Paradise, Part II

March 22, 2008

ANAHEIM, Calif. — In an effort to find somewhere to watch the NCAA tournament tonight, I was outside asking around about the best sports bars in the area. The consensus among the valets was ESPNZone in Downtown Disney, about a half-mile walk from the hotel.

Blah.

There are nothing but chain restaurants in Orange County, apparently. As someone who isn’t a chain restaurant fan, I’m disappointed in that. But I decided to head over to the ESPNZone, which turned out to be twice as far from the hotel as I was told. The hostess told me there was a two hour wait. I grabbed a drink and watched the end of the Oregon-Miss. St. game when I realized I wasn’t going to get a table there either.

So I hiked it back to the hotel to grab a sandwich at Cafe del Sol, a nice restaurant in the hotel.

A man walked in soon after I did and took a seat behind me after asking if the TV near me had the Arkansas-Indiana game on, which it did. I would have rather watched Louisville play, but at least it wasn’t Memphis and Texas-Arlington.

It turned out that the man behind me was fairly important. He was UC-Riverside athletic director Stan Morrison, who happens to have a seat on the NCAA tournament Selection Committee. After I finished my dinner — an awesome chicken pesto sandwich with fries — I moved back and watched the remainder of the game with Mr. Morrison.

He was interesting, to say the least.

Morrison told me stories of his life-changing experience in Louisville, where he won the 1959 national title in Freedom Hall by defeating two basketball immortals — Oscar Robertson’s Cincinnati Bearcats and Jerry West’s West Virginia Mountaineers. At Cal-Berkeley, Morrison played for legendary coach Pete Newell, who also won an NIT title at San Francisco and a gold medal as the coach of the 1960 U.S. Olympic team.

It was in Louisville that Morrison decided he wanted to become a basketball coach instead of an engineer, and that choice led him to his current position today. Morrison coached the University of Pacific, USC and San Jose State and took all three to the NCAA tournament. He coached the last PAC 10 champion team USC had in 1985.

He also talked about the 1996 NCAA champion UK team. Morrison coached San Jose St. against the Cats in the first round of the 1996 tournament. The Spartans had the lead for “about 14 minutes” he recalled, and at the under-eight timeout, his players were ready to go home. “Then the flood came,” he laughed, remembering how the Cats blitzed SJSU and ended up winning 110-72.

And he claims to love his job now, where he watches “more basketball than anyone you know,” he says. He has access to film rooms and spends his life befriending coaches, referees and other AD’s. He cited former Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson, former UK and current Minnesota coach Tubby Smith, official Tony Greene and many others among his good friends. We talked about how friendly Smith and UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart are and about the recent success UK’s athletic department has had in recent years.

Morrison called the UK-Marquette game the best of this site and marveled at how well Western Kentucky is playing. He also commented on how different UK was early in the season from the way the Cats played later in the year.

He called Louisville coach Rick Pitino one of the all-time great college basketball coaches and said that while it’s the committee’s job to pick the teams, it’s still up to the teams to play the games, so it’s very tough to decide how well the committee did based solely on the way the teams play in the NCAA tournament.

He’s also a big fan of UK freshman forward Patrick Patterson and applauded UK’s effort at the end of the season despite having to overcome several potentially devastating obstacles.

I could go on, since we talked for nearly an hour and a half, but I won’t.

If you didn’t see UCLA play Thursday, please watch them today. Freshman center Kevin Love is an absolute joy to watch. He never stops hustling and throws some outstanding outlet passes. He’s wildly entertaining too. He hit a full-court shot at UCLA’s shoot-around Wednesday and he has a fun personality. Morrison called Love one of the smartest players he’s ever seen. The Bruins play Texas A&M tonight at approximately 9:15 EDT.

More Anaheim notes: While walking to the bank today, I noticed a large strawberry field right in the middle of the strip our hotel is on. There are businesses, restaurants and hotels all down the street, then a random strawberry field. It was odd.

This is the cleanest city I’ve ever seen. Southern California is always complimented for its cleanliness, but it’s different in person. It’s literally spotless. There is no trash on the streets or sidewalks at all. It’s unreal. Lexington isn’t the dirtiest place on Earth by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s odd to see a place that is so crowded with tourists yet still so clean.

Marquette-Stanford should be a very good game today. Marquette doesn’t have the interior play to bang with Stanford’s Brook and Robin Lopez, but the Cardinal might have trouble hanging with Marquette’s guard play, which reminds me of Jay Wright’s early Villanova teams from a few years ago that featured a four-guard offense led by Allan Ray and Randy Foye. Marquette’s starting five features four guys — guards Dominic James, Jerel McNeal and Wesley Matthews and forward Lazar Hayward — who can put the ball on the floor and create their own shots — and they can hit those shots from pretty much anywhere. The game tips off at 6:45 EDT.

We’re leaving tomorrow. Unfortunately, I never made it to the beach. Oh well.

Posted by Travis Waldron | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment 

Greetings from Paradise

March 19, 2008

ANAHEIM, Calif. — During the NCAA tournament Selection Show on CBS Sunday night, members of the media that cover UK basketball (including myself) were openly cheering for Anaheim as UK’s destination. Unlike many of them, I’d never been to Anaheim — or California, for that matter — but I figured it couldn’t be worse than Omaha, Neb., Little Rock, Ark. or Birmingham, Miss., three of the other possible destinations for the Cats.

I now see why they were rooting for Anaheim.

This place is beautiful. It’s almost fake — the grass is too green, the palm trees are too tall and the weather, well, it’s Southern California. It’s about 75 degrees here and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Outside of our hotel, which is in north-central Orange County, Disneyland is a 10 minute walk and the Hollywood Hills are visible off in the distance. Laguna and Huntington beaches are both 15-20 minutes south of here.

Yeah, my computer broke as soon as I stepped off the plane when the strap on my computer bag snapped. But other than that it’s hard to complain about anything. And since most of you all are stuck in Lexington going to class and being normal college students, I’d feel guilty complaining about much of anything.

But on to the basketball:

It’s interesting how different the atmosphere in Anaheim is from the atmosphere in Atlanta last week for the SEC tournament. Most of the people here are almost oblivious to the fact that there will be big-time college basketball in this area all weekend — I even had one photographer ask me what was going on at the Honda Center (Anaheim’s arena) this weekend. When I told him the NCAA tournament was in town, his response was baffling: “Oh, is that March Madness?” he asked. “I’ve heard about that.”

I saw a few Cats fans in Houston-Bush International Airport as we connected to our flight to Anaheim, but I haven’t seen any UK fans other than that outside of the arena. And when I told a gas station attendant I was from Kentucky, he didn’t even make the connection as to why I was here. In Atlanta, people automatically assumed I was from Kentucky before I identified myself solely because so many UK fans were in town.

UK senior guard Ramel Bradley played the underdog card at UK’s opening news conference today. As you can read in my story that is in tomorrow’s Kernel, Bradley likes the idea that the Cats are somewhat of an underdog. But Marquette’s star guard, Dominic James, doesn’t agree with him. James said Bradley was using the underdog role to get motivated and that’s it. James, on the other hand, is motivating himself with the idea that this is his third consecutive NCAA tournament and his Golden Eagles have yet to win a game.

Players to watch in the Anaheim region:

It may say something for UK’s role as the underdog when the Cats likely don’t have one of the five most appealing players in the entire region. Sure, those familiar with UK are intrigued by Bradley and fellow senior Joe Crawford, but take a look at this lineup of players in this region alone:

Brook Lopez, Stanford: Brook, along with his twin brother, Robin, must love it in Anaheim. As documented by Sports Illustrated two weeks ago, the Lopez twins are huge Disney buffs. But don’t expect that to get in the way of good basketball from the duo. Brook is the better of the twins — he leads Stanford at 19.2 points and 8.5 rebounds a game. If UK gets past Marquette Thursday, it could see the Lopez twins, who would present a tough challenge to the Cats’ thin front line.

Dominic James, Marquette: James has battled through some injuries this season, but he’s still one of the premier point guards in the country, and maybe the best in a region that has several good point guards (Ramel Bradley and Darren Collison also come to mind). James is averaging 13 points per game (second for the Eagles behind Jerel McNeal) and has the ability to control the game with his speed. Watching Bradley and James square off should be fun.

Kevin Love, UCLA: Love is an outstanding freshman center for the West’s top-seeded UCLA Bruins. He’s averaging a double-double, leading the Bruins in points (17.1 per game) and rebounds (10.6). If you haven’t gotten a chance to see him play, stay up late and catch UCLA Thursday night. It likely won’t be a good game — the Bruins take on 16 seed Miss. Valley St. — but Love will be sure to impress.

Darren Collison, UCLA: Collison might be the fastest player in the country. He’s lightning quick and controls the game as well as any point in the country. He’s averaging 15.2 points per game, but his scoring ability pales in comparison to his ability to really set the pace the way UCLA wants to play.

Russell Westbrook, UCLA: Westbrook came out of nowhere this year. UCLA took a flier on Westbrook when he came out of high school and he’s developed into a strong NBA prospect. He’s a good passer (4.3 assists per game) and a solid scorer (12.6) and also contributes on the glass (3.9 rebounds per game).

Other interesting notes: Cornell, which plays Stanford in the first round, is the nation’s third-best 3-point shooting team at 41.2 percent…This pod features the NCAA’s two most successful teams in terms of national titles: UCLA has 11, Kentucky has 7…Games are played at the Honda Center, home of the NHL’s Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

First round match-ups in Anaheim:

2:30 EDT - South Region: (11) Kentucky v. (6) Marquette

approx. 5:00 EDT - South Region: (14) Cornell v. (3) Stanford

7:25 EDT - West Region: (9) Texas A&M v. (8) BYU

approx. 11:00 EDT - West Region: (16) Mississippi Valley St. v. (1) UCLA

Posted by Travis Waldron | Filed Under Blog | 1 Comment 

Bringing the Noisycrane to the Niles

March 4, 2008

Kernel writer Sean Rose played with his band, Noisycrane, at the Niles Gallery the other night and Britney McIntosh and I went, mostly to listen, but also to practice mixed media.

To link to this video, just click embed at the bottom right. Enjoy…

Posted by Brad Luttrell | Filed Under Blog, Mixed Media | Leave a Comment 

Multimedia storytelling — sometimes it’s better when you hear it for yourself

February 26, 2008

Many black people don’t like Paster Ron Whitlock’s message that they can’t blame racism for their lot in life. It makes them uncomfortable, he said. It holds them accountable, he said.

It’s not everyday that I, as a reporter, find someone who is that honest and passionate from the start, especially when I’m holding a microphone in front of his face. But Pastor Whitlock spoke openly into the mic after delivering the same message to about 15 black members of New Beginnings Christian Ministries in Bowling Green, KY a few weekends ago.

I was on assignment with photographer Emily Coovert during a photography/multimedia weekend workshop with the Kernel. About 10 workshop participants had multiple assignments over three days where the task was generally the same — find an interesting place, take pictures and audio clips of the people and sights there, and piece the two together to make a cohesive multimedia story.

My experience is in writing. I’ve worked at the Kernel about two years now, serving as a writer and editor, but my experience with pictures and multimedia production was limited to say the least. After a weekend of scrambling to learn all of the new computer programs for audio and visual production, everything finally seemed to come together for me with this piece.

Here I had this man whose message — take responsibility for you, don’t blame others for your place in life — was certainly empowering. And then he made his message even more specific, passionately telling his all-black congregation that blaming white America for their problems was not going to solve anything.

If you were just reading a story, you’d have to rely on me, the writer, to tell you this man was passionate. And if you were looking at a picture of the congregation singing together, you could imagine what they sounded like but never really know.

But with multimedia, you can listen to the rise and fall of the pastor’s voice yourself as he preaches, and you can hear the people singing as you watch pictures that represent their church service. This is why I’m so excited about multimedia at the Kernel. It’s another way to approach what we do every day — storytelling. I could have told you Pastor Whitlock’s message, but instead I let him tell it with his own voice and the voices of his congregation. And I think, at least in this situation, it was more powerful than I could have written it.

Posted by Juliann Vachon | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment 

This is a workshop, not a chillshop

February 26, 2008

For one weekend, the entire city of Bowling Green was up for grabs.

Ten UK students, including myself, participated in a photojournalism/multimedia workshop two weekends ago and set out to document life in the Western Kentucky community. Diverse stories were not hard to find.

One student produced a story about the turnaround of a ghetto to the now colorful, family friendly area dubbed Little Mexico. Another told the story of a skateboard shop that some say saved their lives with a program that gives kids not only skateboards, but a safe place to use them. All participants covered a different Sunday morning worship services, finding multiple aspects of religion in the community.

The task was documenting all of these events not only through a lens, but a microphone as well.
A team of still photographers and multimedia producers, who capture audio and produce a slideshow, worked in pairs on each assignment.

Participants produced about a dozen multimedia pieces documenting the community in three days while working with Kernel Photo Adviser Jim Winn, Bowling Green Daily News Photographer Hunter Wilson and Midland Daily News Photographer Brett Marshall.

At the workshop, students learned the same programs that nationally known multimedia producers use every day. Everyone worked to not only become better photographers and producers, but also better visual storytellers.

All of the multimedia pieces are on display at the Kernel’s new Web site, (www.kernelmixedmedia.com), in the Mixed Media section.

Posted by Brad Luttrell | Filed Under Blog, Mixed Media | 1 Comment 

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