First off, congrats to Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics.  KG has had the misfortune of having awful teammates, coaches and front office personnel for the majority of his career, and this is what he deserves for his years of effort.  Although there were moments of doubt (his missed free throws at the end of Game 5), The Big Ticket now has a title, and that can never be taken away from him.  Also, Jesus and The Truth were also extremely fun to watch in the Finals.  Again, congrats to three great players finally getting the monkey off of their back.

The ever-awesome Sunday Morning Quarterback decided to take a look at the improvements freshman quarterbacks make from their first to second seasons.  He's been at this for a couple of weeks now, by conference, but the final results are in and as you can see from his graph, there is little rhyme or reason to statistical change beyond a general trend toward the mean.  Those at the top seldom stayed there and those near the bottom generally improved, if only because there was nowhere to go but up.

If anything, Clausen's numbers are likely to go up substantially after the rather low rating of his freshman campaign (103.85).  When you consider the environments he played in, the offensive line "protecting" him, the youth at wide receiver, the rotating running back situation and the still-looming spectre of Evan Sharpley behind him, that wasn't too bad.  In fact, in his final three games , he had a 2-1 record, was above 50 percent in completion percentage in every game and threw six touchdowns to only one pick.  Granted, Air Force, Duke and Stanford didn't have the best defenses, but there was definitely progress made.

Also discussed in SMQ's piece are the starters of a bunch of Irish opponents, including Washington's Jake Locker, North Carolina's TJ Yates and Pittsburgh's Pat Bostick.  While the Irish signal caller may not have a ton of experience, he'll be in the same boat as many of his counterparts, with hopefully the worst experiences of his career behind him.