Catchin' up in Vegas

Now that the long day is over, I think I'll relax and do a blog update or two.

------------------------

First, I'll follow up on my brief stint as a celebrity. Since my last post about it, not too much has happened other than I did the Israel Sports Radio interview with Jasmine Marcus. It was a lot of fun, and it was great to talk to someone who was so interested. You can listen to the interview here (look for "Jumpshots with Jasmine- BYU sports editor JJ Despain, Ari Bluestein, Cornell squash club Dan O’Connor and YU basketball star Jeremy Pressman").

Oh, on my way to Las Vegas I was catching up on my podcasts. And I was sort of mentioned in one! It was the ESPNU College Basketball podcast, with Dana O'Neil and Eamonn Brennan. What was cool was that it was Dana who called me last week, but Eamonn who brought me up in the podcast. It's cool to think of all these people in Bristol talking about me.

Go to the podcast here and go to the 6:47 mark if you want to skip all the way to where I come in.

Also, a couple of friends from the newsroom are involved with a project called "Her Campus: A Collegiette's Guide to Life." It's like Seventeen magazine, but online and for college-age girls. Tiffany, Lauren and Darrian are involved with BYU's HerCampus.com site, and they have a "Campus Celebrities" section (not to be confused with the "Campus Cuties" section, haha). Anyway, Darrian asked me a few questions and I guess I'll be on their site! That should be cool. By being featured on a site somewhat linked to Seventeen, I'm well on my way to Justin Bieber's path to stardom.

The last thing is that I got some feedback from Cory Giger, the DJ at ESPN Radio 1450 AM. He sent me some direct messages on Twitter:

That was nice to hear from him again, although it's too bad he doesn't have that audio available. And it's nice that, even though he doesn't like the Honor Code, he's respectable about it.

------------------------

This weekend, I'm in Las Vegas for the Mountain West Conference basketball tournament. I'm here as a sports columnist representing The Daily Universe. And I've already cranked out three editorials!

1) Not down and out, just turning out

This one I wrote literally in the van while we were pulling into Las Vegas. I was very impressed to see how many BYU students were planning on coming to the tournament and supporting their Cougars, instead of writing off the season after the Brandon Davies announcement and the embarrassing New Mexico loss that followed.

2) Rams win would be a Cougars win too

Yesterday and this morning I was probably thinking more about the Colorado State vs. New Mexico game than the BYU vs. TCU game, to be honest. For some reason I've just been really intrigued by coach Tim Miles and the Rams this season. I was rooting for them to get into the NCAA Tournament, although it looks now like they've definitely missed that chance.

Anyway, I wrote this viewpoint to discuss how Colorado State could win against New Mexico (and why that would be good for us). I knew that the viewpoint would only be relevant for about six hours, haha. In fact, I don't know if it was ever published on the website, just on my blog. But I wrote it for fun, and now you guys can read it if you're interested.

3) Back on track to break the curse of the Lobos

This is what I wrote after it turned out Colorado State lost to New Mexico (after a really good fight). During both the BYU game and the Colorado State game, I was sort of struggling to think of what to write. But this is what I finally came up with. Hits newsstands in about six hours, but you can read it here first!

And it's too bad Colorado State didn't win, because I wrote two different beginnings to my editorial so that I would be ready for either outcome and I liked my Colorado State winning one better:

The Colorado State Rams overcame the New Mexico Lobos __-__ yesterday, even though they trailed about __ percent of the game.

Around the 12-minute mark in the second half, Wes Eikmeier made a big three that kept the Lobos from running away with a win. Eikmeier's shot was followed by a steal and breakaway layup from Pierce Hornung to take back the lead and make the score 47-46. ... New Mexico kept the game close, very close. The Lobos even grabbed the lead __ more times. But CSU coach Tim Miles and his Rams persevered and kept their finesse until the final buzzer.

While the Rams celebrated their miracle win, BYU was probably celebrating just as much.

During the conference season, BYU swept every team in the league but could not get past New Mexico. Fortunately for Cougar Nation, Colorado State nicely pushed them out of the way for us.