not leap from the page.

But my all-time favorite example of the standard of civility set by the leadership of this site is this gem from Ken: "If you were his father, I wager Liggins would be on suicide watch. I know I would be." That’s right – my deficiencies as a father are such that my children are likely to be looking to commit suicide.

As a father of five children, I could say that I find comments about a man’s children or his fatherhood deeply offensive and in the poorest of taste, and believe that they should be off limits in any civil discussion. But it would be mock outrage, because really my skin is far too thick to be offended by any of this. If I were that offended by your name calling and condescension, I wouldn’t bother to supply your site with the benefit of my observations. The truth is that I recognize that at heart you are affable, sociable guys who simply get very defensive when challenged, and resort to name calling out of frustration as a proxy for rational argument. I recognize it, and am not offended by it in the slightest. I have always felt that fetid condescension says more about the author than it says about his target.
 
I do, however, find it more than passing strange and more than slightly hypocritical that you can speak of me as you do while decrying my much tamer comments, and declaring them verboten. An objective reader attempting to discern the relevant protocol from your posts would search in vain for a rule that would forbid mine but permit yours.

On the one hand, this is a site where it is okay to say, "Listen, Pal, I don’t care what you think, and doubt anybody else does, either. I am dead sick and tired of hearing you, and I will now teach you a lesson in humility. Everything you write is a silly, laughable, fallacious, nonsensical, foolish, hyperbolic rant of a tirade, and if I were your son, I would kill myself." That’s what you said, my friend[s].

Here’s what I said (to a poster who called my coach a "hard headed detriment to the team who better start learning from his mistakes"):

"Seriously, before you start telling us how much smarter than our coach you are, you ought to learn how to spell ‘their’ so you could be taken a little more seriously."

Certainly there is an argument to be made that my comment lacked grace and benevolence. I do not, however, see that there is any credible argument that my comment is more of an ad hominem personal attack than what this site has – repeatedly — said of me. I do occasionally play the provocateur, but as Shakespeare wrote, "I am a man more sinned against than sinning." (King Lear 3.2.59)

Another authority springs to mind: Matthew 7:1-2.

They are called “parctices,” and you are all ignorant hillbillies for not knowing about them.

(.. or either I just didn’t proof that one as well as I OUGHT to have done…)

… and there is a very real difference between an reasonable, informed fan and an arm chair quarterback in the modern vernacular.

An intelligent, reasonable fan always supports the team and knows that his role is to be a supporter. He knows that college teams have huge staffs, all of whom have spent most or all of their adult lives chasing the game of basketball, for a living. He knows that there is absolutely no way that a mailman or a lawyer or a clerk or a high school teacher is going to be able to invest enough of his life in the game to become as knowledgeable or as conversant about the modern college game as those who spend their lives in it, no matter how much TV they watch, or how many blogs they read.

He knows that he does not watch tape of the team and their opponents 24/7. He knows that he cannot visit all of the recruiting prospects the coaching staff sees. He knows that he does not see what the coaches see in practices every day, and during and after games as the players are receiving instruction. He knows he has no idea what the student athletes are doing in their studies, or what may be happening in their home life.
 And so on, and so on…

Because he is aware of how vastly superior the coaches’ knowledge is to his, he never makes ignorant pronouncements about how wrong the coach was not to play so-and-so, or not to go to such and such a defense, or to decline to recruit somebody he (the fan) has never seen. He knows that if he makes these pronouncements he will seem ignorant and pitiful to the other reasonable fans who also know their limitations and their rightful, honorable place.

The arm chair quarterback is unaware of his limitations. He foolishly believes that because he played high school or YMCA rec-league basketball, and reads (or runs) an amateur basketball blog, or watches the games on TV, and listens to the coaches’ call-in shows, and talks about the team with the other Rubes down at the Waffle House that he is smarter than the coaches, and that if only they would adopt his advice we would have an unending string of national championships. He criticizes substitution patterns, defensive strategies, and recruiting choices in a manner that presumes that he is the national authority in each.

The fan says, “I sure do enjoy watching that new kid from Scott County play. I hope he works hard enough to earn more playing time, because I like his style, and he’s such a nice kid. He seems to be doing a great defensive job in the paint, so I wonder why he isn’t getting more time. Look at his numbers from the IU game. Coach hasn’t been playing him much, and I hope that changes. Maybe somebody will ask about that on the call-in show.”

The arm chair quarterback says, “That game was the last straw, and if the coach doesn’t pull that kid from Texas and start playing Jimmy from Hopkinsville he’s not going to last long here. Everyone knows the ONLY way to beat Louisville is to go to the box and one with Danny on the point, and if coach can’t see that then he needs to go back to Mississippi. I’m tired of these turnovers (layups, missed foul shots, fill in the blank).”

As Jeff Foxworthy might say, “If the difference between these two approaches is not obvious to you, you might be an arm chair quarterback.”

I do not mean to suggest that the fan is always happy, and must be a great simpleton — far from it. But there is a certain modicum of humility that those who are not professional coaches should display. It is missing all too often.