Just like always, when I make a stupid prediction, the opposite happens. This dumb statement was about Rutgers’ men’s basketball not winning a game in the Big Ten this season.
First game after my idiotic statement, RU beats #16 Ohio State at the RAC. They did it without their captain, Eugene Omoruyi, a big presence in their lineup. RU employed a 2-2-1 zone which gave the Buckeyes fits. Most surprisingly, the Scarlet Knights converted on their free throws, at one time they had hit 12 out of 14. Plus Geo Baker had a good game; whenever he scores more than 14 points, RU wins.
I am not particularly impressed with Ohio State. Having lost to Iowa on Saturday, the Buckeyes are in midst of a 3 game slide. Meanwhile, RU now has a 2 game winning streak versus OSU, having won last season when the teams met in the Big Ten Tournament.
Rutgers subsequently played hard for the first half at Minnesota on Saturday. The Golden Gophers ran off an 18-1 spurt in the second half to effectively put the contest out of reach. Minnesota is 13-3 and unranked now, but Richard Pitino’s squad had reached the Top 25 earlier this season.
I am not going to make some silly prediction about RU now that Omuruyi and rising freshman Caleb McConnell are sidelined. Rutgers next game is at Purdue on Tuesday. While the Boilermakers are 10-6 overall, they won on the road at Wisconsin on Friday night and are 7-0 at home. This, like all of the remaining games for RU, will be tough to win. RU is in the bottom four of the Big Ten along with Northwestern, Penn State and Illinois. Northwestern is a quality team and has played a difficult opening conference schedule; they come to the RAC on Friday. Penn State and Illinois are both winless and possess below .500 records.
So there is a chance for RU to win some more games this season. I doubt that they will be favored in too many of those meetings. I like that Coach Steve Pikiell has gone to a zone defense. I was just so frustrated and I continue to be frustrated that RU is a bottom feeder in the Big Ten. Let that change already.
On the women’s side, thankfully a judge in Alabama permitted Maori Davenport to play high school basketball. The Rutgers recruit scored 25 points in her season debut. She was supported by her future coach, C. Vivian Stringer and luminaries like Kobe Bryant and the Alabama State Legislature. However, this is only a 10 day reprieve. The ASHAA has not responded to the motion, but the belief is that they will either appeal the decision or seek to nullify it. For now, common sense rules, and Maori can go back to doing what she loves.
Her future college basketball team continues to become relevant in the Big Ten. RU picked up a pair of wins this past week. They are now 13-3, the only unbeaten team in the Big Ten at 5-0. I expect that the team will return to the Top 25 when the updated poll is released.
Checking in on other NJ schools, Monmouth is at 3-14, 2-2 in the MAAC. Some progress there. Rider, the unheralded school from Lawrenceville, is currently atop the MAAC with a 5-0 conference record. Princeton is alone in first place for now in early Ivy League play. The two teams with the best overall records, Brown and Yale, have yet to start their league campaigns. Seton Hall has been stumbling a bit lately; they are 12-5 and 2-2 in the Big East. Villanova is a perfect 4-0 in conference and is 13-4, followed by Marquette at 3-1 and 14-3 in the highly competitive league. Surprising NJIT is now 13-4 and 1-1 in the American Sun Conference after a loss at North Alabama.
F&M is currently in a 3 game slide, losing games to Washington, Muhlenberg and Ursinus, with two of the losses occurring within the friendly walls of Mayser Center. What is a rebuilding year is starting to show that F&M does not have the chemistry or the scorers to fend off hungrier teams. It is only 7 games into the Centennial Conference season; a lot can happen beginning with the next battle at Mc Daniel in Westminster, Maryland. The Green Terror owns a victory over the Diplomats, so maybe F&M can begin a streak of its own by avenging the loss.
Alabama is losing players at a very fast rate, either to transfer or entry into the NFL. I foresee the Crimson Tide having a very nice season, maybe even making the Final Four again next year. But I believe they are a bit more vulnerable in the SEC in 2019.
As for Clemson, dutifully celebrate your championship with doughnuts and cigars. Retaining it is going to be hard. Be like your coach—enjoy the moment and start to prepare for next year. Everybody will want a piece of the defending National Champions.
I liked the New York Jets’ choice of Adam Gase as the new Head Coach. While his record in Miami was below .500, his work as a developer of quarterbacks is greatly respected. No less an authority than Peyton Manning, who Gase coached in Denver when the Broncos won the Super Bowl, stumped for Gase as the Jets’ next HC. Note to GM Mike Maccagnan: get working to secure quality free agents and utilize your high draft picks to select impact players, ones who can accelerate the progress of the team on defense and conform to the talents of highly-prized QB Sam Darnold.
The first two games of the second round of the NFL playoffs went to the teams who should have won. Kansas City asserted its superiority, shored up its defense, and halted the red hot Indianapolis Colts. Behind a solid offense line, the LA Rams punishingly ran over and around the Dallas Cowboys, ending the Dallas Cowboys playoff hopes.
New England dismantled the Los Angeles Chargers. LA never stood a chance, down 35-7 at the half—tied for the most points the Patriots have scored in a half in the playoffs. The Chargers have lost the last 7 meetings with New England in Foxborough, and traveled from Baltimore, to the West Coast back to New England. They looked fatigued because that’s what they were.
The game of the weekend was in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. The Saints overcame a 14-0 lead by the Philadelphia Eagles and won 20-14. It was hard-fought and contested into the last two minutes. There was no Nick Foles miracle this time. The NFL will have a new champion.
Next Sunday we have the LA Rams traveling to New Orleans in the early game. The late contest pits the Patriots at the Chiefs in what likely will be a bitterly cold Arrowhead Stadium. The top two seeds meeting in the Conference Finals. The way it should be. The 7 day forecast for Springfield calls for significant snow. No better place to be than ensconced in front of my TV in my warm den. Hopefully the action will be as hot as the prognosticators are forecasting.
I did come away with some more respect for Chargers QB Philip Rivers. Two things struck me. He does not curse, but he is exceptionally animated on the field, whether he is challenging his teammates for poor play, chastising the officials or talking smack to his opponents. He has a fierce will to win. The talent he has ben given throughout his career just wasn’t enough to make it to the Super Bowl, let alone win it. He will be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
I confess that I did not see much of the Colts-Chiefs game except when my wife and I were with friends in a Chinese restaurant which we like in Bordentown, New Jersey. A second confession is that I love Chinese food as much as I love sports.
Not that I can eat Chinese food every day; the rice would upset my system too much. But given an option, Chinese is my go to choice. I ate Chinese every Wednesday that my father had off from his dentistry practice. Egg drop soup, chicken chow mein, roast pork egg foo young and white rice. Canned pineapple for dessert. I knew tons of Chinese restaurants n the Middlesex County area, which was a godsend to my father; he used to drive up the Garden State Parkway from Highland Park and take us to a Chinese restaurant in Union Center, or pick it up and race home so that it would still be hot. When he was in a really good mood, we would splurge on roast pork with Chinese vegetables.
There were times when my ability to eat Chinese food was compromised. Lancaster, PA, Wilmington, DE and Washington, DC were not meccas for Chinese food when I was in college. I did have one date with a young woman from Beaver College where we ventured into Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Neither the date nor the meal were memorable.
When we took our family jaunts across the country, I learned that a surprising locale had great Chinese food. That place was Las Vegas. Whether it was downtown at the Mint or on the famed Las Vegas Strip, the Chinese food was excellent.
My father disliked onions, yet he loved egg foo young. He used to call places that overused onion or celery, “Onion Palaces.” He hated to have Chinese food outside of the New York area except for Las Vegas. He did not like the meals he had in San Francisco’s renowned Chinatown. I have always felt that they were very good, but not exceptional.
The one place I recall from my childhood to be the best of all places was Lum Fong’s in Manhattan. There were two—one in Chinatown, and one in Midtown. A trip to Lum Fong’s at 150 52nd Street was an event. Patrons arrived dressed up and the women were adorned in fur and smelled fantastic. The food was to die for.
Lum Fong’s other location was on Canal Street. We went there occasionally, but my father far preferred the 52nd Street restaurant. While I have been to other places in Chinatown with mixed results over the years, I still have a place in my heart for Lum Fong’s that survived its demise in the 1960’s.
In my later college years, I had occasion to try other dishes of Chinese food. I was not restricted like my father. It helped me like Chinese cuisine even more. I will eat shrimp, chicken, fish, scallops, vegetarian, noodles and even beef, although I am never quite sure whether it is really beef.
I learned about Szechuan and Mandarin Chinese cuisine. It even opened me up to Thai and Japanese food. While those ethnic foods are very tasty and offer an alternative to Chinese, they are only alternatives.
While at the Public Defender’s Office in Elizabeth, my colleagues and I established a tradition of Friday Chinese. For the longest time, we went to a place on Morris Avenue in Elizabeth. I ordered egg drop soup and vegetable lo mein or chicken with mushrooms. We ventured to another site nearer to the office on Mondays, where I usually had chicken with mushrooms. Both places eventually closed, but they did not disappoint in the characters who would frequent them. One even survived an I.C.E. raid and the other an attack by the cook on an Elizabeth H.S. student. I went to another place around the corner from the office for years, but the ownership turned sour and I could no longer eat there. So I brought Chinese food from a take out place in Springfield to work on Fridays.
The range of the discussions at these shops was unreal. I learned so much more about law and politics on the walks to the restaurants and the circuit we used to take on Fridays around the Westminister section of Elizabeth to digest our meal. One time we even saw Air Force One gracefully rising with President George W. Bush after take off from nearby Newark International Airport. I cherished those times.
Locally, I have a number of go to places. When I became a bar mitzvah at age 42 (a long story for another time), we celebrated the day with a ’60’s throwback shindig at Hunan in Morris Plains. My surprise 60th birthday party was held at—Hunan. New Year’s Eve is a standard at the sister restaurant, Hunan Spring, in walking distance from our house. When our daughter lived in Pittsburgh, we had a place outside of the city that we regularly frequented. After she had emergency surgery, I brought Chinese food back to the hospital for us. I have a former colleague from the Bergen Region who introduced me to a wonderful place in Denville. The list goes on and on.
My wife loves Chinese food almost as much as pizza. She has been instrumental in my quest for a fine Chinese meal. We have found that we don’t like Southern California Chinese cuisine—too much like what is in China and hardly tasty like American style Chinese food. Off the top of my head, we have had Chinese food in at least NY, NJ, CT, PA, CA, OR, ME. MA, NV, TX, FL, AZ, DE. I have had Chinese food in England and we ate it in South Africa.
I think that you get the picture. Chinese food is my favorite cuisine. If it doesn’t snow on Saturday, we are scheduled to have Chinese food in Armonk, NY with my cousin and his wife who live in West Hartford, CT. It is place that I have found halfway between us and David Chan’s is fantastic. We have been doing this for a couple of years on Martin Luther King weekend.
So, while pro football players play to win and many who competed this weekend will be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame located in Canton, OH, I prefer Cantonese. To each his own, I guess.
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