Denver 62, Western Kentucky 59: Huge road win lifts Pios to 3-0 in SBC

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BREAKING NEWS: Denver can win on the road.

The Pioneers extended their winning streak to five games and improved to 7-9 overall, 3-0 in Sun Belt play — and, perhaps most importantly, 1-0 on the road in Sun Belt play — with a 62-59 win over traditional conference power Western Kentucky on Thursday.

“We looked like a very good basketball team tonight,” said Coach Joe Scott. “To come into Western Kentucky, and beat Western Kentucky at their place, says something about your basketball team.”

It’s just the fourth conference road win in Joe Scott’s entire four-year tenure at DU, and Denver’s fifth road win overall in its last 62 road games. And it comes against the Sun Belt’s glamour program, a school that boasts a 1971 Final Four appearance and was the 14th winningest program in Division I college basketball at the end of last season. Three years ago, WKU provided the NCAA Tournament with one of its principal shining moments with a buzzer-beating overtime 12-over-5 upset of Drake.

Denver had beaten WKU the last two seasons, but both of those games were at DU’s Magness Arena. This is the Pioneers’ first ever victory at historic Diddle Arena in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

“I’ve been coming here since 1999, and I can’t tell you how good this one feels,” Pioneer radio play-by-play man Mitch Hyder told Coach Scott after the game.

“It feels good,” Coach Scott agreed. “And we’re going to enjoy it for a little bit. … We’ve got a little time to be happy here. But sometime tomorrow, I told [the players], it’s not about being happy anymore, it’s about learning how to reward ourselves. It’s about learning how to reward this effort tonight with a similar effort on Saturday [at Louisiana-Monroe]. And we’ll get to work on that at some point tomorrow, because our guys deserve to be happy tonight.”

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Denver (+7) at Western Kentucky

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The Denver Pioneers face a huge road test this evening, as they travel to historic Diddle Arena in Bowling Green, KY, to face the Sun Belt’s glamour program, Western Kentucky. Tipoff is 6:00 PM Mountain Time. The game will be televised on Fox College Sports, which, of course, I don’t get. (Anyone have a stream? Argh.) [UPDATE: Never mind; it looks like the game is also on PioneerVision. Yay! I can watch!]

Denver arrives in Bowling Green riding a 4-game winning streak — but of course, all of those wins have been at home, and the Pioneers have struggled mightily on the road under Joe Scott. This is DU’s first conference road game of the season, and an opportunity to make a huge statement if they could pull out the victory.

Western Kentucky, meanwhile, is desperate for a win, for reasons that are explained here:

The Hilltoppers will be taking the home floor for the first time since an embarrassing 114-82 home loss to Louisville on Dec. 22 in front of a capacity crowd.

WKU (5-8, 0-1 Sun Belt) has also dropped three straight games, has lost seven of nine and is off to its worst start as a program since the 1999-2000 season.

Denver has beaten WKU in their last two meetings, but both of those were at Magness Arena. The Pioneers are 0-4 all time when playing the Hilltoppers on their home floor. So a win would be an enormous step forward for DU. And a loss would be an equally huge step backward for WKU, as this WKU fan message-board thread makes clear. The original poster asked, “Valid question: What if Denver beats us at home Thursday?” Among the responses:

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Tweet-rant of the day: vaccines, autism, pernicious lies & societal rot

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I went on a bit of a Twitter rant just now, via iPhone while grabbing a coffee at Starbucks, after my phone got a CNN Breaking News alert which announced: “A now-retracted UK study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an ‘elaborate fraud,’ a medical journal reports.” Here’s the rant:

What say you, @JennyMcCarthy? RT @cnnbrk: Study linking #autism to vaccines a “fraud,” medical journal BMJ reports http://on.cnn.com/hJiZpB

The fraudsters who invented vaccine-autism link have blood on their hands every time a child gets sick or dies due to loss of herd immunity.

Also, continued belief in the long-disproven vaccine-autism link is a searing indictment of our society, culture, education and media.

That Obama, Clinton & McCain each made wishy-woshy statements about vaccine-autism “link” in 2008 is indefensible and almost beyond belief.

Our society’s inability to purge itself of empirically false ideas, despite all the volumes of information available, is a sign of deep rot.

Or perhaps it points to something deeper than societal: a flaw in human nature itself. Either way, it’s a BIG problem.

So basically, I blame Jenny McCarthy for the decline and impending doom of Western Civilization. 😉 #PANIC

But srsly: she should be shunned & universally condemned for role in propagating this pernicious lie. Instead, she was on ABC 12/31 in NYC.

If you can’t tell, I find the vaccine-autism b.s. extraordinarily depressing. It tests my faith in the very idea of human progress.

Wonder how Nazis could ever rule a civilized nation? Look no further than the continued mainstream belief in a long-disproven outright lie.

And, no, I’m not saying the “autism-vaccine link Truthers” are Nazis. Just that humanity’s inability to purge itself of known false ideas…

…is intimately related with the ability of an evil, inhuman regime based on pernicious lies & vile scapegoating to win over the masses.

BTW, #LetMeBeClear: when I talk about “purging” false ideas, I don’t mean censorship. I mean aggressive counterspeech & shaming of liars.

This, of course, all ties in with — and indeed, was specifically referenced in — my Grand Unified Theory of PANIC!!!!. We’re all heading toward that Event Horizon, and Jenny McCarthy is leading us there… or something.

And then there were 3

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With Ohio State’s win over Arkansas, the sixth annual Living Room Times Bowl Pick ’em Contest is down to just three contestants with a chance to win, and just two bowls that matter — the Cotton Bowl on Friday and the BCS title game on Monday.

If Texas A&M wins the Cotton Bowl and Oregon wins the title game, David K. wins the contest. If LSU wins the Cotton Bowl and Oregon wins the title game, Jeff Freeze wins the contest. If Auburn wins the title game, Randy Styles wins the contest (regardless of the Cotton Bowl).

Rachel Dulitz, who had led the pool for 10 consecutive days, fell out of first place and was mathematically eliminated by Ohio State’s win. Josh Rubin was also eliminated.

Full current standings are visible to contestants here (along with everyone’s picks), and visible to everyone here. Contestants can play around with “what-if” scenarios here.

The Trees are strong, my Lord.
Their roots go deep.

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Their roots go deep.

A few thoughts about Stanford’s impressive Orange Bowl win over Virginia Tech last night:

• In retrospect, how big of a game was Stanford-Oregon? Wow.

• The Pac-10 can now finish no worse than 2-2 in bowls. (Thanks, Huskies!) Hopefully Oregon makes it 3-1.

• I hope Oregon beats Auburn convincingly, so the final polls are #1 Oregon, #2 TCU and #3 Stanford. Western football FTW!

• Stanford’s in-demand coach, Jim Harbaugh, is reportedly very unlikely to go to Michigan, and is instead choosing between the NFL (probably the 49ers) and staying put: “If he stays in college coaching, he has decided he will stay at Stanford, where he has built a potential powerhouse,” according to “a person with direct knowledge of Harbaugh’s thinking.”

• I suppose, as a USC fan, I should hope Harbaugh bolts, especially with a likely “down” period coming for the Trojans, due to the sanctions. But you know what? I hope he stays. (Luck, too.) The more Pac-12 powers, the better. It’s ultimately good for USC, and also good for college football, I think — enough of this SEC hegemony crap. (Also, I have to admit, despite the pain of 3 losses in 4 years, I kinda have a soft spot for those ever-loving Drunken Trees. Third-favorite Pac-12 team, after USC and Washington? Maybe.)

• With LaMichael James returning to Oregon, and if Harbaugh stays and Luck also returns (perhaps due to the labor situation)… and if Cam Newton goes pro… Oregon & Stanford, preseason #1 and #2? (The Pac-12: it’s a WAR!!!)

• How much must Stanford’s meteoric rise under Harbaugh burn Cal fans, who have been waiting for Tedford’s team to get over that hump forever? (Jeff Tedford:Cal football::Mark Few:Gonzaga basketball. Discuss.)

• Stanford’s rise also makes it a little harder for Notre Dame to use academic standards as an excuse for poor performance on the field, no? Or am I missing some key difference? Granted, Stanford is at least located in California…

• USC officially announced its re-emergence on the national scene with an impressive win over Iowa in the 2003 Orange Bowl. A six-year near-dynasty followed, with a BCS bowl every year, two national titles, one epic title-game loss, and three woulda-coulda-shoulda years (derailed by the Pac-10 war, including the loss to Stanford on a day of infamy in 2007 that made the world a dark and lonely place, full of sadness and mockery and kittens, and incidentally, started the Trees’ ascendancy to where they sit today). Could this impressive Orange Bowl win, seven years after USC’s, serve a similar purpose for Stanford? Could this be the Drunken Trees’ announcement that the Revenge of the Nerds Tour is here to stay? (FEAR THE NERDS!!! THEY WILL CRUSH YOU!!!) Or will this be a fleeting high water mark for a program that’s doomed to return to mediocrity in due time? I hope it’s the former, not the latter. Like I said, USC and the Pac-12 and college football are all better off with multiple western powerhouses competing year in, year out.

• Apropos of which, Stanford should get Boise State, TCU and/or BYU on the phone about non-conference scheduling, because their current slate isn’t exactly inspiring. Let’s get some western-football clashes of the titans going here!

LRT Pick ’em update: Dulitz on brink, Styles sitting pretty

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Last night’s crushing loss to Stanford by Rachel Dulitz‘s favorite team, Virginia Tech, didn’t quite dump Dulitz from the catbird seat she’s occupied since December 26 atop the LRT Pick ’em Contest. But it made her lead precarious, and left her potentially hours from elimination.

The contest’s top four contestants — Dulitz, Randy Styles, Jeff Freeze and David K. — now all have 33 points out of a possible 48. Duiltz remains alone in first place, however, because of a tiebreaker — namely that she holds the best overall prediction record, at 20-9. But she would lose the lead, and any chance of victory, if Ohio State wins tonight.

Styles (19-10) is second, while Freeze and David K. (18-11) are tied for third. Josh Rubin (also 18-11) fell to sixth with 30 points, but remains mathematically alive to win, at least for now. John Presper a.k.a. Joe Mama (17-12), in fifth place with 31 points, cannot win.

In addition to hurting, though not yet dooming, Dulitz, Stanford’s win also made Josh Rubin’s position more precarious, while boosting the chances of Randy Styles, Jeff Freeze and David K. (the latter two of whom would have been eliminated by a Virginia Tech win). Here’s a run-down of the scenarios after tonight:

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Five still alive in LRT Pick ’em

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With seven bowls to go, five contestants remain mathematically alive to win the 6th annual Living Room Times Bowl Pick ’em Contest. They are the current Top 5 in the standings: Rachel Dulitz (currently in 1st place), Josh Rubin (tied for 2nd), Randy Styles (tied for 2nd), David K. (tied for 4th) and Jeff Freeze (tied for 4th). Nobody else can win the contest.

No one can clinch the Pick ’em Contest prior to the BCS Title Game next Monday. But which two contestants will remain alive to win the pool, heading into that decisive game, will be determined by the outcomes of the Orange and Sugar Bowls tonight and tomorrow, and possibly the Cotton Bowl Friday and the BBVA Compass Bowl Saturday.

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Fun with time lapses

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First of all, if you weren’t visiting the blog late last week, you may not realize that I finally published my Defining Day #2 and Defining Day #1 posts. But I did! Only a year late! Anyway, there ya go. You can even read the entire Defining Days of the Decade series in one place, if you have several hours to spend on my navel-gazing. 🙂 “Honorable mentions” still to come, by the way…

Secondly, if you missed our Noon Year’s Eve balloon drop videos, go watch them now! (Also, ahem, the Bally Drop.)

Thirdly, I also made a time-lapse video of the entire “Noon Year’s Eve” party — a.k.a. Loyette’s third birthday party — from start to finish, plus its aftermath. Watch 2 hours, 47 minutes in 1 minute, 20 seconds:

Finally, here’s a time lapse of us taking down our Christmas tree yesterday, an end-of-holidays ritual that always makes me a bit sad:

DU starts 2-0 in Sun Belt, now hits road

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Putting their dismal 2-9 start further in the rearview mirror, the Denver Pioneers bookended the New Year’s holiday with a pair of home wins Thursday and Sunday to start the Sun Belt Conference season 2-0 and extend their overall winning streak to 4.

The story of the first game, 65-52 over Louisiana-Lafayette, was Denver building a lead and successfully salting away a game in the final minutes. The story of the second game, a 72-70 overtime thriller over Arkansas-Little Rock, was the Pioneers overcoming adversity to pull out a game they nearly lost after leading by double digits.

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Denver wins OT thriller

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In a home game that I, frustratingly, had to miss, the Denver Pioneers improved to 2-0 in Sun Belt play with an overtime win over Arkansas-Little Rock. DU gave up a late 10-point lead, then rallied from 4 down in OT to pull out the victory. I’ll have more later on both this game and Thursday’s Sun Belt opener.