The Freshman Fifteen - Week 3

Dhivy : It took three weeks, but my squad finally laid the lumber to the opposition. In the short-run, I was lucky that finals caused Joe's team to miss a lot of games this week, and that Eric Gordon suffered an in-game injury. It would've been a better long-term solution if they had skipped their finals and been declared academically ineligible, but beggars can't be choosers. Plus, Gordon's injury prevented me from having to send Nehemiah Ingram or Mardy Collins after him. Thanks to these windfalls, I asserted my will in an easy victory and am closing in on the top spot overall. MVP honors for the week go to Nick Calathes, who turned in two sparkling performances by averaging 22.0-5.5-9.0, along with six steals and seven threes. I assume he'll keep this level of play for the rest of the year. I also assume that I'll be very disappointed in Nick Calathes in the coming weeks.

The big men came to play as well. Beasley and Love helped us outrebound Joe & Quang's teams combined. They had so much trouble rebounding that it was a wonder they were able to bound in the first place. Kyle Singler mailed in a performance against Michigan and told reporters that his team was already on cruise control. When asked how Duke could be so casual, Singler said, "I meant Dhivy's team, you clod. Duke who?" And while the win was nice, I'm not about to rest on my laurels. Instead, I'll… work under your hardys?... and get rid of P'Allen Stinnett. He had two subpar performances against Xavier and St. Joe's and has been replaced on my roster by Corey Chandler of Rutgers. He's a great scorer with good range, but I'll be looking for him to step up his assists. I've realized that the only thing more fun that beating Quang and Joe is beating Quang and Joe and proving that I know more than them at the same time. So win, lose, or draw, I'll continue to trot out a bevy a freshman from around the country, while Joe stops to smell the Derrick Roses and Quang turns Donte Green with envy.


Quang: finals hit my team hard as three of my players were limited to only one game this week. therefore instead of schooling dhivy and joe like we usually do, it was in fact my players who got schooled by their teachers in "math308: basic algebra" and "hist723: history of taking naps during class". dhivy capitalized and won the week while also proving that he doesn't value education as much as both joe and i do. this will surely catch up with dhivy when i start doing michael beasley's homework and then tell all the media as much. dhivy's questionable scruples aside, we were already in a pretty deep hole before eric gordon hurt his back in the first game of the week. since he also missed the game against kentucky, i only got 12 minutes from him when i was expecting 80. if eric had played just two average games by his standards, the deficit between dhivy and me would have been much less pronounced. if eric had gotten a 50-30-30-10-10 quintuple-double while hitting 10 threes and converting every attempt from the field and the line though, i would have swept.

although this week didn't end exactly as we planned, i'm still pleased with our production and execution. oj mayo's only played one game but it was the game of the week as usc took on derrick rose and memphis. mayo played well defensively which would have been completely useless for fantasy purposes had he not been playing someone on joe's team. donte green was the only player who played twice, one of which was in an impressive win over virginia where he filled up the box score. his versatility remains an asset on a team where every other player is either chucks or dunks. anthony randolph played decently in a game against villanova where they coughed up a 20-point lead. this would have been crushing had we decided to count wins and losses as fantasy stats. even deandre jordan played well in his only game to rebound from a horrendous week where i almost cut him. anyways, next week our team faces another challenge as oj mayo doesn't play a single game while the rest of the team plays only single games. thankfully though, all these games are against a bunch of directional states like western carolina and east tennessee state. if a third consecutive week passes without a win, changes will be made. such as me paying other students to go to class for all of my players so they can focus only on basketball.


Joe : Back in college I used to hate finals, not only did I have to study and fuel up on coffee to keep my eyes open while studying and taking the tests, but even if I wanted to laze about and watch college basketball my options were limited because the players were taking finals as well. It's still affecting me today as once again my team was steamrolled due to inactivity. I had the only player on any roster that went a full week without playing. Its not as if my team would have won blocks and rebounds if we were at full strength, but with Justin Burrell siting in Jamaica Queens sharpening his number 2 pencils instead of posting double doubles in Carnesceca Arena I stood no shot. With one more game I would likely have moved up in rank in points, steals and assists and I still wouldn't of even had as many games played as Quang. So in short, for the third week in a row I have deduced that on equal footing my team is easily the greatest regardless of Dhivy's roster changes and Quang's bold assertions. Only two things can stop us tournaments and final exams.

I was able to watch all of the games played by my players this week except for Jonny Flynn's 21 and 10 showing against Rhode island, and for the most part everyone did as expected. While O.J. Mayo and his teammates were able to shut down Derrick Rose scoring wise, but as expected he was able to put up numbers in other areas of the game, posting 10 boards and playing great defense himself contributing 3 steals. It was alarming however to see Pat Patterson miss two free throws in a row, I definitely thought it would affect my squad's stellar free throw prowess, but when you have Jarryd Bayless and Jonny Flynn have 6 for 6 games the few shots that others miss here and there don't really matter. One time, I hit 9 free trows out of 10 in a competition against my friends...I made my team in my image!