|
|
Lately, the volume of email that I receive with questions about this site has risen dramatically. So, I've thrown together this FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) to try to answer your questions before you resort to sending me more email.
- Who maintains this site?
- McD.
- How long have you been maintaining this site?
- I put together the beginnings of this site back in early 1995. The earliest reference to it on the Internet that I found on is a UseNet posting by Bryan Johnson dated January 29, 1996. Bryan went to Arizona State but he was a big UConn basketball fan. He used to post updated cummulative stats for each player following each game on a his web site and at one point he started the ambitious project of putting together a site with info about all the D-1 teams called "Center Court".
- Why do you go by the name McD?
- Those are my initials. It's also a way to drop the hint that I'm mostly Irish despite my German last name.
- Have there ever been any UConn players from Ledyard?
- Funny you should ask. Yes, although none have been starters. And Brett Rabideau, list-mistress of the <uconn-bball> email discussion list, also went to Ledyard High School (but she was there after I had graduated).
On a related note, I have two friends from my graduating class at Ledyard (1977) that are now, or have been, NCAA men's basketball head coaches (I wonder what the odds of that happening are?) - Mike Dutton is the current head coach at Vassar College (Div. III) and Ron Jirsa was the head coach at the University of Georgia (Div. I) for two years. He is now the senior assistant coach at the University of Dayton. Another friend from my class, Rob Dodson, played basketball at Bates College (Div. III).
And while we're on the subject of my days at LHS, Bob Schaefer, who was the Director of Player Development for the Boston Red Sox until he was fired by Dan Duquette in August, 1998 for reasons still unknown and prior to that a coach with the Mets and Royals (where he was an interim manager for a while), was my gym teacher.
How any of that has anything to do with UConn basketball, I have no idea.
- Do you work for UConn?
- No, although I did apply for an opening for a "Program Aide, Men's Basketball" back in February, 1996 (obviously, I didn't get that job).
- Does UConn have any affiliation with this site?
- No. I have no official connection to UConn.
- Do you know how to contact the UConn Athletic Department?
- Yes.
- Do you know how to contact Jim Calhoun?
- You can try contacting him through the UConn Athletic Department (see previous question).
- Do you know how to contact the Big East Conference?
- Yes.
- Do you know how to contact any members of The Horde?
- Here's a table of reporters and how I would contact them via email if I had to. In most cases the reporter has their own email address. In some cases there is a general email address for the Sports department or the whole paper. When that is the case I've added a predefined subject that reads "Attn: Reporter's Name". The name of the paper is linked to the best Contact Info page I could find for that paper.
- Do you have any suggestions on how I can find a sports or UConn related job?
-
You can also check the job openings for some CT newspapers on their web sites:
- Have you ever been contacted by current or former UConn basketball players regarding this site?
- Yes - James 'Tex' Spradling (UC '88), Willie McCloud (UC '89), and Steve Emt (UC '94) have all contacted me. I also know Kyle Chapman's (UC '97) father from a previous job.
- How long have you been a UConn basketball fan?
- My parents were both Ledyard High School basketball fanatics when I was in high school. When I first attended UConn in 1977 they caught the UConn basketball bug and were huge fans until they passed away in 1999 (thankfully, both of them lived to see UConn win the National Championship).
I attended UConn from Fall '77 through Fall '78 (I lived in Towers in Kingston, Room 305 for 2 semesters and then Room 405 for one semester after the dorm went co-ed), and again as a commuting student in Spring '83 and Spring '90 (but I eventually earned my degree elsewhere). During my time at UConn from '77-78 I was a passive fan of the UConn men's basketball team, but not a real big fan.
Then, in 1984 or 1985 a high school buddy of mine had 2 tickets to a Providence vs. Villanova game that was played at Providence College. That revived my interest in college basketball, which had diminished during the early 80's. I recall the following season ('84-'85) I was stuck driving somewhere during the championship game (I don't recall where I was going) and I had to pull over because I couldn't concentrate on driving with Villanova pulling off the big upset over Georgetown.
I finally became the true-blue Huskies fan that I am today during the '87-88 season. My sister had gotten married to a UConn alum with season tickets and we talked UConn basketball a lot that season and I went to a couple of games with them. I taped all of the NIT games that year. My brother-in-law called me up the day of the NIT final to tell me he had a ticket for me, but I had a final exam in a night class (Pascal computer programming) that I was taking. I called the instructor to tell him I had to miss the exam and asked if I could make it up some other time. He asked what was up and I told him I had to go to the NIT game because "who knows when UConn will be playing for the championship of any tournament again?". He said "But it's UConn. They won't win." I told him I still had to go, so I arranged to take the exam that Friday morning, which was Easter holiday. I went to the game, moved down to within 5 rows of the court and saw an excellent game. stuck around for a while in NYC and made lots of noise, got home real late that night, and when I woke up the next day to go to work I felt really run down (not surprising). It got worse during the day, and when I woke up Friday to take the final exam I had a 104 degree temperature. Took the exam anyway, did horribly, but still got an "A" in the class. I was home sick most of the followimg week.
- Do you go to a lot of UConn games?
- Unfortunately no. I did have 2 season tickets for the '92-'93 season (the Covington Cormier era) but I had the hardest time finding people to go with me to the games. Didn't help that they were only 15-13 that season. My sister and brother-in-law have had season tickets for both the HCC and GP for years and they give me first dibs when they have a spare ticket. Some games of note at which I was in attendance:
- Dec. 10, 2001 men's game against Northeastern at Gampel Pavilion.
- Dec. 8, 2001 women's game against Holy Cross at HCC.
- Both 1997 NIT games at Gampel Pavilion (Bradley and Iona).
- 1994 BE Tournament in which #1 seeded UConn lost to #4 seeded (and eventual champ) Providence.
- I flew down to Miami with some friends for a 3-day weekend trip to catch a game in the '94-'95 season.
- 1993 NIT overtime loss to Jackson State.
- All 1992-93 season games at HCC.
- Jan. 1990 victory over G'town at the HCC just days after they defeated Syracuse. UConn started the game with a 13-0 run. The loss kept G'town from moving up to the national #1 ranking.
- 1988 NIT championship game against Ohio State in Madison Square Garden.
- The occasional home game while I was attending UConn during the '77-'78 and '78-'79 seasons.
- How do you find the time to update this site every day?
- I usually only takes about 15-20 minutes to update the News page each day, so I can do that either during lunch or, occasionally, before I get to work in the morning. I usually update the home page while I watch a game in progress so that it's ready to be posted online as soon as the game ends.
- Why do you bother to post links to multiple sites that have the same article (i.e; AP stories)?
- A few reasons:
- Sometimes the article has been edited on one of the sites so I list all of them because I want to make sure that I have the most complete version.
- Not all sites keep their articles available long-term so having multiple links to different sites increases the odds that I'll be able to find it again online in the future if I need to.
- Occassionally, I forget to check one of my regular sites, or a site doesn't get updated one day for some reason, or I just don't have the time to check all of my sites. If I post all of the links that I find, including those that I know to be duplicates, then when I look back at a day's set of links I can tell if I checked a site by whether I have something posted from that site or not.
- Why do you include links to articles that aren't about UConn basketball on the News page?
- Because it's my site and I want to. :)
Acutally, I use a two-level approach to identifying the content of a particular article so that readers can skip those that don't interest them.
First level is the category code which describes the focus of the article. It usually consists of two parts - and Institution code and a Sport code. "UC-M" means the article is about UConn men's basketball, "UC-W" for women's basketball. Sometimes I'll added "Recruit" or "Alumni" to those codes. Some other codes (but not a complete list) that I use (usually in combination with each other):
Institution codes
- UC - UConn
- BE - Big East
- D1 - Division I
- CT - Connecticut
- HS - High School
- LHS - Ledyard High School
- NBA - NBA
- NCAA - NCAA
- USA - USA Basketball
Sport codes
- BB - Basketball
- FB - Football
- MS - Men's Soccer
- WS - Women's Soccer
- MH - Men's Ice Hockey
- FH - Women's Field Hocky
- VB - Women's Volleyball
Second level is a color-code: Blue for articles that discuss the men's team, Red for the women's team, and Green for non-UConn basketball articles that I think are still of interest to UConn basketball fans.
For example, all Blue colored codes have some content about the UConn men's basketball team but if the scope of the article is the Big East or Div. I in general it will be catgorized as "BE-M" or "D1-M".
If an article has little or nothing to do with UConn or basketball (not often) then I will use an "Off Topic" category.
I also now post all UConn-related sports articles that I run across in local papers. For non-basketball UConn men's sports I use a lighter shade of blue than I do for the men's basketball links. For non-basketball UConn women's sports I use a lighter shade of red than I do for the women's basketball links.
I also have a couple of general sports related categories that I follow, including Women in Sports, Title IX, Sports & the Media, Sports Reporting, Sports & Money and others. These are relevant issues in the world of sports that I like to keep up on.
You will probably notice that I also post links to articles about Anna Kornikova (using the code "Anna") and the Professional Bowlers Association (using the code "PBA") regularly. I think of the Anna articles as a subset of the Women in Sports category. I find it interesting that amount of press she receives for having accomplished so little on the tennis court.
The PBA stuff started when a guy who had retired with a ton of money from working at Microsoft decided that he was going to try to make his way onto the PBA tour. He hired an instructor and practiced relentlessly but just couldn't improve his game enough to qualify. So he bought the PBA tour and is now committed to reviving interest in it. These could be considered a subset of the Sports & Money category.
Since purchasing a new home entertainment set-up (DirecTV, TiVo, and an HDTV) I've started tracking articles that relate to those items (and HDNet, all-HDTV/mostly sports programming channel available only on DirecTV) since all of them should be of some interest to sports fans since they enhance the sports viewing experience significantly. For those articles I use a light green color since they are of somewhat lesser interest than strictly sports-related articles, yet they are of more interest than an "Off Topic" article.
- Do you find all of the articles you link to yourself? And what are those icons that you use on some of your links?
- While I locate most of the links that I post here myself, there are a handful of UConn fans who regularly submit links to stories that I have missed or might not find otherwise (see the following question). I also subscribe to the <uconn-bball> email discussion list and try to read The Boneyard discussion board on a regular basis. The icons that I sometimes place at the beginning of a link are used for these reasons:
 - I use this graphic to denote links submitted to me via email. If you send me an email with a link suggestion, I'll make this graphic a link to either your web page or email address if you tell me to do so in your email message.
 - I use this graphic to denote any links that I find posted on the <uconn-bball> list.
 - I use this graphic to denote any link that I find posted on The Boneyard and it will be linked directly to the posting on The Boneyard so that you can jump right to the on-going discussion. Also, I will sometimes use this graphic if I find the link myself but I know that there is an interesting discussion about it on The Boneyard.
 - I use this graphic if I'm linking to an item that is up for auction on a site like eBay.
 - I use this graphic if I'm linking to a web site that I have an Affiliate account with. Following one of these links and purchasing the item linked to or something else from that site will generate a small commission for my Affiliate account. (See below for more info.)
 - I use this graphic (it's supposed to be a band aid) if I change the URL for a link (usually only because it broke after I posted it, occasionally because my fingers are too fat).
- I found an article that I think would be of interest to fellow UConn fans, and it's not on the News page yet. Should I send it to you?
- That depends on where you found it. Every day I try to check a certain set of web sites in a certain order. The time of day that I start my check varies per the previous question.
1) First I start with the "Local Media" section on the right side of the News page. I check the sites that have a number after them in the order that they are numbered. The order is determined by the quality of the articles usually found on the site and the time that the site is updated each day.
2) Next I check the NY Times and Boston Globe because when they do have UConn articles they are generally pretty good.
3) Then I check ESPN and CBS SportsLine.
That is pretty much the minimum set of sites that I will check. You should only bother to send me a URL for an article on one of those sites if you see that I've done my main set of checking and I don't have that article listed.
4) I then check the "Local Media" sites that have letters after them at some point no earlier than around lunch time (since they generally are updated later than the numbered sites) and, on the day of and the day after a Big East game, I'll check any sites I have listed in the "Big East Media" section for that Big East opponent.
If the article that you've found is from one of those sites, you should send it to me if it's late afternoon and I still don't have it posted.
5) If UConn is playing a non-conference game that day, or if there is a Big East game coming up soon, then I will search the appropriate sites at this point if I have time.
If the article that you've found is from one of these sites feel free to send it to me right away to make sure that I get it posted.
If the URL for the article was posted to the <uconn-bball> email discussion list I will post it as soon as I get that message (if not immediately, then eventually). There is no need to forward these URLs to me.
If you saw the URL posted to The Boneyard discussion board please send it to me. I try to check The Boneyard as frequently as possible, but it's usually not as often as I wish it was.
If you found an article on a site not covered by any of the above then send it immediately!
There is no need to send me links to just-released polls or the latest Big East Player/Rookie of the Week awards. I always check for those.
And, finally, if it's a Saturday or a Sunday feel free to send anything you run across on any site because I'm usually short of time to do an update on the weekend.
If you send me a URL for an article, please in include the name of the site that published it, the title of the article, and the author's name. And check my site to see if I have already posted it on the News page. If I post your link I'll use a graphic to note that it was submitted to me via email. If you would link me to link that graphic to your personal web site or make it a MailTo: link let me know when you submit your link. At a minimum, I'll use the "TITLE" parameter of the HTML anchor tag to give you credit (people using browsers that support that paramenter, like MS Internet Explorer, will see your first name and first intitial of your last name if they hold their cursor over the graphic). Thanks.
- Where do you get your information?
- JazzyJ was my first, and primary, source for the historical team stats for the men's team. That got me started. Then I got the historical women's team stats (photocopies, which explains why I don't have more of them online yet) from the UConn Athletic Department. Since then, the yearly UConn and Big East media guides have been my source for team stats. I also scour the Hartford Courant and the major sports web sites every day for the info on my alumni trivia pages.
- How can I get media guides?
- Both the UConn and Big East media guides are usually available about 2 weeks before the season officially starts (early November). There are separate guides for both the men and women. For the 2001-02 season the UConn media guides are $25 each, the Big East guides are $15 for men's basketball and $10 for women's basketball. Contact the UConn Athletic Communications Department for UConn media guide ordering info. The Big East Conference has a Publications Order Form on their web site.
- The countdown ticker isn't working for me. Is it broken?
- Arrgh. You don't know frustration until you try to write something of substance in JavaScript (aka JScript) that works the same way in both Netscpae and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and on both Mac's and Wintel PCs. Consider the countdown ticker a work in progress. I have put togther a CountDown Timer Debug page which explains the common reasons for it not working properly and also provides a form you can submit to me with some debugging info to help me figure out what's keeping it from working properly on someone's computer.
- Why do you only have the team stats for the women for the 1993-94, 1994-95 and 1995-96 seasons?
- I actually have the stats going back to 1985-86 (Geno Auriemma's first year as coach) but I haven't had the time to put them online. Hopefully before this season is out.
- Why don't you have the team stats for the men prior to the 1976-77 season?
- Because I don't have them in a year-by-year format. I would need to reconstruct them from the player-by-player stats that I do have and that isn't a easy task. If you have pre-1978 stats in a per-year format, please let me know.
- Why don't you have more player profile/stat pages?
- Lack of time. Someday, maybe, I'll have them for everyone. I try to make a new one every week or so, or whenever an alumni comes up in a discussion on either the <uconn-bball> email discussion list or The Boneyard discussion board or is in the news for some reason.
- Why don't you have a page listing individual and team records?
- Again, lack of time.
- Did you make the "McD's UConn Huskies Hoops" logo?
- Of course not! A former co-worker, Jon Graney (also known for his DeathWatch page) made it for me at the start of the 1997-98 season after deciding that this site needed a logo for the home page. Thanks, Jon!
- How did you make the background image that you use on your pages?
- I didn't. I found that background a couple of years ago on a Doron Sheffer page on a site devoted to Israeli basketball. The woman who made that background is Herouth Maoz. Her web pages for the Maccabi Tel-Aviv team of the Israeli league eventually become the official web site for the team (although she is no longer involved with that web site). I asked her how she made the embossed Huskies logo background and she replied:
Yes, I did use Photoshop. It does have an emboss function. A word of advice if you want to use it: it makes a sharp, rather dark, embossed picture, and it's not recommended to use this as background, as the edges visually clash with the text, making it hard to read, and the color does not contrast well with neither light nor dark text colors. So use one of the blur functions to make soft edges, and also lighten the embossed result. If you want to copy my Husky background, feel free.
Which I did. But before I used it I lightened it up quite a bit more and I made the size of the GIF larger and a perfect square so that it tiled better and was spaced farther apart.
- Do you have access to the satellite coordinates for UConn games?
- Sort of. There is a page on the The Sports Network web site that lists the coordinates for major sporting events. Walter Burbank usually scans the satellites just before game time to find the backhaul signal for the Men's games and, if he finds it, he'll post the info immediately to the <uconn-bball> email discussion list. However, I'm trying to find a source that can get me the coordinates for the backhaul signal for the UConn games prior to the day of the game. If you can help me out, please let me know.
- Why don't you have the box score from the November 11, 1997 pre-season game between UConn and the Around The World All-Stars online?
- Technically speaking, I don't have any box scores online. I have links on my team schedules that point to the box scores posted on the official UConn basketball site.
For the record, I did eventually find a URL for the Around The World All-Stars game box score on the Courant's web site <http://www.courant.com/news/jump/testtest.stm> but it no longer works.
- Some of the links on the Library page and the Championship Memorabilia page that point to Amazon.com have "thedreimillersA" in the URL and a pink blob graphic in front of them. What is that?
- I'm an Amazon.com associate. I get a small commission for anything purchased by someone after they follow a link from my site. I don't really like the idea of using the site to make money, but the amount of money that I make from Amazon.com doesn't even come close to covering the cost of hosting this site. So, the way I justify it to myself is that I'm not really making money, just spending less. For the record, the pink blob graphic is supposed to look like a piggy bank.
- Is there a way that I can make a contribution to help defer the cost to host this site?
- As odd as it seems to me, and probably seems to you, I get a fair number of emails from people who would like to make a donation because they really like this site. Well, I'm not poor so I've always told those people "Thanks, but no thanks!". I get a great deal from Periwinkle, where I host this site, and they kindly turn a blind eye to the excessive volume of traffic this site generates on their servers. If I needed or wanted to make money from this site I would be running ads on it (I get frequent requests to do so).
If you're looking for a way to make a small contribution towards this site at no expense to you, you can follow this link to Amazon.com (or this link to CD Now, where I'm also an affiliate) and then buy something from them. This will generate a small commission for my associate account (and I promise to spend it wisely) but will not change the cost of the item to you.
 I recently signed up with PayPal, so if you click on the button to the right and sign up (and do a couple of other things) I'll get a small referral fee. It's a great way to pay for and receive payment for online auction stuff (like eBay) and it's also a handy way to give someone money electronically. I also have a Yahoo PayDirect account (mcd@toto.com) but they don't offer a new user referral fee.
Now, having said all of that, I'm always interested in trying out new stuff on the web. I signed up for a micropayment system called "Honor System" via Amazon.com. It's a straight-forward way of letting people contribute money to help support a web site like this one. I'm not going to promote this on my site at all, however, since I don't really need the money. I'm going to leave it buried here on my FAQ page as an experiment to see if anyone finds it and decides to make a donation. Since it was set up in Feb. 2001 I've received three donations of $1 each (as of Nov. 9, 2001). After Amazon.com takes their cut I'm let with $2.10. Thanks to the three people who made a donation.
You can also make a donation via my PayPal account. Just click on this button:
I promise to spend any contributions on something for my wife and kids to make up for all of the time I spend updating this site. :)
- Why does the "Last Update" time always seem to be in the future? Is time travel involved in updating your links?
- The incorrect time is one of those mysteries that may never be solved. The Last Update date and time are automatically insterted into the News page by the web server that it is hosted on. It worked just fine until this site was moved to a new server back in March. For some reason, the new server insists on reporting the time in GMT instead of EDT/EST. The technical support people at my ISP have checked and rechecked the server configuration and everything is set for EDT/EST so they have no idea why I'm getting GMT.
If you really need to know the exact time it was last updated, subtract 4 hours during Daylight Savings Time, subtract 5 hours during Standard Time.
- According to your web site's server log files, what is the most popular search term that leads people to this site?
- "Big Women". Ok, I'll admit that nobody has ever asked me that, but I felt a need to share this with someone. I suspect that they aren't looking for "Big East Women" and are thus disappointed when they see this site. Perhaps what they're really looking for is something like this.
|
