Ramble On ... Davidson

Among the benefits of an undefeated Southern Conference season and the great run in the NCAA tournament, the recruiting reports have established the fact that 6-10 center Frank Ben-Eze has signed on with the Davidson Wildcats.

Said ESPN.com:

For most of Bob McKillop's 19 seasons at Davidson, recruiting top-tier talent to the small liberal arts college outside of Charlotte, N.C., hasn't been easy.

In the past week, though, with the buzz of the Wildcats' Final Four near-miss still fresh, recruiting has been Eze. That's Frank Ben-Eze, a highly touted 6-foot-10 forward from Arlington, Va., who chose the Wildcats despite several high-majors reportedly showing interest.

A player recruited by Davidson and Bob McKillop is the luckiest player in the shooting match.

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Nice item on Doug Collins in an issue of the Rocky Mountain News earlier this week:


Collins remains top NBA analyst

By Dusty Saunders

I first reviewed Doug Collins' NBA work in May 1991, mentioning that he had a squeaky TV voice similar to that of Fred Savage, the adolescent hero on The Wonder Years.

I also mentioned that Collins, on TNT, was the best NBA analyst on television.

Only one thing has changed in 17 years - the voice of Savage, now an active grown-up producer-actor on the Hollywood scene.

Collins still offers a squeaky tone and retains his credentials as the best analyst working the NBA playoffs.

Viewers can easily find a handful of analysts and play-by-play personalities with deep, mellifluous voices.

But no one zeros in on the intricacies of the NBA better than Collins, who has survived and thrived in the musical- chairs game constantly played in the NBA.

He's been a player (76ers), a coach (Bulls, Pistons, Wizards) and a broadcaster.

Such varied experience provides Collins with in-depth insight into the past and the present.

Probably because he's aware of his voice limitations, Collins basically stays away from the wowie!- and zowie!- type exclamations used by many along broadcasting row.

As a former coach, Collins is at his best enlightening viewers on the art of substitution, particularly in the closing minutes of a tight contest.

Because of his skills, Collins always improves the broadcasting work of his partners.

Working tonight with Kevin Harlan on TNT's Boston-Cleveland game, Collins will be the network's main analyst during coverage of the Western Conference final.

Unless the Lakers fall into the basketball sinkhole being dug by the Utah Jazz, Collins should be able to "critique" the work of Phil Jackson, who succeeded Collins as coach and guided the Michael Jordan-dominated Bulls.

I am sick of the Sprite commercial "Sprite Liquid Freedom" where the kids jump into the pool that looks like a basketball court - "I'm falling away, with you."

Everyone wondered about the music track to the commercial and it was often misreported as being a track from an Australian band. Here's the latest scoop, not confirmed but on numerous Internet sites:

The music for the Sprite Liquid Freedom ad was created exclusively by staff at sound and music company Human Worldwide, New York. The music was not written or played by New Zealand band, Evermore, despite the attribution of a Limewire track to them. I stated earlier here that the music was performed by an unknown Australian band. People jumped to conclusions and assumed it was Evermore, even though Evermore are from New Zealand and not Australia.

Benjamin Pacheco wrote and recorded the music for the first track. See the Boards article from April 1, 2006 and credits for the Australian version. Pacheco told Boards that he wrote and recorded the music at home. For more of Pacheco’s work see his band site Mus-OK and Mus-OK MySpace site. The track is now hosted at the Union Devo MySpace site, named Counting Backwards, and can be downloaded there as an mp3 audio file.

The ‘Falling Away’ track was written by Lindsay Jehan, Hugh Wilson, Andy Bloch, and Morgan Visconti at Human Worldwide. The song was recorded at Human Worldwide’s studio by Hugh Wilson (vocals) and Lindsay Jehan (instruments), Australians living in New York at the time. Wilson is performing the full song at his live shows. Hugh Wilson has the track available to play on his MySpace site.

Regardless, I've watched my share of NBA playoff games and I am officially SICK of that commercial and it's only the conference semi-finals.

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I read the following sentence in a column on the NCAA and OJ Mayo on Yahoo.com's sports page:

The best thing for the NCAA is to fight Stern’s age limit as best it can and stop the forced hammering of square pegs into round holes.

Brand, of course, is doing the opposite. He even got CBS to run a propaganda special during the Final Four where he and Stern sat together and concluded they needed “more cooperation” – i.e. a 20-year-old age limit.

Two thoughts:

How and why should the NCAA have anything to do with the way the NBA sets its rules and conducts its business? The only say in the age rule should be from the NBA (Stern representing the league and its owners) and the NBA Players (Billy Hunter representing the players as a whole).

The age limit used to be 18 (after HS grad). Now, it's 19. Stern would like age 20, but lost that in his collective bargaining agreement with the players association. So be it. That's the rule.

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The NBS Spring concert included the Class V chorus performing a terrific Irish song, called "Irish Friendship Wish." Here are the lyrics:

May there always be work for your hands to do;
May your purse always hold a coin or two;
May the sun always shine on your windowpane;
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;
May the hand of a friend always be near you;
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.


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