Weekly Content for P.A.C.K. Meetings P – PRAYER Pray for your time together. Ask God to give you open hearts, open ears, and a willingness to be open and honest with each other. Wrap up your time together by having guys share any additional personal prayer requests and pray specifically for one another. You can also pray this prayer as a follow-up to the topic: Heavenly Father, thank you for opening my eyes to see You and know You. I trust in the truth of Your Word and I place…
Blog
-
PACK Topic: How Can That Be?
Continue Reading -
How Can That Be?
Continue ReadingThe Men’s Final Four is set with NC State, Purdue, UConn, and Alabama. When considering the stories behind how these teams made it, we can’t help but ask, “How can that be?”…and all for different reasons. NC State It’s hard to believe that NC State finished the regular season losing four straight, and were the 10th ranked team in the ACC Tournament, but won five straight to win the ACC Tournament, beating UNC and Duke along the way. Then as an 11th seed in the NCAA Tournament, they won four straight including beating Marquette and Duke, and becoming…
-
PACK Topic: Top Teams Put Away Their Opponent
Continue ReadingWeekly Content for P.A.C.K. Meetings P – PRAYER Pray for your time together. Ask God to give you open hearts, open ears, and a willingness to be open and honest with each other. Wrap up your time together by having guys share any additional personal prayer requests and pray specifically for one another. You can also pray this prayer as a follow-up to the topic: Heavenly Father, thank you for sending Jesus to defeat sin and death so I can experience freedom and salvation. Please help me put away sin…
-
The Daily Refill
Continue ReadingBy Matt Osborne, Staff Writer Playing without the services of LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers were amazingly able to overcome a 19-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat the Milwaukee Bucks 128-124 in double overtime last night. The Lakers’ comeback efforts were led by Anthony Davis, who scored 34 points and hauled in 23 rebounds in nearly 53 minutes on the court. Three of Los Angeles’ starters (Davis, D’Angelo Russell, and Austin Reaves) played 48 minutes or more in the team’s victory on Tuesday night. With the team having to turn…
-
Top Teams Put Away Their Opponent
Continue ReadingThe NCAA men’s basketball tournament has gotten off to a tremendous start with multiple overtime games, tight finishes, and one buzzer-beater from Colorado. We’ve seen some fun first-round upsets from surprising teams like Yale, Oakland, Grand Canyon, and Duquesne. As we look at the Sweet 16 teams remaining, however, the majority are top seeds and top programs. All four of the No. 1 seeds and No. 2 seeds are moving on to next weekend. Also, 12 of the Sweet 16 teams are seeded 1-4 with the other four being Gonzaga, San Diego State, Clemson,…
-
When The Leader’s Not Worried
Continue ReadingBy Matt Osborne, Staff Writer The NCAA Tournament has officially started, and there was no shortage of storylines from the first full day of action. Two of the better stories from Thursday’s slate of games were 14-seed Oakland stunning 3-seed Kentucky behind Jack Gohlke’s 10 three-pointers, and Oregon’s Jermaine Couisnard scoring 40 points in a first-round upset over South Carolina, his former team. But another storyline that was equally as captivating came from Dayton’s 63-60 win over Nevada. Trailing 56-39 at the under-eight TV timeout, ESPN analytics gave Dayton a 0.5% chance…
-
Let’s Get Greedy?
Continue ReadingIt’s a rewarding experience for every team that makes the NCAA Tournament. For some teams such as NC State, Duquesne, Drake, UAB, and Oregon, the fact they even made the tournament is a big deal considering they weren’t expecting to until they won their conference tournaments. These teams are surprised and pumped to be in the “Big Dance,” with some saying they’re “playing with house money” and it doesn’t matter if they win any games in the NCAA Tournament – they should be good with just being there. Of course, that’s…
-
PACK Topic: The Tournament of Fear
Continue ReadingWeekly Content for P.A.C.K. Meetings P – PRAYER Pray for your time together. Ask God to give you open hearts, open ears, and a willingness to be open and honest with each other. Wrap up your time together by having guys share any additional personal prayer requests and pray specifically for one another. You can also pray this prayer as a follow-up to the topic: Heavenly Father, I confess that when my eyes shift off of You and my mind wanders, I’m often filled with fear. I pray, Lord,…
-
The Tournament of Fear
Continue ReadingMarch Madness is underway and I absolutely love this time of year! The conference tournaments are exciting and watching the bracket reveal on selection Sunday is always fun. (Now we get to fill out our brackets and I hope you’ll join our bracket challenge HERE.) Everything surrounding the NCAA Tournament is so thrilling, but I also recognize that fear gets involved. During the hours leading up to the announcement of which teams were in and which ones were out, I know that many fans, players, and coaches from certain teams were filled…
-
Bid Thieves
Continue ReadingBy Matt Osborne, Staff Writer As Selection Sunday approaches, there’s a lot of talk about teams on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament. “Bid thieves” is a unique term we’ll likely hear in many discussions. A “bid thief” is a team not projected to be in the running for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid, but wins its conference tournament, secures an automatic bid, and “steals” a bid from another team. This is an interesting term to use considering we think of a thief as someone who takes something that doesn’t rightfully belong to him. But…
