You are currently browsing the Michelle Tackabery blog archives for October, 2008

Slow going for Atsür at Efes

October 27, 2008 basketball
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Engin Atsur: Turkish Basketball StarEuroleague ball club Efes Pilsen started their official league (what we’d call conference) season October 19th with a win over Partizan, 61-60, but Coach Ergin Ataman failed to put Engin Atsür on the court. Engin did get playing time in their next (Turkish League) game last week, putting up 6 points in their 95-57 stomping of Oyak Renault.

Yes, this is where European basketball can tie you up in little knots and make you cry uncle, or even oncle. Efes is a Turkish league team, but regularly takes one of the Euroleague spots each year, so besides regular “conference” opponents it will play out of “conference” opponents all season, like the NBA. However, the outcome of those games will affect their standings in the EL all year and determine where they will place in the EL playoffs, and they will still have the opportunity to win their own league championship, unlike the NBA.

Clear as mud? Yeah. Now: say it in Turkish…  Hopefully Atsür will get more chances to prove himself, but it appears that he is being used, as he has been on the Turkish National Team, as a back up point / shooting guard and, as this picture will attest, professional hunk. I told Richard Engin was going to be huge back home, with women swooning. Tell me I’m wrong.

27.10.08 Update: Draft Express released its Turkish League Preview late yesterday. The article is a great overview of the situation in the TBL and Atsür’s role in it.

Engin’s player profile on Draft Express

Squeaking Sneakers and Sloppy Screens: Fun time at the barn

October 26, 2008 basketball
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Apparently about 3500 of us diehards tromped out to the Old Barn to watch the new version Wolfpack last night, and it was lots of fun. Of course any time I can hear the squeak of sneakers again, I’m happy, but there was much to be excited about with this team, and the first thing was Ben McCauley’s hustle and his 17 points. He played hard and gave no quarter, setting a business-like tone from the tip, and I hope he continues to do that because that is exactly what we need – Coach Lowe’s “get to work” mentality in full effect.

Farnold ran as if he was not wearing the bulkiest leg brace Richard and I had ever seen on a basketball player, until he tripped, or was knocked over—I missed the actual event, only to swing my head and see him sitting on the floor, looking decidedly pissed at himself. He limped off to the locker room, but I got the feeling that whatever pain he was in was eclipsed by the lecture he was giving to himself about pushing it too hard—because he was pushing it. He wasn’t quite as speedy as the last Red & White game we saw him play, but he was definitely another Lowe worker bee, and a smart one at that. He made it back by the end of the game, but did not play again.

Of the guys we did not get to see much of last year, I was most impressed with Johnny Thomas, who demonstrated absolute commitment on the offensive boards. Rebound that basketball some more, Johnny, and I’ll love you forever. The freshmen on the whole looked hungry; although Mays made some mental mistakes, his heart’s obviously there. Someone who did not make any mental mistakes, and showed a lot of toughness, was freshmen Kendall Smith. I’m sure we won’t see much of him during the regular season, but I’ll bet he’ll be invaluable in practice. 

The other really exciting thing to see, at least for the glimpses we got, was watching guys hit free throws instead of brick them. Ah, the swish is sweet. Please Lord let that continue; that killed us last year. And then, there were the extremely sloppy screens, or should I say, the non-existent screens? Richard called them moving screens, har har. There wasn’t a vertical in sight. Tsk tsk. Well, it’s only the first official week, but we were sitting across from the benches and you could hear Monte loud and clear with that foghorn chest of his: “Screen! Screen!”

To be fair, the other thing you could hear was Monte screaming “Push it! Push it!” The first exhibition game is back at the barn in two weeks.

Roundball is officially here

October 25, 2008 basketball
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Courtney Fells, Sidney Lowe, Farnold Degand, 2007It’s time for the Red / White game today and Richard and I’s first chance to see the new team in action after their first formal week of practice. Anyone who has drifted over to read my blog before knows I am a bigger basketball fan than a football one. It’s faster, with more scoring, and then there’s the warm and dry inside factor, which is a big plus, but the real reason? Hunky young men in shorts. ‘Nuff said.

So, as we all know, Coach Sid wants us to run up and down the court, and this time last year, I got all excited about that because Farnold Degand was impressive at the Red / White game in that regard. He ran like a deer, and I could barely swing my head around fast enough to watch him break. Although Tim Peeler and Wolfpack Sports Marketing are trying to spin it more positively, I didn’t find much to be hopeful about in the recent GoPack article about his progress since knee surgery; as of two weeks ago, he still had to “get back in playing shape.” 

Still, one of the greatest things about being a season ticket holder for college basketball is being able to see the progress of a team from the first tip to the last buzzer. It’s one of the reasons why I get so perturbed at the empty lower bowl seats at the RBC during the first half of the season. I realize people aren’t as thrilled about the exhibition and non-conference games because there isn’t as much on the line. But there’s so much to see and understand, and the second half of the season is so much richer when you have seen these young men change and mature, and watch their abilities grow.

I guess when I’m rich enough to consider season tickets as just an investment to make a profit from, I might feel differently. But this is amateur basketball, and it means more than that. Oh well. I guess I’ll see some other diehards at the game tonight. Go Pack!

NCSU round ball dissed by the N&O

October 19, 2008 basketball
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I wish I could say I was shocked, but there was only a single mention of NC State’s first (and open) basketball practice this weekend in the Raleigh News & Observer’s Sports section—at the bottom of another story about Duke’s first basketball practice, we got an aside mentioning these pictures (buy now!). Either our Atheletics Department has zero relations with the press, or the press doesn’t care. I realize there are a lot of sports to cover in Raleigh, and the N&O desk is now apparently in Charlotte, and there were out-of-state football games to cover, and … oh hell, like I shivagit, as my friend Marvin likes to say. NC State’s basketball program does not get the same treatment in the local press, and we are supposed to suck on it while Duke and Carolina fans and the sports media tell us to learn our place.

Not gonna do it, N&O. This is amateur basketball, and everybody starts at zero the first day of practice. The name on the paper is Raleigh. This seems like a simple fix. No one wants to do the hard thing, and write articles that require, um, thinking. It’s far easier to recycle talk about Carolina ranked #1 again (didn’t help them last year, did it?) and Coach K’s quest for a gold medal.

These kinds of things make you weary, but it’s really just another reason why we are not renewing our subscription to this rag. If they want to ignore one of the most dedicated, passionate fan bases in the country, I feel justified in ignoring them right back.

Bring It On

October 15, 2008 basketball
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Competition? Bring it on!!!!

Cross-posted from The Launch Pad.

A team for the moon

October 5, 2008 anxiety
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Last night after Richard and I got back from our excursions*, I caught the last half-hour of October Sky on network TV, one of my most beloved space movies, although no one in it makes it to space. It’s the movie based on Homer Hickam’s book, Rocket Boys, which tells the story of his first baby steps into aerospace engineering (rocket science, to me) with his three high school friends, none of whom followed him into NASA nor became rocket scientists. Even so, their collaboration enabled them to figure out how to build a flying rocket, and got them all into college.

When I watched it, I was reminded of the amazing things that individuals can accomplish when they join together—so much greater than they can alone. Bridges that span continents. Skyscrapers that house thousands of people. Information systems that enable communications between speakers of hundreds of languages. It fills me with the same kind of awe I feel when I think of a man walking on the moon—the fact that human hard work can make such a thing happen. Not miracles or supernatural powers—just plain old “want to.” Sometimes being part of a team can drive you bats. It can feel like you’re all teetering on a house of cards, and if you just had to rely on yourself, you’d at least be sure of the legs beneath you. But the fact is, the more hands you have in the work, the larger the net you have to catch you if you fall.

I’ve been thinking a lot about collaboration and space efforts lately because of my involvement with Team STELLAR. I am helping administrate our team wiki, and as more and more engineers create their team pages, pick up assignments and tell us about themselves, I feel the same stirrings of awe. What we are trying to do, on the face, might not seem particularly noteworthy. After all, we’ve been to the moon. What else is there to do? The fact is, there are so many answers to that simple question that I can’t even begin to list them in a single blog post, although I hope to be talking a lot about them in the coming months. But I’m pretty confident that our answers will be as awesome as those skyscrapers and bridges, because of the collaboration of our incredible network of volunteers.

Life a life of optimism and adventure. Or else, what’s a life for?—Homer Hickam.

*11:00-4:30: Carter-Finley Stadium (we lost, 31-38)
*4:30-6:00: shopping for new sun lenses for me & dinner at the mall. What a fab life we lead.
*6:00-7:30: shopping for Richard’s laptop at Best Buy.

Only a writer

October 1, 2008 anxiety
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I got a bout of stomach troubles Monday night that kept me home from work yesterday. Either it was food poisoning, or this is the new way my GI tract tells me “this food is no longer acceptable. Aborting.” By about 3 p.m. I started to feel normal and I was reading a blog post up on MySpace by the musician Peter Murphy, who occasionally puts up what can only be described as stream of consciousness mind bombs. He had posted a sufi poem, which prompted me to look for a poem I had written in a similar vein, thinking I might reply. In search of the poem I dug up some old journals, and Murphy’s answer was lost for a while while I got mired in some old pain.

For years—years, I doubted my writing… skill, ability, gift, whatever… but I had it, it kept pushing me, soothing me, releasing me, tormenting me in turns, and I really didn’t grow as a person—for those many years—until I was able to tie my income to that gift, because I have to do it every day, and since I have to eat and have a roof over my head when it rains, my solution was to find some job where I could write that would pay me enough to do that. Not nearly as simple as writing that sentence of course. My writing work, nowhere near the art I wish it was, has been the record of my life, the only permanent record, if there is such a thing, I have.

Yesterday I came upon words I wrote in 1989: no matter what, I’m only a writer in the end, and I have to do it or I’ll die, and I have to find a way to keep doing it, or I’ll die. It’s the only thing I really know about myself that matters. Murphy quoted a poet who said that love is the secret beauty that keeps the world alive. If our love is how we live in this world, I love through my words; it’s all I know, it’s all I have, it’s all I can give. And if my words are full of anger now, it is only in the hope that somewhere, someone else can recognize it in themselves, and realize they can possess it and survive.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
-Kahlil Gibran.