The 2017-2018 UCONN Men's Basketball Team

After a disappointing season last year, filled with injuries, I was hopeful this year's team would fair better. My wife and I again purchased season tickets at the Gampel Pavilion this year and have only missed one game. With disappointing play and recent losses to the three "A's", Arkansas, Arizona, and Auburn,  the turnout at home games has been well below average. I'm not normally a glass half empty kind of guy, but I don't think it's going to get much better this year.

At present, the team's record stands at 7-5, with the AAC regular season play starting this weekend against Wichita State at the XL Center. Wichita State is presently 10-2 and ranked among the top 25 teams in the country by the Associated Press. Heck, even the University of Central Florida, a team that UCONN had it's way with in the past, has a better record.

UCONN has 19 games left to play prior to the AAC tournament. A quick scan of their opponents reveals that of these 19 games, 13 of the games are with Wichita State, Cincinnati,Temple, Memphis and Tulsa (2 apiece), and Villanova, SMU, and Houston (1 apiece). I would be surprised if they are able to win more than 2 of these games. So let me do the math for you. 7+2+6= 15 wins, and a final regular season record of 15-16, which probably doesn't get them into any tournaments after the AAC.

I 'm hearing grumblings about Kevin Ollie and his failure to lead this team to some success on his own accord. If this pattern continues and UCONN again fails to make the NCAA or NIT tournament this year, I think his job is in jeopardy. 

Let's hope that I'm totally wrong with my predictions and the UCONN men find a way to turn things around. Beating Wichita State would be a great start, but there's no way they can win if they continue to play terribly in the first 20 minutes and fall asleep in the last 10 minutes.

Ken

Thanksgiving Day in Manchester

If you read back to a post I wrote last year, you will see that I pledged to try and get a seeding card for this year's race. Well, I only ran one race leading up to the Manchester Thanksgiving Day Race. As it turns out, my time in the Prostate Zero 5k was fast enough for me to get an under 42 seeding card. However, I didn't know if I could actually get my card though because I waited too long to register for the race, less than 2 weeks from it and they had shut down the online registering system. 

Every year there is a race the Saturday before Thanksgiving called "Know Your Race Pace", which I have run before. I remembered that if you run a qualifying time in that race, you could get a seeding card. So early Saturday morning on November 18th, I headed over to Main Street in Manchester to run the race. When I got to Bennett Junior High, the registration location, I bumped into several of my Amigo running friends. I could have just registered for the Thanksgiving Day race and went home, but I decided to run since I was already there ready to run. I guessed that my time would be 41 minutes and I finished in 41 minutes and 50 seconds. Not too bad of a guess. I was able to get my seeding card and register for the Thanksgiving race after that race.

Even though I was able to get ahead of many of the runners with the seeding card access, I again waited too long to get lined up and still ended up with quite a few people to run by. That was okay though and I posted a time of 41 minutes and 12 seconds, guaranteeing me a seeding card for next year's race. Now the next lower seeding card is under 38 minutes, which I believe I can achieve if I can stay motivated and healthy over the upcoming year. That's one of my goals for next year.

I ran three races this year, which is 3 times as many as I ran last year. In 2018, I hope to better that mark too. Happy holidays to all.

Ken