Holiday Greetings, Cougies!
The McBoob children were happy to see Santa Butch last week on the CdA lights cruise. May your holiday be filled with cheer and good will; and may your kids be cute as mine.
It’s Day 4 of Invasion of the In-Laws ’07 at the McBoob residence. The bad news is that I gave up my mattress pad for the guest bed and my back is killing me. The good news is that Auntie Doris is taking me to the casino tomorrow. Karma, guys – it’s a beautiful thing.
Not only is Coach Mac an accomplished artist (remember these t-shirts?), 
he can also coach a little bit. Jason just wrapped up his 4th season as O-Line coach of Montana State, where he is credited with putting together one of the best lines in the program’s history. Among his pupils was Jeff Bolton, the 2005 Rimington Award winner for 1-AA. Bolton, who played only 6 games as a center in college “gives credit to his versatility as a lineman to his offensive line coach Jason McEndoo, who came to MSU at the start of Bolton’s sophomore year. “He was an amazing coach. He taught me almost everything I know about playing offensive line,” Bolton said. “All my technique and everything I owe to him.” (Idaho Mountain Express, 2/28/05)
When a coaching change occurs, there’s a lot of adjustment and learning that happens for both the players and the coaches. When McEndoo arrived at MSU in 2003, he inherited a group that included Brent Swaggert, who would go on to earn first-team Big Sky honors that year and has since bounced around the NFL. The coach recognized that in his situation as “the new guy,” he could learn from his players as much as they could learn from him, saying of Swaggert “The most important thing about Brent is his leadership, and his ability to talk to the young guys and help them through situations. That really helps me.” (msubobcats.com)
So what are we getting in McEndoo? First and foremost, a Coug. But also a young coach with enthusiasm; knowledge of the game (MSU employed a zone blocking scheme, similar to the Denver Broncos); the ability to coach-up young players and the versatility to help them achieve award status; AND a guy who is not afraid to delegate some of the responsibilities for the unit to his upper-classmen. With our mix of experience and youth on the line in ‘o8, I’m pretty pleased with this hire – and it helped to find out that over the last few years McEndoo has paid a few visits to Coach Yarno for some pointers.
Bud Nameck has really improved his play-by-play but you can tell the difference between a really good play-by-play guy and one who’s a little less experienced by how they handle time-outs and breaks in play. A seasoned vet continues to break down the game, and provide other insight that may have been quickly skipped-over during the rapid pace of the game. Nameck, on the other hand, was giving play-by-play of every on-court promo that took place – in great detail. I don’t care that some schmo just won an X-Box for hitting a half-court shot; I want to know how many elbows Aron Baynes has thrown .
I placed a call to my little gay friend, Poo during the game and he was sitting with the Mayor of Mt Vernon (2012) courtside, right behind Kevin Durant. Did anyone (who knows him) see him?
At the end of the game, Bud was all excited and emphatically proclaimed “… the undeafeated, 6th-ranked Cougs head to Pocatello, Idaho!” Did anyone else hear this? I’m as excited as the next guy about the status of our basketball team but Pocatello, Idaho doesn’t have quite the same credibility as Durham, North Carolina, does it? I hope this soft non-conference schedule doesn’t come back to bite us.
QUESTION:
Playing in front of what kind of crowd, will better prepare your team for Pac10 League play: A or B?
A
B
One last thought from last night’s game. Being new to this whole “We’re a Basketball School” thing you’ll need to bear with me… With a 30-point lead in the second half, against a team of 5 Freshmen, is it still cool for the crowd to chant “You Got Swatted!”; or like a booger in your grandma’s nose, do you just politely pretend not to see it? We need to know these things.
Merry Christmas, Cougs!
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