It Could Have Been Worse...Much Worse

By now, you've probably all seen the new Keady Court graphics. In my opinion, they're very well done. J thinks the concept is sneakingly-familiar to ours from last week, but I think good design is good design and similarities happen in the design world quite often.

The new concept gets rid of the Special in center court, which is a positive. It puts focus on Keady by placing his signature on the court and doesn't genuflect at the altar of the B1G too much (it gives the right amount of respect to the conference, in my opinion).

There are a few people complaining about the change at center court and the overall design on the Purdue Athletics page on Facebook...but you won't hear any of that on this site. The Athletic Department got this one right, in our opinion as we were never huge fans of the train at center court and always like things that lean toward classic and simple.

With all of the poor decisions and near mistakes made over the last few years by the Purdue marketing family, this is a victory...and they needed one.

Coulda been worse.

Tuesday Gumbo

For the first time ever, I'll be forced to root for the Celtics

JJ and Smooge spoke with the press together outside of Boston about playing together again and looking ahead to next season. There were a few interesting tidbits I took from the presser.

-Since the Celtics have more retired numbers than any team in the league, the former #25 & #33 don't have a ton of options for next season.
-JJ will be number 12 to honor his Mom who wore that number in high school.
-Moore will sport 55...as he used to be a fan of Jason Williams a few years ago. But a few people on the message board think it's more because he was #22 in HS and #33 in college (add 'em up, Einstein).
-The two didn't have any tryouts together prior to the draft in spite of both making multiple stops at common teams.

JJ will learn under the capable, but aging (he's 35), Kevin Garnett...and Moore will will have to fight and scratch and claw his way onto the roster...but we all know what he's capable of. And in my opinion, he's always reminded me of Ben Gordon who surprised a few people a few years ago by making noise for the Bulls early in his career.

Keady Court Revamp
Back when I was at Purdue in the mid/late 90s, I had a chance to play on Mackey's hardwood a few times...and I was simply amazed at how many deadspots the old wood surface had. A few years later, the athletic department replaced the wood and gave the court a new paint job...a few years after that, it was re-named Keady Court.

Due to the sheer pounding college courts take, they need to be replaced every 10 or 15 years, so a change was imminent. But, hard rain and on-going construction have combined to form a destructive force that sped up the replacement calendar for Keady Court.

A concept of something I'd like to see on the new surface

Looking Ahead
This summer has gone pretty slowly (from a sports standpoint). The Indy Car season, paltry recruiting morsels and classic games on different networks can only tide us over so long...so in the coming weeks we'll take a look at Hope's squad...what to look forward to, what has us concerned and what flat-out scares us to death.

Stay tuned.