Basket-blog

With one game to go in the Irish football season (mercifully), we begin to find other things to think and ruminate on here at Section 29. There must be another high-profile athletic team to fill the void once the 6-6 Irish fade from view for a bit (until the next coaching change, which will beget the next recruiting news, which begets Signing Day, and so on and so forth). That's where the #12/#13 Men's Basketball team comes in.

The Irish suffered their first true letdown of the season on Saturday, falling victim to Ohio State's suffocating 2-2-1 press defense that silenced Kyle McAlarney even as Luke Harangody was making it perfectly clear he was over his recent bout with pnuemonia. The Irish sit 6-2 with highly winnable games against Boston (University, not College), Savannah State, and Delaware State before beginning the Big East slate at DePaul (@ 8 PM on New Year's Eve, no less! You wanna talk about an athletic contest that's f&*kin' with everybody's plans!) But along the way this season the Irish hoops squad will have at least one other loyal blogger aside from us; at least, he better be seeing as how he's on the team. Zach Hillesland, the senior forward from Toledo, OH, will be a contributing member of The Quad, the New York Times' college sports blog. Check here for all of Zach's posts so far and in the future (look for a new one about once a week). His opening riff where he explains how every member of the team got his nickname is quite humorous. My favorite:

No. 1 Ty Nash

Nicknames: Moe, Smash, T-Nash

Origins: Tyrone claims that one should use Moe when you don’t really know someone’s name. Apparently Tyrone has a problem with remembering names because he calls everyone Moe. He used it so much, we now call him Moe. Smash was given to Tyrone by our strength coach, Tony “T. Ro” Rolinski, a.k.a. the Dog-Faced Gremlin, a.k.a. Ari Gold (the strength coach version), a.k.a. the Sexiest Man Alive Under 6 Feet. That last one was self appointed.