Interview with Max Neumann

Rival Country will be making a move in theme. The new focus will be on Small Private High School Basketball. I have both played and coached at this level, and its something I am passionate and a little knowledgable about. I also think I can finally get an audience, however small it may be who will interested.

My first order of business is an interview with Max Neumann, the senior guard/forward from the Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, Maryland. The Hebrew Academy competes in the Potomac Valley Athletic Conference, a small private school conference in the Washington DC Metro Area. Max is a potential all-conference type player from Kemp Mill, Maryland. His stat line last year was 7.1-ppg, 4.0-rpg, 2.0-spg, 33%-3P. He is the leading returning scorer from last year's 14-15 Hebrew Academy Squad.

Rival Country: As a returning starter where do you think you fit on this years team?
Max: This year I feel that I have stepped into a big leadership role on and off the court. As the starting small forward, I play a large role in the execution of plays and I anchor the defense. Off the court, I pride myself on keeping the team in a close circle, which creates a positive atmosphere during practices and during games.

RC: What style of play do you prefer?
Max: I prefer a running style. Both an offense and defense which are focused on getting up and down the court quickly, controlling the tempo of the game.

RC:What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses?
My strengths includes being 'basketball smart', quick reflexes, long arms, a good stroke from beyond the arc and above average speed. My weaknesses would be aggression and upper body strength. I've been known as a lanky player, but it gets the job done.

RC: What did you do this summer to prepare for your senior season?
Max: This summer, I played on the varsity summer league team and spent some time running track and in the weight room.

RC: What are the big games you're looking forward to this year?
Max: We have two games against the Jewish Day School, our main rivals, and then after the regular season the team plans to attend the Saracheck Tournament, which we hope to make some noise in.

RC: Do you have any plans for college?
Max: In regards to sports, I don't really see myself playing anything. I do intend to attend the University of Maryland College Park Campus as an engineering student. This unfortunately means that basketball will fall to second on my to do list.

RC: Are there any players on the team that you expect to have a break out year?
Max: I expect our starting shooting guard, Benjy Karlin (2006-07 5.3-ppg, 2.2-apg), and out starting center, Efry Ahdut (2006-07 4.0-ppg, 3.6-rpg), to have break out seasons. They both possess multiple weapons, which they can use to attack an opponent. They both have excellent outside shots and have very strong quick moves to the basket. Until now, their opportunities have been limited, but this year they will have a lot more freedom to attack.

RC: What is your goal for the season?
Max: I expect nothing short of the PVAC championship banner and a saracheck tournament championship title. But until later in the season, I can only focus on the game at hand and try my hardest to win.

The Hebrew Academy is lead by long time coach Steve Achhammer and is in re-rebuilding mode after losing 9 seniors from last year's middle-of-the-pack PVAC finish. Joining Max, Benjy and Efry are seniors Jeremy Lamkyes, Michael Leeb, Yehuda Margulies, Paul Creeger, Yonatan Isser, and Jessie Fisch, juniors Hanania Falik, Brandon Berry, and Natan Haramati. The 2007-2008 season gets going after Thanksgiving with the annual alumni game.

The Itch

Its about the time of the year that I get the itch for basketball. The air is turning a little colder, and the days are creeping towards November. Somewhere down in the pit of my being, I can feel that its basketball season.

I'm not longer an athlete, in any sense of the word and my recent coaching stint is over. Regardless, I imagine that for the rest of my life, I'll know when its time for vacant gyms to be filled with the sounds of full court lay up drills, wind sprints and offensive terminology.

I'm excited about this season. Gonzaga should against have a competitive season. Air Force will struggle, but should continue their unorthodox style. John Beilein is going to turn Michigan into a Big 10 version of his West Virginia squad. Harvard has Michigan's old coach, and could become competitive someday.

More than anything I can't wait for small to mid-major basketball teams playing on national tv. I can't wait to see players who have some idea of team basketball, passing and cutting, shooting the three with impunity. This is my time of year.

I love it.

Untitled (The Legend of B.J. Symons)

5,833 passing yards
9 games with 400 yards of offense
448.69 passing yards per game
52 TD's
25 INT's
661 yards v. Ole Miss (3rd highest of all time, he also has the 7th and 15th highest games)

That's one season. ONE SEASON. Those would be pretty solid career numbers for most quarterbacks. But B.J. Symons only got one season to start at Texas Tech. Symons was a fifth year senior by the time he got a chance to play. Kliff Kingsbury had finally graduated and moved on to a mediocre NFL career (the same place Symons ended up). B.J. took advantage of the opportunity, as you can see up there. His worst senior game was 230 yards and his best was 661. He played the second half of the season with a torn ACL. The guy was a gunslinger through and through.

The point of this story, is that both that Mike Leach is a genius, and he has recruited some badasses. Looking back, Kliff Kingsbury was probably the worst QB of the Mike Leach era. B.J. Symons, Sonny Cumbie, Cody Hodges, Graham Harrell. All badasses

On that note Graham Harrell should be in the Heisman race this year. I agree with Mike Leach when he says that the fact that Harrell is really really good at what he does, should not work against him with Heisman voters.

European Basketball is More Fun to Watch

If you care about basketball at all, then learn some Spanish, Italian or French and start watching European basketball. Its better. It really is. I can't throw and fancy stats out there to tell you why but I was watching a Spanish League highlight video today which included almost no dunking, and the dunking it did include was almost all produced by exceptional passing. What it did include was the aforementioned exceptional passing, players who could actually make jump shots, point guards making plays instead of dribbling around the court meaninglessly, big men with real post moves, and an unfortunate clip of Walter Herrmann taking off his entire uniform, so that he could dunk in his boxers.

I won't go on my rant about why the NBA sucks. Other than having a league filled with a bunch of offensively deficient guards, athletic post men with little or no polish, and being entirely focused on superstars and their personal achievements, it could be a good league. It is, as a matter of fact, infected with the sports league strain of chlamydia. Until it fixes the underlying problems, it will always have these unfortunate side effects. Those underlying problems are indeed a post for another day.

I digress. The point to be made is not that the NBA is crap, which it is. The point to be made is that European basketball is more fun to watch. Maybe not everyone on the court is a former dunk contest champion, and they don't run the 40 in 2.9874 seconds, but they can.......play basketball. Holy shit. Why would any pay millions of dollars to people that already have skill, when they could pay millions of dollars to unproven projects who repeatedly underachieve and end up playing in Europe anyway.

midmajority.com

I am in love with midmajority.com. I think it is possibly the best website I've ever been to. When I invision everything I would want to be able to accomplish in a website, its all there. Alas, I have no programming ability, and the first year of law school (and the last 24 years of my life) is not the most convenient to learn. I love the whole concept of that website, and I think Kyle Whelliston is a very entertaining and knowledgeable writer. If I could steal or copy more things from his website, I would most definitely do that. There is more information, both expansive statistics and analysis, a map of every game to be played, a blog, an online store (an idea which I did steal), polls, humor, you name if. If you care at all about basketball in America, its there for your enjoyment.

I would like to say that I will someday live up to that standard set by midmajority.com, but it would indeed be a lie. In that light, I think everyone who happens to come across my almost completely ignored blog, should go there instead. Its just better. Really, it is.

Taking Saturday Off

This past week I bought a copy of The Paper Chase for $9.98 from Amazon.com. The movie is similar to Scott Turow's book 1L in that it tells the story of student struggling through his 1L year at Harvard Law School. Hours and hours of studying, Professors that humiliate their unwitting students, and hordes of super intelligent students.

That is not my experience. I read 1L before law school and it scared the crap out of me. After a month, I'm not scared. I kept waiting for things to get crazy. I kept waiting for our professors to make someone cry. I kept waiting to struggle for hours and hours with abstract legal concepts. I also expected my fellow students to be a little more astute. None of the above has occurred. This is not to say that law school is easy. It certainly is not. It is also not to say that I'm any smarter than my classmates. Its more that I was hoping they'd be smarter than me.

I have been taking Saturday's off. I don't go to the library on Saturday. I didn't crack a book on Saturday. The only difference between this saturady and all my undergraduate Saturday's is that I feel guilty. As time passes on Saturday I feel legal studying opportunities fading past me. Should I study? Are my classmates ahead of me. What did I miss, am I falling behind? Ahhh.

Maybe I'll study next Saturday.

Rival Country Store

All the fans I don't have can now purchase Rival Country gear.


Rival Country Online Store

Forget Law School, check this out

Suns v. Spurs-Game 6

I'm pretty desolate after the game last night. The Suns are literally the ONLY reason I watch the NBA. Since about 1999 college hoops has been my true interest. The only thing that kept me into the NBA that long was the Stockton/Malone era in Utah. Say what you will about those guys, but they played basketball like its supposed to be played.

Since they retired (and even before), I can usually find one team to go with to keep myself entertained into the summer. Its often been the Phoenix Suns with Rex Chapman/Kevin Johnson (To be fair I was a Suns fan from the time they got Barkley, and only took a break during the Stephon Marbury debacle) or the Indiana Pacers with Reggie Miller, or even the Dallas Mavericks when they had Steve Nash.

Since Steve got traded, I've been a Suns-only kind of guy. I drink the kool-aid when it comes to the Phoenix Suns. I think they've got it right, and once they tweak it the right way, and gain the necessary experience, everyone's eyes will be opened.

For some reason, playing high quality, fast paced basketball seems to be shunned by all of our basketball 'experts.' I don't understand this, at all. Nothing inherently wins or loses. When two teams in the league (PHX and GSW) play this up-tempo game, and EVERY OTHER TEAM plays a clutching, grabbing, slow the game as much as possible, type game, the odds are in favor of the majority style. Bottom line. The Suns will hopefully break through before Steve breaks down or Shawn Marion is traded, or whatever other doomsday scenario might exist.

The point of this is that the Suns had this series stolen. Period. You can't read the future, but after a series changing game 4 win, PHX has ALL the momentum, and then D. Stern lowers the boom on the series. Not fair, and not right. Rules aren't intended to ruin your most high profile yearly event for the sake of their own existence. The SA style is not inherently better, just more easily copied. Building a team like the Suns actually takes talent evaluation, foresight, and the ability to choose system specific players (L. Barbosa v. Marcus Banks being a perfect example of good vs. bad). The Suns drafted a franchise player after tanking a season, surrounded him with a few thugs, a few career foreigners, a cagey vet or two. But with the exception of Duncan, they're all interchangeable. Not the case with Phoenix. They build a team with a solid nucleus, shrewd basketball decisions, and an amazingly intelligent free agent signing, and viola. They get rewarded by having some low budget chump beat the shit out of said free agent for 6 games. Said free agent is also a 2 time NBA MVP, but for some reason he can't get a damn call.

I'm sick of the NBA. I'm just going to stop this blog now because it makes me mad. If I watch any more games it will only be because I accidentally forget to change the channel. I can't think of anything more boring than a potential San Antonio vs. Detroit finals. I want to vomit just picturing it.

What a pathetic joke.

Talk About Mixed Messages

I'm with Steve Nash in response to the NBA's decisions in regarding the aftermath of the Suns/Spurs game 4.

"Disgusted" That's Steve's word, and now mine.

I just think that reality and common sense should have the final call. David Stern is way off base here. I heard him on the Dan Patrick show, and he was basically ignorning the issues at hand, and instead attacking Dan Patrick for having the audacity to insult his decision.

Mike D'Antoni on the other hand did a great job of being upset, without having a melt down. D'Antoni is my kind of coach. He's pissed, but still expects victory. I think its possible. Stranger things have happened. I wouldn't write off the Suns for any given game. Maybe a 7 game serious without Amare is out of the question, but on any given night, any team can win.

Here's hoping that Robert Horry's cheap shot doesn't screw the Suns.

Shhh...If you don't admit it, you're not wrong

Game 1- San Antonio 111, Suns 105.

We have an insider blog by Marc Stein titled Same ol' Spurs Whip Suns. He's kidding right? A six point win, some only scored with suprisingly good free throw shooting by the Spurs at the end of the game, and Steve Nash on the bench bleeding profusely. I admittedly only got to watch the first half and the end of the fourth quarter because I had to go to practice. But, I must have missed something. Articles here, here and here seem to imply that no only was this game a loss, but also proof that Phoenix has no chance at all.

Game 2- San Antonio 81, Suns 101.

Twenty point blowout followed by nothing. The AP did a typical write up. That's all I could find. Silence among the analysts. No more doomsaying. No more chicken little.

Honestly. Isn't this to the point of ridiculous. If you're in the sports media you can yell and scream loud enough to make everyone hear you, but if you're wrong, you don't have to say anything.

Just be quiet. If you don't say anything out loud, no one will remember what an idiot you sounded like.

Alex Gutor

Alex Gutor is an Outside Hitter on the Penn State Men's Volleyball team. In the upcoming 4-team NCAA Championship tournament his Penn State squad will match up with UC-Irvine in the semifinal round.

I played high school volleyball against Alex Gutor. I remember that during my senior year, he was the mysterious Eastern European player that the Greenhill School (Dallas, TX) had somehow procured. We were sure that he was some sort of volleyball machine. It turns out that he actually is.

During my junior and senior years in high school (and possibly beyond) Greenhill was on some ridiculous winning streak that I beleive got into the 50's. Alex was a big part of that, and the years of success that Greenhill had.

I wish him luck in the upcoming tournament.

Rising Sun

So, the Phoenix Suns are amazing. I watched the first quarter of their game last night before I fell asleep. (I hate how work gets in the way of watching sporting events, I also hate how the East Coast is so far away from the West Coast)

Who would have ever thought a team that passed the ball, shot the ball well, and made crisp cuts to the basketbal would be successful?

I HATE typical NBA basketball. I hate isolation plays. The NBA is basically a bastardized version of basketball where they stand around waiting to see if someone is going to dunk it, or if the offense is going to be so disgustingly stagnant that someone who has been dribbling meaninglessly for the last 14 seconds jacks up a shot to beat the 24 second clock. Now, because its the NBA, they end up dunking it a lot, and often making those shots. But that's beside the point. Why not play the game the way its meant to be played?

VT Massacre and Aftermath

If I haven't said it before, I'm saying it now. I hate the media. I hate their self serving, scandalizing, over the top, 'anything for drama' attitudes. What kind of organization(s) capitalizes on this kind of situation. They're creating the story. They somehow only talk to the people who want to blame the school. They don't talk to other school administrators, they don't talk to experts, they just talk to anyone that will throw the University under the bus. Its a sad sad situation.

This kind of event cannot push us to a 'lockdown' society. Every shooting can't stop life, every event cannot cancel school or evacuate 8 buildings. I'm sure that in the near future we'll be in a period of overkill, where anyone will be evacuated for anything. Then they cycle will go back around, and people will stop taking threats seriously, because they're so often empty. The media won't be there for that part. They won't pay much attention to the natural progression. I read a stat this morning in a TIME article (which I disagreed with on other grounds) that cites a Department of Justice Study:

"...in 2004 less than .1% of all homicides involved five or more victims."

This is not a crime that can be easily prepared for. This is not a fire drill, or a tornado drill. Every single instance is different, every single event could involve an entirely different approach. In some circumstance, mandating a 'lockdown' could work in favor of a sociopathic murderer. In other situations, mandating an evecuation could do the same. In all reality, even regulating such, can be of benefit to a sociopath, because they're going to do what they want to do, and if a uniform plan has been made, they know whats coming.

On another note, I am somewhat appalled at this idea that everyone who shows a little mental instability should be locked up. That seems to be what the newspapers are saying. Is there no where left for civil liberties? You can't judge individuals on their writings, their personal decisions in the way they act or dress, or socialize. There are thousands of Americans who are strange, anti-social, unfriendly, and indeed mentally disturbed. You can't lock them all up, you can't watch them all, all the time. This is not the Soviet Union.

Freedom is worth every cost. Even those people who died at Virginia Tech. Freedom, in the end, is all we really have. Once we let terrorists, lone gunmen, and the media scare us all into barricading ourselves inside, then they win. We might as well stop voting, stop working, stop going to school.

This shooter violated the social contract. But that doesn't mean its no longer valid. I would hope that through time and patience, we could look beyond the devestating events that took place at Virginia Tech, and that the Nation will heal. Because we can't walk with fear, afraid of what might happen.

March Madness

I've recently discovered that I'm not interested in high powered basketball. I find no joy in a power conference team with blue chip recruits, and traditional, boring basketball. I want to be clear that its not any one of those things in itself that I find boring, but the combination. Georgetown for example is both a power conference school, with blue chip recruits, but it plays a very innovative Princeton-styled offense. Syracuse is a great example of a combination that doesn't interest me. I realize its a great program, I realize they're good at basketball. I just wouldn't watch them play if you paid me.

West Virginia. Air Force. Butler. Gonzaga. Marist. VMI. Winthrop. Princeton.

Those teams interest me. Princeton is included more for its historical relevance than for its current success. The others, at least in the past few years have been successful with somewhat unorthodox styles of play (in the case of Marist, success is relative. Honestly I just like the way they play, regardless of the outcome).

I love the Three point field goal. I feel like it is the greatest of equalizers. A team that can do it consistently and successfully can use that ability to overcome height or athleticism disadvantages. As much as I'd like to say that you could win on the three alone, I feel that the three point shot only opens up the game for said 'unathletic' team to be able to operate. Much like a dominant big man can open up space for his team mates, a great three point shooting team can create similar opportunities, from the opposite perspective (inside/out vs. outside/in).

The problems with this particular style of basketball is the necessity to have every player on your team be a perimeter scoring threat. Recruiting a college team like that is probably just as difficult as finding a top-20 recruiting class, just from a different perspective.

Unorthodox defenses also rank high on my list. Just last night I watched West Virginia and Air Force play (unfortunately not against each other) and saw WVU's 1-3-1 defense, interspersed with constantly changing man and zone schemes. The ability to change defenses on the fly is an underrated team skill. Air Force was running some sort of hybrid man-zone matchup. It confused the players from Clemson all night. The Air Force loss had more to do with ineffective offense, than defense.

I need these things to be interested. As a coach, I can appreciate the need to pound the ball inside to the big man, or to run your typical flex/motion/4-low/double post sets. They just bore the hell out of me. I guess if I coached teams that had more traditional players, then I could play more traditionally. The truth of the matter is that I'd rather coach a team that shot more three's and trapped the half court in a 1-3-1.