FLAMED OUT

The Flames got doused tonight in front of a "crowd" of 27, including all 14 of us from "Sports and Social Media" (#sasm) class.

The Youngstown State Penguins' (Penguins, really?) tall guys were too tall for the UIC Flames and hit shots from outside too. The Youngstown State guards were too quick and created too many turnovers for coach Howard Moore's host team (5-11, 0-2 Horizon League).

The Flames fell behind by 1 point on a 3-point buzzer-beater at halftime and never recovered after leading scorer (prospectively only scorer?) Kelsey Barlow got hurt and sat out and by the time he came back it was out of reach and he was playing like someone who resembled Kelsey Barlow but wasn't Kelsey Barlow because of his injury, whatever it was. UIC scored 7 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half and went bye-bye, ultimately by a final of 75-62.

Meanwhile, mascot Sparky flirted with the girls, played around with the kids and kept smiles on people's faces, to his credit, considering the size of the crowd and the temperature outside.

A few blocks away, the Luol Deng-less Bulls were surprising the Phoenix Suns. Much further away, Creighton was handling DePaul.

And if Northwestern played, they lost. Or will lose. Probably.

Tonight was about finding out what the Sports for Social Media kids (#sasm) could do online and in class, what they could write, coherently, and spell and punctuate and tweet. Like what I see so far but much reading to do the next few days.

Tomorrow we'll find out if they can blog. If they can't, they'll learn how, a lot how, next Monday when they blog away 5 hours (hint, hint, kids, write well, write carefully, proofread, spelling and grammar count and I've got the abacus out).

I'd suggest to my kids they study some other Twitter trails and blogs (Columbia grad Graham Couch at the Lansing, Mich., State Journal on Michigan State's game versus Ohio State last night) and my Juice This blog at thesportspost.com and David Haugh on anything and everything at the Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald sports beat writers like Tim Sassone (Blackhawks) and Mike McGraw (Bulls).

Oh, I work there too.

See you kids at a prep game, well some of you. Remember, grades for J-Term are due the last Saturday in January, so get's get to work. The sooner you write your blog, the better and the more you remember (like tonight or tomorrow, preferably).

Hugs,

HS