11.17.08

Tryouts are over and the roster is set, although it probably was not that hard.  Wednesday marked the first day of tryouts and sources revealed that about fifteen eager ballers came to tryout.  But Big D's run and gun atmosphere must have been too much for some of those ballers to handle, resulting in only twelve tryoutees to show.  So the team is set, and now we wait.  

Roster coming soon.

The Bloggers are back!  Well it's that time of year to put away the golf clubs and head to the intramural fields for flag football playoffs, settle in for October baseball, college and pro football and of course, Baronball tryouts.  Before we get to the inside info on tryouts, there's a new segment we are going to introduce.  Ladies and Gentlemen:

PROPS AND NOTS

Props and Nots are going to be our weekly shout outs and call outs of all things sports at Franciscan. So without further ado...

-Good Props to Greg Hurst for stepping up his articles so far this semester in the Troub.  We here at the blog are pleasantly surprised and happy at the humor and subjects (praise God not to much Boston sports) he's gone after so far.  Keep up the good work Greg. Maybe we would welcome you as a guest blogger sometime. 

-Grand High Exalted Props to ManBearPig for allowing us to read an article by Dylan next week that's not about his Spartans.  Unless of course he writes a two page "Spartans Season Recap" where he spends 1 1/2 pages writing about his 13 sacks.  Or maybe he'll just leave that to his Spartans Facebook group... O yeah, and put away the fake headset when "coaching" your girl's team.  I think I have a new idea for a Jeff Foxworthy CD: "You might take intramural sports to serious if..."

-Mad Props to the Rays for putting the BoSoxs on the ropes... Sorry Greg, but it's time to put an end to this dynasty talk. 

-Mad Nots for the new Intramural Volleyball "Conduct Rules".   I guess peers cannot handle any adversity for a job that they signed up for.  

-Garlic Nots for the Refs again this year in flag football.  They've put a bad taste in our mouth by all their "hurdling calls", "impeding the runners", and pretty much 2-3 horrid calls a game.  Just let them play my friends.  Shame on the Fieldhouse Staff for not teaching them better. 

-And finally Ballin' Props for Duke joining up with the basketball team.  It's about time man! 

Which leads us into our fast facts about tryouts we've heard so far.  Quickly here we go:

- Yes you read that right, Josh "the Duke" Ducolmbier was there for tryouts.  Our team just got a lot better. Get ready for Duke day, coming your way next semester, just as we promised.

-Only 15 guys have gone out for the team this, far fewer than in previous years.  Word is we are going to greatly miss our graduated seniors.

-Saddest news of all... "Baby" Ben Liedel, and his brother Matt are not going to be playing this year.  Ben accepted a scholarship at Ave (we also heard he's not going to play for them either), and Matt may be back in time for next semester.  But probably not. 

-Mike Fuez is looking like the leader in the clubhouse the Barons need.  We belive he is the frontrunner for starting point-guard, with Dan "Headband" O'Brien and newcomer Sam Titus fighting behind him. 

That's it for now, more when we can get back in and take another look.  So far it's seemed like mix results as far as talents, we might be taking a step back this year.  But you never know until they get on the court.  So keep your head up Barons, keep repeating to yourself:

Duke...

....Duke...

...Duke!

Duke!!

Duke!!!!

Duke!!!!!!

DUKE!!!!!!!!

THE BARONS ARE BACK!!!!

They're Back

Today marked the first day of tryouts for the Men's Basketball Team for your Franciscan University Barons.  Open tryouts were scheduled from 9-11 p.m. eastern time tonight, and continue until Friday.  Tomorrow Crazy Pills and Chris Mullin will try to visit these open tryouts and try and get a pulse of these '08-'09 Barons. 

B-Ball's Comin...

The Bloggers are back! After a wonderful summer break spent working hard on our golf games, the call of school is bringing us back to where we belong, good old FUS. Which means we are only a few months away from the start of everyone's favorite season: Basketfall. We start November 17th against Penn State Beaver (who we beat 77-75 last season). We are only 56 days away from nirvana!!!!

We'll be back in the next 52 days to give you some previews on the season, players, and how much we improved our golf games (I myself lowered my handicap to a 7...not to brag). But enjoy the start of school Baronballers, and our hearts and prayers are with the cross country team.
THE BLOGGERS ARE BACK!

1500

Do you remember way back in the day, November 26, 2007 to be exact, when the Barons surprised everyone and won their first game? If you don't then read this. Well back on that fateful day is when a group of three ragtag artists came together to start everyone's favorite bookmark-->this blog. So we finally got 1500 hits, a number we have been waiting for a long time. Now granted this number has been greatly inflated due to the fact that we check this blog multiple times of everyday to see the hit count and to see if we got any comments. We would now like to offer our thanks to all ten readers and Greg Hurst-->our muse.

Thank you all for reading,
the basketball موحمد

Top 5 Reasons Greg Hurst Hates Us

1. We're Supposedly "Donny Haters"
2. We have creative nicknames
3. We can write
4. Our articles are not boring.
5a. Our blog has a greater circulation that his paper.
5b. We criticize the team
5c. We get all the women
5d. We have better style
5e. We liked it when the Patriots lost
5f. We wear pink polos and tight jeans. Admit it, thats bad ass.
5g. We like Michael Bolton
5h. We like "The Notebook"
5i. We like "chick flicks"
5j. We actually know something about basketball

To counter act our evil left wing pro Jewish reporting, the Troubador has started it's very own Fox News, "Fair and Balanced", "No Spin Zone" reporting, lead by non other the fair and balanced Greg Hurst. I feel like CNN. Our new competition in the Baron Basketball world doesn't really like us. We think. Then again maybe he has never read our blog, but it seems like he is writing to us.

First of all I just have to say: We aren't Donny Haters. Let me say that again. WE DON'T HATE DONNY. Just his hair style. Kidding...Truthfully I don't get where these people get off saying this. Yeah we've been harsh when it needed to be (blowing JCC game 1 anyone?) but when we think he does well we give him props. Take a look:

St Vincents Game:

PROPS TO COACH DONNY
The man coached with crazy emotion in a game that we all knew we couldn't win AND explored the depth of his 42 men bench. Hopefully this wasn't just an experiment in a game that was a throwaway, but rather a realization of the potential of this team. God only knows.

Our Second Half Re-cap (Best High School Team in the Land):

4. Wins! Enough said. Props to Coach Donny for getting these guys to play at the next level. Next year is looking more and more promising, and it seems to be because of coaching.

How is this Donny Hating? Why do they think that? From the very beginning we have said he is a great guy, with good charisma, good recruiting, and a solid faith foundation. All things we respect and admire. HOW IS THAT HATING? We only said he had to work on his coaching. Which he has. So we said so. Plus to steal a line from one of our anonymous commenters: we write with the seriousness of Naked Gun 33 1/3. Enough said.

Next thing: since when do we have an agenda? What is our agenda? He thinks we have one? You have got to be kidding me! Sorry for caring about the team Greg. What happened to not being the kid that jumps on the bandwagon when the team starts winning? We were at every loss cheering on this team. So just because we started sharing our opinions we have an agenda? Come on man. The only thing we want is for this team to do well. Sorry for pushing that "agenda".

And as far as jumping on the band wagon... why did it take the Troubador the whole season to actually care about the team? Our school newspaper only starts to give article space (other than the random recap) to them in the second half of the season. Where have you been Greg Hurst? Must of taken a while to come up with five reasons to love this team. And they weren't even good reasons to love this team.

And "hope of glory"? Puh-leese. Connor's good, but not the best player on the team, and not our hope. Even though his basketball skills have turned me gay (and evidently Greg too), he's not worthy of that name. Or the airtime he's been getting in that article every week. I feel a little "scratching your buddy's back" going on in this situation.

I could go on and on but I'm tired of this. Yeah the team is winning. But we still have a loosing record, with 20 losses. I think there is some room for improvement here. Our "agenda" is still relevant. But then again Pats fans are hardly rational. Or the Troubador.

Basically these articles just seemed forced. Are they really trying that hard to keep up with us in the funny, creative, blog-style writings? But thank God they didn't give that column space to Dylan "The Spartans" Ehle. His intramural writings (and football team's play) are painful enough.

CHEIF IRON HORSE!!!

You can't make this stuff up. Guess the sports writers at the field house are trying to catch us in creativity. Robert "Iron Horse" Slattery. Good try. In case they really want our opinion here's what we would of called him:

ROBERT "Mr. Roboto" SLATTERY

Gotta love the Styx reference. Plus if he is Mr. Roboto he is still a robot and robots are hard workers.

ROBERT "Sgt. Slaughter" SLATTERY

Come on... every little kid wanted to be Sgt. Slaughter. Plus as a GI Joe, he was the coolest. Until he started supporting Iraq in the WWF. Then they cut him out of the show...sad day. But he too is all that is man, like Robert is. And it rhymes.

So there are our ideas...here's to you Mr. Roboto, our Sgt. Slaughter. I don't know how to tell you how I feel... I think Styx puts it best:

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo
Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto
For doing the jobs that nobody wants to
And thank you very much, Mr. Roboto
For helping me escape just when I needed to
Thank you-thank you, thank you
I want to thank you, please, thank you

PS Fieldhouse writers- Instead of spending 3 days trying to figure out incredible nicknames for our guys, put the stupid recaps up.
THE BARONS ARE BACK

"The Best High School Team in the Land"

Too bad we play D-III college ball. Well life is somewhat better in Baron Land, where the win column is not so barren, thanks to our community college tour. Let's break it down:

The Good:

1. Ben Liedel- Dang man. 22 points against our "rivals" from the west side. 15 against Penn State New Kensington. 13 3 and 3 against Ohio Eastern. The kid is becoming a man. I think a nickname change is coming on- I just can't figure it out. He's no longer a baby.

2. Matt Liedel- We no longer have to put him in here. Same old same old from Matt. Doing it on both sides of the floor. From now on just assume that he's in the good.

3. Team Play- These guys are finally starting to jell. Good team play, better defense is what is giving us a few of those W's

4. Wins! Enough said. Props to Coach Donny for getting these guys to play at the next level. Next year is looking more and more promising, and it seems to be because of coaching.

The Bad:

1. 4-18 (or 5-18 or 4-19, they still haven't posted Friday's score...). Guess it could be worse, but take a look at who we've beaten:

1. Ohio State Mansfield: a branch college (community college), record is 4-23. I have family in Mansfield, let's just say that it's a farming town...yeah...we'll leave it at that...

2. Christendom: Raise your hand if your shocked that these guys actually have a team...my point exactly. I'm shocked they didn't have to wear prayer shawls and rosaries while playing. I mean basketball wasn't invented in the century they live in. Record is 5-13

3. Ohio University Eastern: Their team picture says it all:

I could beat this kid....

Another power house of D-III...I mean a branch college. Their team is sooo good, that we can't even get there record off their website. That's right, with less than a month left, they haven't updated their website. Once. They love their Panthers.

4. Jefferson Community College: Even though it's Steubenville, it's Steubenville. And a community college. Plus we lost against them in the first half of the season. In a Bo Sox '86 type collapse. On a scale of one to ugly, It was fugly (that's waaaaaaay above ugly for all those who aren't wise in the ways of gangster).

That's our four wins. 2 branch colleges, a college of Opus Dei kids, and the local CC. Impressive.

2. We are still not playing great defense, good but not great. You could say I'm pulling for straws here, but come on, we could be at least maybe three wins better if we held the other team to 50% from the field instead of 80.

The Ugly

1. If you don't like our lyrics, then fast foward: We are still catching flack for the site. Can you believe it? I can't either. Some people in our wonderful administration want us shut down. Why? Because we express our opinions? Because we're honest? Because we care about sports? Calm down. We've been thru this before. We aren't affiliated with the University, and we are going to keep it that way. No conforming to rules or regulations, we're going to hide behind our right to say whatever the hell we want to. If you don't like our style, if we're too critical for you, or not "positive" enough, then don't read it. But if you disagree with what we say, our analysis, then we'd love to hear your opinion. Otherwise just shut up.

2. Our Website: It's Monday and we still can't find out if we won Friday...

Tonite's Match-up:

The Basket Barons of Francisan Univeristy (4-18 or 5-18 or 4-19)
vs.
The Beavers of Penn State Beaver (6-18)
With their athlete of the week:

I thinks she could out ball half our team... But yeah... these guys are riding a 6 game loosing streak and looking to dam that up. I know bad joke. But home court advantage, our new spirit of teamness, and the Liedels and Stanton leading us should give us an advantage. We'll win. But only because it's a community college.

RANDOM TANGENT: Why don't we have an athlete of the week? I mean it would be cool. Maybe we'll start doing it. Nah... Giving Matt the honor every week would get old...

RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: From a fan of the barons and the blog: "I wonder if they would of won another game if you guys didn't start the blog..."

THE BARONS ARE BACK!!!!!!

Our Eulogy to Heath Ledger....Just Kidding Let's talk some Baronball!

Welcome back to baron land baby! the Baronbloggers are back! and so is the team. New semester, new calendar year, same team, same results. And for us bloggers, new countries to drown our sorrows in. That's right, we're traveling abroad. But at least we can legally drink the beer here. Lord knows if this losing streak continues we will need it.
The reason for our excursion is to find peace in our hearts after suffering such a heartbreaking first half. Tomorrow we meet the Dahli-Lama. Followed by the Pope. Maybe he knows some Catholic European Basketball Stars....
Let's break down what we have missed so far:

1. A 53-50 heart breaker to Allegheny
Lidel and Co. continued to struggle on defense letting the other team shoot 75% from the field


2. An 81-72 defeat to the hands of Bethany College
Great job by Zac getting a double-double and Flannigan continues to turn us male fans gay with his season high 19 points. We gave a great effort against a team that was more talented than we were. I'll take 9 points to Bethany.


3. A disappointing loss to rival Christendom...wait...no....HOLY SHIT!!!!!! WE WON!
VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How bout them Barons? Lidel had 25 & 12? The Arby's train was having no more of this loosin' streak. Yeah baby! I was wondering why traffic had picked up in the last few days... Matt is a stud. Duran Duran looks to be leading well from the point, and from all accounts the Nate Stanton of old is back! Major props to him for sticking it out during his cold streak and not mailing in the season. Zac has chipped away his concrete hands, pulling out another great game. two in a row from him? Maybe we will see more from this team. Man I am so excited. I'm going to go have a beer.

A few random thoughts before our victory party here in Europe:

1. R.I.P. Dan O'Brien- we'll miss your energy and enthusiasm on this team. Enjoy Austria!

2. While we bloggers continue our search for the perfect 7'0 European to recruit to our humble team, the posts will be sparse. But we'll keep an eye on the team, and will be back in full force next year

3. Since when is one game a hot streak? I hate our sports writers. They are like communist Russians- spinning the truth.

4. Anyone who wants to let us know how they think the team is doing, since we aren't there in person send us a note.

Thats it for now. Enjoy the win. Big game tonite. Maybe get some momentum and finish this season off right. THE BARONS ARE BACK!

We actually do have sportswriters.

Apparently the Finnegan Fieldhouse operates through Christmas Break. Today I was rummaging around the Athletics section of one of my favorite websites and found that there has been some new game recaps posted about our beloved Barons. I cannot say when they were put up because they have no time stamp, but I can say two things about them.
1. The game recaps are a little bit late.
2. (And since we do not like to be critical here at the Baron Blog) at least there are recaps up.

Here are the two latest games
Waynesburg and Altoona
and here are two other game recaps that were recently posted
Ohio University Eastern and Hiram.