Scout Team Woes

This past week in the college basketball world was wild and entertaining, to say the least. Number 1 Texas lost not only once, but twice, Chandler Parsons of Florida hit another game-winner, Tennessee got romped by Georgia, K-State lost to Oklahoma State a mere five days after knocking off Texas, and we dropped our tenth loss of the season at Illinois State on Wednesday. This is certainly the time of year when college basketball starts to heat up around the nation, and it should be interesting to see how many things shake up.

In Creighton news, scout team hasn't been near as fun as of late. We typically run through our opponents' stuff against the starters the day before the game, and that's normally my chance to show my athletic prowess and offensive skill set. However, lately we've only been running through scout team at "3 quarter's speed", which infuriates me on multiple levels. For starters, I can't show off my athletic prowess and skill set that I previously mentioned at "3 quarter's speed." Secondly, what does "3 quarter's speed" even mean? Do i sprint or do I jog? Do I try to embarrass the starters or do I give them a little bit of a break? Do I dunk or just simply lay it up? You get the picture. In any event, "3 quarter's speed" needs to go. It doesn't do any of us any good.

The second issue I've been having with scout team lately is the fact that Josh "No Filter" Jones gets the best roles for every team. He always gets the role of the other teams' best offensive player, and it normally wouldn't bother me since Josh is a scholarship player and the rest of us are walk-ons, so just by the elimination process it would appear that he would be most qualified for such a postition. However, it does bother me, because let's be honest here...Josh doesn't need any more incentive to shoot more as it is. Josh got up a fair amount of shots in high school, and as the old saying goes, Josh has never seen a shot he didn't like, so telling Josh he can shoot whenever he wants on scout team is a lot like telling Tiger Woods that there's never any such thing as too much sex. What's even more absurd about giving Josh these roles is the fact that Josh feels the need to tell you how much he's going to shoot. "I'm about to get buckets," and "I'm gonna 'hibachi' that dude" would probably have to be my favorites. Josh's facial expression upon hearing he was going to be Osiris Eldridge for Illinois State and could shoot any time he wanted is reminiscent of the look on Rad Tad's face upon seeing John Madden pull up to him on the Hall of Fame bus in Little Giants. Utter joy.

Well as I drown my sorrows in the disappoint that currently is Creighton men's basketball scout team, the rest of the team does have much more important matters at hand. Beating Missouri State today would help pull all of our dedicated fans back from the ledge and get us back to .500. We're currently 4-4 in conference play and are trying desperately to not play a Thursday night game in St. Louis. (Sidenote: I say "we" and "us"when describing the team because I am, in fact, a member of the team, but I have no direct impact on the outcome of our games whatsoever, so just disregard most of the we's and us's I use on the blog. You know what I mean.)

Hope to see you all at the game tonight and am going to end this blog with a shoutout to my good friend Johnny Beutler, for he has been begging for one for weeks. I told him it may be difficult to fit him in, considering so many shout-out requests flood my CU-mail every day, but I kept my word and am giving John Beutler a shout-out on the Simple Plays blog. Call me when you're famous Johnny, and always remember...Simple plays, fellas, simple plays.