It's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

It really is too - 60˚ a week before Christmas isn't too bad. I'm back home now, and it's kind of weird readjusting to "home life" vs. college life. But I'll never complain about the free laundry and food. Hell, sometimes even both of these things are done for me. Now if it would stay nice and not cold when I'm in Chicago this week. Weather and med school interviews aside, today was a pretty sweet sports day, for such fans out there. Football-wise I checked out the Bears and Rams games, basketball had me check in on the SIU and Illinois games. Tomorrow's MNF game should be pretty exciting: Colts/Bengals. Hell, they had over 60 points combined by halftime last year. Now you may have noticed that I have two teams from two different sports. If I had to choose, it would be the Rams and the Illini. The Bears are a closer decision vs Rams than the Salukis are to the Illini. Oh, and if you haven't figured out from by basketball choice and blogger name - I go to U of I...

A couple of things I noticed while vegging out in front of a TV and eating continuously... Illinois's up first. Brian Randle can shoot 3s now, who knew? I swear everytime I was at a game last year, unless he dunked he either tore through the net or flat-out bricked his jump shots. And about his jump shots, he had no real range. Not so much this year - he's apparently got some range and added a "close miss" shot to his repertoire. That and the kid is still a freakish athlete and can play defense. I've been pleasantly surprised by Brian Carlwell - a true freshman center. In his limited playing time, he's done pretty well. He's shown flashes of being able to compete in the future, and I think he'll be a better 5-man than Pruitt. Dub-C. Other wise known as War-ren Car-ter... This kid can ball. Never thought I would've said that based on his play the past few years, but he just knows how to score. Hell, I look up at the scoreboard sometimes and wonder where those points came from, because it doesn't seem like he's working that hard to score. The Rams, while their offense isn't what it was six years ago is still decent. However, this isn't the Martz show anymore, and we actually have some sort of commitment to the run. Enter Steven Jackson - this guy's just flat out big and the offense runs through him - he probably averages 25+ touches a game. Back in the day, the offense was "unknown QB" throwing to one of five receivers running fly patterns. This led to sky-high numbers for said QB and Faulk racking up some ridiculous numbers with all this attention to the air show. However, I'm still kind of amazed at how Faulk put up the numbers he did with fewer touches than Jackson currently gets now. SIU and da Bears - these teams know how to play defense. The Bears have fallen off kind of recently in this regard, but that'll happen when you lose Tommie Harris and Mike Brown. I'm not saying they're the only reason, but it certainly doesn't help losing two of your bigger people up the middle. Oh, and Rex Grossman had a monster game today - I wonder which QB is going to show up in the playoffs. Granted he did this against a Bucs team that almost came back to win, but I still wonder what the Bears are going to do in the playoffs. SIU - this team should make a video Tom Emanski-style of how to play team defense. They've consistently been one of the better defensive teams in the country. If they played in a BCS conference, I'm sure more people would recognize this fact. Well, probably not as well in the ACC with Duke and the Tar-Hansbrough-Heels, but still. The MVC isn't doing too bad though - wins against LSU, Syracuse, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa isn't too shabby. Wichita State is also ESPN/USA Today #10, AP #8. Oh and on a final note - I've got double reason to root for SIU and against Indiana tonight. SIU because 1.)they're a local team for me 2.) they're playing Indiana. Against Indiana because 1.)they're a Big Ten team 2.)they took Eric Gordon after he verbally committed to Illinois - the hell with you Kelvin Sampson. I hope he hates you as a coach and subsequently leaves early.