A Scattered Brain

Greetings all,

This week was a little better as far as overall scores go: 192, 184, 198; 574 Series.  All three games were above average so that is always good.  If I had made all of my non-split, easy spares (the ones that should be automatic), I would have had the following scores: 205, 216, 209 for a 630 series.  5 spares missed, nearly 60 pins difference.  That isn’t including any splits (I had two); just single and 2-pin spares that are easy.

My overall approach and release I was happy with.  I adjusted to lane condition changes better than usual and definitely focused more on each shot; even the spares.  I would hit my target mostly, I must have been lining up a little wrong that I’ll need to correct.

On a different note; Purdue faces Michigan tonight.  Go Boilermakers!

This one will be really short… kind of like my scores:

140, 170, 193; 503 series.

I just can’t seem to make even easy spares.  I would easily be over 200 average if I just made the easy spares.  Is my problem trying too hard, or not hard enough?  I don’t know; but I have got to figure out my spare shooting somehow.

Last night’s bowling wasn’t much to write home about; I had 520 series.  I mostly felt good about my strike ball but left a lot of single pin spares.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t converting them.  I missed 4 single pins in the first game alone.  That’s inexcusable!  Next week, during the 10 minutes of practice, I’m going to throw a strike ball once on each lane and then the rest of the time will be devoted to practicing the corner pins.

As a team we did well; we lost the first game by only 15 pins but won the other two and took total pins.  We’ve now won the last two weeks in a row for the first time I believe this season.  Now if only I had made those spares… we could have taken all 7 points.  Oh well, next week will be better, I’m sure.

After a long day of calls, I had to take a late lunch and decided to get some practice in after Wednesday night’s poor performance.  The scores were as follows: 192, 182, 236, 259, 249.  The first two games were warming up and trying to put into practice one very valuable piece of information someone gave me on Wednesday… more on that later.

The last three games, I had a total of 1 open frame and if those would have counted, would have given me a 744 series (my first in a three game set of any kind).  So, what was this piece of very valuable information that helped today and hopefully can in the future?  I was told to “throw my second ball first”.  Apparently, to no real knowledge of mine until pointed out, I was trying too hard on my first ball, but had a nice relaxed swing and release on any spare ball.  So, today, instead of trying to guide or muscle my first throw, I just picked my target and went.  I didn’t try to add extra speed or revolutions.  The result; more consistent throws that hit harder.

Now, I know this was one practice session on one particular day and previous results don’t predict future outcomes; but if I can try to remember what I did (or really didn’t do) today, hopefully that can translate to better scores when it does count.

Have a great weekend!

So, this isn’t a great start to the revival of the bowling blog.  Last night we lost all 7 points (3 games and total pins) to our opponents, who were great fun to bowl with so that’s a consoloation.  The nearly one month layoff really didn’t help my scores:

Ouch, a 2 pin drop in average for one week.  Not good.  I was using a new ball, but that wasn’t the issue entirely.  I kept trying to hard.  I have a tendency to try to guide the ball which ends up taking away any power and drive.  When I start to do that and notice, I tend to over correct and throw the ball hard.  Usually I can make smaller adjustments and work out ok, but last night kept going from one extreme to another.

My spares really did me in.  Other than the times I had splits, I missed 2 easy spares in the first game, 4 in the second, and 1 in the 3rd.  That’s a total of 7 missed easy spares in 20 opportunities.  If I made those, that adds approximately 70 pins to my series and gets me to my average.  I know what I need to really practice on: smooth arm swing letting the ball do the work and spares.

I hope you all have a good rest of the week and weekend!

We are just one day away from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and I can’t wait anymore! I love the Olympics and always have. For me, the first week of the Summer Games are the best because that is when all of the swimming events take place. I am caught up in not only the events themselves but the side stories. Michael Phelps going for 8 Gold medals, Dara Torres competing at 41 years old; they are all so compelling. I will DVR every bit of content I can and will probably watch a bunch on the web as well. I will keep track of the medal count constantly hoping that the United States is always in first. I get almost as excited about the Olympics as I do the NCAA Tournament.

However, there are a couple of aspects of the Olympics that I feel are lacking and need change. The first; the IOC should have never chosen China to host. For all of the geopolitical reasons that exist, choosing China was irresponsible and arrogant by the IOC. There was a time I felt that the U.S. should protest and not send a team to China and I agree that we were right to not send a team to Moscow in 1980. However, I do understand that the Olympics are supposed to be about athletic competition, not the policies or politics of the host nation and the athletes should not have to suffer to serve a political end. That is part of why China should not be the host. When it is known long before hand that a country will be controversial for significant reason, that country should not be in the running for an Olympic bid. It isn’t like this is a new concern, people have been protesting this choice since it was made. So, while politics shouldn’t have an effect on the athletes, it absolutely must play a role in selecting the host and the IOC should be ashamed of considering China for the games and I believe they did so partly just to cause the controversy in the U.S. especially.

The second aspect covers all Olympic Games and that is the allowed use of professional athletes in the games. The primary reason for allowing professionals was understandable; to counter act the USSR and Eastern European Bloc’s use of ‘professional’ amateur athletes. The world knew that while they weren’t part of professional clubs, team athletes from those countries were by all accounts professionals. So, 20 years too late, the IOC allowed professionals for all events. Of course, that started in 1992… after the fall of the Berlin Wall… at which point, the need to allow professionals was greatly diminished.

This is another area where I have changed my mind over the years. I agreed with the use of pros for the primary reason that the Olympics should showcase the best athletes regardless of pro/amateur status. However, now I take the stance that pros are paid already to perform in their profession and are showcased already through the countless TV networks and internet. If you want to see someone play, you have ample opportunity to. However, rising stars and those currently not paid directly for their competition should get this chance to show off in front of the world. It was easy to allow professionals before, it should be easy to go back to amateur competition.

Despite some flaws, I love the Olympics, the competition, and the side stories. I think NBC does a great job mostly of presenting the Games (except for that nasty time delay issue that is hard to avoid) and I will look forward greatly to the next 2 weeks!

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been pretty quiet about bowling lately and that has been for one primary reason… the last two months have really been bad. Ever since my great night (and best ever) on January 16th, I’ve not had one night over my average. Until last night… and it all just seemed to click again.

I bowled a 603 series and had two games over 200. My release was smooth and consistent and for the most part, my targeting was good too. Even in the middle 162 game, most of my strike shots were decent with a couple of bad breaks with splits.

Here are my scores for the season; you’ll be able to see what I mean about my slump.

I’ve also gotten my average back up over 180… dropping below that was a real shot against my ego for this season. There are only 8 weeks left that count toward average so achieving my goal of 190 for the season is well out of reach. If I can get two more series in the 600′s and none in the 400′s over that time I’ll be pretty happy.

For the first time in a long time, and at least since I’ve been there, Purdue is in sole possesion of first place in the Big Ten for men’s basketball.  This has been a long time coming and is great to see.  The team is made up of primarily young players (four freshman regularly start for the team) so I didn’t expect much from this season except hopefully building to the next two years.

All expectations have been well exceeded by this group of kids.  They play hard, and most importantly play together.  No one person is the star or tries to take the glory.  Each night a different two or three players tend to step up to give Purdue the win.  They are having a nice 9 game winning streak and just came off a terrific win at Wisconsin, a place they hadn’t won at since 1996.

Hopefully Purdue can keep this up going into the conference tournament and NCAA tournament as well.  This just makes me more excited for March coming up!

So, last night was the Super Bowl… la di da. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to pay attention as much as I would have liked as Connor is really keeping us on our toes now with all of his crawling and pulling himself up on things. Even more unfortunate is that I don’t seem to have missed anything. From what I saw, outside of the 4th quarter the game was boring and none of the commercials were all that great.

First, the game. I was routing for the Patriots; partly because I do like them, but mostly because I think the 1972 Dolphins are insufferable and I’m sick of hearing how they are the only perfect team and all of their pomp and circumstance around that. I hope the Giants enjoy their cases of champagne that the Fish will send them. I am, however, happy for Eli Manning. I used to not think much of him as he seemed in his past to not work very hard. This year, it was evident that he worked much harder on becoming a good quarterback and while he still has room for improvement, I was impressed with him the 2nd half of the season. That pass in the fourth quarter to put them ahead for good after a scramble was Elway-esque and made me happy for him.

Now the commercials were just as pedestrian as the game itself. I only have a few to judge from but in my opinion the first Diet Pepsi Max commercial was the best of the game. Taking it’s play from a classic 90′s SNL running skit (Night at the Roxbury) was pretty clever and the cameo by Chris Kattan at the end really added to the whole thing. Other than that, nothing really grabbed my attention enough away from everything else going on.

Overall, I would rate the Super Bowl experience this year a D+. Nothing worse than a D+. How do you dress it up? “It wasn’t a D, it was a D+!” If there are any commercials that you liked that I should check out, please let me know. I know you can see all of the commercials on MySpace and I may check them out with recommendations.

So, we’ve just nearly passed the mid point of the season and so far, not too bad. I’ve had a few bad weeks, but for the most part it was pretty nice. I’ve been able to maintain a 180+ average, about 10 pins higher than last season so that’s a positive.

My biggest issue and average killer is my recent decline in spare shooting. Outside of this past week, I’ve been missing about half of my single pin spares. Sometimes I would shrug it off, but then I realized that shooting a single pin spare (no matter the pin) is like shooting free throws in basketball. I have a high standard when I see pro and college players shooting less than 90% free throws and now will hold myself to the same standard. If I can’t make 90% of my single pin spares, obviously I should work on that first and foremost. I can’t expect to strike more than 50% of the time so spare shooting is extremely important. Missing a single pin can account for 11 pins in scoring (the spare + next frame) so it is worth much more than just the single miss. This will be the thing I work on most over the rest of the season.

So, here are my scores for the first 17 weeks. Enjoy.

Did you see that last week!!!! I had some lucky breaks in the first two games and some equally unlucky breaks in the third game. Regardless, 641 is my personal best 3 game series so I’m pleased with that. I’ll be even happier if I get another 600 series next week…

Please note, I’m not sure why the table gets a little messed up when it posts, while editing everything looks good. It doesn’t seem to matter how I input the table, so oh well. I’m thinking about moving my blog elsewhere, and this may be the catalyst to do so.

Take care all and have a great week.