Let's blog away, let's blog, let's blog away

Let's take a look at two different blogs from rival schools, Arizona State and Arizona. Since the Sun Devils beat the Wildcats 3-0, there should be an interesting contrast between the two.

First, Ali Lund has an entry for the Sun Devils, where she tell us how they prepared for the Wildcats.

"University of Arizona is our biggest in-state rival!"

WHAT?! More of a rival than Mesa Community College? More than the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine & Health Sciences?

So, OK, the team was preparing for their "biggest in-state rival." And the preparation? "We watched video of the Wildcats playing and for fun we had a paper airplane contest."

OK...

"On Friday we cracked a piñata...made by our lovely Assistant Coach Giovanna Melo."

There you have it. The best way to prepare for your rival? Paper airplanes and piñatas. Saindon is a GENIUS, and apparently Melo is some kind of papier-mache wunderkind.

So ASU won the match 3-0, and Lund says that the crowd was outstanding: "it's always so refreshing to look out into the stands and see a sea of maroon and gold with signs to cheer you on."

Was this match at Florida State?

Very peppy! Good stuff!

"WOW! What a week it has been for ASU Volleyball!!"

Now let's compare this to Arizona's player blog, written by Brooke Buringrud:

"It seems like each week these blogs get harder and harder to write."

Uh-oh...

"College volleyball is a lot different than what high school or club was like. Here, you lose a game and you can’t escape it…it’s on television, it’s in the papers, you go and get your car washed and they want to know who you played and if you won."

Well, it can't be all that bad, right? I mean, there's still the boundless joy of a toasted bagel in the morning, right?

"Even my morning bagel comes with a comment on Friday’s game."

Oh...sorry.

But Brooke rallies at the end, letting us know that "we are keeping our heads up" and she's sure that Arizona is "capable of being a top team."

"We’re still looking for that checkered flag, but when we find it, you will definitely know."

After all, tomorrow is, another day!

Totally unfair characterization of Paige Weber's quote

"The returning girls on this team - I know they want a shot at this again after a rough year last year - and I want to help them get what is rightfully theirs."
- Arizona freshman Paige Weber, on their upcoming match against UCLA.

Hm. "Rightfully." Really? How, how do ya' figure? Did UCLA steal the 44 wins out of 60 matches that they've gotten against Arizona? I guess I missed that part of the Bible where Moses said unto the Hebrews that the Wild Cats of the Tu-Sahn desert shalt verily smite the creatures of the Western Woods.

Dave Rubio wants 2 B your BFF, IMHO

You may be aware that there's a movement out there to regulate text messaging of athletic recruits. Anna Chappel, a former Arizona basketball player and chair of the Division I student-athlete advisory committee, claims that student-athletes want text messages eliminated.

"If you don't stop it now, what roads are you going to have to cross later on?" she said in an Arizona Daily Star article.

Very ominous.

But Dave Rubio has a different opinion. He's much more down with the youth of today.

"The preferred way of communicating for young people today is by text messaging," he said.

That's our Davey. He sounds like the editor of Teen Vogue making an appearance on the "Today" show, doesn't he?

"Coming up, Matt makes cool summer finger sandwiches, Al will have the latest weather, and Meredith Vieira talks with Teen Vogue's Dave Rubio on all the hot new trends with today's teens. That's later, on 'Today.'"

Baum back in the hizzouse

Arizona's Kristina Baum has been granted a medical redshirt, making her eligible for one final year of action.

Baum tore her ACL last year. We can only hope we'll read her cries of joy on her "Baumer's Blog" because her writing is different than most; it's entertaining. Right now she has a sonnet about Arizona's spring trip to Hawaii, along with a handy-dandy stanza-by-stanza explanation of said poem.

I appreciate the decoding because I'm honestly not sure I could figure out what this means:

Napping at noon, too many pictures, having a purse stole,
Get into bed with a dig and a roll.

(FYI, it's apparently not about falling asleep in the middle of the day after too much attention from paparazzi, your only comfort coming from a scarf with compartments for your wallet, lipstick, and chewing gum. Assorted breads join you in bed.)

The only other source of confusion, if we're being reeeeallly picky, like 7th grade English picky, is the following:

Stanza 4: I think everyone brought back Macadamia nuts for someone back home which were found everywhere even in menus.

For a moment I thought the people back home were found "everywhere even in menus." That's just me. I have issues with misplaced modifiers that are deep-seeded.

Bre Ladd hits mainstream entertainment news: Yippee?

Apparently there's a rumor out there that Arizona alum Luc Walton is dating Britney Spears. Only there's one problem: Walton is dating former Arizona volleyball player Bre Ladd.

Is he better off with Ladd? Let's take a look:


OK, kinda unfair using that photo of Spears. So let's take a look at some pros and cons with Britney:

Pro: Britney's shown herself capable of being smokin' hot.
Con: Not lately she hasn't. (And isn't it interesting that Natalie Portman could pull off the shaved head look, but Spears...can't?)

Pro: Trips to Maui at the drop of a hat.
Con: Trips to rehab clinics in even less time.

Pro: Get to swing with the hot, young Hollywood elite.
Con: Smalltalk with the hot, young Hollywood elite.

It's kinda like choosing between young Elvis and Vegas Elvis. You have to either pick pre-K-Fed Spears or post-K-Fed.

As for Ladd, how can you go wrong? She's modest: According to a 2002 Daily Wildcat newspaper article, her most embarrassing moment was when her "bathing suit top fell off in the water in Rocky Point." That's a normal Tuesday night for Spears.

In the same article Ladd says the first thing she does in the morning is brush her teeth. Spears probably freaks out about the latest paparazzi photo/rumor, drives to get coffee with a child on her lap, then tries to decide which wig to wear that day.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm taking Ladd, every time.

Wait: What happened to Burkholder?

We're not big into conspiracy theories, but a press release about Allison Napier becoming the new assistant coach at Arizona that doesn't mention why the previous one (who happens to be the best setter in the program's history) left is just odd. No, not JFK/grassy knoll odd, not Area 51 odd, but odd nonetheless.

Afterall, even if Burkholder simply decided she didn't want to coach anymore, wouldn't being the best Wildcat setter ever warrant a "So long and thanks for all the fish" press release at the very least?

Did Burkholder enter the witness protection program? Did she snitch on the mob and is now a postal worker in North Dakota somewhere? Is she CIA? Is she...(gulp) Scully?

Where for art thou, Burkholder!

Attn. UWBadgers.com: This is "Where Are They Now?"

The Arizona volleyball website, in an obvious effort to one-up the Wisconsin website, has posted a Where Are They Now? story about former Wildcat Stephanie Rempe.

First sign that it's a better effort than Wisconsin's? Rempe isn't a volleyball coach that you see nearly every weekend. She is in athletics, however, as associate A.D. and S.W.A. at Oklahoma. Rempe is also a marathon runner, member of some Stiletto gang, etcetera.

It's quite an illustrious and interesting career she's had so far, and one that most Wildcat fans are probably glad to read about.

Now, hop to it, Pete: Pauline Bresky. Where is she these days?

Did you put the Baum on? Who told you to put the Baum on?

There's a new update to Arizona Wildcat Kristina Baum's blog, but we don't want to give it too much pub because she's mocking us by throwing her team's spring break trip to Hawaii in our face.

Baum back in the hizzouse

The doldrums of the off-season just got a little perkier with the return of...Baumer's Blog! This is the diary of Arizona Wildcat standout Kristina Baum, who is not lacking for personality or confidence (rollshot.com article? Can I get a witness?). Baum's entries are pretty good, as this past fall she documented her ACL and meniscus tear and subsequent rehab progress, as well as her hope to be granted a medical redshirt.

Among her better entries:

Alright, alright. I’m back. So I took a little break, okay? Geez. When you get sliced open, have a dead person’s tendon or ligament (something, I forgot what it’s called) put in your body, have some cartilage snipped off, and then get stapled back together all why you’re sleeping... ummm... I think I deserve a break.

Mmm...dead person's tendon...that's good stuff.