I Bleed Blue and White

It's Fisher's time.

Corey Fisher has seen his role steadily increase over the past two seasons, and it looks like he is finally ready to assume a starting spot in the backcourt. We’ve got big ideas when it comes to Fisher this season, but it appears we aren’t the only ones.

‘Nova is likely to be pretty guard-oriented (similar to 2005-06) and if that vaunted 4 guard offense is to return, Mr. Fisher-Price is going to be one of the key ingredients. Here’s some morning links.

• The Sporting News listed Corey Fisher as one of eight pivotal players in college hoops for the coming season. They believe that it he shines, so will ‘Nova.
• Villanova By The Numbers also took part in the East Coast Bias Roundtable, and has posted their answers. Like us, they also see Fisher becoming one of the faces of the Big East.
• VUHoops has a new blogger on the staff. Derp’s first article helps you get to know ‘10 target Cory Joseph. Speaking of Joseph, Jay Wright and Chris Walker will both be going to see the recruit for in-home visits in the coming weeks. Two separate visits, that is. I like the sound of that.
• Brian Westbrook’s days as a Philadelphia Eagle could be numbered. Reportedly, he other 31 teams are foaming at the mouth.
• ESPN is going to show college hoops around the clock on November 17th. So if you are in the area, make sure to check out that St. Peter’s-Monmouth clash at 6 a.m.!
• After a win over FBS Temple and a blowout win in their home opener, head coach Andy Talley thinks the ‘Nova football team is overrated. Ouch.

Brian Lynch was a bit before my time, but a few friends have been talking about him at the U.S. Open this week. For those of you who don’t know, Lynch married tennis star Kim Clijsters and has been all over the TV this week during his wife’s matches.

For those who do not follow women’s tennis, Lynch changed the landscape will a single question. This is the man who took Clijsters out of professional tennis after their marriage following her winning the U.S. Open in 2005. Yep, that’s right. Brian Lynch has took a tennis star in her prime out of the game for 4 years. Only a Villanova man.

Lynch took his game to Europe after 'Nova.

So if you’ve been missing Brian Lynch, or just want to find out who exactly this man is, turn on CBS this Friday.

• VUHoops is all over the Brian Lynch phenomena by noticing he is #11 on Google Trends. No, seriously. He really is.
• Sticking with the alumnus theme, Mike from VUHoops let us know that former Villanovan Andrew Sullivan is captaining Great Britain at Eurobasket 2009.
• Villanova By The Numbers is looking into Scottie Reynolds’ bid to become the all-time leading scorer at Villanova. He is 623 points shy of Kerry Kittles’ record of 2,243. According to stats-guru greyCat, he would need to average roughly 20 points per game in his final year to hit the mark.
• VUHoops has posted the recap of their Wisdom of Crowds experiment for the guards. It’s an interesting look into things, although like Ed suggests over there, I have a hard time figuring out how the masses figure Reggie Redding’s minutes per game will decrease by nearly 5 minutes.
• Villanova Golf Coach Will Reilly and sophomore Eddie Ryan are helping inner-city youths learn life skills through the game of golf. The pair teamed with the Northeast Philadelphia Boys & Girls Club to create the program.
• Field hockey players Steffi Caniglia and Dana Ramsden were selected to the Big East Honor Roll for their performances over the weekend.
• Goalie Chris Bresnahan was selected the Philadelphia Soccer Six Player of the Week.
• And for the second time in the season’s first three weeks, freshman Heidi Sabatura was named the Big East Rookie of the Week for women’s soccer.

Checking in with our counterparts this morning, there was some pretty interesting stuff going on at VUHoops and Villanova By The Numbers.

We’ll start off with the number-crunching greyCat, who sometimes can make my head hurt with such in-depth analaysis, but his latest article covering 10 rising juniors in the Big East is a must-read. The article covers 1o guys who are ‘laying in the weeds’ so to speak, instead of some more high profile players. To give you an idea, it talks about guys like Mac Koshwal, Rick Jackson, Jimmy Butler, and Marshon Brooks. Not guys who have seen their name on a couple All-Big East lists, but guys who have a good impact on the game nonetheless.

greyCat also took a look at 9 rising seniors to watch (a little more notable list) as well as a quick look around of the A-10 for the upcoming year, a conference that yields several of our opponents.

The guys at VUHoops have been very active during the summer recess, running multiple series as well as keeping up with the general Villanova news.

We’ll start with their ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ experiment in which they have been polling their readership to determine what the fans’ feelings are about each player’s upcoming season, and the amount of minutes they will play. They’ve already covered Scottie Reynolds, Corey Fisher, Reggie Redding, Maalik Wayns, Corey Stokes, Dominic Cheek and Taylor King. Voting for Antonio Pena is ongoing. Make sure you head over there and participate.

They have also been running a Meet The New Wildcats series which gives fans a little introduction to the 4 newest Wildcats, as well as redshirt freshman Maurice Sutton and transfer Taylor King.

While I was in the student section during the Marquette win, I was getting periodical messages from Liz (a.k.a. “SportsGal” in the comment section) about this thing called “Interactive Tuesday” that apparently was going on during the game. What this exactly meant, I really don’t know. I watch a lot of college hoops, but it’s usually ESPN’s “Big Monday” and the weekend games. I thought I needed to clear some space in my Tuesday schedule to catch this phenomenon. But according to multiple outlets, it’s best I stay away.

It started with a BBM (for all you crackberry people) from Liz, who was venting her frustration that Rick Pitino had beaten Jay Wright for “better dressed coach” in a fan poll during the game. Now my initial reaction was confusion (what the hell is Liz talking about?), which was then followed by more confusion (how in the name of all that is good and pure can anyone vote for a coach besides Jay?), followed by anger at myself, because I was missing the game.

So in reality, I forget all about this whole mess. When I head over to Cracked Sidewalks today, I see this stunningly beautiful piece of writing from Rob Lowe (a contributor there). What I had discovered was that ESPN spent the majority of the game having stupid polls like “cheesesteak or brat” scrolling across the top, along with the announcers plugging it, in a shameless way to somehow get fans more involved. Because obviously a grudge match, shootout between two Top 15 teams is boring. Anyways, fantastic job by Rob here. The letter to ESPN’s Ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber reads quite eloquently, but manages to squeeze in gems like “failure” to really drive the point home.

But it doesn’t stop there. Even our own greyCat from Villanova By The Numbers is disgusted. (Speaking of greyCat, I love his work over there, but it hurts my head. I’m a finance major. I’m supposed to be good at math. And I feel like when I meet him, he’s going to tell me he was an Arts major. And then I’m really going to feel stupid and I’m not going to like him anymore. Sorry, I digress.)

Anyways, he shares the same opinion, which if you haven’t caught on yet, is not good. He also writes his own letter to ESPN, with perhaps the best line being “please do not inflict ‘Interactive Tuesday’ on another audience.” The bloggers are portraying this as a hate crime. I love it.

And then the final straw. The guys at the phenomenal blog Awful Announcing let everyone know that this isn’t the first time ESPN has sodomized a collegiate event with this non-sense.

Apparently, it was around for the football season. I’m trying to think about why we didn’t know about this. How were ‘Nova and Marquette fans alike completely blindsided? Oh right, we don’t have football (I kid, sort of). Anyways, despite terrible ratings, the bigwigs up in Bristol decided to torture hoops fans everywhere.

Now I’m really thankful that I was able to attend the game, and please accept my deepest apologies if you had to watch on TV. You did get one moment out of it though, courtesy of “Larry.”

Liz, if you want air time, you have to "embellish" your name.

Oh, by the way, that screenshot is of Dominic James’ second missed alley-oop of the night. That’s got to put a smile on your face.