Movie Review: "Bridge to Terabithia"

Karen and I took the kids to see Bridge to Terabithia last weekend. I thought it was just wonderful -- I even cried during the movie, which is not exactly a common occurrence for me (the last time a movie made me cry was Hotel Rwanda, though obviously they're slightly different movies). First of all, any movie that stars kids is always a crapshoot, because good child actors don't exactly grow on trees. But I thought Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb were outstanding. It was a movie that required genuine emotions, not your typical kitschy kiddie movie, and they both delivered.

The plot was engaging and I thought it managed just the right amount of obviousness (is that a word?) in the symbolic links between the make-believe Terabithia and the real world. In other words, and I don't think it ruins the movie for people who haven't seen it yet to say this, the kids make up their own world to help them deal with the problems they face in the real world, and the movie shows this in a way that is obvious enough for kids to understand but not so obvious that it thumps them over the head with it.

Obviously this is not the "feel good movie of the year!", since Karen and I spent a good portion of the movie crying, but that's also what made it so good -- it's a movie that doesn't shy away from tragic events yet is accessible to kids.

Very highly recommended, even for adults to see by themselves.

Movie Review: "Flags of our Fathers"

I think Clint Eastwood is a wonderful director. Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven, Mystic River, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil... the guy knows what he's doing. Of course, he has also directed Absolute Power, The Rookie, and Bronco Billy, so he's not exactly a sure thing. For all its hype, I think Flags of our Fathers is somewhere in the middle of those lists. It's a pretty good movie, but I think it's baffling to see it getting 2 Oscar nominations and there were even people saying it should get nominated for Best Picture (though once people saw Letters from Iwo Jima it seems a lot of folks forgot about Flags because they thought Letters was so superior).

The most interesting thing about Flags was the backstory of how the famous flag picture came to be taken. Of course, Eastwood knows this, so he trickles the story out in a series of flashbacks and flashforwards and maybe even some flashsideways, but I think this is one of the problems with the movie. There was so much flipping between the soldiers in battle and the soldiers back in the States that it made the movie feel disjointed. I don't mind a little artistic license when it comes to playing with time in movies (i.e. Memento) , but I thought Eastwood overdid it here.

The movie also seemed to be asking what it means to be a hero, which I didn't think was particularly novel or compelling. Not to mention that one of the characters in the movie was so obviously a hero by any standard that it kinda ruined the question.

Don't get me wrong, Flags is a good movie and certainly worth seeing. But I don't think it quite reaches greatness.

Numbered thoughts on Indiana

1. I don't think we can hang the Michigan loss on Tommy Amaker - he did everything he could to help us win. I realize this is beating a dead horse, but everytime I watch Michigan I just shake my head at how horrible Amaker is. I mean, Lester Abram, Dion Harris, Brent Petway, and Courtney Sims are all SENIORS. According to RSCI, they were ranked #49, #22, #62, and #52 nationally as recruits, and all have played extensively for Amaker for four years. And they still can't take care of the ball. I mean, IU had trouble taking are of the ball earlier this season as well. Then Sampson focused on it and two weeks later our turnovers take a precipitous plunge. It's an embarrassment for the entire B10 that Michigan has continued to employ Amaker. Yeah, he's clean, and apparently that's quite an accomplishment at Michigan. But c'mon, can they really not find a coach that's both clean AND a decent coach?

2. Injuries are part of basketball and every team deals with some types of injuries every season. But that doesn't mean that don't matter, and in my opinion Indiana wins at Michigan with a healthy Calloway. Calloway is extremely important to this team, and I was actually pretty impressed with Indiana's play at Michigan considering we didn't have Calloway and DJ spent half the game on the bench. We needed the win, but I thought we battled through some tough circumstances.

3. I really, really like Armon Bassett. He's been a pleasant surprise all season, and although he needs to work on his shot selection, that's not unusual for an offense-oriented freshmen. I'm sure Sampson will work that out in time, and in the meantime I'm enjoying watching him play, and I think he's going to be a key part of this team for four years. But he is NOT a point guard, in any shape or form. Wilmont does a better job of looking for his teammates than Bassett... and that's saying something. You can tell that whenever Bassett has the ball, he's thinking, "What can I do with this that will end in me getting a shot?" That's a great attitude in a shooting guard... but not a point guard. The question of who is going to play point guard next season continues to loom large. I would also add that this is NOT a criticism of Bassett - it's an observation. Bassett is just being the player that he is.

4. Before the season, everyone in the country and on this board agreed that Ohio State and Wisconsin were obviously the class of the B10, and that no one knew who the 3rd best B10 team was going to be. Like pretty much everyone else on this board, I really hoped Indiana could be that 3rd best team (though in my case I doubted it would happen). Well, right now, ignoring the unbalanced conference records and standings and all that stuff and just using my own eyes to gauge the situation -- I think Indiana is obviously the 3rd best B10 team. I'm happy about that.

5. Different people can say the same thing and mean completely different things, and different people can read the same thing and reach completely different conclusions, and I think somewhere along the way a lot of that has been happening regarding Sampson, Mike Davis, and this year's talent versus last season. Here's what I think, articulated as clearly as I can:

5a. I think Sampson is an enormous step up from Mike Davis.

5b. I think Davis was a terrible coach, but I think his faults have become overblown in the minds of IU fans (and they were overblown while Davis was still here), particularly with regard to his game prep and game coaching. I've heard many times here that "We would've lost this game under Davis" and I just shake my head. We won a lot of big games under Davis... and we lost quite a few of them as well. We beat #1 MSU in Davis's first season, and finished well ahead of where I thought we would. We obviously made the FF in his second season. And we had several seasons where in my opinion our talent level was not very good. Other than last season, I don't think Davis was squandering highly talented teams - he was struggling to get much out of mediocre talent. Davis was bad, but he wasn't the only factor in our performance the past six seasons.

5c. I think Sampson is a wonderful coach, but I think his skills became overblown in the minds of IU fans this season. Maybe we're still suffering from Bob Knight hangover and want to get back to the point where we're able to worship the ground that our coach walks on, but that's silly. Sampson is not the best coach in every facet of the game in the entire nation... and that doesn't mean he's a failure either. It's absolutely amazing to me how badly Indiana fans seem to want to deify their coach... all it took was 14-4 start to the season and we're convinced that Sampson can walk on water and the team will never have a down game or lose intensity ever again. it's absolutely amazing to me how quick Indiana fans are to criticize our coach after a couple losses... all it's taken is a few completely predictable road losses and now Sampson doesn't know how to use time outs or coach offense or teach shot selection. Listen, Sampson is an experienced coach, an excellent leader, and knows what he's doing.... that doesn't mean we'll win every fricking game. Sampson is good, but he isn't the only factor in our performance this season.

5d. Regarding talent, I do think that this team has significantly less talent than last season. First, remember that Indiana went on an impressive 5 game winning streak during the 5 games that DJ White played in - and we were 12-10 in the rest of the regular season games, so DJ's talent did have an important influence on our record last season. Add Marshall Strickland, Robert Vaden, and Killingsworth to the mix and that was quite a talented team, IMO. This year's team isn't very close to that level, and I've mentioned that I think this is one of the least talented teams at Indiana in many years - but that doesn't make them untalented by B10 standards and certainly not by THIS season's B10 standards. Indiana is used to having quite a bit of talent, so there's a big difference between comparing our talent to previous Indiana teams versus comparing our talent to other B10 teams. The point is that I think Sampson clearly has something to work with this season, but I also don't think this Indiana team was somehow only a good coach away from greatness.

6. One final thought - I think there's an obvious explanation for Indiana fans' manic depressive attitudes. We are all really, really, really tired of watching Indiana field mediocre/decent/good teams that sometimes tantalizingly approach really-good-to-great status but can't quite get there. We don't want to hear about talent deficiencies, or coaching problems, or leadership issues, or justifications for recruiting losses, or anything else... we don't want explanations or rational analysis... we want to be able to watch a GREAT INDIANA TEAM again. Until we get there, we're going to try to argue that each Indiana team could be great until such time that it becomes obvious that they aren't great, and then we're going to get depressed and pissy about it for awhile. I think we're going to see this same cycle again next season as well (in other words, I don't think we'll be a great team next season either). I completely understand (and feel) this emotional response.

B10 fouls and foul differentials

I decided to do some geeky number crunching. The following numbers are for all B10 games as of today.

My first question was "How many fouls on average do the various B10 teams get called for?" In other words, if I tell you that Indiana played Northwestern and got called for 16 fouls and Northwestern got called for 14 fouls, that doesn't really tell you anything unless you know how many fouls a team gets on average. Here it is:



The way to read this chart is to say "In B10 games Indiana gets called for an average of 21.18 fouls per game."

Obviously, Indiana leads the B10 in fouling, while OSU and Wisconsin gets called for the fewest fouls.

Next, I asked mysefl, "Alright, but different teams play different styles that tend to draw different amounts of fouls from their opponents, so how does that break down across the B10?" Here it is:



The way to read this chart is to say "In B10 games Indiana opponents gets called for an average of 18.82 fouls per game."

Note that once again Wisconsin leads the B10 in drawing fouls. But also note Northwestern on the other side. Northwestern opponents don't foul them much at all. Bizarre.

Then the question was "If we ignore home versus away and just look at foul differentials in ALL games, what teams get the biggest advantages?" Here it is:



The way to read this chart is to say, "In B10 games Indiana gets called for an average of 2.37 more fouls than their opponents." Again, this has nothing to do with homecourt.

Then I asked, "For a given team, how many more fouls do they get called for on the road versus at home?" Here it is:



The way to read this chart is to say, "In B10 games Indiana gets called for an average of 4.43 more fouls per game when they are on the road versus at home."

Note that Indiana and Purdue are far and away the worst of this group - the Hoosier state teams pile up the fouls when we leave home. Also note that Michigan actually gets called for FEWER fouls when they leave home.

Then finally I asked myself, "What is the homecourt advantage for each team -- how many fewer fouls do they get called for at home versus the number of fouls called on their opponents at home?" In other words, the chart above looks at Indiana in Assembly Hall versus Indiana on the road. The chart below looks at Indiana in Assembly Hall versus our opponents in Assembly Hall. Here it is:



The way to read this chart is to say, "In B10 games, Indiana's opponents are called for essentially the same number of fouls as Indiana."

Note again that UW and OSU see huge advantages at home, and once again Northwestern is completely bizarre.

I've got en Excel spreadsheet with the raw data if anyone wants to run other calculations.

There were a lot of question marks for this team heading into the season

Now that we're 23 games into the season, I decided to take a look back at some of those question marks. It's easy to forget that our most frequent starting lineup last season was Monroe, Strickland, Wilmont, Vaden, and Killingsworth -- in other words we lost four starters. Granted, DJ White was only a non-starter due to injury, but we're still replacing a LOT of minutes and production. Wilmont is the only returning player who averaged more than 20 minutes a game last season... and he averaged 22. Five new players plus DJ's return from injury -- it's not surprise that most Hoosier fans are happy with the way this season has gone to date.

Anyway, he's my recollection of the biggest question marks heading into the season (at least MY biggest question marks).

#1. Who will be the other post presence inside to help DJ White?
So far, the answer seems to be "no one". It's kind of unfortunate that with five new faces (Bassett, Shaw, Mike White, Xavier Keeling, and Lance Stemler) and our pressing need in the post, I would characterize both of the new perimeter players as a "pleasant surprise" and all three post players as "struggling to contribute". Add to that Ben Allen's difficult transition, and I'd say our biggest question mark has gone unanswered.

#2. Will AJ Ratliff come out of his sophomore slump?
It took a long time, but I think it's fairly safe to say the answer is "yes", he's out of his slump. I still think there's another level where Ratliff can play, but he's been consistently good on offense, he's rebounding well, and his offense is coming around. I very happy with where AJ is right now.

#3. Will Earl Calloway become the point guard that he showed glimpses of late last season?
I'd say this is a resounding yes. IMO, there were some folks on here whose expectations for Calloway were out of whack with his performance last season. Sure, he obviously had potential, but lots of players have potential. After a rocky start to begin the season, I think Earl has become a big reason why IU is winning games. His decision making has really improved, and his defense is wonderful. He also seems to have a knack for driving the lane and hitting a big shot when we need one.

#4. Wilmont is a guy who can shoot the team to victory... or defeat. As a senior, will he become a consistent positive force?
I think Wilmont is still struggling a little bit when it comes to scoring within the offense. He hasn't been quite as streaky as last season when it comes to hitting his shots (and shooting almost 38% from 3 point range when you shoot as many as Rod does is very good), but it seems like some games he says "I gotta be The Man" and shoots 20 times and then the next game he says "I gotta be part of The Team" and he shoots 5 times. I still think Wilmont is having a very good senior season, but I wish we could know what we were going to get from Rod in any given game with a bit more certainty.

It's really too bad that Allen, Stemler, Mike White, or Xavier Keeling haven't been a huge surprise, because with the way the rest of the team has developed, I think we'd be a seriously dangerous team right now. Instead, I feel like we're trying really hard to compensate for our big glaring weakness... and mostly being successful at it.

testing

I'm checking to see if we can operate with two display names with one Google account

Shawless

I thought the IU vs Illinois game was very similar to the Wisconsin contest in that I thought the Illini were playing very well throughout and IU was "hanging on" for dear life. Of course, that is always my warped view.
Since four of our remaining six games are on the road, this was a crucial victory. Somehow, somewhere we need to steal a road win so we can finish 10-6 in the B10, which should be a lock for 3rd place. Onto the game...I am not a fan of Lance Stemlers play, either on the offensive end or the defensive end of the floor. I kept complaining about his play during the game, but understood that he could potentially be a bigger threat on offense than Mike White or Xavier Keeling...so I felt some compassion for Sampsons substitution pattern. After the game, reading the box score, I noticed that Joey Shaw played 2 minutes (I don't recall seeing him in the game) and, believe it or not, I completely forgot that he was sitting there on the bench while Lance was logging 19 minutes of action. I don't understand this?? Is he hurt? Is he in the doghouse? Whazzup?

Movie Review: "An Inconvenient Truth"

An Inconvenient Truth is a bit of an odd movie to review. It's barely even a movie, even by documentary standards. 90% of the movie is Al Gore on a stage doing a presentation to an audience. The other 10% is miscellaneous scenes of Gore looking pensive in cars, on planes, on farms, etc. Surprisingly, the presentation was excellent, while the non-presentation scenes hurt the movie. I give it 3 and a half stars overall.

As everyone knows, the movie is about global warming. Since I already believe that global warming is "real", I wasn't sure that the movie would be all that interesting to me, since it is preachin' to the choir, as it were. But there's something interesting and valuable in seeing all the scientific evidence laid out in one sitting, and Gore has done an excellent job in creating an engaging way of telling the story. So engaging, in fact, that I started getting annoyed when they cut away from the presentation to do the little side pieces. It's not that the side pieces were poorly done (other than being a little melodramatic), they just weren't as compelling as the presentation itself and, in my opinion, they were also unnecessary.

I would definitiely recommend "An Inconvenient Truth", though I wouldn't call it a great movie.

My take on the healthiest B10 basketball programs

"Health" takes into account a lot of factors, but the way I am defining it it basically boils down to "probability of success for the program over the next decade". Here's my opinion:

1. Ohio State - The Buckeyes have a lot of things going for them right now. They have a well-respected coach who is unlikely to leave over the next decade. They have a wonderful freshmen class and another solid class coming in next season. They have state-of-the-art facilities. They have "buzz". They appear to have a really good chance of making Final Fours in the near future, which should mean even more success afterwards. On the negative side is an apathetic fanbase combined with ridiculously high expectations.

2. Michigan State - The main reason I don't have MSU above OSU on this list is that I would be a little surprised if Tom Izzo is still the coach for MSU 10 years from now. He's young enough to do it, but I get the impression that he's looking around for new challenges. I also feel that MSU has struggled just a bit over the last few seasons, and it's been awhile since they headed into the NCAA tournament as a legitimate FF threat. But Izzo is one of the best coaches in the B10, MSU has been solid for a long time now, they have great facilities, and a enviable recruiting base.

3. Wisconsin - I struggled to decide whether to put Indiana or Wisconsin here. I finally settled on Wisconsin because Bo Ryan is, I think, one of the top 5 active coaches in college basketball and is apparently committed to UW for the long haul. They also have a new arena and they are finally starting to lose the Bennett stigma for playing boring basketball. On the downside, they have a veteren-led team this season so they'll need to replace a lot of players over the next couple seasons, and because it's Wisconsin, it would only take a couple mediocre seasons for them to slip back into obscurity.

4. Indiana - We're all familiar with the positives and negatives here. On the positive side is a quality coach who is expected to be at IU for the next decade, a rabid fanbase, lots of tradition which makes it easier for Indiana to get "back" into the national conversation, and fairly exciting short-term prospects for the next season or two. On the downside is lack of recent success, outdated facilities, out-of-whack expectations, and general program turmoil.

5. Illinois - I think there's a bigger gap between #4 and #5 than there is between #1 and #4. Illinois appears to have some significant issues, though they also have some strong positives. On the positive side is a lot of recent success and a recruiting base that most programs would walk over broken glass to have. They also have a solid coach who probably won't leave Illinois (by choice). On the downside is a surprising downturn in recruiting and out-of-whack fan expectations that I'm guessing will lead to a coaching change over the next 5 seasons -- which means rebuilding. They are the first program on this list that has any coaching issues (other than the vague possibility that Izzo might be getting bored). Also, they don't have the best facilities and like Indiana they are not blessed with a lucrative football program to generate income.

6. Purdue - It was a tough call putting Purdue ahead of Michigan, because Michigan is in some sense the "sleeping giant" of the B10. However, Purdue actually has a few key advantages over Michigan. First, obviously, is slightly more stability in the coaching position. While it's way too early to know whether Painter will be successful, he appears to be fairly solid and has already shown his prowess as a recruiter and they have a wonderful recruiting class coming in that should immediately help the program get back to at least "healthy" status. They also have a strong fanbase and a good recruiting base. On the downside, obviously, is they have by far the ugliest team colors in the B10, West Lafayette is enough to give people nightmares, a complete lack of recent success, sub-par facilities, and a head coach with all of 2 seasons of experience.

7. Michigan - It's embarrassing that Michigan is so low on this list, because they have so much going for them. They have a TON of money, they have a great recruiting base, they have great name recognition (in spite of recent problems), and Ann Arbor is a great college town. But all that is pretty much for naught, because of their coaching issues (either Amaker will get fired, which creates instability, or he'll keep his job, which is worse) and because of their apathetic fanbase. The best thing that can be said about the coaching situation is that the inevitable coaching opening will be fairly attractive, so they have a decent chance of landing a quality coach (history of poor choices notwithstanding).

8. Iowa - I believe Iowa is in a very difficult position. Fans are turning away from the team and attendence at home games is way down. Alford has been unable to produce quality teams at Iowa and has a long term contract, so he'll probably be there for awhile. When he eventually gets fired (I'm guessing it'll be 2-4 seasons from now), it's doubtful that Iowa will be a particularly hot coaching vacancy. The don't have great facilities or a noteworthy recruiting base, and they've historically had trouble being a top tier B10 team. It's hard to picture how they get from where they are now to a point where they are consistently a threat to win the B10.

9. Minnesota - Minnesota is obviously in trouble. They have an interim coach, an ancient arena, lack of recent success, frigid winters, a poor recruiting base, and an athletic director that does not fill one with confidence. On the bright side, um, is.... give me a second... I got it! On the bright side, they aren't Penn State.

10. Penn State - I think there's an excellent chance that DeChellis will be out of a job at the end of this season. Penn State actually headed into this season with a reasonable expectation of "taking the next step" and finishing in the upper-division of the B10 and making the NCAA tournament. Now they're 1-6 in the B10 and tied for last place. And unlike Michigan and Minnesota, Penn State is not an attractive coaching position, so there's no guarantee that changing coaches will lead to better results. Penn State is also the only B10 program where opposing fans are often louder on PSU's home court than the home fans are. That's very bad. The only positive for PSU is that they don't need basketball to generate any money for the school.

11. Northwestern - In some sense, there's no reason for NW to be last here. They have a solid coach who is a perfect fit for NW and will probably be there awhile, and that counts for a lot. But simply put - NW has never made it to the NCAA tournament, and there's no reason to believe that they are only a season or two away from doing it. Until they make it to the tournament for the FIRST TIME, I'm not going to move them out of last place on this list.

Movie Review: "The Black Dahlia"

I admit that the only reason I watched "The Black Dahlia" was because I didn't realize beforehand that it was directed by Brian De Palma. De Palma is one of my least favorite directors. He and Oliver Stone are the foremost examples of "over-directors", in my mind. Their movies generally drive me crazy because they seem to have this ego-driven need to spend the entire film showcasing their directing "talents", and thereby constantly inserting themselves into the movie... and taking the moviegoer out of the movie. Yeah, you're smart. You know all about camera angles and flashbacks and mood lighting. I get it. But I just want to watch the movie.

Interestingly, both Stone and De Palma have made movies that I've really enjoyed (like JFK and The Untouchables) , so I guess their style doesn't always prevent me from liking their movies... but those seem to be the exceptions to the rule.

Side note: The quintessential example of a director who doesn't "over-direct", in my opinion, is Steven Spielberg. He directed a string of unbelievably great movies and basically never got within sniffing distance of an Oscar... until he decided to film a movie in black & white (how daring!!) and bingo, he nabs Best Director for Schindler's List.

Anyway, back to The Black Dahlia. I give it 2 out of 5 stars. If I had to use one word to describe the movie, it would be "annoying". It lacked any sort of flow, and several times I thought the movie was about to end (thankfully), only to see yet another "twist" tacked on that I needed to watch. The only reason I gave it 2 stars (as opposed to fewer) was that the cast was very strong. I can stand to watch Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank even when they are in bad movies (and both have had their share). And I'm slowly coming around to Josh Hartnett, who I thought was wonderful in Lucky Number Slevin - though I admit it will take me awhile to forgive him for Hollywood Homicide.

So I suggest passing on The Black Dahlia. On the other hand, I hear the book is pretty good.

Is simplicity a valid goal?

(this is something I posted on my work blog, and thought I'd post it here as well for giggles)

There's been an interesting discussion happening within the online user experience community recently on the virtues of simplicity (or lack thereof). Legendary Don Norman kicked off the debate in an essay titled "Simplicity Is Highly Overrated". Excerpt:

Why is this? Why do we deliberately build things that confuse the people who use them?

Answer: Because the people want the features. Because simplicity is a myth whose time has past, if it ever existed.

Make it simple and people won’t buy. Given a choice, they will take the item that does more. Features win over simplicity, even when people realize that it is accompanied by more complexity. You do it too, I bet. Haven’t you ever compared two products side by side, comparing the features of each, preferring the one that did more? Why shame on you, you are behaving, well, behaving like a normal person.

Basically, Norman's argument is that people say they want simplicity, but when it comes time to make a purchase decision, they go for features.

Joel Spolsky followed up on Norman's essay with some thoughts on his own experiences, specifically that people often confuse simplicity with aesthetics. Excerpt:

Devotees of simplicity will bring up 37signals and the Apple iPod as anecdotal proof that Simple Sells. I would argue that in both these cases, success is a result of a combination of things: building an audience, evangelism, clean and spare design, emotional appeal, aesthetics, fast response time, direct and instant user feedback, program models which correspond to the user model resulting in high usability, and putting the user in control, all of which are features of one sort, in the sense that they are benefits that customers like and pay for, but none of which can really be described as “simplicity.” For example, the iPod has the feature of being beautiful, which the Creative Zen Ultra Nomad Jukebox doesn't have, so I'll take an iPod, please. In the case of the iPod, the way beauty is provided happens to be through a clean and simple design, but it doesn't have to be. The Hummer is aesthetically appealing precisely because it's ugly and complicated.

Not surprisingly, not everyone thinks simplicity is overrated. On Scott Berkun's blog, he provides a defense of simplicity. Excerpt:

It’s easy to confuse success with quality, and both articles discount our secret inability to make satisfying choices. We are attracted to things with more features, that cost less, or come in larger quantities, despite our inner suspicions that we’re likely to complain about those purchases soon after. We date people, eat food, take jobs and buy products for superficial, misguided reasons all the time. We’re easily seduced, and every marketer knows we always have been and always will be.

But we shouldn’t confuse the success of feature-laden crap as a signal for the irrelevance of simplicity any more than the success of Rocky IV and Burger King signaled the irrelevance of good film-making or fine dining. It just means there are gaps between what we need, what we want, and why we buy, and that the masses are by definition less discriminating than the niches of people with refined tastes for a particular thing.

Berkun is basically arguing that there is still a place for simplicity, even if most folks don't give enough thought into their purchases to look for it. He also concludes by saying, "Simple design doesn’t mean brain death: it means being being as simple as necessary to achieve a great experience for a group of people, but no simpler."

When it comes to enterprise software, I think this discussion is even more relevant. Those of us in user experience often here the calls to deliver "simplicity", whether we're working on a small troubleshooting utility or highly available, performance-tuned, enterprise-capable application serving capability. "Make it simple!" we're told. This has long been one of my pet peeves, and the articles above touch on my beliefs, but don't quite capture them. Ironically, in his defense of simplicity, Berkun comes closest to capturing why I think "Make it simple!" is a mistaken goal. I think that saying "...as simple as necessary... but no simpler," is another way of saying "simplicity is NOT the goal."

Let me use an extreme example to make my point. Let's say we could create an application server product tomorrow that is so simple that all it requires is an on/off switch (I believe this can be done through the use of pixie dust). We release it and everyone raves about how simple it is. Until someone tries to use it and asks, "Uh, it was really easy to turn on, but I need a way to actually deploy my application." Well, okay, so we add a button for installing an application. That's not too bad, just one more little button. Still simple... and then someone says, "Great, I have my application running. Now I have an update to the application. What do I do?" Well, we could add another button for updating an existing application, but why bother? The product would be much simpler if we just have the user create a new server and install the new version of their application on it -- then we don't need to add another button!

Obviously, that would be a terrible decision. Why? Because creating a simple product is not the goal. The goal is to create a product that allows users to achieve their goals... and sometimes those goals are complex. Especially when it comes to enterprise software. If a customer has a goal of trying to maintain the value of their legacy systems by creating external services on top of the old systems that can communicate with newer systems, an on/off switch is not what they are looking for.

Obviously, unnecessary complexity is a problem, and IBM needs to do a better job of eliminating unnecessary complexity. But not because simple = good and complex = bad. We need to reduce unnecessary complexity because it interferes with a user's ability to achieve their goals. Simplicity, in and of itself, is not particularly relevant.

Side note: Of course, the challenge for the user experience engineer is that a feature that adds unnecessary complexity for one user is absolutely critical for another, so providing the features necessary to allow users to achieve their goals while also eliminating unnecessary complexity sometimes makes me feel like a circus contortionist. But that's a topic for another day.

Indiana at Illinois

1. I was one of those "glass half empty" guys who really expected us to lose this game, and so I wasn't at all surprised by the outcome. This game just had "loss" written all over it. At some point Indiana's hot shooting was going to cool off (YIKES), B10 road games are always tough, you know Illinois really wanted this game, no team (Sampson-coached teams included) can play a whole season without some off-nights, AND this team is not the kind of team that can have off-nights and still expect to win. My response to this loss is basically a shrug.

2. I think Bruce Weber is a good coach. He's not a great recruiter, obviously, but he's a good coach. However, now that Mike Davis is gone, I think he clearly now holds the league title for "more annoying sideline demeanor". He's just embarrassing out there. It's almost uncomfortable watching him... it's like watching Star Search when some awful singer is belting out a tune, and they are obviously the only one that doesn't realize how bad they are. In the grand scheme of things, this isn't important, but someone needs to sit Weber down and show him some game tape and have a frank conversation with him about representing Illinois.

3. Part of the reason it is difficult to win on the road in the B10 is that home teams get the calls. Indiana gets the calls in Bloomington. Our opponents get the calls when we're on the road. It's something that the team simply has to deal with if they want to win on the road. It's part of being a mentally tough team. In particular, I think DJ needs to get better at shrugging off the bad calls. I think after he got called for a foul on that block in the first half, the officiating got in his head a little bit. It's just college basketball. Complaining about officiating on the road is like complaining about the sun rising in the east.

4. That said, I would very much like to see the home team vs road team discrepancy when Illinois plays in Bloomington match the 20 to 9 personal foul and 20 to 6 free throw discrepancy that we saw last night.

5. We continue to struggle to find 3 "bigs" that we can count on. We have one big we can count on. We need three. I think Stemler has to be one of those 3. C'mon Lance, we need you.

6. Does anyone know when Ratliff is expected to get his cast off?

7. Indiana scored 18 points in 7 1/2 minutes. Then we scored 19 points in the next 32 minutes. Wow. We shot 8-32 FGs (25%) during that stretch.

8. I'm very happy that our next two games are at home.

WONK!

Big Ten Wonk has now posted tempo-free stats for B10 conference games only. Here's the links:

offense
defense
efficiency margin
pace

Wonk makes the point that even though the stats are tempo-free, with so few games to consider they are basically meaningless. But I'm a firm believer that bad stats are better than no stats, so...

Some notable stats from an Indiana standpoint:

• Indiana is FIRST in the B10 in points-per-possession and EIGHTH in opponent points-per-possession. In other words, so far we're winning B10 games because of offense, not defense.
  
• However, our 3pt FG % defense is incredible (2nd in B10 at 23.4%). This is balanced by being 10th in the B10 in 2 pt FG% defense (52.9% -- dang!).
  
• Likewise, our rebounding has been surprisingly mediocre - 8th in defensive rebounding percentage and 4th in offensive rebounding percentage.
  
• After our initial struggles holding onto the ball, it's nice to see us at 2nd in the B10 with a 16.6 turnover %. Last season we were 9th in the B10 at 22%, and Ohio State was best in the B10 at 16.8%, to put 16.6% in context.
  
• Indiana is FIRST in the B10 in efficiency margin (which is our points-per-possession minus opponent PPP) at +0.21. Last year we were 7th at -0.03 and OSU again led the B10 at +0.14.
  
• Indiana is also FIRST in the B10 in "effective possessions".
  

I noticed something interesting in Pomeroy's predictions (warning: geeky)

First for a slightly geeky intro to the topic:

If you have slightly weighted a coin so that it lands on heads 60% of the time and tails 40% of the time, and you have to predict how many heads you will get if you toss the coin 10 times, what will you say? Obviously, the best guess is 6. However, if I ask you to predict which side the coin will land on each toss, you'll predict heads every time. So even though heads is "favored" on each individual toss, the aggregate prediction should not be 10, it should be 6.

When it comes to basketball (and other sports), people mess up this principle all the time. They look at a schedule and think, "Hmmm... we'll be favored in 12 games and underdogs in 4 games, so I predict we'll finish 12-4." But if a team is a slight favorite in 12 games, it makes no sense to predict that they'll win all 12.

Ken Pomeroy's site has a great feature where he uses his stats to give a percentage chance of victory for each team in each game, and then also provides an overall prediction for how many games a team will win. And he does the overall prediction the smart way - not just adding up the individual predictions, but looking at the percentage chance of victory in aggregate.

I just looked at it and he predicts that Indiana will end up with a 13-3 B10 record (after the Purdue game is factored in). That seems like a pretty reasonable prediction, perhaps a little more optimistic than me, but reasonable.

But here's what interesting: I then looked at the remaining B10 games and our percentage chance of victory in our remaining games. According to Pomeroy, Indiana is favored to win ALL of our remaining B10 games. EVERY one of them. According to the predictions, our toughest remaining B10 games are at Illinois (64% chance of winning), at MSU (58% chance of winning), and home against Wisconsin (61% chance of winning).

Pretty cool.

testing

We are trying to use the Blogzeffer again and have been confused. I'd like to hit whoever designed it. I wish we were signed in automatically like before. Has this always been a Google site? Didn't take us old foggies into account. Anyway, enough complaining, let's see it this posts.

Book Review: "Mac's Boys" by Jason Hiner

I can't recommend this book enough for Indiana fans, especially those like me with no memory of the 1953 championship. It was incredibly well-researched, with great information about the state of the game at the time (coming off the point-shaving scandals at CCNY, LIU, and Kentucky), the opposing teams and coaches, the individual players on the team, and the play-by-play action of each of the games. The play-by-play was especially exciting for me, because I went into the book without knowing which games we'd won and lost, so I didn't know the outcomes until the final whistle sounded. It is full of quotes by the players, coaches, and the press articles of the time. Buy it and read it - you won't be disappointed.

Here's a few anecdotes to whet your appetite:

- Indiana lost 3 games that season, and each of them were lost on the last-second shots.

- Branch McCracken told his players at the beginning of each season to avoid "drinking, smoking, and gambling." This worried the players, because they knew these were three of Bobby Leonard's favorite things.

- The Minnesota coach was Ozzie Cowles, who went to Minnesota from Michigan, where he led Michigan to their first ever NCAA tournament appearance. After returning from the NCAA tournament, here's what Cowles had to say: "We'd been gone for a week, but no one seemed to notice. A couple of days after we got back, Fritz Crisler [UM AD and head football coach] stuck his head in my office and asked me where I'd been. That was when I decided that Michigan was no place to coach basketball."

- Because of the draft for the Korean War, there was an exemption that allowed freshmen to play in 1951-52, which allowed Don Schlundt to play as a freshman. He was a sophomore in 52-53, and (answering my trivia question below) he broke the all-time B10 scoring record a bit more than halfway through his sophomore season. Remarkable.

- Though IU beat Kansas in the championship game, it was that Kansas team that really changed college basketball in the years that followed. Kansas had lost Clyde Lovelette the year before and weren't considered contenders. But they changed the way they played defense and adopted Iba's Oklahoma A&M pressure defense that Iba played in the final few minutes of the game when down by less than 6 points. This was a pressure defense that played passing lanes and guarded players without the ball (and new concept). That year's Kansas team decided to play that way for the entire game and almost road their defense to the title.

- Kentucky was banned from playing the entire 52-53 season because of recruiting violations and point-shaving. Kentucky chose not to penalize Rupp, though. At all.

Transferring?

No sooner did you mention the posiblity that Xavier Keeling would be a likely transfer, he suddenly appears out of nowhere. Initially, I thought he was quite awkward looking out on the floor, but last night against Southern Illinois he almost appeared nimble. Sampson must think he can play some "D" or he wouldn't be out there. He might just be a better option inside than Ben Allen. What do you think? SI reminded me of Keady's Purdue teams of the past...the second tier recruits who knew they had to play ferocious defense or had no chance of winning. Those teams always finished near the top of the B10. No one looks forward to playing that type of team...you can't dribble without some guy in your face and can't pass (or can't wait to pass). SI anticipates the opponent will eventually wither and cave, but IU surprised then with an even more tenacious defense...COOL. It's like having a wisdom tooth pulled watching such a contest, but you can't fault the result.
Cookie Maker.

Wow, what a frustrating Kentucky game

This was probably the first game this season where I felt emotionally attached to the outcome. I wanted to beat Duke, sure, but I didn't think Indiana really had much of a chance and losing at Duke is not a big deal. Kentucky isn't that good this year, and this was a very winnable game. Plus, it's KENTUCKY. I really wanted Indiana to win.

And what did Indiana do? They played hard. They took care of the ball (11 turnovers is pretty good against UK's defense). They played great, inspired defense (I love seeing that kind of perimeter pressure). They rebounded like demons. DJ White finally looked like an All B10 player offensively. It was a picture perfect game.

Except they couldn't buy a freaking basket. Aaaaurgh!

Stemler, Basset, Ratliff, and Calloway were 0-14 from the 3 point line. But never mind the 3 point line, other than DJ we couldn't make a layup either.

I wanted to throw things.

But it felt good to care. And one thing is for sure - if we continue to play defense and rebound like that, we're going to win a lot of games.

Duke games are kinda meaningless

Just like last year's Duke game, I don't think there's a lot we can take away from last night's game in terms of getting a better read on where this team will eventually end up. This is especially true of last night's game because we also don't know how good Duke really is. They certainly didn't look like the 10th best team in the country, but this time of year it's tough to know.

The thing is, Duke plays such a weird style of basketball, particularly on defense, that it's dangerous to read much into it. How many teams will try to deny every perimeter pass where both players are 30 feet from the basket? Duke's defensive philosophy is simple and effective: you have to drive to the basket on us and make good decisions to beat us. That's harder said than done. That's why Wilmont played 10 minutes last night - he doesn't have a great handle and he doesn't make good decisions. The things Wilmont does well, like shooting 3s, are almost irrelevant against Duke. What makes Duke's defensive philosophy successful is the same thing that makes Temple and Syracuse's matchup zones effective -- it completely removes a team's ability to play their regular offense. It gets teams outside their comfort zone. Teams have to improvise offensively for basically the entire game. It works.

The other thing Duke was doing is fronting DJ White in the post - completely fronting him, not 3/4 fronting, for the most part. For 99% of the teams out there, this would be a stupid thing to do, IMO. But because Duke puts so much pressure on the perimeter, the IU guards were 30 feet from the basket so throwing over the top means a loooooooong throw, and Duke's helpside defense is very quick. Again, Duke was basically daring Indiana to drive to the basket. They effectively shut down all the other offensive options, wriggled their fingers with their thumbs on their noses and said "Betcha can't beat me to the basket!" To their credit, Basset and Suhr did a pretty good job of meeting that challenge.

So how is the offense coming along? We have no idea. What does this game say about Wilmont and Calloway's future playing time? We have no idea. What does this game say about DJ White's future NBA prospects? We have no idea.

A few more miscellaneous thoughts:

1. Indiana played terrific defense all night. Holding Duke to 21 second half points is pretty remarkable. Holding ANY team to 21 points in a half is pretty remarkable (unfortunately Duke did it to us in the first half).
2. The team seems to be starting to display some of Sampson's trademark toughness. It's fun to watch the hustle.
3. Is it just me, or is Mike White about 5'11"? I swear I saw Suhr towering over him in the huddle.
4. The officiating in the second half was much better than the first. That is setting a pretty low bar, though.
5. Mike White and Ben Allen are exactly the type of interior players that struggle against Duke's defense, IMO. Lance Stemler is the exactly the type of "interior" player that thrives against Duke's defense. We missed him.
6. Joey Shaw is a remarkable bundle of kinetic energy. I'm really looking forward to watching him develop over the next 4 years.
7. How many times last night did one of IU's inside guys dribble into a Duke double-team and lose the ball off a Duke player's stomach? I stopped counting at 87.
8. So far, this team looks nothing like the team I expected. I'm not even sure what I expected, but I know it wasn't big minutes and contributions from Basset, Suhr, and Shaw. It's kinda fun to have know idea what is going on. You'd think I'd be used to that by now.

Basketball recruiting budgets

I got my Rivals.com Recruiting Yearbook in the mail yesterday, and I found something in there that absolutely SHOCKED me. They have a little blurb on page 161 about basketball recruiting budgets at public universities (for 2004-05). This does not include anything but basketball (they have a separate table with football recruiting budgets). For the B10, they have information on 9 schools (sans Northwestern and Penn State). Here's the list:

1. Illinois ($230,904)
2. Purdue ($145,395)
3. Michigan State ($132,370)
4. Ohio State ($129,923)
5. Minnesota ($124,374)
6. Michigan ($122,389)
7. Iowa ($99,219)
8. Indiana ($79,645)
9. Wisconsin ($43,309)

So first off... holy crap, Illinois spends WAY more than anyone else. They spend nearly THREE TIMES as much as Indiana, and there's a big dropoff between them and #2. Wisconsin clearly flies coach.

So that was interesting, but not shocking. Here's the shocking part. Here's the same list for the SEC:

1. Auburn ($837,005)
2. Arkansas ($504,564)
3. Tennessee ($460,491)
4. Georgia ($444,861)
5. Florida ($378,256)
6. Alabama ($342,585)
7. South Carolina ($339,328)
8. Kentucky ($297,725)
9. Ole Miss ($286, 630)
10. LSU ($266,360)
11. Mississippi State ($257,797)

$837,005!?!?! What the...? Illinois stomps the rest of the Big Ten, but they come in last in the SEC, and aren't even close to most of the conference.

Let me repeat, Auburn spends $837,005 in ONE year on basketball recruiting and Wisconsin spends $43,309... and Wisconsin is a Top 10 team.

I'm racking my brain trying to come up with an explanation for the differences between conferences on this (and... duh... no, it's not cheating... that comes out of a completely different budget). So far, I haven't been able to think of anything. Anyone?