These two were probably destined to play for the title. PSU ended the season as the #1 ranked team. But Stanford got the #1 seed in the tournament. PSU has now won 25 straight matches with their last loss coming September 15th against, you guessed it, Stanford. Stanford and Penn State are also the only two teams in the country who have made every NCAA tournament.
Stanford needed five games to win their semifinal match against USC, fighting off a match point in the fifth game to do it. Penn State, on the other hand, swept Cal in three, continuing the roll that they have been on since the start of the NCAAs. PSU got stronger in every game winning 30-28, 30-25, 30-16. Cal was actually the first team in the entire tournament to score 20 points on PSU – they have been that dominant.
The finals will be on ESPN2 Saturday night at 9PM EST. Unfortunately, that the same time that I’m having my fifth annual State College Santa Crawl (poor planning on my part). The good news is that I can maneuver the crawl so that we’ll just move from one bar to another between games so we should be able to catch most of the action anyway (weather permitting, that is, the forecast isn’t too good right now).
On a related side note, I was down at the Tavern last Saturday after watching PSU beat BYU for the regional crown when one of PSU’s players, Kate Price (Kate’s the one who went into the stands for that spectacular save that I mentioned last week), came in with some former players. I’ve known Kate for about three years now (her older teammates corrupted her and used to sneak her into some of the local taverns as a minor).
Kate begged me to show the others one of my tricks that I rarely do. It involves someone freely picking a card out of a deck, signing it, returning it to the deck, then shuffling the deck. After giving the deck back to me, I toss the deck into the air and the signed card winds up sticking to the ceiling. I don’t do the trick very often because it ruins the deck. In addition to the one card on the ceiling, the other fall to the floor and just scatter everywhere. Even if you bother picking the cards up off of the floor, they’re usually too messed up to use anymore. But it was near the end of the night, the deck I had was kind of messed up anyway, and Kate had just won a big match, so I relented.
One of the secrets of doing the trick is to make sure that you put it on a ceiling that’s high enough that someone can’t just pull the card down. The Tavern ceiling is about ten feet high so I figured I was safe. Wrong. I overlooked the fact that while Kate is a girl, she’s also 6’4″ tall and a top caliber NCAA athlete. The card stuck cleanly to the ceiling but as her girlfriends stood there staring at the card, Kate just took a running jump and cleanly picked it off of the ceiling. I was caught red-handed with wax stuck to the back of the card. Of course, they still couldn’t figure out how I found the card and got the wax on it, but a little bit of the awe and amazement was gone. Next time I need to remember not to underestimate my audience.
I actually watched some of that game last night. I saw that it was on and thought Mary Ann might be interested. I showed her, but she had already put on her PJs, so she went to bed. I then changed the channel.
A very impressive card trick.
But as I recall when you did this trick for us you just swiped the card across a damp, sweaty part of your anatomy. Where’d the wax come from? Good question!
You can use sweat to stick a card to a window or mirror (not by throwing it though – you need to prestick it). Actually the simplest thing for that is to use chapstick/lip gloss – you can carry it with you and no one would ever question why you have it. You swipe it across the back of your hand and your set.
I carry the wax with me – although I don’t have a particularly good container. I’ve actually improvised and use a brass screw cap from a ceiling light fixture and a screw top that I got off off a tube of ointment of some sort. I just put the was inside of both of the caps then stick the open ends together. One cap end fits just inside the other and the wax holds them together nicely. You only need a dab for the card to stick so the caps will hold plenty (I also use the wax for another trick or two which is the real reason I carry it but it’s usually with me in cast there’s a good opportunity to do the card on the ceiling thing).
Damn!! I’ve never seen that trick. And I’ve been telling the kids how UncleLar does magic, now you gotta come see them. We do take them to bars, y’know.
Ron – the game has really changed since Mary Ann played. I don’t know if you saw the intro promo or not, but that was kind of the theme of ESPN’s lead in. Legendary UCLA volleyball great Karch Kiraly was doing the color commentary. His angle was that this was an “old school” vs “new school” game. Cal’s Angie Pressey was Karch’s old school gal – he talked about how she was a 5’8″ outside hitter like the old days and it was rare to see that these days. He said that because of her 36″ vertical she could play above the net even though she was only 5’8″.
He then said Penn State was “new school” – that they were just as athletic, and could jump just like Pressey, but that they started out 6 or 7 inches taller (and what’s funny is that he was actually being conservative), so there was probably no way that Cal could compete.
For the record, Penn State’s outside hitters and blockers are:
Megan Hodge at 6’3″ – plus 7″ over Pressley
Nicolle Fawcett 6’4″ – plus 8″
Arielle Wilson 6’3″ – plus 7″
Blair Brown 6’4″ – plus 8″
Christa Harmotto 6’2″ – plus 6″
and these girls can JUMP. When you watch these kids it’s mind boggling how tall and athletic they are. There is nothing the least bit clumsy about any of them.