Meet the New Boss: Grading the retread coaching hires

A weeklong grade book for the offseason coaching hires. Part One: Established head coaches moving up the career ladder. Today: Old faces resurface in new places.

• DAN McCARNEY (North Texas).
Where you've seen him before: After five seasons of futility, McCarney finally broke through with five winning seasons in six years at Iowa State, including the Cyclones' second ever finish in the final AP poll (No. 25 with a 9-3 record in 2000). He was somewhat hastily fired after a regression to 2-10 in 2006, eventually landing on his feet on Urban Meyer's staff at Florida for the last three years.
Replacing: Todd Dodge, who was unable to convert his prolific spread offense from local high school powerhouse Southlake Carroll into wins at North Texas: Barely removed from a four-year winning streak in Sun Belt games under coach Darrell Dickey, UNT won all of six games in three-and-a-half years before ditching Dodge last October.
Best resumé line: McCarney has a BCS championship ring from his time in Gainesville, but even that pales next to guiding Iowa State into the top 10 for the first and only time in school history in 2002, however briefly.
Biggest drawback: It took McCarney five years to drag Iowa State's carcass out of the crater he found it in and nurse it back to life, and the two relapses after the Cyclones' turn toward respectability – to 2-10 in 2003 and 4-8 in 2006, the season that got him fired – were spectacular fireballs.
Longevity: At 57 (he'll be 58 by the start of the season), McCarney doesn't have a five-year buffer to get this project off the ground. At that point, he'd probably like to be in position to hand off a viable SBC contender with a more solid foundation; if not, he'll probably be out, anyway.
Grade: B+. McCarney's not a big name and certainly doesn't bring a gaudy record (56-95) from his days at ISU. But he's exactly what North Texas needs after its failed experiment with Dodge: A salt-of-the-earth veteran with 35 years of experience in the Big Ten, Big 8/12 and SEC and respectable record as a college head coach. In terms of wins and losses, UNT may be a better opportunity than Iowa State – as bad as the Mean Green have been since their last conference championship in 2004, at least that track record exists.

• RANDY EDSALL (Maryland).
Where you've seen him before: At UConn, where he spent a decade taking UConn from obscurity in the I-AA/FCS ranks to consistent success in the Big East and finally to the big stage in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, as Big East champion. Edsall doesn't quite fit with today's "retread" theme, but he is a veteran, and he's also the only head coach to leave his job this offseason for essentially a lateral move, rather than a clear step up.
Replacing: Ralph Friedgen, who gave a solid decade to his alma mater before being summarily discarded in December by first-year athletic director Kevin Anderson.
Best resumé line: Question its credentials and circuitous path if you must, but the fact remains: UConn played in the Fiesta Bowl barely a decade removed from finishing sixth in the Atlantic 10 in Edsall's first season.
Biggest drawback: Well, he isn't Mike Leach. In fact, Edsall is more like a younger version of Friedgen: Another no-frills, run-first, defense-and-special teams guy in a conference already dominated by Frank Beamer, Jimbo Fisher, Tom O'Brien, Butch Davis, Frank Spaziani, et al. For a program allegedly looking to spark dwindling interest and attendance, it's a steady-as-she-goes hire; at least Leach – who was reportedly one step shy of measuring Friedgen's office for pirate drapes before Christmas – would have been a wild card, which is only one of the reasons he would have immediately energized the apathetic fan base with the promise of the most wide-open offense the ACC has ever seen. Edsall is a safer choice, in that he promises the program probably isn't headed for an utter collapse on the order of the 2-10 debacle of 2009. How do you build a marketing campaign around the guy with the "high floor"?
Longevity: For starters, he's only 52, one year younger than Friedgen when he was hired in 2001, and calls Maryland his "dream job." As long as the record's respectable, he'll be entrenched for the foreseeable future.
Grade: B. Edsall's not exciting; fans aren't going to start flocking in droves for 8-4 runs to the Champs Sports Bowl. But if he gives Maryland the decade Friedgen did – that is, six eight-win seasons, seven bowl games and rare conference championship – this is a good hire.

• ROCKY LONG (San Diego State).
Where you've seen him before: Long, a former All-WAC quarterback at New Mexico in 1971, spent 11 years as head coach at his alma mater from 1998-2008, arguably the best decade in school history: The Lobos turned in five winning records in Long's final seven seasons, before he abruptly resigned – to the surprise and chagrin of school officials – in the wake of "a terrible job" by he and his staff in 2008. "I want this program to be on top," Long said then. "I don't see that happening with me as the head coach."
Replacing: Brady Hoke, who brought the Aztecs out of a decade of futility with nine wins in his second season – as many as they'd won in three years under Hoke's predecessor, Chuck Long – before setting off for his dream job at Michigan. Long was promoted from defensive coordinator.
Best resumé line: Long left New Mexico as the schools all-time winningest coach, and took UNM to as many bowl games on his watch (five) as the program had earned in its first 70 years combined.
Biggest drawback: He also left New Mexico with a losing overall record (65-69), zero conference championships, only one bowl win in five tries and as many losing seasons as winning.
Longevity: Long just turned 61, giving him anywhere from five to 15 years left in the tank, if he doesn't fire himself first.
Grade: B. San Diego State didn't have a lot of options after Hoke left in mid-January, taking offensive coordinator Al Borges with him to Ann Arbor. They didn't get a headliner in his place, but they did get a veteran who's built and maintained a consistent winner in the Mountain West with less resources that he has at his disposal at SDSU.

• PAUL PASQUALONI (Connecticut).
Where you've seen him before: Pasqualoni's resumé over 15 years at Syracuse included seven top-25 finishes, at least a share of four Big East championships and only one losing season, in 2002. Three years of stagnation got him fired in '04, but honestly, after four years of successor Greg "Gerg" Robinson, stagnation never looked like such an accomplishment. Pasqualoni returns to the college ranks after six years with the Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys.
Replacing: Edsall, who essentially built the current UConn program from the ground up.
Best resumé line: The Orangemen combined to go 20-4 with a Big East championship in Pasqualoni's first two seasons in 1991-92, both ending with Jan. 1 bowl wins. Going back to his first job, at Division II Western Connecticut, his career winning percentage as a head coach is just shy of 65 percent.
Biggest drawback: It's never a good sign when your hiring prompts the program's most influential donor to call the athletic director "unqualified" and demand his money back – especially when you coached one of said donor's sons in a previous gig. Clearly, Pasqualoni isn't arriving as a unifying figure.
Longevity: At 61, Pasqualoni seems like a "maintenance" hire – a stopgap to keep the bottom from falling out of the rapid success under Edsall for four or five years.
Grade: C+. Statistically, 60-year-old head coaches are almost always well past their prime, especially if they haven't spent at least a decade building a program into an undisputed national power, a la Bear Bryant, Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno, the only coaches ever to win a national championship past their 60th birthday. UConn isn't competing for national championships, but on the heels of its first Big East title, it will be a tall order for Pasqualoni to leave the program in better shape than he found it.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Why does Rich Rodriguez keep talking about his 'progress' at Michigan?

Last week, Rich Rodriguez told the Associated Press he could "see a light at the end of the tunnel" of his tribulations at Michigan, if only he'd had more time to finish the job. Today, he doubled down on the "tunnel" metaphor in an interview with national radio host Colin Cowherd, clarifying precisely the tunnel he had in mind:

"We were making progress," he said. "The best was ahead of us and the worst was behind us.

"I almost felt like Andy Dufresne in the 'Shawshank Redemption.' Went through 300 yards of the foulest smelling crap you can imagine and we were finally getting to the good part at the end — and we didn't get a chance to do that. It was frustrating."
[…]
"The way things worked out, certainly there's regrets," he said. "… I just wish we had more time to succeed."

Actually, it was 500 yards, coach, but we see where you're going with this, again: The extreme attrition, factionalization, bullying from the press and simple bad luck Rodriguez endured in Ann Arbor made one of the most coveted jobs in America seem like a prison, and quarterback Denard Robinson finally offered a way out. But the new warden had the escape route sealed, or was waiting at the other end, or had Rodriguez shipped off to a new prison before he could make his escape, or stole his Racquel Welch poster, or, uh … well, we get the idea. Rodriguez did the tedious, day-to-day work to get the program out of the dire situation he inherited, put it on the right path and was cut out of the plan at the last second. We get it.

Do we buy it? We do not. Rodriguez's appeals for more time to see the thing to fruition might fall on a more sympathetic audience if a) He hadn't already had three years to demonstrate unmistakable progress at a program that was consistently worse throughout his tenure than it had been at any point in the previous 40 years, and b) Whatever semblance of progress the Wolverines had demonstrated the first ten games of 2010 hadn't been so thoroughly erased over the final three.

At 7-3, there's room to claim progress, even if the last three wins in that record happen o be harrowing, skin-of-the-teeth triumphs over three of the most hapless teams in the conference. (In this case, Indiana, Illinois and Purdue, all narrow Michigan victories, wrapped around a not-so-narrow losing streak at the hands of Michigan State, Penn State and Iowa.) But the final three games brought any and all vestiges of optimism to the grisliest possible end. The Wolverines were trounced by Wisconsin by 20 points, Ohio State by 30 and Mississippi State (!) by 38 in the bowl game. The hopelessly green, sad-sack outfit that greeted Rodriguez in 2008 could have hardly fared worse. The new defensive coordinator was demonstrably worse than the one who'd been run out of town after Rodriguez's first season. When a 5-0 start devolves into a 2-6 finish, of which the high point is a 67-65 escape against a team coached by Ron Zook, in triple overtime, that is the opposite of progress.

Presumably, Rodriguez thinks Brady Hoke only has to crawl through the last few remaining yards of crap before he breaks into the clear, thanks to the previous administration's legwork. That makes some sense: Going forward, the Wolverines figure to be one of the most veteran teams in the country this fall, with nine offense starters returning around Robinson – including four-fifths of the offensive line – and a defense that should at least have a clue for a change, if not a sudden influx of talent. Hoke is obviously exaggerating for effect when he says anything short of a Big Ten championship is a "failure," but it's not an exaggeration to expect the 2011 edition to look closer to the Michigan that you (and Hoke) grew up with than any of the depressing teams that took the field under his predecessor.

And really, that would probably be the case if Rodriguez had been miraculously granted a fourth year. But some discernible return to form was the mandate for 2009, too, and again last year. Despite their fast starts, those teams ultimately delivered nothing of the sort. The 2011 team, the first legitimately veteran lineup at Michigan since Lloyd Carr's last go-round in 2007, may be the one to fulfill that promise, regardless of who's at the top; a lot of people who aren't dumb will probably spend the next six months predicting exactly that. But the natural optimism that comes with an experienced team is an inevitable matter of time, not of steady, coordinated progress. If a more seasoned outfit does manage a breakthrough this fall – minor or otherwise – does Rodriguez really think he's earned the right to lead it?

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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CrossFit Radio Episode 157

On Episode 157 of CrossFit Radio, host Justin Judkins interviewed CrossFit success story Amber Wilson and Games hopeful Sarah Rodriquez, who also co-owns CrossFit La Verne. This episode was webcast live at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011.

3:45 Amber Wilson is an athlete at Clear Lake CrossFit. She started CrossFit one year ago and has seen amazing health benefits because of the intense exercise and focused nutrition plan. She gave her first impressions of CrossFit and explained how she wondered where the treadmills and air conditioning were. She also talked about how important the community has been to her success and explained how necessary it was for her to change her thinking in regards to diet and nutrition in order to reach her goals.

29:20 As co-owner of CrossFit La Verne, Sarah Rodriquez is always encouraging her athletes to compete in the Games’ qualifiers. Sarah leads from the front and is quite the competitor herself. She came on the show to talk about her road to the Games. She explained how important it is to gain experience in the competitive arena and described some of the competitions she has been in lately. She also spoke about owning an affiliate and growing it over time. She has moved her box twice and described that process, and she outlined which equipment was a priority as they started the affiliate with limited funds.

1hr 4min 47sec

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The Couch Stretch

“It turns out that even top athletes who are really really good at what they do they still need to stretch,” says seminar team member Jami Tikkanen of Thames CrossFit. He addresses tight hip issues he identified in one of the seminar attendees, Diego Derscentis, a professional soccer player in Europe.

Tikkanen shows Derscentis a series of stretches taught by mobility guru Kelly Starrett. Beginning with Starrett’s classic couch stretch, Tikkanen adds two more versions to help fix Derscentis’ tight hips.

“We see a lot of elite athletes (who’ve) still got difficulties in coming up from the bottom of the squat,” Tikkanen says. “Everybody’s working the bottom, but they’re not working necessarily coming up all the way to full extension.”

He instructs Dercentis to spend two minutes in each stretch and to consistently use the tools to make progress increasing mobility.

“With new range comes new responsibility,” Tikkanen says.

8min 41sec

Additional reading: A Postural Error: A Costly Biomechanical Fault—Muted Hip Function (MHF) by Greg Glassman, published Jan. 1, 2003.

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Did UCLA fans actually veto Rocky Seto as defensive coordinator? Maybe.

About this time last week, longtime USC assistant Rocky Seto was fully prepared to leave his gig with the Seattle Seahawks to return to Los Angeles, this time as UCLA's defensive coordinator. Multiple reports on Feb. 1-2 informed readers that Seto had been or was about to be officially hired, and Seto himself told ESPN Los Angeles on Monday that he had been offered and accepted the job on Feb. 1:

The former USC defensive coordinator and current assistant coach with the Seattle Seahawks said he had accepted a verbal offer from UCLA and was scheduled to be introduced at a news conference the following day [Feb. 2].

He told a few friends. He told his family. He tried to wrap his head around the idea of holding such a key role for UCLA, the school that had been his rival as both a player and a coach for more than a decade.

By the time the L.A. Times reported the following morning that Seto's hire was "a done deal," though, said offer had been "rescinded," as the Times explained over the weekend:

Seto, as assistant coach with the Seattle Seahawks, was offered and accepted the job Tuesday night, but the offer was rescinded the following day, according to the person close to the negotiations. The person said that no reason was given other than UCLA officials decided to go "in another direction." UCLA officials claimed Saturday that no "official" offer had been made.

As Seto confirmed to ESPN L.A. on Monday, "I was a bit disappointed because when I accepted the offer, emotionally and mentally I was there. … [UCLA head coach Rick Neuheisel] called, and he was really gracious about it and very flattering. It just wasn't the right time. What was flattering about it was I really believe wanted to do it, but the circumstances just wouldn't allow for it."

What circumstances changed from last Tuesday night, when Seto was apparently offered and accepted the job, and Wednesday, when the "unofficial" offer was rescinded before it could become public? Two things:

a) Word got out. Seto denied reports that he'd posted his hiring on his Facebook page, but admitted to ESPN L.A. that some of his family and friends may have posted congratulatory messages on his wall. According to the L.A. Times, the student-run Daily Trojan originally quoted a text message from Seto when it broke the news on Feb. 1, "[I] accepted the position tonight to coordinate at UCLA. Praise the Lord!" It was swiftly removed from the story after the Times contacted Seto to follow up.

b) The opposition got out. Armed with the news – and from a USC outlet, no less – Bruin fans and boosters went on the offensive over the next 24 hours, most notably from the most reliably earnest fan site on the web, Bruins Nation, which immediately labeled Seto a "Pete Carroll Extremist" and launched a "Veto Seto" campaign that aimed to swarm the university's social media sites with opposition to Seto's hire as both a dyed-in-the-wool Trojan and an inexperienced 34-year-old with no real coordinator experience. (Seto technically held the "defensive coordinator" title at USC in 2009, but in name only; Carroll personally oversaw the Trojan defense throughout his tenure. At any rate, the '09 defense was by the worst of the Carroll era.) Traffic on BN surged in the wake of national signing day, and the site was declaring victory by the weekend.

From UCLA's perspective, of course, its backtracking looks a lot better if the decision was a result of loose lips, as opposed to bullying fans overruling the head coach's choice for the job, considering the latter would be a pretty straightforward sign of the apocalypse for Neuheisel's tenure going into its make-or-break season. That is, the next sign of the apocalypse: With a 4-8 season, a complete staff overhaul, an uninspiring recruiting class and a persistent vacancy at defensive coordinator – still unfilled more a full week after the offer to Seto, and a full month-and-a-half after Neuheisel fired Chuck Bullough – Bruins fans frankly have all the signs they need.

Neuheisel? He's chilling in Cabo, naturally. What? It's legitimate business: When he announces Sammy Hagar as UCLA's defensive coordinator, the haters are going to lose their shirts, man.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Climb This Way

The rope climb in the last event of the 2010 CrossFit Games derailed some top competitors who didn’t have the technique to scale it efficiently. Some had spent plenty of time on the rope and made short work of it, while others had left it out of their training regime and struggled.

If you’re Rich Froning Jr.—second fittest man on earth—you’d probably just scale the thing with no hands, but even he’d admit that proper technique would have helped him out.

Follow Adam Neiffer of CrossFit Fort Vancouver as he walks some clients through proper rope-climb technique.

4min 57sec

Additional reading: The Do-It-Yourself Climbing Rope by Lincoln Brigham, published Dec. 27, 2009.

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thurs, jan 6, 2010

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DIY Dip Stand

Jeff Rice details a small construction project that will produce a dip station for about $50.

The dip is an important functional movement that’s an integral part of the muscle-up. Between the muscle-up and ring dips, this movement comes up periodically as part of the WODs at most CrossFit gyms. Unfortunately, performing dips on the rings can be challenging to many beginning CrossFitters, so outfitting your gym with a stand to do bar dips—dips on rigid parallel bars—can be important for building the strength, coordination and confidence needed to master ring dips and to get that first muscle-up.

While many commercial pieces of gym equipment can be used to perform bar dips, all have their pros and cons, and in my experience of evaluating dip stands for my own gym, the cons outweigh the pros by a wide margin.

Making dip stands from scratch is one solution to the problem. In my research for homemade dip stands on the Web, I came across an abundance of ideas. Many involved using steel pipe and fittings. These were often attached to walls to provide stability, or they were welded together to form makeshift parallel bars. While all these solutions have their merits, I was looking for something lightweight and something that could easily be moved around the gym. And, of course, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the project.

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Pitt Stopped by Louisville in Overtime

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Kyle Kuric scored 12 points, including two big baskets in overtime, to lead No. 16 Louisville past No. 4 Pittsburgh 62-59 on Sunday.

Kuric had a potential game-winning layup blocked at the end of regulation, but atoned by hitting a 3-pointer early in the extra session then adding the clinching dunk with less than a second on the clock.

Then things got a little bizarre.

The clock didn't stop after the basket, which put the Cardinals up 62-57, and the horn sounded. Some Louisville cheerleaders on the baseline raced onto the floor, with one male cheerleader grabbing the ball and tossing it in the air.

Officials called Louisville for a delay of game technical foul and put .5 seconds back on the clock. Pitt's Ashton Gibbs knocked down two free throws and the Panthers had one last chance to tie, but Gibbs couldn't get off a desperation heave in time.

Peyton Siva led the Cardinals (22-7, 11-5 Big East) with 14 points and Mike Marra added 11 off the bench for Louisville, which remained unbeaten at home in conference play and knocked off a top-five team for the second time this season.

Gilbert Brown scored 20 points and Brad Wanamaker had 13 points, 12 rebounds and six assists for the Panthers (25-4, 13-3), but Pitt turned it over three times and missed all three of its field goal attempts in overtime.

The most painful miss came with about 5 seconds to go when Wanamaker passed up a 3-pointer with the Panthers trailing by three and tried to hit Brown under the basket instead. The ball rolled out and Louisville's Terrence Jennings came away with it.

Jennings hit Siva with an outlet pass, who fed Kuric for the dunk.

Gibbs' final heave was a fitting end to a tough day - he finished with 14 points on 3-of-11 shooting.

The Cardinals played the nation's best rebounding team even on the glass. Pitt, whose plus-11 rebounding margin is tops in the country, outrebounded the Cardinals by just one, 39-38.

Still, the Panthers had their chances thanks to Wanamaker, who did a little bit of everything. He hit three big shots in the second half as Pitt erased a 12-point deficit to tie the game three times in the final 3:37.

The last one, a confident 18-footer, knotted the game at 56 with 17.1 to play.

Siva drove the lane but his shot was swatted out of bounds by Gary McGhee. The Cardinals ran a back screen for Kuric, who hit a game-winning layup against Marquette from the same spot Jan. 15.

Not this time. Wanamaker swallowed it and sent the game to overtime.

Kuric hardly looked bothered. He calmly drilled a 3-pointer on Louisville's second possession of the extra period, and the Panthers self-destructed.

Brown was called for a charge, then Siva swiped the ball from Travon Woodall. Officials called McGhee for traveling on Pittsburgh's next trip, allowing the Cardinals to continue to drain the clock.

Pitt's second loss in its last three games means the Panthers have just a one-game lead over Notre Dame heading into the final week of the season. The Panthers travel to South Florida on Wednesday and close the season at home against Villanova on March 5.

Pitt will need to finish ahead of the Irish in the standings to win the title. Notre Dame beat the Panthers 56-51 on Jan. 24.

Louisville held its own against the bigger, stronger Panthers from the outset. The Cardinals extended their matchup zone in an effort to get Gibbs out of rhythm, and it worked.

He missed all five of his field goal attempts in the first half. Then again, his teammates weren't much better. Pittsburgh went more than 10 minutes without a basket as Louisville built a 24-12 lead.

Wanamaker ended the drought with a runner, and for a brief moment, the Panthers woke up. They closed to within 26-22 on a jumper from Brown, but Marra responded with a 3-pointer and Siva added a pair of free throws just before the horn to give Louisville a 31-22 lead at the break. The nine-point deficit was the second-largest for the Panthers this season, behind a 12-point hole they faced in a loss to Tennessee back in December.

Wanamaker almost led the Panthers all the way back. Almost.

 

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CAM NEWTON KNEW HE WAS BEING SOLD AND WAS IN THE ROOM WITH THE MOTHMAN AND TUPAC

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Teaching the Pull-up to a Large Group: Part 2

There are many progressions for learning the kipping pull-up, and different cues will work for different athletes. Join HQ trainers Adrian (Boz) Bozman and Lisa Ray as Boz instructs coaches on his method of teaching the pull-up to a large class.

In Part 2, Boz begins by fielding Michael Giardina’s question about shoulder position. Boz says he wants to stop athletes from “overthinking” the movement, so he speeds it up and keeps the progressions simple.

“If you just get people to relax and go faster, nine times out of 10 they’re fine,” Boz says.

Afterward, Boz talks about the kipping pull-up return phase, something he only teaches to athletes experienced enough to utilize it. He tells his athletes, “If you’re not getting over the bar, you have no business doing the push-away. (If) you’re not strong enough for this movement, it’s going to beat you up. Don’t do it.”

For those who are ready, the progression is simple: push away from the top of the bar and return to your swing, then stop.

“If they can’t control that swing after the return, well, the return wasn’t good enough,” Boz says.

From there, the athlete works to use fewer and fewer swings before stringing together consecutive kipping pull-ups.

9min 56sec

Additional reading: Kipping Pull-Up Progression by Eva Twardokens, published Mar. 1, 2006.

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wed, jan 19, 2011

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Rate Your Shoe

The “perfect shoe” may not exist, so Dr. Lon Kilgore offers up a system designed to help you select the best footwear for any sport.

There has been a tremendous amount of online chatter about what shoe to wear while CrossFitting. Hundreds and hundreds of expert and not-so-expert opinions are floating around the Internet. This person recommends one model and brand of shoe because he or she likes it. This person recommends this shoe for running, this shoe for lifting, and this shoe something else. This person says not to wear shoes at all.

Who is right?

As opinion-rich as this area is, we have very little objective data about what the perfect exercise shoe is like. This is the Holy Grail of exercise footwear: the elusive multi-purpose exercise shoe. What is presented here is a simple means of selecting the correct shoe for your training, a more formalized and quantifiable version of my advice to trainees for the past two decades. Its intent is twofold:

1. Make the consumer non-reliant on the advice of random experts.
2. Give exercise professionals a framework to help them develop a means of identifying shoes to recommend to their trainees and provide these trainees with a compelling rationale as to why they need them.

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Inside a Strongman Seminar: Parts 1-2

What do kegs, yokes and concrete balls have to do with CrossFit?

Join Rob Orlando of Hybrid Athletics at San Francisco CrossFit as he takes coaches and athletes through strongman movements and equipment.

“It’s fun. It’s cheap. It gives us another mechanism to kind of harden the athlete,” says Kelly Starrett, owner of San Francisco CrossFit.

In Part 1, Rob Orlando introduces strongman and explains how he started incorporating the movements into his own programming. He says his intention is to make strongman approachable by anyone.

“Let’s make this infinitely scalable, just like CrossFit, and let’s bring it to people who can actually do it and who are interested in learning it,” Orlando says. “I think CrossFitters could benefit from the training, and they’d love it.”

The bottom line: strongman shouldn’t be intimidating.

“With strongman implemented into CrossFit training, we’re just trying to have some more fun and play with different toys,” Orlando says.

In Part 2, Orlando teaches the tire flip. “The tire flip has huge athletic applications,” he says. But to reach the training potential of the tire flip, you have to go heavy.

“It doesn’t have to be a thousand pounds, but it’s got to be heavy enough that it’s going to elicit some response,” Orlando says.

His demonstrator, Dave Lipson, shows the most efficient set-up and lift, as well as the common faults.

“You want so much momentum on that tire from the initial pull—like a power clean. It’s a full explosion … to drive it. That tire should not stop moving,” Orlando says.

Part 1
9min 49sec

Part 2
7min 25sec

Additional audio: CrossFit Radio Episode 135 by Justin Judkins, published Sept. 1, 2010.

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CrossFit Radio Episode 154

On Episode 154 of CrossFit Radio, host Justin Judkins interviewed United Kingdom CrossFitter Michael Bale, as well as Peter Ricciardi, who converted to CrossFit after years of fitness excuses. This episode was webcast live at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011.

3:30 Michael Bale recently completed a 365-day burpee challenge where he completed over 66,000 burpees in the year. He talked about how and why he decided to complete this challenge, and how CrossFit’s popularity has increased over the last few years in England. Michael described what the CrossFit community is like in his part of the world.

21:50 Peter Ricciardi is 56 years old and has been CrossFitting since last April. He spent the last several decades fooling himself and buying into his excuses as to why he didn’t need to get in shape. He recently wrote a letter to the editor of his local paper explaining the invaluable gifts CrossFit has brought into his life.

1hr 0min 40sec

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Hardy's heroics keep magical run at MSG going for St. John's

Was Dwight Hardy inbounds? Did one of those two heels touch down? Should the basket have counted at all? Why wasn't it reviewed?

Arguing it is a moot point. The fact is that St. John's played the role of David to perfection yet again, slaying its fifth Top 10 foe at Madison Square Garden this season.

Hardy, off of a nice stop-and-go move on the baseline in the closing seconds, dropped in a bucket from underneath the rim to give the Johnnies a 60-59 victory in front of a packed crowd over No. 4 Pitt on Saturday afternoon.

It was the first time this season that the Panthers have fallen on the road. Meanwhile, for Steve Lavin's club, it's quickly becoming no longer a question as to whether they'll be in the field of 68, but rather how high a seed they can secure.

Hardy lifted St. John's to 17-9 overall and 9-5 in the Big East, and in the process, the the Bronx-bred senior bolstered his case to creep into the conference's Player of the Year conversation.

St. John's took advantage of a bevy of calls made their way in the second half, and Hardy led that effort by going 10-of-12 from the stripe. He scored 19 points, and during the team's current four-game win steak is averaging 24.5 a game.

Hardy is one of nine seniors on the roster this season, and, sure, there will likely be some growing pains next season, despite Lavin having one of the nation's deepest and most impressive recruiting classes lined up.

But next year's group will benefit from something those on their way out have accomplished, and that's making the Garden one of the Big East's toughest road venues again.

Even watching on TV, it was clear that the atmosphere there was absolutely insane, and it's certainly played a role in recent home victories over Duke, UConn, Georgetown, Notre Dame and, of course, Pitt.

The Johnnies have a better than good shot at reaching 20 wins now before next month's Big East tournament. They still get to host league bottom-feeders DePaul and South Florida and will play on the road against No. 15 Villanova and Seton Hall.

A few final nuggets from this one …

• The lone offensive bright spot for Pitt, oddly enough, was junior guard Ashton Gibbs, who played for the first time in two weeks after suffering a sprained right knee. There was no easing the team's leading scorer back in, as he played 34 minutes and poured in a career-high 26 points. But outside of his effort, the team was 13-of-32 from the floor and 1-of-9 from 3-point range.

• We have a Justin Burrell of 2007-08 sighting, folks. The senior forward, whose average point total has gradually declined since a promising freshman year, scored 15 points in a variety of ways. He victimized Pitt's Gary McGhee, who looked very slow against the smaller Burrell. Future Pitt opponents should take note of this.

• How long until other coaching staffs adopt the suits and sneakers look that Lavin & Co. are riding on this hot streak just for superstition's sake? The staff has kept it up since last month's Coaches vs. Cancer weekend. It started with the 93-78 blowout of Duke, and the Johnnies' staff has not gone back. They're 6-1 while shunning the penny loafers.

• OK, because it can't be completely ignored, here's a screen grab from the ESPN replay of the final bucket by Hardy.

From up top, both of his heels are clearly hovering above the base line, at the very least. But did either one touch down? We may never know.

Ryan Greene also covers UNLV and the Mountain West Conference for the Las Vegas Sun. Read his Rebels coverage and follow him on Twitter.

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The Two-Ply Shirt

Join Sevan Matossian at Ironwill Strength and Fitness as he shows us a specialized piece of powerlifting equipment for the bench press: the two-ply shirt.

According to Willie Albert, a competitive powerlifter and coach, two-ply powerlifting is an incredibly extreme sport in which a shirt allows skilled lifters to push 200-300 lb. more than they could in a T-shirt. The key word here is “skilled.”

“I’m not saying that anyone can put on a bench press shirt and do it. It requires a tremendous amount of skill,” Albert says. “It’s a hard, hard skill to bench press in a shirt, but it does aid you.”

The challenge comes in keeping the bar in a very specific line. If the lifter’s forearms start to move out of a position perpendicular to the floor, he can lose the bar forward or backward, which is extremely dangerous with big weight on the bar.

“You have about a one-inch to one-and-a-half-inch spot on that shirt that you can touch,” Albert says.

Jay Nera, another Ironwill coach and a competitive powerlifter himself, demonstrates bench pressing with a shirt and shows how he can actually relax with 405 hovering well above his chest.

5min 22sec

Additional reading: The Holy Trinity of Strength Training by Bill Starr, published May 27, 2009.

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UCLA Embarrasses No. 10 Arizona

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Reeves Nelson had a career-high 27 points and 16 rebounds, and UCLA defeated No. 10 Arizona 71-49 on Saturday to tie the Wildcats for first place in the Pac-10 in the last men's game played at historic Pauley Pavilion before it closes for renovation.

Joshua Smith added 17 points and Tyler Honeycutt had 15 for the Bruins (21-8), who share the league's top spot at 12-4 with two games remaining. They have won 12 of 14 after being out of the top 25 all season.

Derrick Williams scored 15 points and Kyle Fogg had 10 for the Wildcats (23-6), who stumbled through a lost weekend in L.A. They arrived with a two-game lead only to be upset by Southern California on Thursday, when Williams, the league's No. 2 scorer, was held to a season-low eight points.

Then they encountered a UCLA team hellbent on grabbing a share of the Pac-10 crown for itself while leaving Pauley on a winning note in front of the late coach John Wooden's family. The program's 11 national championship banners will be packed away while the arena is remodeled before it reopens for the 2012-13 season.

Fittingly, Wooden's great-grandson Tyler Trapani, who rides the Bruins' bench, got in the game and scored their final basket.

A sweep would have given Arizona the regular-season title outright. The Wildcats still could have claimed at least a share of it by winning Saturday. Now it comes down to next weekend, when they host the Oregon schools and UCLA hits the road to face the Washington schools.

UCLA held the Wildcats to a season-low in points; Arizona came in averaging 77.6 - second-best in the Pac-10. The Wildcats shot 21 percent from 3-point range, well off their league-leading 41 percent.

The Bruins gained control of a game that was close early with a 22-2 run spanning halftime. Smith scored nine points despite picking up his third foul in the spurt that ended with UCLA ahead 51-30. Nelson added seven. His rebounds helped the Bruins dominate the boards 40-26.

Leading 29-28, UCLA closed the first half on an 11-2 run while the Wildcats were limited to one field goal over the final 5:03. The Bruins picked up where they left off in the second half, starting out with 11 consecutive points in front of a big crowd that grew more raucous as the lead increased.

Smith proved to be his usual load in the post, barreling through the Wildcats' defense for layups. He got hit in the eye at the same time he was called for his third foul and sat down.

The Wildcats immediately took advantage, running off 10 straight points to close to 51-40. Fogg and Jamelle Horne hit consecutive 3-pointers.

Arizona scored six straight to get within nine before Smith tipped in Lazeric Jones' missed 3-pointer with 4:02 left. But the Bruins closed the game on another run.

Among those attending the final men's game at Pauley were former Wooden assistant Denny Crum, Olympian Rafer Johnson, and Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe from the 1971 national title team that was honored at halftime.

 

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World of WODs No. 1: Winnipeg, Canada

Creative CrossFitters create new workouts every day. Mike Warkentin begins the search for signature workouts from around the world.

“I could totally do a pull-up on that branch.”

Greg Glassman changed the way CrossFitters view the world. Tree branches became pull-up bars, picnic tables turned into plyo boxes and swing sets seemed like great places to hang a set of rings. And that rock over there? You should probably overhead squat it.

Indeed, all the world is a CrossFit gym with the right pair of eyes and a little creativity.

This article is the first in a series where we’ll publish some of the best workouts from locales around the world, giving residents and travelers a chance to test their fitness outside the box. On Feb. 23, we travel to St. Augustine, Fla., for a workout in a 17th-century fort.

If you have a set of landmarks, natural features or outdoor “equipment” suited for a great WOD, please view the submission guidelines on the last page of this article—then send us your workout!

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Nutrition Prep Day with the Chans: The Chicken Salad

“How many carbs or how much fat I have in the meal is all based on the protein, and it’s all going to be evenly divisible by whatever the protein,” says Cherie Chan of CrossFit Verve, located in Denver, Colo.

In Part 1, Cherie and husband Matt prepare a chicken salad using Zone Diet principles to balance the protein, fat and carbohydrate.

Cherie starts with her protein: grilled chicken breasts. From there, she adds carbohydrate in the form of chopped peppers, celery and onions. For the dressing, she uses eggs (another protein), limes (carbohydrates), and mustard and curry powder for seasoning. She uses slivered almonds for the fat.

After the salad is assembled, Cherie measures the total amount to portion it equally and shows how she serves the dish as a complete meal.

In Part 2, the Chans share their nutrition tips for making a Paleo-Zone diet work.

“I can’t recommend a food processor enough,” Matt says as he makes short work of the vegetables they need for their meals.

They store the excess in the fridge to easily add carbohydrate blocks to any meal.

“We’ve both found that we both need a minimum of one block of vegetables in carbohydrates,” Matt says of each meal they eat in a day. “It’ll sustain us longer, we don’t get hungry as quickly, and it actually assists with our digestion a little bit better than all the fruit does.”

To make your own chicken salad, download the recipe here.

Part 1
6min 09sec

Part 2
4min 59sec

Additional reading: CFJ Issue 21: Zone Meal Plans by Greg Glassman, published May 1, 2004.

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BracketBuster success could help CAA land three NCAA bids

When George Mason finished practice and returned to its Cedar Falls hotel Friday night on the eve of its matchup with Northern Iowa, the Patriots noticed a TV in the lobby had on the Virginia Commonwealth-Wichita State game.  

For the last few minutes of the second half, the George Mason players huddled around the TV, cheering for every VCU bucket or defensive stop.

"I really enjoyed seeing that," George Mason coach Jim Larranaga said by phone. "There's a real loyalty there among the CAA schools. Our guys wanted to cheer for VCU knowing how important it is for the league to earn respect nationally.

There was plenty for Colonial Athletic Association members to celebrate this past weekend because the conference flexed its muscles in its BracketBuster matchups. The top six teams from the CAA went 5-1, raising hopes that the league could produce three NCAA tournament teams for the first time ever.

VCU pulled off a surprising 68-67 road win at Missouri Valley Conference co-leader Wichita State on Friday night.  

George Mason rallied from a 10-point deficit at Northern Iowa the following day despite an off game from leading scorer Cam Long.

And Old Dominion withstood a 35-point onslaught from Cleveland State guard Norris Cole to emerge with a 74-63 victory.

Only three times in its history has the CAA even placed two teams in the NCAA tournament, yet SI.com's latest mock bracket projects George Mason as a No. 7 seed, Old Dominion as a No. 8 and VCU as a No. 11. Larranaga said the strength of the league is comparable to the benchmark 2006 season when the CAA landed Final Four-bound George Mason and UNC Wilmington in the NCAA tournament and just missed having Hofstra join them.

"Based on the number of all-conference performers returning, I anticipated this was going to be maybe the best season in the conference's history," Larranaga said. "As I watched the non-conference games, I was convinced this could be the best CAA ever, and nothing has changed my mind about it so far."

Respect for the CAA has gradually increased the past five years because the league has enjoyed success in the NCAA tournament. Besides George Mason's ubiquitous Final Four run, VCU toppled Duke in the first round in 2007 and Old Dominion upset Notre Dame last season.

While Old Dominion defeated Clemson, Xavier and Richmond in non-league play and VCU knocked off UCLA on a neutral floor, it's George Mason that's playing the best of the three right now. The Patriots won by 17 at home against Old Dominion on Feb. 5 and by 20 at VCU 10 days later, extending a win streak that has now reached 13 games. 

Saturday's win at Northern Iowa may have been the most challenging victory of the streak simply because of the adversity George Mason had to endure to achieve it.

Forward Ryan Pearson was sick the previous day and didn't practice yet scored 21 points and grabbed 15 boards. Guard Andre Cornelius aggravated a shoulder injury and got kicked in the stomach hard enough that he vomited on the floor yet he tallied a game-high 24 points.

That was enough for George Mason to withstand a quiet eight-point game from Long and a barrage of 3-pointers from Northern Iowa, enabling the Patriots to emerge with a 77-71 road victory.

"We found a way to win," Larranaga said. "I think it showed a lot of character on our part."

When Larranaga checked his phone after the game, he had a congratulatory text from Drexel coach Bruiser Flint. It was yet another sign that the CAA programs understand how important this weekend was to the perception of their league. 

"Three weeks before Selection Sunday, you want to leave a good impression on the members of the committee with how your team performs and how your league performs," Larranaga said.

For both George Mason and the CAA, it's mission accomplished.

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DEATH TO BACKBOARDS

THAT IS ALL

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Meet the New Boss: Grading the class-hopping coaching hires

A weeklong grade book for the offseason coaching hires. Today: Established head coaches moving up the career ladder at more prominent jobs.

• Jerry Kill (Minnesota)
Coming from: Northern Illinois, fresh off matching the school record for wins in a season (10), broken in Kill's absence with the Huskies' blowout win over Fresno State in the Humanitarian Bowl.
Replacing: Tim Brewster, who became first coaching casualty of 2010 in the midst of a 1-6 start that brought his record in Minneapolis to 15-30 in three-and-a-half years, with losses along the way at the hands of Bowling Green, Florida Atlantic, North Dakota, South Dakota and, yes, Northern Illinois.
Most Impressive Resumé Line: Besides being named "Kill," he's been a consistent winner at all four stops in 17 seasons as a head coach: Only one of Kill's teams in that span (Southern Illinois in 2005) failed to at least match the record of the team before it, and even the '05 Salukis earned a share of the Gateway Conference championship and the third of five straight trips to the I-AA/FCS playoffs.
Biggest Drawback: Kill's three-year stint at NIU was his first foray onto the I-A/FBS stage after more than 25 years winding throughout the lower levels, but at 50, he's hardly an up-and-comer. He's also faced some persistent health issues over the last five years, .
Key Intangible(s): Sets a new, daunting standard for head coaches who closely resemble the school mascot.
Grade: A–. There aren't many coaches on the market with a career record (127-73) more than 50 games over .500, even if the vast majority of the wins came in small-college obscurity. Assuming the Gophers aren't going to be challenging for Big Ten titles under pretty much any circumstances (last Rose Bowl: 1961, the longest drought in the conference), Kill is a steady presence that can give them a solid string of bowl games and the occasional run at something bigger, without the wholesale collapses that bookended the Brewster era.

• TODD GRAHAM (Pittsburgh)
Coming from: Tulsa, where the Golden Hurricane won at least 10 games and a share of the Conference USA West title in three of Graham's four seasons.
Replacing: Mike Haywood, who lasted 17 days on the job before being fired over a felony domestic assault charge on New Year's Eve. On the heels of five lackluster years under Dave Wannstedt, the bar couldn't be much lower.
Most Impressive Resumé Line: In addition to the division titles, Graham's winning teams at Tulsa also led the nation in total offense twice (2007-08) and finished in the top six in both total and scoring offense three times, in 2007-08 and 2010.
Biggest Drawback: Graham's background is on defense – Tulsa's outsized success on offense in 2007-08 was largely attributed to his co-offensive coordinators, Gus Malzahn and Herb Hand. The Hurricane defense never finished higher than 74th nationally in Graham's four seasons, and twice finished in the bottom twenty.
Key Intangible(s): Has never been arrested.
Grade: B+. Graham's record speaks for itself: His only team at Rice rebounded from a 1-10 flop to end a 45-year bowl drought in 2006; his first two teams at Tulsa both played for the C-USA championship in 2007-08; after a 5-6 mulligan in 2009, his last team at UT upset Notre Dame to kickstart a seven-game winning streak to close the season, and averaged upwards of 500 yards and 40 points per game without Malzahn or Hand on staff. Under the circumstances, the Panthers weren't going to do much better in a search that began abruptly in January.

• PETE LEMBO (Ball State)
Coming from: Elon, a small, church-affiliated school in North Carolina, where Lembo led seven wins over ranked FCS teams in five seasons and took the Phoenix to the I-AA/FCS playoffs for the first time.
Replacing: Stan Parrish, who went 6-19 over two seasons in his first head coaching gig since leading Kansas State into infamy as the nation's most hopeless program in the late eighties.
Most Impressive Resumé Line: Before raising Elon from the ashes, Lembo earned a national coach of the year nod in 2001, his first year as a head coach, for leading Lehigh to a perfect regular season and the quarterfinals of the national playoffs. He took the Mountain Hawks back to the playoffs in 2004.
Biggest Drawback: Has no experience in any capacity above the I-AA/FCS level.
Key Intangible(s): Considers Ball State a significant step up.
Grade: B+. Even Ball State fans aren't that jazzed about a balding, bespectacled guy they'd never heard of before he was handed the keys to their ailing program. But Lembo only has one losing season in nine years as a head coach (his first season at Elon, in which the Phoenix improved from 3-8 in 2005 to 5-6) and has the best career winning percentage (.687) by a mile of any new coach with previous experience hired this offseason.

• AL GOLDEN (Miami)
Coming from: Temple, black hole in which Golden was able to bring some light in the form of the school's first back-to-back winning seasons in 30 years.
Replacing: Randy Shannon, whose substantial improvements to the Hurricanes' academic and criminal records were easily overshadowed by his team's clear step back last year in a make-or-break campaign.
Most Impressive Resumé Line: Did we mention back-to-back winning seasons at Temple? The year before Golden's arrival, the Owls were 0-11 in 2005 and had just been booted from the Big East for a solid decade of all-purpose futility. Golden won almost as many games (17) in his last two seasons in Philly as his predecessor, Bobby Wallace, won in eight (19).
Biggest Drawback: Has a losing record in limited experience as a head coach (27-34 over five years), and only two of those wins came against teams that finished with a winning record – Navy in 2009 and BCS-bound UConn last September.
Key Intangible(s): Comes from square-jawed roots under mentors Tom O'Brien, Joe Paterno (as a player and coach) and Al Groh, and reportedly has players "fired up" by Golden's hands-on emphasis on discipline.
Grade: B. Considering he was perpetually floated as a possible replacement for Joe Paterno at his alma mater, it's not like Miami went out on a limb for a neophyte – at least Golden comes with experience as a head coach, unlike the 'Canes' last two hires, Shannon and Larry Coker. But they're clearly more interested in striking, uh, gold with an up-and-comer hitting the prime of his career than in a more accomplished resumé.

• BRADY HOKE (Michigan)
Coming from: San Diego State, fresh from the Aztecs' first winning season in more than a decade in Hoke's second year.
Replacing: Rich Rodriguez, a competent profession who found himself in a wrong place/wrong time situation with the deck stacked against him from day one or a ham-fisted sadist who systematically detonated the century-old pillars of Michigan Football, depending on your perspective. Whatever the baby steps the Wolverines were taking over the course of Rich Rod's tenure, they were effectively negated by the catastrophic ending.
Most Impressive Resumé Line: It took a while, but Hoke finally broke through at Ball State with a 12-0 regular season in 2008, his sixth season in Muncie, and quickly raised SDSU from the embarrassment of the Chuck Long era. But his advocates in Michigan seem at least as impressed by his stint as defensive line coach on Lloyd Carr's staff from 1995-2002, and on the Wolverines' 1997 national championship team, in particular.
Biggest Drawback: Also has a losing record as a head coach: 47-50 over eight years, with three winning seasons to five that finished sub-.500.
Key Intangible(s): Has a connection to the pre-Rodriguez era, is known and liked in Michigan circles, more or less openly lobbied for the job and said he'd walk from San Diego to Ann Arbor if necessary. Says all the right things to establish himself as the anti-Rodriguez.
Grade: B–. The Wolverines should be significantly better this fall, regardless of the coach: They get back a huge number of starters. a star quarterback and a defense that must improve as a matter of statistical inevitability. But (successes notwithstanding) Hoke doesn't have many skins on the wall for a job of this caliber and comes across as something of a sentimental, "family" hire, which will only sustain warm feelings among the faithful until the ball is snapped.

- - -
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Remembering Lumpy

Seattle firefighters do a Hero WOD in full bunkers to honor a fallen comrade, while a man CrossFits to help him cope with his brother’s death. Andréa Maria Cecil reports.

“It seems kind of common with my experience in CrossFit: things will just happen, and it turns out beautiful and terrible at the same time.”

Those are the words of Jay Roughton, a Seattle firefighter and owner of CrossFit All In in Lake Steven, Wash. His description was of the day he and four fellow firefighters at Station 37 of the Seattle Fire Department did a WOD.

But not just any WOD. A Hero WOD—one bearing the name “Brenton.”

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Hardy's heroics keep magical run at MSG going for St. John's

Was Dwight Hardy inbounds? Did one of those two heels touch down? Should the basket have counted at all? Why wasn't it reviewed?

Arguing it is a moot point. The fact is that St. John's played the role of David to perfection yet again, slaying its fifth Top 10 foe at Madison Square Garden this season.

Hardy, off of a nice stop-and-go move on the baseline in the closing seconds, dropped in a bucket from underneath the rim to give the Johnnies a 60-59 victory in front of a packed crowd over No. 4 Pitt on Saturday afternoon.

It was the first time this season that the Panthers have fallen on the road. Meanwhile, for Steve Lavin's club, it's quickly becoming no longer a question as to whether they'll be in the field of 68, but rather how high a seed they can secure.

Hardy lifted St. John's to 17-9 overall and 9-5 in the Big East, and in the process, the the Bronx-bred senior bolstered his case to creep into the conference's Player of the Year conversation.

St. John's took advantage of a bevy of calls made their way in the second half, and Hardy led that effort by going 10-of-12 from the stripe. He scored 19 points, and during the team's current four-game win steak is averaging 24.5 a game.

Hardy is one of nine seniors on the roster this season, and, sure, there will likely be some growing pains next season, despite Lavin having one of the nation's deepest and most impressive recruiting classes lined up.

But next year's group will benefit from something those on their way out have accomplished, and that's making the Garden one of the Big East's toughest road venues again.

Even watching on TV, it was clear that the atmosphere there was absolutely insane, and it's certainly played a role in recent home victories over Duke, UConn, Georgetown, Notre Dame and, of course, Pitt.

The Johnnies have a better than good shot at reaching 20 wins now before next month's Big East tournament. They still get to host league bottom-feeders DePaul and South Florida and will play on the road against No. 15 Villanova and Seton Hall.

A few final nuggets from this one …

• The lone offensive bright spot for Pitt, oddly enough, was junior guard Ashton Gibbs, who played for the first time in two weeks after suffering a sprained right knee. There was no easing the team's leading scorer back in, as he played 34 minutes and poured in a career-high 26 points. But outside of his effort, the team was 13-of-32 from the floor and 1-of-9 from 3-point range.

• We have a Justin Burrell of 2007-08 sighting, folks. The senior forward, whose average point total has gradually declined since a promising freshman year, scored 15 points in a variety of ways. He victimized Pitt's Gary McGhee, who looked very slow against the smaller Burrell. Future Pitt opponents should take note of this.

• How long until other coaching staffs adopt the suits and sneakers look that Lavin & Co. are riding on this hot streak just for superstition's sake? The staff has kept it up since last month's Coaches vs. Cancer weekend. It started with the 93-78 blowout of Duke, and the Johnnies' staff has not gone back. They're 6-1 while shunning the penny loafers.

• OK, because it can't be completely ignored, here's a screen grab from the ESPN replay of the final bucket by Hardy.

From up top, both of his heels are clearly hovering above the base line, at the very least. But did either one touch down? We may never know.

Ryan Greene also covers UNLV and the Mountain West Conference for the Las Vegas Sun. Read his Rebels coverage and follow him on Twitter.

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Andrew Bernstein on Stress: Parts 5-6

In this multipart series, Andrew Bernstein, author of The Myth of Stress, presents to CrossFit athletes and coaches his process of dealing with stress.

In Part 5, Bernstein concludes his breakdown of stress over traffic jams. Using the worksheet, the participants discover that the truth of the situation is in reality, at this time, the traffic should be there.

“The reality is we’ve got things out there we want to change, but when we experience them as problems and we get emotionally charged, we try to change that from anger or frustration, and it’s not a very efficient way to move,” Bernstein says. According to him, the worksheets help bring realization.

“Now instead of a problem, we can say there’s a situation. There is still something there, but it doesn’t have the negative emotional charge,” he says.

In Part 6, Bernstein describes when the worksheet is the most helpful.

“The time when you would want to do this on paper is when something lingers,” he says.

According to Bernstein, stress triggers tend to cluster.

“Start with the most charged one,” he says.

He also advises to start with those involving others before tackling those that more directly involve you. According to the expert, the root of most of our stress is the concept of “should.”

“The combination of your brain, your culture and your language sets you up to experience a lot of stress,” Bernstein says. But “it’s not inevitable. Because if you challenge the way that you think about things, you won’t experience stress.”

Part 5
9min 53sec

Part 6
11min 42sec

Additional reading: The Positive Impact of Physical Fitness on Emotional Fitness by Dr. Brooke R. Envick and Rick Martinez, published May 25, 2010.

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Colorado Upsets No. 5 Texas

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- Colorado overcame a 22-point first-half deficit to upset No. 5 Texas 91-89 on Saturday behind 33 points from Alec Burks and 21 from Levi Knutson.

Colorado (18-11, 7-7 Big 12) was down 48-33 at halftime, but the Longhorns (24-5, 13-2), who used their superior size and athleticism to take control early, suddenly were affected by the altitude and the Buffaloes' push-the-pace style that led to first-year coach Tad Boyle's biggest win in Boulder.

Because of issues at the free throw line - where Burks, an 84 percent shooter, missed eight shots - the Buffs had to sweat out the final minute.

The loss dropped Texas into a tie for first place in the Big 12 with No. 3 Kansas, which beat Oklahoma 82-70.

J'Covan Brown and Jordan Hamilton led Texas with 21 points each, but the Longhorns went 8 1/2 minutes without a field goal as Colorado climbed back into it behind Burks, who scored 11 in points a 14-0 run early in the second half.

Knutson scored 13 points after halftime and Burks scored 24 points in the second half.

The Buffaloes went ahead 81-70 on Austin Dufault's tip-in with less than 3 minutes remaining, but Texas wasn't about to go down quietly.

Brown hit three free throws with 38 seconds left to make it 85-80. After Knutson's two free throws, Hamilton's 3-pointer with 30 seconds left pulled Texas to 87-83.

Cory Higgins stepped on the baseline on the inbounds, turning the ball over with 29 seconds left, but Hamilton was long on a 3-pointer and Burks corralled his 10th rebound.

He missed his eighth free throw before making one to make it 88-83.

That's when Hamilton's long 3-pointer made it a two-point game with 18 seconds left.

Burks was fouled again with 14 seconds remaining and this time he made both for a 90-86 lead.

Hamilton misfired a 3-pointer and Higgins hit one of two foul shots, and Cory Joseph hit an uncontested 3 at the buzzer as the student section at the record fourth sellout at the Coors Events Center this season stormed the court.

The Buffs ended a six-game skid against Texas, which lost for the second time in three games.

Early on, it looked like a laugher for Texas, which took control with a 16-0 first half run and led 43-21 on Gary Johnson's three-point play.

After Dufault's jumper got Colorado within 45-31, Brown pulled up at the top of the key, calmly swished his fourth 3-pointer and then spun toward the crowd, smiling and admonishing them to "Shhh!" as he sauntered down court.

The Longhorns did little to quiet the crowd after that.

Colorado outrebounded Texas 43-39, outshot them 53 percent to 42 percent in the Longhorns' last visit to Boulder before the Buffaloes bolt to the Pac-12 next season.

 

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