A lot of stuff went down while I was away. I'm going to be honest: I haven't caught up to any of the other Northwestern blogs, I've just scanned around, so, if I'm repeating something you've read elsewhere, sorry.

• First, and most importantly: you have until Saturday afternoon to join the Sippin on Purple pickem league. It's just for Big Ten games, and doesn't include tonight's games to give you some warmup time. By my count, we now have 30 entries, but competition breeds skill. As noted, the prizes are as follows: a free post on whatever topic you like, and a Sippin on Purple DIY Purple Drank kit, featuring a bottle of Sprite and a bag of Jolly Ranchers. (Illicit drugs not included, nor do we condone the usage of them.) So sign up! I won't feel good about winning unless I beat a lot of you.
• The two-deep for the Vandy game came out. key points: 
• Arby Fields was supposedly NU's starting running back, but, well, now he's listed as a co-starter with Jacob Schmidt and Stephen Simmons. The running back situation is brutal - I'm not sure if this is meant to instill competition, but I'd be much more comfortable giving certain guys trials in a starting role than giving a whole host of guys a few downs a game. This whole situation is unseemly.
• Venric Mark cracking the two-deep at wide receiver! Yeah buddy!
• Bryce McNaul beat out Ben Johnson for the starting spot at weak-side linebacker, meaning Ben Johnson is apparently relegated to backing up Quentin Davie - not sure if this is just the upshot of the injury to Roderick Goodlow or something permanent.
• Justan Vaughn is officially a starting corner. 
• With David Arnold injured, Mike Bolden is out of the running at cornerback - he'll be backing up at safety, with Jeravin Matthews now looking likely to be somewhere in the cornerback game.
  
• Punt return is listed as Hunter Bates or Venric Mark. I picture Venric doing it, considering he's everybody's favorite person. Stephen Simmons and Scott Concannon are listed as the kick return guys - I can live with that. Stephen's our best returner, and Concannon's going to be as good a blocker as Jacob Schmidt, plus he's a bit faster.
• THERE'S A POSITION BATTLE AT LONG SNAPPER! THERE'S AN "OR" BETWEEN THE STARTER AND THE BACKUP! LONG SNAPPER CONTROVERSY IN EVANSTON! ALERT SPORTSCENTER!
• So that's our depth chart.
• New uniforms! We saw a photo of them - they look great. Sadly, they weren't wearing shoulder pads so you can't really enjoy the Northwestern stripes - it looks all baggy. I'm sure they'll look great in person on Saturday. (I'm rubbing it in at this point.)
• Basketball news! @Zachaaryperry alerted me (while I was on vacation) to the fact that Northwestern will play Creighton at home this season. We now know of three out-of-conference games: Creighton, and two out of St. John's, Davidson, and a third school at Madison Square Garden. I suspect we'll hear more soon - not shaping up badly, though, doesn't look like RPI murder like last year. (Sadly, Creighton star P'Allen Stinnett will not be with the Bluejays when they come to Welsh-Ryan. Pity, as I'm quite a fan.
• Also, the team is in Italy. You can read all the player blogs and game recaps on the NU website - sounds really, really, cool, and good to see that John Shurna is womping on lower-level Italian competition. (7-7 from three-point range? Jesus.) JerShon Cobb is having a rough patch, but he's just starting, and brought down seven boards in one game, so there's that. 
• The division chatter has fallen, and I can only think of one thing... this whole thing greatly increases our pipe dream probability of one day smelling roses. Think: is it harder to be the best out of 12 teams? Or to be the best out of six, and then win one more game? Bring it on, Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, and Minnesota.
• Charlie Goro needs some help in the Name of the Week poll. This makes me sad.
• With football season two days away, we've updated Coach Fitz's intense-o-meter: he is an 8.2, signifying the movie "Volcano" starring Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, and Don Cheadle.

I can't feel my blogging face.

• So, news: I'm sure I've said it before, but I'm going to Vanderbilt. School for us NU students doesn't start until about September 20th - I'm showing up about the 15th - and that leaves me with two weeks where none of my high school friends will be in New York. I would kill for any excuse to do anything interesting. Driving 1000 miles for a football game is a gift, not a burden. Problem is, I'm from New York. I take the subway everywhere. The one thing of many nobody from out of town understands is that nobody from New York needs to drive, ever. I'd say about half of my friends have driver's licenses. Until last Tuesday, I didn't have one. But then I took my test, and now, I have one. So me and two of my bros are going to hit the road Friday afternoon and check in Monday night, and somewhere in between we're going to drive 2000 miles and see a football game. Coverage of NU's opener on this site will therefore be live and in person, and therefore, hazy/awesome as all hell. 
• Secondly, and less importantly, I'll be out of town and the majority of internet range from this Wednesday to next Wednesday. But never fear, I've written/am writing posts for every weekday and several for some days next week, even if I won't be in town, and they'll be appearing every day at noon. Enjoy. 
• That fancy NU football scrimmage was Saturday. I couldn't go, because I don't live anyplace in the vicinity of Kenosha, Wisc., but it doesn't sound like anybody missed much in terms of our starters, as they apparently didn't play much. HTP was there, which is good, and LTP's man on the scene noted that Lee Coleman and Charles Brown dropped a lot of passes, which seems to be Lee Coleman and Charles Brown's collective M.O. Sounds like the Watkinsurgency is still going strong, Venric Mark and Adonis Smith might be able to contribute ASAP, and we need a name for Trevor Siemien to go along with the Cult of Persanality and Watkinsurgency. I nominate the SieMillien Man March.
• Kyle Rowley was never much of a great passer before he transferred to Saint Mary's. Which is why the news took me especially by surprise that he threw nine touchdowns in the Arena Bowl while leading the Spokane Shock to victory. He must have been the least mobile quarterback in Arena history. Also, didn't the Arena League fold? Either way, congrats to Kyle for fighting through the adversity, switching sports, and winning a championship. Never saw it coming. (Hat tip to Loretta.)
• Yesterday, the women's soccer team beat DePaul 2-0... starting the fall athletic season! Damn, that went slowly and painfully.
• Brian Peters' preseason blogs have been great. I particularly enjoyed the tidbit that Jared Carpenter enjoys singing rap music with his name inserted in whenever he can, because I've never heard him speak, but have heard him do that. I'm also intrigued by players on our team having mullets.

That's all for now. Join the Siemillien Man March with me.(Or come up with a better idea.)

Hey, did anybody see last night when I was accumulating some links for this and accidentally hit "publish" and there was a post saying "Monday Sips" on the site for like 45 seconds? I hope not. That sucked. On to the next one:

• Obviously, the most important thing happening right now is the now-ongoing crusade to get Pat Fitzgerald to grow a mustache. (It's a movement, thanks to the people at Spread Far the Fame.) Basically, we need this to happen, and we will not rest until it does. Even better, Coach Fitz is aware of the whole shebang. Look, people, some fights are meant to be fought, and this is one of them. Our coach needs some upper-lip padding. You see, great facial hair is about more than just well-placed follicles and trace amounts of creepiness: it's about pride, confidence, and cojones. We know coach Fitz has the first two, and judging from the fact that he has kids, we can speculate that he also has the third. Now let's make this happen.
• Two important things in the Northwestern practices you can't see world: the football team is headed up to Kenosha to start camp there, and, in weird news, the basketball team starts practice today so they can head to Italy next week. We know this is true because there is a blurry photo of Ivan Peljusic dunking. (The real question about that photo: is that a blurry person in a No. 44 jersey jogging back on defense? Is Northwestern resurrecting Kevin Coble's jersey so fast, and blurrily?) Also, Lindsay Willhite reports that Luka Mirkovic is wearing a Rip Hamilton/Lucious Harris style facemask. That's fantastic news: tall Serbian men with facemasks are intimidating.
• NFL preseason kicked off, and I kept an eye on recent NU grads. The biggest impact anybody had was Mike Kafka, who led the Eagles to preseason triumph. Kafka replaced Mike Vick at the end of the third quarter with the Eagles down 27-19. Aided by a pass interference call that gained them 46 yards - Kafka, so wiley, always drawing pass interference calls for his receivers! - Philly scored on their first possession, but failed the two-point conversion. Then, Jacksonville went three-and-out, and Kafka completed a 57-yard pass to Chad Hall on the first play from scrimmage that set up a David Akers field goal that gave them the lead, and they'd hold on. Philadelphia, you have a preseason hero.
• Elsewhere, Tyrell Sutton had 32 yards rushing (on four carries), 22 yards receiving, and lost a fumble on the one-yard line. Sherrick McManis played some corner and broke up a pass for the Texans. Of the four NU grads on the Bears, the only statistical evidence any of them exist is a five-yard sack from Nick Roach. And that's about it.
• Northwestern's women's soccer team had an exhibition game against Loyola-Chicago Friday, meaning... the fall athletic season is officially underway! Or at least kind of underway, since it was an exhibition game, I guess. But hey, that's cool too.
• Less fantastic news: NU is chockful of injuries after the first week in pads. Four guys are reported to be injured until at least past the season opener against Vandy, but most likely for more time - possibly even missing the whole season. Let's run them down:
• David Arnold (foot). This is a bummer. Arnold was great last year at linebacker, and I thought really could've been a factor at one of the safety positions this year. We don't know what role the coaching staff had planned for Arnold, but that's what makes this injury more difficult: he seemed like he had a decent amount of potential and I thought could been a surprise star on our defense. If it's a serious injury, that essentially straps in Jared Carpenter at that position as the starter instead.
• Roderick Goodlow (knee). Goodlow was definitely going to compete for the third linebacker spot, and looked good when he took the field last year as a true freshman.  Luckily, he was a true freshman last year, so he still has his redshirt year in pocket: if he misses a large part of this season with injury, it wouldn't hurt too badly to just slap the redshirt on him and keep his eligibility nice and safe. Goodlow only had an outside chance at getting the job from behind Ben Johnson and Bryce McNaul - this setback will give those two a lock on that position.
• Tony Jones (shoulder): he's a true freshman and probably wasn't going to see much of the field at wide receiver.
• Tim Riley (shoulder). Not fully sure who he is, and it appears he'll be ready to play shortly after the opener - he just had surgery on the shoulder and is recovering as planned.
• Reminder for future: never end links posts with depressing injury summaries. 

I didn't always post on Friday over the summer, but August is about getting back into game shape.

• For y'all it's the end of the work week, but stuff gets started for NU this weekend as the football team reports for campus tomorrow, and practice starts Monday. I'll enjoy not doing strenuous workouts over the next few weeks, with the weeklong Kenosha trip next week and a return to Evanston on the 24th. I'll enjoy not doing strenuous workouts during that time.
• The big news of yesterday, of course, was the announcement that the first Big Ten Championship game will happen at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. I don't have a problem with it, other than that it's the most boring possible choice - you had Soldier Field and Lambeau on the table and you go with the new, soulless stadium? Alright, cool with me, I guess. Also, Big Ten, listen up: the home base of your conference is Chicago. Not Indianapolis. I get that it's geographically centered, but that doesn't matter for things like this. Know where your bread is buttered. (Hint: you want it to be Chicago.) Also, it sucks that your basketball tournament and football championship game are in the same building. (update: check that, just the same city. I was thinking of the Final Four.) Come to think of it, I hate this decision. Screw you, Lucas Oil Stadium. Whoever let George Lucas buy his own oil company was a tool.
• Does anybody think that the one guy who voted "N/A" in the "what's the worst stadium in the conference" poll wasn't the Northwestern guy? First off, nine guys voted for Ryan Field. And understandably. Even we all hate it, and we're Northwestern fans. That makes the Northwestern guy either a) the n/a guy or b) the Indiana guy. And I highly doubt anybody who plays at Ryan Field for all their home games would be like "man, I truly dread having to go to Indiana to play in the dismal atmosphere they have there, that place is a dump" when they play in a giant semi-attended cavern of non-distinct bleachers.
• Talking about polls, we have our first hot poll action of the year, as the coaches poll came out today, and Northwestern has a majestic two votes. This means either two people think we're top-25 material, or one guy thinks we're top-24 material. This puts us slightly worse than Texas A&M (3), but better than Northern Illinois (1) and exactly as good as Temple.
• Love this picture of Pat Fitzgerald. 
• With camp approaching, I decided to take another reading of the Pat Fitzgerald Intense-O-Meter. If you saw him at media days, you could tell he wasn't in full midseason form yet. HE was making jokes, smiling, the whole nine. That's indicated in the intense-o-meter, which only registers a slight uptick from 3.8 to 4.1, which indicates that Fitzgerald can reheat cold pizza using microwave radiation he emits from his brain. If you have any funny stories to tell coach Pat Fitzgerald, tell them to him now, because by September 4th, he'll be murderously intense. 

First off, I'd like to announce that I'm skipping my junior and senior seasons of blogging at Northwestern to play college basketball. Other than that, let's hit the sips.

• It's Big Ten Media Day! That's... not really that exciting, to be honest. Anyway, I'll be watching all day and tweeting up a storm (@sippinonpurple!). Coach Pat Fitzgerald will be on at 10:15 central. I feel bad for whichever poor NU staffer had to wake the coach from his July month-long slumber, which allow him to stay up 22 hours a day through football season so that he can coach eight hours a day and spend 14 hours a day banging his head through brick walls and yelling.
• I bet somebody was expecting me to way in on Northwestern's big play into the Chicago marketing field last Friday. I try to be something of like a go-to source here... but... well... LTP and Spread Far the Fame did a good job with it already, and, well, dammit, I like writing about sports, not marketing campaigns. Maybe it's because I'm a student who already goes to games for free. But I dunno, I've just been on a roll writing about football and basketball, and for some reason this makes a post about a potential program-altering marketing campaign less appealing to than writing about Northwestern's offensive line. I know a lot of you gave good responses to the analytic posts - hope I'm giving you dudes what you want. 
  
• The Kevin Coble thing is now a dead horse, but for any of you that didn't see, somebody launched a Fake Kevin Coble twitter feed on Thursday, and it's magic.
• WHOA. Stephen Strasburg is on the DL?! Kid, if I could give you one piece of advice....it'd be quit while you're ahead.1:37 PM Jul 29th via web
  • Reply
  • Retweet
• Dude, I don't care about winning. RT @sippinonpurple and @fakekevincoble wins. by a lot1:28 PM Jul 29th via webMy favorite stand-up comedian has always been Dave Chappelle, for a couple reasons. I'm rich biatch!11:20 AM Jul 29th via web
• Northwestern recruiting: representing, and bringing in one of the best classes of all time. I hope we get Justice Hayes, because his name is Justice.
• It's not often that someone I know becomes an internet sensation, so when it happens, I'll post about it. This is my boy Brandon, with his song "The Birds and the Beedrills", a track which features the names of 151 Pokemon characters used as sexual innuendo. 
  
• That's pretty much it. Enjoy your media days. Or something like that.

I don't think I realized the scope of how big a deal this was at first. Kevin Coble deciding not to come back might be the biggest story this Big Ten basketball offseason has seen (besides the addition of Nebraska, of course). I mean, a decent team fighting to be in the top half of the conference losing their best player for no apparent reason? People from all over the webs have things to say about it. 

• Let's start by dishing out love to the NU blogosphere. (Everybody else will get theirs afterwards. That's how we do in the family.) LTP, of course, WENT IN on the entire situation, and plans on posting a bunch of open letters to Kevin Coble tomorrow. This is what we call catharsis. 
• Spread Far The Fame debuted a feature I am destined to love, entitled "The Many Moods of Bill Carmody". Great stuff there. They also appear to be the only place with the piece of info that none of the players knew about Coble's departure until the same time that the media found out, which is... disturbing.
• Fire Bill Carmody, incidentally, is pessimistic and thinks this is a sign that nobody cares about Northwestern basketball. He's not alone. He is alone, however, in referring to Kevin Coble as a pussy. I think he's the only guy to do that so far. (Good thing Jim O'Donnell doesn't work for the Sun-Times anymore.) (Not saying FBC sucks as bad as Jim O'Donnell. Don't take any offense.) (NOTE IN RETROSPECT: FBC points out that although he says that Kevin Coble "pussed out", he doesn't refer to Coble as a pussy. I had read it as "pussied out", which I thought made it sort of implicit. My bad.)
• Lindsay Willhite makes it seem like this has been a decision brewing for a while. 
• Teddy Greenstein has a pretty damning paragraph in his Trib article. 
• He seemed on pace to return in the fall. But his rehabilitation caused an apparent conflict that led to multiple meetings among Carmody, Coble and Coble's mother, Carlys.
  
• That gives some credence to the concept that maybe this is less about Coble's injury and more about Coble's unwillingness to play. Greenstein also focuses on Coble's seeming disassociation from the rest of the team, at least in a social sense.
• Some really great - and optimistic, for all y'all down in the dumps today - analysis from The Only Colors and Basketball Prospectus, echoed by ESPN's Eamonn Brennan. Even without Coble, Northwestern had a fantastic offensive team last year. Second best in the Big Ten in terms of offensive efficiency. The fact that we were below .500 is a testament to how horrendous our defense was - last in the Big Ten. By a decent margin. Kevin Coble is a great offensive player. Other than his above-average rebounding skills, he's not a defensive presence. Perhaps this isn't so bad after all? TOC points out that John Shurna is a freakishly similar player to Coble, and I don't completely disagree. Also, props to TOC for a great headline.
• Also, unsurprising that a Michigan State blog has a great post about Kevin Coble. (He played against them this one time, you might remember it.)
• More optimism from ESPN's Andy Katz - all your problems in life can be solved by going to Italy. "Ayyyyyy! A-spicy meat-a-balls will-a revive-a your-a tourn-a-ment hopes-a!", said Katz, before dancing a very convincing rendition of the Tarantella. 
• "Optimism? Why's there so much damn optimism here?", I'm sure some of you are thinking. "Where's the good ol' fashioned hate? Why hasn't anybody written an article that reminds me of a nice firebombing?" Well, for you, friends, there's CNN's Gary Parrish, who ethers the entire Northwestern basketball program including Coble and Bill Carmody.

• John Calipari loses players to the Wizards and Kings.

  Roy Williams loses players to UCLA.

  Bill Carmody loses players to a lack of interest.

  It's like that, for 1000 words. Even Nas is like, "woah, chill out with all that undying hatred."
  
  So, to wrap it up NU fans are very depressed, and oddly, outsiders seem to think we still have a shot. I think that's the first time those two things have ever happened simultaneously.
  
  
  So that's it for now. Go back to wailing and gnashing your teeth.

Jared Wickerham - Getty Images

I generally have a reason for inserting a photo, but I just played a game called "type in names of rappers into the find-a-sports-photo widget" we have on SBN, and this came up.

View full size photo »

When I get home late at night, sometimes I feel the urge to stay up late writing posts about collegiate sports so that I can futurepost them bright and early for all the people who have to wake up early. Consider this a gift from me, a person who is blissfully asleep when this is actually being posted. Also, consider it a mechanism of me making sure my brain doesn't hurt in the morning.

• The first, and most important thing, is that as of some mysterious time earlier tonight, Pre Snap Read had Northwestern up in their countdown, checking in at No. 42. Just read it now. Dude seems pretty optimistic at NU, citing our previous success at taking unknowns and slotting them into an offensive system they've spent several years learning - even if they don't have the game experience most season preview people crave so dearly. He predicts eight-plus wins, and just does a really solid job all around. It's what I do, but way shorter and better. No. 42 is also higher than where NU placed last year - 47 - and I believe everything these guys say, so book it: eight-plus wins for Northwestern. I personally predict 24 wins for Northwestern, which falls into the category of "more than eight."
• NU announced two more game times this week. First! Vanderbilt, 6:30 Central. Sweet! Night game! I'll be roadtripping, and a 6:30 game gives me (calculates) (still calculating) 19 hours of morning and afternoon to kill by tailgating. I like tailgating and being at college campuses. I will like this. Second! Rice! 6 PM, central. The downside, no TV whatsoever. This does not please me. I will not like this. You see, as a selfish prick, I think about how these things affect me. For one of these games, I will be there. For one, I most certainly will not be there. The fact that the one I am seeing is on some crappy channel like ESPN3 that isn't actually a channel doesn't disturb me, especially because it means most people will be able to watch it, including any NU student. The other one, I want to watch on television. It will not be there. Sherman mad. It's 2010. Other schools have their spring games broadcast. Texas is working on having their own network. I hear Notre Dame is working on planting an NBC chip inside everybody's brain that streams highlights, the film Rudy, and subliminal messaging that Fighting Irish football is still relevant 24 hours a day. Can we get this game on TV? BTN channel 38, Comcast Sports, WGN, whatever, get it on TV in Chicago. The Blackhawks realized this, they won a Stanley Cup. Come on, Northwestern.
• Also, obligatory "both games are in the south it is hot in the south the players will benefit from the sun not being up because it takes away the advantage of the dudes from vanderbilt and rice because they are more used to sunlight n crap" point here.
• Alas! The time for our celebration of the fantastic Great Britain work of the newly knighted Sir Alex Marcotullio has come to a crashing halt! Last we checked in, Marco Polo had breathtakingly led his team through to the second group stage. In that second group stage, the UK was pitted up against Norway (SCREW YOU NORWAY, SCREW YOU AND YOUR TRAITOROUS MINISTERS), Poland (SCREW YOU POLAND, SCREW YOU AND YOUR COMICAL LACK OF ABILITY TO AVOID GERMAN INVASION) and Slovakia (SCREW YOU, SLOVAKIA, SCREW YOU AND YOUR NEWLY FORMED NATIONALISTIC IDENTITY). Marky Marc sat out the Norway game, but it was aight, for the Brits did Norway like they were Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and beat them 83-47. The next day, against Poland, Alex turned up the fire, dropping 15 on the Poles in a 98-89 victory, had four vowels in his last name, a number which astounded Polish players such as former Duke benchwarmer Olek Czyz. And against the Slovaks, he had his best performance of the tourney, putting down a team high 17 to go along with three boards and three steals in an 82-66 victory. (Oddly enough, the fuel in his last two games was his shooting from within the arc, each time accompanying three treys from downtown.) Great Britain was 4-1, tied for the highest record in the tournament, after the second group stage. Sounds nice, right, bro? YA DEAD WRONG. Only the top four advanced, the top two from each group. Because in GB's group, Austria, Poland, and Great Britain were tied for four, they went to the next tiebreaker - head-to-head victories - then the next tiebreaker - point differential in those head-to-head victories. Thanks to a 20 point loss to Austria, Alex Marcotullio lost his chance to play in the semifinals to fight for FIBA Europe U-20 second division glory. SCREW YOU, FIBA EUROPE. However, he will play two more games in the classification stages for 5-8th place. First up, Portugal (SCREW YOU, PORTUGAL, SCREW YOU AND YOUR LANGUAGE THAT SOUNDS SEXY WHEN SPOKEN BY SEXY BRAZILIAN PEOPLE). Prepare to be Marcotullioized. 
• Big news in the Demps family: first lil Tre commits to Northwestern, then, poppa Dell gets named GM of the New Orleans Hornets. (TRADE CHRIS PAUL TO THE KNICKS PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE) This means that the NBA's Southwest Division currently features a NU parent as a GM and an NU alum. Interestingly, the idea for Tre to go to NU was planted in Dell's skull by Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey a few years ago, after Morey ripped off Dell's then employees, the San Antonio Spurs, by trading the rights to Vassillis Spanoulis and a second-round pick for Luis Scola and game changer Jackie Butler. I have the transcript.

Dell Demps: Damn, Daryl, you ripped us off! I mean, we gave up JACKIE BUTLER. 

Daryl Morey: (lights up a victory cigar) Yup. Jackie, the pride of Coastal Christian Academy, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Don't worry, I'm sure Vassillis will do great things in your organization.

DD: How did you get to be so good at basketball trades, Daryl?

DM: Well, I'm smart. I went to Northwestern, you see. They taught me how to do math, science, and stuff like that. And also how to have a basketball team missing two players widely considered to be crucial to their success perform well. 

DD: Man, that school must be good at basketball.

DM: (laughs, takes major drag from victory cigar, puts out ashes on picture of rival GM's) No, we're pretty bad. Never made an NCAA touranment.

DD: Intriguing... (ponders) You see, my son, he's always spoken about wanting to do something different. Something great. Something seemingly impossible nobody had ever done before. That's how you get a legacy. Not by going to UNC or Duke, where they'll forget you next week! That's how.

DM: Is that why he's breaking all the rules by following in your footsteps to be a mid-level talented basketball player?

DD: Mid-level? My son's great!

DM: He probably shouldn't go to Northwestern, then. We suck. We always do. (He ashes his victory cigar, and smiles, wryly.) Enjoy Vassillis. He's a great guy. Makes a mean spinakopita. (He chuckles, and saunters away, leaving Demps with something more powerful than the world's deadliest parasite: an idea.) 

• I forget if there's more stuff. Point is, unlike my last 18 posts which were really long and therefore guaranteed to be stockpiled with factual errors, this one has none. Unless there is one, in which case the statement "this post has no factual errors" becomes an additional unfactual statement. I just blew my mind.

Moderately newsy day in the NU sports world, so let's hit it and quit it.

• I normally don't talk about recruiting because it creeps me out, especially in football, where I know I won't actually see the dude play for another three years. But, basketball's different, because there's only 12-ish players on the squad. NU used up one of their readily available 2011 scholarships - they have four, I believe - on Tre Demps, a point guard from San Antonio, that hotbed of Northwestern recruiting. Demps had offers from Minnesota and Stanford, but chose NU, because he's the intellectual type who coulda gone to Harvard. Demps' dad is Dell Demps, a former shooting guard from the University of the Pacific who had a cup of coffee in the NBA over the course of three years, and I've never heard of him, although he's apparently quite a big figure in the front office world working as an assistant GM to R.C. Buford in San Antonio, and is one of the people being bandied about for the New Orleans Hornets GM job. (IFYOUGETTHEJOBTRADECHRISPAULTOTHEKNICKSFORTWOFUTUREFIRSTROUNDPICKSOKAYTHANKS). So, that's Tre Demps. He and other PG recruit David Sobloweski (spelling from memory - how was I?) - will try to take the recently abandoned reins from Juice Thompson in two years.
• I hoped Alex Marcotullio would also be a reins taking candidate, and perhaps he shall, so, let's check up on his progress with the Great Britain U20 team over in Austria. The Marcoleptic, as I decided just now I would call him forever, is being used exactly the way you'd expect him to be used: as a 3-point specialist. Through three games, he's taken four 2-pointers and 19 3-pointers. Against those dirty Austrians, Marcotullio started out hot, draining three threes in the first half to give the redcoats a halftime lead, but after their halftime tea break, Marcotullio failed to strike again and the team went on to lose 91-71, finishing with nine points. Then today, the squad faced Belgium (SCREW YOU BELGIUM, SCREW YOU AND YOUR THICK, DELICIOUS WAFFLES) needing a win to qualify for the tournament's second round. Marcotullio dropped eight, and Belgium made like they did in World War I and quickly succumbed to larger, imperialist powers, losing 73-52, incidentally, also ceding their sovereignty over the Congo in the process. Marcotullio has had eerily similar stats in every game: either eight or nine points, zero or one assists, two or three steals, and 1-3 rebounds. Not awful, but creepily similar. He's shooting 37 percent from downtown, which isn't bad considering the extra two feet the FIBA line presents. Tomorrow, he and the squad take on Norway in a second round game. (SCREW YOU NORWAY, SCREW YOU AND YOUR FJORDS).
• Eric Chun is done and gone at the British Open, but he fought hard, eventually missing the cut by only one measly stroke. He was at 1-under through 12 on the second day, but then... well, I suppose you can't call a college kid going 4-over on the last six holes of a major tournament choking, but feel free to call him a choke artist. (don't. he did really well.)