After his team’s most recent defeat – a 93-58 beatdown at the hands of Valparaiso – Murray State head coach Steve Prohm did not mince words: “We need to figure out what we need to do to get better. We are struggling – we’re playing terrible. Everybody knows that.” The 35-point drubbing was the Racers’ third-straight loss, an ugly punctuation to an unexpectedly poor start. “This is definitely not the same basketball team that finished the year,” Prohm said. Those statements were made on November 29 – well over two months ago – and it’s safe to say that his team has figured out how to get better. A lot better, in fact. Since losing to the Crusaders just after Thanksgiving, Murray State has reeled off 18 straight victories and put itself in position to become the first team in 11 years to go unbeaten in OVC play. With the conference’s most exceptional player pacing an highly efficient offense, the Racers seem poised to cement themselves in league history. If they can follow that success up with even more in March? Then it might be time to start mentioning Murray State in the same breath as some of the elite mid-major programs in college basketball.

Cam Payne and the Racers have their sights set on something special. (ovcball.net)

Murray State’s accomplishments to this point have mostly hinged on its ability to score with ease, a strong suit that begins with point guard Cameron Payne – the clear-cut front-runner for OVC Player of the Year. His dynamic scoring prowess (19 PPG) – quick off the dribble, adept at drawing fouls, proficient from deep – combined with equally-great passing skills (5.9 APG) makes the sophomore an unmatched force in the league. Last season, Eastern Kentucky coach Jeff Neaubauer called Payne “Murray State’s next Isaiah Canaan.” But the sophomore is not alone. Joining Payne in the backcourt are three excellent shooters – T.J. Sapp, Jeffery Moss and Justin Seymour – each of whom shoots better than 40 percent from deep and scores between 8.5 and 11.0 points per night. Down low, the Racers are equipped with arguably the conference’s best big man, 6’8’’ Jarvis Williams (16.1 PPG, 8.6 RPG), whose ability to run the floor – not to mention his great rapport with Payne – make him the perfect five man for Prohm’s uptempo attack (16.6 seconds per offensive possession; fastest in the OVC). Throw in power forward Jonathan Fairell, the fourth-best offensive rebounder in college hoops, and the sum of the parts of Murray State is an offense that might surpass last season’s Belmont group as the most efficient in recent modern OVC history. As it stands, the Racers rank 28th nationally in offensive efficiency (112.4 AdjO), just behind last year’s Bruins (112.9), and with a soft schedule upcoming, Prohm’s group has a great chance to further improve on that number.

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Another week, another slate of terrific basketball from the ACC. While some teams seemingly riding high got a dose of reality this week (hello Virginia and Notre Dame), others showed their ability to overcome adversity (Duke), while others flew under the radar entirely (Clemson). This is this week’s ACC Stock Watch:

Trending Up

• Duke. The Blue Devils showed the dismissal of Rasheed Sulaimon was not going to be a distraction for them, as they went into John Paul Jones Arena Saturday and knocked off previously unbeaten Virginia. Avoiding a letdown after that big win in knocking off Georgia Tech at home was nice to see from such a young squad, too.
• Louisville. The Cardinals had an impressive week, exacting revenge on North Carolina in an impressive comeback fashion at home and emerging victorious from a road trip at Miami. The offense is coming around, making Rick Pitino’s team look as if it may be peaking at the right time.
• Clemson. How many casual ACC fans realize that the Tigers have reeled off four straight wins? Their demolition of NC State in Raleigh was particularly impressive on January 28th, but taking care of two teams they should defeat in Boston College and Florida State this week showed the team is still battling for a ticket to the Dance for Brad Brownell.

Sidy Djitte and Clemson are riding a four-game winning streak in the ACC. (AP)

• Wake Forest. Danny Manning’s team, so close in so many defeats this year, had a nice week in dispatching of Virginia Tech and defeating a talented (but hard-to-figure out) NC State team. More importantly than that is that the Demon Deacons may be regaining some of the home-court edge they lost during Jeff Bzdelik’s tenure.
• Terry Rozier, Louisville. Rozier has four straight 20-point games, but his matching 22-point performances this week were huge for Louisville in overcoming the Tar Heels in overtime and winning the tough road test against the Hurricanes. He and Chris Jones continue to make life easier for Montrezl Harrell down low, and some argue Rozier is the Cardinals’ most dangerous offensive threat.
• Justise Winslow, Duke. Whether or not it was accurate that Winslow was hitting the “freshman wall,” he broke out of it in fine fashion this week. With Jahlil Okafor hounded by Virginia’s double teams, Winslow willed the Blue Devils to victory with a 15-point, 11-rebound performance. He matched that effort with another stat-stuffer against the Yellow Jackets: 15 points, 10 rebounds, three assists, two blocks, two steals. Some believe he’s the key cog in the Duke machine going forward.

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Michael James is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League. You can also find his musings on Twitter at @ivybball.

Looking Back

• Home Unsweet Home – We’re over a quarter of the way through the 2015 edition of the 14-Game Tournament and an alarming trend just will not yield. Home teams are just 6-9 (0.400 – lowest of any conference in the nation) in league games thus far this season with both Cornell-Columbia and Harvard-Dartmouth splitting their travel partner series by winning on the other’s home floor. While Yale managed to sweep its travel partner showdown with Brown, it followed the same pattern, blowing out the Bears in Providence by 18 before trailing Brown at the final media timeout at home only to come back and win by four. The Ivies also rank last nationally in two other categories that many equate with a game’s appeal – offensive efficiency and percent of close games. Teams are scoring just 0.96 points per possession in league play (over five points per 100 possessions worse than the national average) and have combined for just two close games in 15 tries (13%).
  

  Despite Yale’s best efforts, the Ivy League as a whole has been struggling to put the ball in the hoop. (AP)

• Channel Surfing – It took until just a couple weeks before the first back-to-back weekend in league play, but the Ivies finally locked down their television deal for the 2014-15 campaign. Five league games will be shown on CBS Sports Network, starting with Dartmouth’s visit to Yale this Friday, while another six will be shown on the American Sports Network, which is a syndicated network, using deals with other stations to carry its product to market. While the deal was a late victory to keep Ivy games on television after the NBC Sports Network deal expired last season, neither of the league’s two marquee matchups between Harvard and Yale will be featured on CBS Sports Network and the first meeting this Saturday will be relegated to Ivy League Digital Network.

Reader’s Take

Power Rankings

1. Yale (15-6, 4-0 Ivy) – After a rough end to the non-conference slate saw the Bulldogs drop three of four tight contests, Yale has taken three-straight games in league play – all of which were within a possession or two after the final media timeout. More importantly, though, the Bulldogs have already survived three of their seven league road games and now get six of their next eight at home, as they attempt to put the title chase out of reach before visiting Harvard in the season’s penultimate game. While the 4-0 Ivy start has been impressive, there are some underlying concerns. Yale has allowed opponents to shoot 37 percent of their shots from three and has benefited from an unsustainable opposition hit rate of just 27 percent. Also, the Bulldogs are doubling up their opponents on free throw rate – a metric that was far less lopsided in non-league play. Yale is getting 31 percent of its points in Ivy play from the free throw line, which would be tops in the nation and a greater than four-standard deviation outlier if it occurred over the whole season. Read the rest of this entry »

Iowa ended a three-game losing streak on Thursday night when it efficiently took care of an undermanned Michigan team, 72-54. The Hawkeyes shot 62.7 percent from the field and managed a commanding 42-14 advantage on points in the paint. All five starters scored in double-figures, and they held the Wolverines to 40.4 percent from the floor. Here are some quick observations from the lopsided road win for Iowa:

Adam Woodbury played maybe his best game of the season Thursday night as he had 11 points, seven boards, and six assists. (hawkeyesports.com)

1. Iowa’s Front Line Can be Dominant: Even with its full roster intact, Michigan’s strength does not come from its inside play. Injuries have limited the Wolverines’ depth, but give Iowa credit for taking full advantage of its better inside players. The Hawkeyes put on an offensive clinic last night, and it was spearheaded by junior center Adam Woodbury. The seven-footer is known primarily for offensive rebounding and for drawing the ire of Dan Dakich, but in this game, he displayed an excellent passing touch by dishing six assists to go along with 11 points and seven rebounds. Jarrod Uthoff and Aaron White also stepped up, combining to shoot 13-of-18 from the floor, proving that when Iowa plays inside-out, the Hawkeyes can be pretty good. Outside shooting is not a strength on this team, but Peter Jok and Mike Gesell can knock down open looks well enough to keep defenses honest. In several games this season, Iowa has looked like it has the worst offense in the league — this performance (1.38 points per possession), however, proves that they can do a lot better. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest edition of a weekly look at the current ACC standings and corresponding team performances, focusing on the teams that are playing better or worse than their records might indicate. We will also delve into some advanced metrics to find a few interesting team or player stats and trends. Finally, we will forecast how the final standings may look, and what that means for ACC schools’ postseason aspirations.

Note: All numbers are current for games played through Wednesday, February 4.

Current Standings

With the conference season now just past the halfway point, some distinct tiers are forming with respect to points per possession margin (PPM). Virginia is clearly in a class by itself even though the Cavaliers hold a very slim one-game lead in the standings. Behind Virginia is a four-team group that’s looks very similar in both the standings and in PPM. Every weekend features a couple of great match-ups between the ACC heavyweights and this Saturday is no exception. Louisville travels to Charlottesville (7:00 PM ET – ESPN) for the first of two meetings with the Cavaliers, and Duke gets a chance for revenge when it hosts Notre Dame (1:00 PM ET – CBS). If both home clubs prevail, Virginia will have a two-game lead in the loss column over the other four legitimate contenders – assuming that North Carolina also wins Saturday afternoon at Boston College.

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1. Texas‘ overtime loss to Oklahoma State on Wednesday dropped the Longhorns to a disappointing 3-6 in conference play and ignited some talk of the possibility of the Longhorns missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years. I’m here to tell you that that chatter is very premature. While Texas doesn’t have any business being this bad with its formidable blend of talent and experience, it’s way too early to be bringing the Horns into the bubble conversation. They still own wins over Iowa at Madison Square Garden and UConn in Storrs, as well as a home win over West Virginia. On the other side of the ledger, their losses, while numerous, aren’t particularly egregious for their resume — every team they’ve lost to is currently ranked in the RPI top 35. Lastly, as is always the case with these kinds of conversations, in order to leave Texas out of the Big Dance, you have to find a team with a better resume, and the bubble right now is just too soft to make a convincing argument for the Longhorns to be left on the outside. There’s no doubt Texas has fallen well short of expectations, but they aren’t in any danger of missing the Tournament – yet. If they lose two or more of their next three games (at Kansas State, at home against TCU and Texas Tech), then we can talk.
2. It’s been an up-and-down few years for Oklahoma State, so when a season highlight presents itself, I don’t have any problem if its fanbase wants to milk it for all its worth. Kyle Porter of Pistols Firing dissects Le’Bryan Nash’s rim-shaking throwdown from Wednesday night in great detail, all the way from how the play developed to the always-fun bench reactions and Travis Ford getting greedy and lobbying for a foul call. Looking around the conference, there isn’t a player who is more important to his team’s postseason chances than Nash is to the Cowboys due to his high usage and ability to create plays for himself, so when a play of his goes viral, it’s definitely worth passing along.
3. Luke Winn’s power rankings at SI.com are always a great read, and this week’s edition includes an interesting blurb about Cliff Alexander‘s presence on the interior. We’ve talked before about Alexander’s offensive rawness in the post, but Winn illuminates how much Alexander lags behind his peers in this department. Jahlil Okafor, Myles Turner and Karl-Anthony Towns have all been considerably more productive on the blocks, but in fairness to Alexander, the other three players are taller and should be expected to post better numbers. Alexander has the potential to develop a true back-to-the-basket game over time, however, so we’ll see what the second half of conference play and the postseason brings out of the freshman.
4. Tomorrow’s match-up between Baylor and West Virginia is one of the more interesting games of the weekend. A Baylor win would pull the Bears even with West Virginia, allowing them to keep a sliver of hope in ultimately catching Kansas in the league standings. The Mountaineers’ press will look to speed up Baylor’s deliberate tempo, which is currently ranked 300th in the country with an average possession length of 19.7 seconds. Additionally, neither team shoots particularly well, but both rank in the top five nationally in offensive rebounding. Unless Baylor gets white-hot from beyond the arc (as they can get sometimes), you can expect the winner of this one to be determined by second-chance points.
5. We’ll wrap up by giving Oklahoma credit for fielding the conference’s most efficient defensive unit in the first half of Big 12 play. Kansas has owned that title in each of the last three full seasons and nine of the last 10, so while there’s still a lot of basketball to be played, it says a lot about the progress Lon Kruger‘s team has made from last year’s shaky defensive performance. Buddy Hield has slightly improved his steals rate from 2.4% last year to 2.6% this year while committing just 1.8 fouls per game in conference play. Those marks would be impressive for any player, but it’s especially noteworthy for Hield because of the high workload he’s asked to shoulder (he’s averaging 34 minutes per game in Big 12 play). The Sooners have held their last three opponents to an average of 48 points per game and could be a decent bet to do the same when they face TCU in Fort Worth tomorrow.

1. On Wednesday night, Purdue got an important 60-58 win over Ohio State. Why was it important? Not only did it stretch the Boilermakers’ winning streak to four games, it also moved their conference record to 7-3, their best start since the 2007-08 season. If Purdue can win the rest of its home games (Nebraska, Rutgers, and Illinois), they’ll guarantee themselves at least 10 wins in conference play. To get serious consideration in March for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid, they’ll need to compensate for their two bad losses against Vanderbilt and Gardner-Webb. A win against the ranked Buckeyes goes a long way toward eliminating some of the stink on their resume.
2. One factor that may have played into Ohio State’s loss was that sophomore forward Marc Loving was not on the court. The sophomore and second-leading scorer did not make the trip to West Lafayette, as he has been suspended indefinitely for disciplinary reasons. The specifics of his cause for suspension were not released by the school, but his absence threatens the Buckeyes’ pursuit for a protected seed in the NCAA Tournament. Loving was beginning to emerge as one of the the best shooters in the Big Ten, as evidenced by his 53.2% shooting from deep. But now that he’s on the sidelines, Ohio State will become even more of a one-man show, starring D’Angelo Russell, than it’s already been.
3. Also on Wednesday, Maryland managed to fend off Penn State in College Park. While the Terrapins are still hovering near the top of the Big Ten standings, stud freshman Melo Trimble has hit a bit of a slump with only seven combined points in his last couple games. It’s lucky for Mark Turgeon that he has a senior leader like Dez Wells, who contributed 23 points and seven rebounds, to pick up the slack. He also managed to get the home crowd off its feet with this monster dunk. On Sunday, Maryland heads to Iowa City for a key game with the Hawkeyes. They’ll need Wells to continue to make big plays and for Trimble to wake up out of his slumber if they hope to notch their third conference road win.
4. On Thursday, Iowa snapped its three-game losing streak with a 72-54 victory at Michigan. The Hawkeyes were able to take advantage of the shallow depth of the injury-ridden Wolverines and walked out of Ann Arbor with an important road win. This bodes well for Fran McCaffery’s group, as his team has a favorable schedule the rest of the way. It’s too early to predict that Iowa is over the hump, but a strong finish would certainly be a departure from what last season when the Hawkeyes imploded and exited the NCAA Tournament in the First Four. This year, the Hawkeyes could actually enter the postseason with some real momentum.
5. After Indiana started off Big Ten play at 5-1, the Hoosiers have dropped three of their last four games and are coming off an embarrassing loss to Wisconsin. Alex Bozich from Inside the Hall takes a deep dive into the makeup of this up-and-down team with a player-by-player breakdown. Yogi Ferrell, James Blackmon Jr., and Troy Williams lead the way when it comes to filling out the stat sheets, but given the fact Indiana has allowed over 1.2 points per possession in each of their last three losses, they may need Hanner Mosquera-Perea back from injury to provide some semblance of a defensive presence inside.

1. Ole Miss has some intriguing potential as SEC play nears the stretch run. The Rebels have proven that they can take care of business on offense and will be difficult to beat if they defend at a reasonable level. On Wednesday Ole Miss beat the red-hot Aggies despite an off night from Jarvis Summers (seven points on 2-of-10 shooting) and an overall sluggish shooting performance (38.7%). The Rebels held Texas A&M to just 0.82 points per possession and they did so primarily through man-to-man defense, which is notable because they have looked most effective this year when switching up zone defenses. Ole Miss could be destined to finish second in this league if it keeps defending the way it did Wednesday night.
2. Bovada has Kentucky as an even-money favorite (1-to-1) to win the national championship, which is, in short, ridiculous. What’s more ridiculous is that it doesn’t seem that ridiculous. Despite a slew of close calls and sluggish performances, Kentucky has done nothing to shake off the perception that it is far and away the team to beat this year. Las Vegas’ confidence in the Wildcats is also an indirect compliment to the entire conference. Kentucky more than proved its mettle in the non-conference slate by beating Kansas, North Carolina and Louisville, among others. If those wins weren’t already in the books, then their less-than-dominant performances against what is perceived as weak competition would raise some eyebrows. Instead, competitive games against Georgia, Ole Miss and Texas A&M seem to say more about the quality of those teams than raise questions about the legitimacy of Kentucky.
3. Prior to Kentucky and Georgia’s Super Tuesday showdown, you probably could have gotten great odds that the Wildcats would win the rebounding battle, especially with the Bulldogs’ bruising forward Marcus Thornton out of the lineup. But those odds would have been pantsed, as Georgia inexplicably outrebounded the Wildcats by 12. The main reason for that was freshman Yante Maten, who had far and away the best game of his young career, contributing 13 points to go along with nine rebounds. It was a tremendous stat line when you consider the front line he was battling, that he was hit by a car just a few weeks ago, and that he was filling Thornton’s rather huge void. As of Thursday night, Thornton had still not been cleared to play against Tennessee this weekend. If he can’t go, Mark Fox will look for Maten to build on his breakout performance against the Wildcats. If the rookie’s performance becomes a trend, Georgia could become a #9 to #11 seed that no team wants to face in the NCAA Tournament.
4. There have been a number of reasons why Florida has struggled to live up to what appears to have been unrealistic expectations. One reason is certainly Kasey Hill’s inability to fill the large shoes left by Scottie Wilbekin. Let’s not be too harsh, though: Wilbekin was one of the most valuable players to any team in the country last year — a savvy veteran point guard who made winning plays seemingly every game. Expecting a sophomore to jump right in and replace his production is dumb. But Hill has had a rough year and has not shown improvement in the part of his game that needed the most work: shooting (38.5% on two-point shots; 49.5% last year). He’s still young and his quick first step is something that can’t be taught, but Florida’s offensive prowess is in large part tied to Hill’s development.
5. Craig Sword is coming on strong for Mississippi State, perhaps setting himself up for a monster senior season. Up until a few weeks ago it looked like his junior campaign would be disappointing when it became clear that a preseason back injury was still ailing. But since the middle of January his minutes have steadily increased and he has gotten back to being the dynamic scorer many thought he could be. In the Bulldogs’ last two road games against Ole Miss and Tennessee – both quality opponents – Sword has averaged 26.5 points per game and shot 17-of-21 from the field. Mississippi State has developed a lot of positive momentum around its program in the last few weeks, and Sword is a big part of that upward trend.

1. The decision by Syracuse to self-impose a postseason ban for this year has been controversial to say the least. On one hand it shows that the school understands how serious the allegations against it are, but the decision to announce this self-imposed ban for one of its weaker teams in recent memory seems a little disingenuous. If this had been a Syracuse team that would have been a NCAA Tournament team (not necessarily a high seed either) the announcement might have been viewed as more significant, but it seems like the school is essentially banning itself from something it would not have been invited to anyways. Of course, all of this is assuming that the NCAA won’t hit the school with more sanctions when it makes its own announcements, but given the way the NCAA is handling the North Carolina case we would not hold our breath.
2. While Syracuse was not a realistic postseason team this year, Kansas State certainly is although those chances have been dropping recently. Things got worse for the Wildcats when the school announced that Marcus Foster and Malek Harris had been suspended indefinitely for an unspecified violation of team rules. Losing Foster, the team’s leading scorer (14 points per game) and best player, is obviously a huge loss and it showed in the team’s loss to Texas Tech on Wednesday. The question for Kansas State is how long Foster in particular will be out since this is the second time that he has been disciplined this season. If he is out for a prolonged period of time, Bruce Weber can forget about making the NCAA Tournament.
3. While Ohio State’s place in the NCAA Tournament is more secure than Kansas State’s, we are not sure how long they can maintain that security if Marc Loving misses much more time. Loving, the team’s second-leading scorer at 11.7 points per game, was suspended prior to Wednesday night’s loss at Purdue. The school did not give an explanation outside of that Loving had “temporarily lost his privilege to wear the Scarlet and Gray.” Given the wording we would assume that Loving will be back relatively soon and although the Big Ten is down this year, D’Angelo Russell needs more than just cursory support if he wants to have a memorable March.
4. Kent State also suffered a big albeit apparently temporary loss this week when they announced that Jimmy Hall, who leads the team in scoring (15.1 per game) and rebounding (7.5 per game), would be out for at least a week after being diagnosed with mononucleosis. The Golden Flashes currently are tied for first in the Eastern Division of the Mid-American Conference (four-way tie in a six-team division), but lost their only game without Hall (a one-point loss at Western Michigan on Wednesday). Unlike the other teams we mentioned they don’t have a shot at an at-large bid so as long as Hall is back and healthy for the conference tournament it probably won’t matter in the end.
5. Recently, we mentioned how a court had ruled that Geno Ford owed Kent State $1.2 million for getting out of his contract early. Now it is a college coach (Gib Arnold) who is going after his former employer (Hawaii) for the $1.4 million that they owe him. Arnold is essentially challenging the charges levied against him by the NCAA (including two Level I allegations) and says that the school owes him the full $1.4 million due to him based on his contract as he was fired without cause (reason for challenging the NCAA allegations) rather than the $346,000 that they paid him (presumably based on the idea that there was cause for the firing). His official statement goes into a little more detail about the issues at hand, but we think in the end it will be difficult for Arnold to win his case fighting on two fronts (the NCAA and Hawaii).

Back by popular demand, your skeleton key into the mind of Bill Walton. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of the piece, we try to decipher what exactly the most interesting college basketball commentator in the world was talking about, as Oregon got past by Washington in Eugene last night, the most remarkable power spot on Earth. And, as always, you’ll want some musical accompaniment, so let us kindly suggest the Grateful Dead at Mac Court on the campus of the University of Oregon on a cold January day back in 1978, featuring an epic second-set jam. Start with Terrapin Station and let it ride.

After A Fun Night In Eugene, Will Dig A Little Furthur Into Bill Walton’s Commentary

First half

16:36 – “I’m fired up. Today was one of the most remarkable days of my life. I saw so much, I’m just hoping it was all real. Because that was a spectacular series of events. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

Comment: Now that’s what you call a tease, setting up what is sure to be our storyline the rest of the night.

14:09 – Following discussion of Robert Upshaw getting kicked off the Washington team and playing with a small lineup: “I know you’re not old enough to remember that one of the great teams in the history of college basketball – two consecutive championships in the mid-60s, they happened to play at UCLA – the tallest guy on the team was 6’5”.”

Comment: Sometimes you have to clean up the facts a little bit. For sure, the 1964 UCLA national championship team famously featured no starter taller than 6’5”, with Hall of Famers Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich leading the way and senior center Fred Slaughter and junior forward Keith Erickson each checking in at just 6’5”. But, Doug McIntosh came off the bench at 6’7” and played 30 minutes in the title game. In 1965, he regularly started and 6’6” Edgar Lacy also became a major factor for the Bruins.

11:09 – Dave Pasch pre-commercial, teasing the next feature: “Well, coming up: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. No, it’s not Walton’s biography. A Walton’s World tribute to Ken Kesey and someone called Mountain Girl. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Walton’s World: “What a day. It started at the HDC with football and then quickly moved to the Knight Library where Voodoo Doughnuts donated $10,000 to the Ken Kesey Fund. And then, one of the original Pranksters, Ken Babbs, the rider who went to college with Ken Kesey at Stanford. The Knight Library had this fantastic collection, including this record soundtrack from Jack Nicholson. And then all the writings. Mountain Girl was there to read it. And then the Jail Journal. And then we all wound up in the Ken Kesey Classroom. And here tonight at the Matthew Knight Arena, Mountain Girl on the left, Sunshine she’s on the right, she’s Ken and Mountain Girl’s daughter. And then down underneath the basket on the other end, we have Ken Babbs. Ken Babbs, a great basketball player in his own day at Miami (Ohio), played on the same team as Wayne Embry. He’s dancing with the Duck here, he’s a great writer himself, he’s got the Last Go ‘Round novel.

Pasch: “Now wait, who is Mountain Girl?”

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