WITHOUT A SAFETY NET

By Your Athletic Supporter, Jack Strap

Step right up for the greatest no-show on earth as Your Athletic Supporter attempts to name the (19) hoopsters in HHI action today in alphabetical order WITHOUT A SAFETY NET {gasp from the crowd}. Drum Roll Please from my Son Andrew who was doing some mean drumming last night @ the RSMI Concert @ our Miller Center for the Arts:

• Alan "The Question" I-Vath-son*, Camouflage 18 Boy, Coach Bill, DD Bales, DJ Jazzy, Everybody Know Joey, Hacker Bob, Iron Mike*, Junior High**, Marsh-mellow, Mighty Kerr, Scholesinator, Swoop, What the Heck*, Who Killed Kenny, Wooooooh Nelly, X-Smoker, Young Old School*, and Your Athletic Supporter (that's 19 alphabetically, count them if you don't believe it)

* denotes Daily Champions finishing 3-0 in the Round-Round Robin Goes Hacker Bob-Bob-Bobbin Along Tournament
** denotes shooting % of 3.333333etc% or 1 out of every 30 shots made

So that brings us to the Iron Man Finale (IMF) where the Daily Champions picked up the aforementioned ** & a Poor Man's ** and took on an HHI All-Star Team as voted on by their peers who left early due to the heat. The All-Stars jumped out to a big lead, but got totally stuck on unlucky 13 while the Daily Champs made their comeback after ** departed & eventually tied the score. But then with 'ligerent Lipper looking on it was Jack Strap, who was named to the HHI All Star Team because all Tourney Teams needed to be represented & his other 4 teammates had departed pre-IMF, who nailed the "Cobra Deuce" WITHOUT A SAFETY NET for the IMF Title.

Got some extra time & blog space so let's do a Super Freak Sing-Along Without Mitch:
That girl is pretty wild now,
The girl's a super freak,
The kind of girl you read about,
In new-wave magazines,
That girl is pretty kinky,
The girl's a super freak,
I really love to taste her,
Every time we meet,
She's all right, she's all right,
That girl's all right... with me, yeah...
He HE HE HE!

HHI CONFERENCE EXPANSION?

By Your Athletic Supporter, Jack Strap

Rumors were running rampant this week that the HHI CONFERENCE was going to EXPAND from a Biggy Smalls Two to 4 Teams this AM @ Da Hills, but that was not to be. Instead a Big 10 + 1 were divided up by Cornhusker Quick who was on I/R, but still came out to help HHI with their biggest problem--picking teams which ended up as:
* Penn State = Swoop, Mighty, Everybody Knows Joey, What the Heck, and Your Athletic Supporter
* State Penn = DJ Jazzy, X-Smoker Bob, Marsh-mellow, Iron Mike, and Scholesinator
* Red Rover, Red Rover send Coach Bill right over

Penn State went quickly up 1-0 in Game 1 when Joey blurred to the basket, but then State Penn set-up a chain gang defense that shutout Penn State for a good 20 minutes or so & scored 10 straight points. But as I was reminded at last night's Wilson Relay for Life (where in the name of HHI EXPANSION we talked to HHI's AWOL Sargent Carter) you gotta have H-O-P-E & a positive attitude to beat the odds, and Penn State had them both and next thing you knew (another 20 minutes or so later) was that the score was tied at 11. Then at the end it was Penn Staters Strap & Swoop (who touched the Bulldog statue for good luck last night) scoring the final 2 buckets for the improbable Penn State victory.

On to Game #2 as speaking of H-O-P-E & a positive attitude, 'ligerent Giant Lipper & Sugar Cane Sandy (his boxing name from back in the day) came out to inspire the perspiring Hoopsters after a draining 1st game. Penn State, who had been doing it the hard way, made it easier by jumping out to lead & finally hitting some deuces including one by a Roving Coach as they went on to win the HHI CONFERENCE Daily Championship.

The Iron Man Finale (IMF) saw DJ begging off with back cramps & perhaps to go mend his broken relationship with Rader (note DJ neglected to call Radon to be in his Foursome for the Big 8/14 Relay for Life Outing) after Rader's scathing commentary in today's HHI Gazette:
I CAN NOT BELIEVE HE WANTS TO GET RID OF ME ! THAT REALLY HURTS DJ AFTER I CARRIED YOU AND YOUR BAG LAST YEAR FOR 19 HOLES . YOUR JUST LIKE THE TIGER YOU WILL SOON BE GETTING BEAT BY YOUR OWN CLUBS AND CRASHING YOUR CHEVY MINI VAN INTO A TREE WHILE RUNNING AWAY from EITHER ME ,YOUR WIFE ,OR ONE YOUR MANY GIRL FRIENDS . DON'T WORRY YOU WILL GET YOURS! I HOPE YOUR BACK CRAMPS UP AT B-BALL TODAY verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry hurt radon RADER

Irrespective of that, Penn State grinded it out for "3 quarters" before Heck went deep (i.e. deuces) at the end for their HHI CONFERENCE IMF Title.

Note that HHI CONFERENCE EXPANSION is still alive as Your Athletic Supporter will be heading South across the Mason-Dixon Line & thinking it might make sense for our EXPANSION plans to include recruiting some rednecks and will use the below description to find them:
You would be a redneck if: You need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos. You need an estimate from your barber before you get a haircut. The biggest fashion risk you take is which plaid you'll wear to the 4-H Fair. You have flowers planted in a bathroom appliance in your front yard. Your wife weighs more then your refrigerator. You move your refrigerator and the grass underneath it has turned yellow. You mow your lawn and find a car. You can spit without opening your mouth. Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night involves putting on shoes and a jacket and grabbing a flashlight. You go Christmas shopping for your mom, sister, and girlfriend, and you only need to buy one gift. Taking a dip has nothing to do with water. There are more than ten lawsuits currently pending against your dog. You take a fishing pole to Sea World. The hood and one door are a different color from the rest of your car. You've ever filled your deer tag on the golf course. You've ever shot somebody over a mall parking space. Santa Claus refuses to let your kids sit in his lap. Your toilet paper has page numbers on it. You think mud rasslin' should be an Olympic sport. The receptionist checks the rat traps at your place of business. More than one living relative is named after a Southern Civil War general. You think the stock market has a fence around it. You think the O.J. trial was the big Sunkist and Minutemaid taste test.

WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD

By Your Athletic Supporter, Jack Strap

First off an HHI organizational announcement: Diggetty Doug Bails has been appointed our Director of Environmental, Health & Safety (EH&S) and did a great job on his 1st day keeping the Grace court from again turning into a slip-and-slide. Bails has been with HHI for a decade or so as don't know for sure since our H.R. records are shoddy at best and in a related story that only Vath will understand--HHI's recent SWOT Analysis indicated that H.R. is HHI's biggest Weakness.

As for HHI Strengths, there were a lucky 13 Hoopsters in action this AM distributed based on a complex algorithm program developed by the SoHo Institute of Technology (SHIT) and then hacked by X-Smoker & DJ (a.k.a. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid or alternately Ernie & Bert). Today's games & teams were dedicated to the memory of John Wooden (a.k.a. The WIZARD of Westwood) who died at 99 and whose achievements include leading the UCLA Bruins to 10 Championships including 7 in a row, as well as amassing a record 88 game winning streak:
* Walton's Whippets = Swoop, Iron, What the Heck, Alan "The Question" I-Vath-son, Quick, and Yours Truly
* Alcindor-Rellas = X-Smoker, DJ Jazzy, Scholesinator, D.D. Bails, Stay-Puff Marsh-mellow Man, and the Return of Scott the Shot who announced he's again moving, this time from Pittsburgh back to Chicago
* Da Rover = The Mighty Kerr

Let the WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD Games begin & so they did as the Alcindor-Rellas jumped out to a quick lead in Game #1 before Vath came off the bench to spark Walton's Whippets. But down the stretch it looked like a Wooden Clinic as the Alcindor-Rellas Story included some crisp passing leading to lay-ups and the victory.

So Walton's Whippets WERE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD who gave them some Defense for Game #2 as John Wooden would tell you wins Championships. What it did this game was keep the score close until Heck seeing the Delusions of Grandeur in Jack Strap's eyes hit him with a cross-court pass setting up the Series-tying deuce.

So it came down to the Daily Championship Game right before which the Giant Lipper arrived with his front row tickets. This game was worth the price of admission and proved the value of the teams picking algorithm program as it could have gone either way. But at the end, the WIZARD gave Heck the big-shot ability of UCLA Bruin Reggie Miller vs. the Knicks (if you're not sure how good that is ask Swoop or Spike Lee) and What The buried the DC-winning deuce for Walton's Whippets proving that when a problem comes along, you must Whippet.

That just left the Iron Man Finale (IMF) which was playable for the 1st time in weeks attributable to our new EH&S Director. It was turn-about is fair play in this Finale when Alcindor-Rellas crooned "when something's going wrong (like 2 straight losses), you must crack that whip & break the Whippet's backs" which they did with DJ's quick-release-deuce giving them the IMF "WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD" Title.