Site note. Yes, you have "points." They don't do anything yet and won't until I can integrate some simple voting mechanisms, but the general idea is: annoy enough people and get enough downvotes and you get temporarily banned; continue on that path and the bans get progressively longer. The math might be tricky, lest I unleash a thermonuclear banhammer holocaust, so be patient.

via reader Bill Rapai

Softballin'. This has been noted multiple times on ye olde right sidebar, but a front page mention: the softball team splattered Baylor this weekend by a total score of 15-2. This was mostly due to a zillion home runs, all of which came after I sagely advised someone that softball homeruns were extremely rare. Go me.

It was actually my first time at Alumni Field. I'd planned on going the week before the insistent rain changed minds. I sat on the other side of a bleacher section from Samantha Findley, marveled at the attendance and the facility, missed a (by then meaningless) home run attempting to find the bathroom, and wished it hadn't gotten chilly so quickly. It was a nice time.

The team has set up a blogslapfight THUNDERDOME against Alabama next weekend at the CWS:

The Wolverines (46-10), seeded No. 5 overall, will play fourth-ranked and fourth-seeded Alabama (52-9) at 7 p.m. Thursday in Bracket 2. The game will be televised live on ESPN from ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City.

The winner plays the winner of #1 Florida—which is an astounding 60-3—and #9 Arizona; loser hits the loser's bracket.

There is much content elsewhere, including a profile of Carol Hutchins that contains this sentence: "My mom was right there and goes, 'Where else would you get a standing ovation but a bar.'"

Lynch. To hockey recruiting: We already knew that Kyle Woodlief of the Red Line Report was extremely impressed with Kevin Lynch's performance at the U18 World Championships, and his latest USA Today column confirms:

Other big winners from our time spent in Fargo include huge Russian netminder Igor Bobkov, sturdy Canadian winger Kyle Clifford, and two-way American center Kevin Lynch. … Lynch … continued to play his usual strong defensive game while battling ruggedly in front of the net and capitalizing on the chances his hard work created. …

Kevin Lynch— Was a two-way demon and key cog in the U.S. winning gold in Fargo. Showed more tenacity and skill than he had all year.

Lynch could have moved up into the second round with that tournament, and has radically upgraded expectations for his college career across just a few games. "Two-way demon" sounds excellent to me. He and Hagelin can have a fevered backchecking contest.

Smotrycz. I thought Rivals was the last scouting service to do a post-Smotrycz-explosion rerank, but I forgot about ESPN. ESPN has just done a revision and Smotrycz shoots all the way to #47, just in front of Wisconsin decommit Vander Blue and two slots behind Nate Lubick, the one who got away. He's actually in front of hyped MSU commit Keith Appling(!).

Other names of note are #20 Ray McCallum, #22 Casey Prather, #38 Trey Ziegler, and #93 Tim Hardaway, Jr. ESPN is way higher on mini-Hardaway than anyone else, FWIW.

Dingbats. The Detroit Tigers Weblog took a screencap of some young ladies who had dubbed themselves "Clete's Cougars" which got some play across the baseball blogosphere. Then Mike Valenti's crack team of web wizards cracked open their bananas and got to work, posting a non-attributed copy on their site. Billfer, the author of the DTW, was irritated:

Wednesday afternoon I was listening to 97.1 The Ticket (unfortunately the only sports talk around in the afternoon) when host Mike Valenti directed people to 971theticket.com for a picture of Clete’s Cougars. I was curious so I ventured over to see what picture they had, and I was a little surprised to see the picture I had posted. It was there with no mention or link back to my site.

Multiple attempts to contact 97.1 and get a link were not responded to, as per usual. Billfer notes the irony of Valenti complaining about bloggers' lack of accountability. As for me, I'm just glad the guys at 97.1 took my advice to heed and used the "save as" option; the last time they did this they put up a screenshot of this here blog. Way to go, guys. Next up: we discuss the anchor tag.

And now you're probably wondering… is he going to go with the American flag as an excuse for a light day of posting? Yes. Yes I am.

Until tomorrow. Eat some tube meat, kids.