In Europe, they call exhibition games "friendlies." They're warming up for the World Basketball Championships, and we had one friendly between Greece and Serbia that wasn't friendly at the end; a baseball-style bench-clearing brawl broke out, and Serbia's Nenad Krstic (formerly of New Jersey and now with Oklahoma City) got out his inner Bobby Knight and threw a chair... at a Greek player. He spent a day in gaol for his outburst; don't do that on the other country's home turf.
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The US was better received in it's two-game set in Spain this weekend. They got off to a slow start Saturday before comfortably handling Lithuania; the closest thing to nasty they had was a flagrant foul by the Lithuanians on Rudy Gay on a fast break.
The Lithuanians had a gambling web site logo on the backs of their jerseys. It's a step back from 1992, where the Grateful Dead sprung for a tie-die Deadhead-style uni.
Sunday, the Spanish team took the US to the wire before losing by one. The Spaniards play NBA caliber ball, even with Pau Gasol out. They had Ricky Rubio coming off the bench for them, and he looked all the world like the guy Minnesota spent a lottery pick on last year. He can start on most NBA teams at either the 1 or 2 right now and might have been the best point guard in the building yesterday.
The US will have to have all hands on deck in 2012 if they want to win the Olympics, for the second string of stars that are playing in this year's team may not be enough to beat Rubio and both Gasol brothers in 2012. Any rematch in Turkey will be on a neutral floor rather than the home game Spain had today, but a win is no shoo-in now that teams like Spain and Argentina can field teams that would go deep in the playoffs in the NBA.
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Interesting piece on the 3-4 reemerging as the defensive set of choice, or a 3-3-5 variant with a flexing safety-linebacker hybrid. I recall a number of teams would run a 4-2-5 with a middle-linebacker/safety hybrid in years past; Michigan used to call the flexman the wolfback
When you have more teams running spread offenses with four and five wide receivers (or people put out wide at least), it's hard to cover five receivers with seven non-down players. That creates at least three one-on-one coverages and plenty of gaps that can break down into big gains.
Plus, it's easier to get 250-ish linebackers than 300 pound down linemen.
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