maly, too: Bulldogs Play Unbeaten California At Anaheim

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Bulldogs Play Unbeaten California At Anaheim

Game 3 • vs. California • #Drake vs/ CALIFORNIA

Nov. 22, 2012 • 10:30 p.m. CST

Anaheim Convention Center • Anaheim, Calif.

Drake Team California

Des Moines Location Berkeley, Calif.

Bulldogs Nickname Golden Bears

1-1 2012-13 Record 3-0

0-0 MVC Conference Record 0-0 Pac-12

NA/NA Ranking NA/NA

Mark Phelps Head Coach Mike Montgomery

63-70/5th Record at School 91-47/5th

63-70/5th Career Record 637-291/31st

87.5 Points/Game 76.3

75.5 Opp. Points/Game 62.7

+12.0 Scoring Margin +13.7

.526 FG% .491

.405 Opp. FG% .379

.524 3FG% .429

.229 Opp. 3FG% .358

.611 FT% .730

34.0 Rebounds/Game 41.7

36.5 Opp. Rebounds/Game 34.0

-2.5 Rebounding Margin +7.7

14.5 Assists/Game 13.7

17.5 Turnovers/Game 13.7

-3.0 Turnover Margin -1.0

6.0 Steals/Game 3.3

2.5 Blocks/Game 3.7

Television ESPN2/ESPN3

Play-by-play Dave Flemming

Analyst Sean Farnham

Radio KRNT 1350-AM

Play-by-play Larry Cotlar

Analyst Dolph Pulliam

Streaming Video www.ESPN3.com

• The Drake basketball squad travels to Southern California for the first of three games in four days at the DIRECTV Classic in Anaheim, Calif.

• Drake opens play in the eight-team tournament on Thursday night against California. The squad will then face either Georgia Tech or Rice on Friday and a team to be determined on Sunday.

• The Bulldogs open the tournament with a 1-1 record on the young season thanks to a season opening win over Division II William Jewell and a hard-fought 85-79 loss at projected Horizon League contender Detroit last Saturday.

• California is 3-0 on the season with wins over CSU-Bakersfield, Pepperdine and at Denver.

• The Golden Bears were tabbed to finish third in the Pac-12 preseason poll behind Arizona and UCLA.

• Thursday’s game has the potential to feature two high-scoring offenses as Drake has averaged 87.5 points per game this season while the Bears check in at 76.3 points per game and are shooting 49.1 percent compared with the Bulldogs’ 52.6 percent clip from the field.

• Drake returns five players who gained starting experience last season along with eight talented newcomers.

• Drake and Cal have met four times, most recently in 1985. Cal leads the all-time series by a 3-1 margin.

• Drake is in the DIRECTV Classic for the first time in program history. Last season, the Bulldogs competed in the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands as their regular-season tournament.

• Drake has one player on its roster with area ties in Gary Ricks, Jr., who is originally from Los Angeles.

A VICTORY would ...

• Make Drake 2-1 this season for its second straight 2-1 start.

• Be Drake’s second victory over Cal and make the Bulldogs 2-3 against the Bears.

• Make Drake 11-13 against current members of the Pac-12.

• Make Mark Phelps 64-70 at Drake.

• Be the 1,151th victory in program history.

A Loss would ...

• Drop Drake to 1-2 on the season and 0-2 away from the Knapp Center.

• Make Cal 4-1 against the Bulldogs.

• Make Drake 10-14 all-time against current members of the Pac-12.

Vs. the PAC-12

• Drake is 10-13 all-time against current members of the Pac-12.

• Colorado, Cal and Utah are the most common opponents with Drake facing the trio four times each.

• Drake has a .500 or better record against five of the 10 Pac-12 teams it has faced.

SoCal Connections

• Drake’s visit to sunny Southern California will be a homecoming for certain members of the Bulldogs’ roster.

• Junior Gary Ricks, Jr. is originally from Los Angeles and played at Sylmar High School before attending Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa.

• Freshman Daddy Ugbede, a native of Nigeria, played his senior season of high school at Junipero Serra High School and lived in Gardena, Calif. At Junipero Serra, he averaged 15.3 points and 6.8 rebounds per game to help the team to a 31-3 record and a 4AA title.

• Assistant coach Chris Brazelton grew up in Highland, Calif., where he graduated from Redlands East Valley High School. He began his college career at UC Santa Cruz before transferring to Fresno State. Prior to joining the Drake staff, he spent five seasons on staff at UC Riverside.

Cal/Drake Connection

• Cal redshirt sophomore Ricky Kreklow’s father, Wayne Kreklow, was a Drake standout from 1975-79 and earned all-conference honors for the Bulldogs.

• He scored the fourth-most points in a single game in Drake history with 43 against Memphis on Dec. 16, 1978 and led the team in scoring in 1978 and 1979.

• He is seventh all-time in scoring at Drake with 1,471 career points.

• His uncle, Mike Kreklow, also suited up for the Bulldogs and was the most accurate free-throw shooter in the history of the program.

Picking up the pace

• Drake’s offense has had 80 or more possessions in its first two games of the season and is averaging 83 possessions per game.

• That pace is the third fastest pace in the nation and the fastest in the Missouri Valley Conference.

• Last season the Bulldogs only played at an 80-possession or greater pace once.

• In the opener against William Jewell, the Bulldogs scored 1.19 points per possession and scored on approximately 52 percent of their offensive possessions.

• Against Detroit, Drake scored 0.95 points per possession and scored on 42.5 percent of its possessions.

[This story was written for Ron Maly by Ty Patton, Drake's assistant athletic director for communications].

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.