Dein erstes Forum » has not always been assertive

PITTSBURGH -- There was a time when Ejuan Price wondered if his college career would ever end.Now that its fast approaching after six seasons, three different head coaches, a position change, one college degree earned and another on the way, the Pittsburgh defensive end almost doesnt want to cross the finish line.Almost.I look at it like, a lot of unfortunate things that happened to me were kind of like a blessing in disguise, Price said. I feel me being here right now is where Im supposed to be.Thats understandable. The Panthers are competitive, his NFL draft stock is rising and the 23-year-old is seventh in the country in tackles for loss and 12th in sacks.But he isnt the only late bloomer making an impact across the Atlantic Coast Conference.Well-traveled Syracuse wide receiver Amba Etta-Tawo has turned out to be a perfect fit in head coach Dino Babers uptempo offense. The Maryland graduate transfer leads the ACC and ranks in the top 10 nationally in receiving yards (1,246), receiving yards per game (124.6) and receptions per game (7.9). Hes also second in the league with eight TD receptions and his 79 catches are tied for fifth in the country and he most among Power 5 receivers.Amba has been outstanding, Babers said. Hes been a pleasant surprise. Obviously, we had no idea hed be able to do the things that hes done.North Carolina senior receiver Bug Howard is suddenly in a much larger role since top deep threat Mack Hollins was lost for the season with a broken collarbone. Howard has had some good moments as part of four-receiver sets in 2015 and caught the winning touchdown with 2 seconds left to cap a wild comeback win against Price and Pitt in September.Howard -- now wearing Hollins No. 13 in his teammates honor -- was just getting started. He had 10 catches for 156 yards at Miami in the game Hollins was injured, had seven catches for 109 yards with a score against Virginia then had six catches for 120 yards and another TD against Georgia Tech. His streak of 100-yard receiving games ended at three in last weeks loss at Duke, though he still had a TD catch there, too.The 6-foot-5 target whose pet peeve is being mistaken for a player on the Tar Heel basketball team is finally living up to his massive potential. He already has a career-best 45 receptions with at least three games left to play. The NFL isnt out of reach either. The way Howard boxed out Pitts Ryan Lewis for the clinching score on Sept. 24 showcased the kind of ball skills that would translate well at the next level.Its a destination that might be in reach for Price too, one he doubted would materialize at times during his star-crossed career at Pitt. Hes been around so long he originally signed at Ohio State when Jim Tressel was the Buckeyes coach before flipping to the hometown Panthers when Tressel stepped down that spring.Price is one of the emotional leaders for the surprising Panthers (6-4, 3-3 ACC) heading into their game against Duke on Saturday.Price made an immediate splash with the Panthers, collecting four sacks as a true freshman for Todd Graham in 2011. Then Graham left and a pectoral injury in 2012 forced Price to take a medical redshirt. New coach Paul Chryst moved Price to defensive end in 2013, intrigued by the explosiveness in Prices 6-foot, 255-pound frame. The experiment lasted all of six games before a back issue shelved Price yet again and he didnt play a snap in 2014 after tearing a left pectoral muscle during the offseason that required surgery.He tried to keep his spirits up during the long layoff, it wasnt easy when he was unsure about the payoff at the end.Its easy to be motivated for a couple days, Price said. But do it over and over and over and over, youve got to find a reason to stick with it.So the player teammate Brian ONeill likened to a Steady Eddie because of his relentlessness learned to train his mind as well as his body. Price knew he could be a force if he stuck with it. The reprieve came last fall. Finally healthy and emboldened by new coach Pat Narduzzi -- the programs third coach in four years -- to get to the quarterback, Price picked up 11.5 sacks while earning first-team All-ACC honors even though he hardly fits the mold of prototypical defensive end.He can bull rush you, ONeill said. Hes so low. You see how low he can get, how he gets leverage. Thats how he uses his height to his advantage.In February the NCAA granted Price a rare sixth year of eligibility. He picked up his degree in communications last spring and is currently working on one in administration of justice, fitting for a player whose long journey appears headed for a happy ending.All the blemishes in my past that got kind of looked down upon, Price said, Im thanking god for putting me in that position.---AP Sports Writers John Kekis in Syracuse, New York and Aaron Beard in Raleigh, North Carolina contributed to this report.---More AP college football: www.collegefootball.ap.org Fake Yeezy 350 V3 Sale . -- Quarterback Will Finch threw for 252 yards and three touchdowns, and Yannick Harou rushed in two scores as the No. Fake Yeezy Boost 350 Free Shipping .C. -- Al Jefferson joked that he feels he can score from anywhere on the court. http://www.fakeyeezyboost350.com/ . Instead of dwelling on the negative, Oates focused on what was good about the clubs recent play. It worked. Fake Yeezy Boost 350 Online . Mats Zuccarello and Derek Stepan scored shootout goals, and backup goalie Cam Talbot earned his second win in two nights as the Rangers shook off a late tying tally and beat the Maple Leafs 2-1 Monday night. Wholesale Fake Yeezy Boost 350 V2 As much as the delivery it is the exclamation - a kind of song actually - it prompts from the wicketkeeper that is worth replaying. It is such an unmistakably subcontinental reaction, audible in any number of scenes - among a group of men after a lewd joke, or, more deplorably, when a beautiful woman passes by. At a mushaira [poetry recital] or a mehfil [small gathering], you may have noticed, a clever couplet brings this on: this, Ai hai hai hai. Umer Sharif, the great Pakistani comedian, was a master enabler of such moments. Occasionally if it is just too good, one might feel the urge to punctuate it with a Maar da laa [That killed me].Sarfraz Ahmed did not so append, and why would he? His Ai hai hai hai to that delivery from Yasir Shah was enough. Words might be the worst way to capture the mastery of that delivery over its victim: this explains it sufficiently. Years earlier, Ashraf Ali expressed a popular variant, a softer, more lyrical but abrupt Aa haa to an Abdul Qadir googly that castled Kim Hughes (if youre in a rush, watch from around 4:00 but this is Qadir googly heaven, so youd be a fool not to watch it all). The bonus - and locator of surrounds - in this instance is Richie Benauds excitement on the mic (Beautiful Bosie!) but Ashraf could easily have been an appreciator of some form of subcontinent art: a dance performance, a poetry recital, a music concert, a filmi dialogue.Moin Khan was an occasional champion of it, as he still is in gatherings of adult men, amid childish jokes. But as with Sarfraz and Kamran Akmal, the loud cackle was his go-to reaction to a batsmans misfortune. Moin once started laughing two-thirds of the way through appealing for lbw off a Mushtaq Ahmed googly to HD Ackerman. It helps to have the voice of Moin and Sarfraz, squashed down but trembling forever on the brink of a screech. It isnt necessary, though.Rashid Latif was an oddity among Pakistani wicketkeepers in many ways, one of which was that he possessed a deeper voice. He was not as vocal either, but even he couldnt help pulling out a slightly stretched aah ha, when Mushtaq once bowled Dermot Reeve with a googly, or a droll ai hai when Mushy did likewise to a UAE batsman (in the same video, soon after the Reeve dismissal). The more refined response alerts us not only that the ball is good but that the entire dismissal is to be processed as a piece of high culture.MS Dhoni has the voice and bearing for it, though nobody should be surprised that he has elevated his version to a tool of proactivity. He uses it as a kind of spook tactic, for deliveries that do not take wickets but might do something special. What they do is plant doubt inside a batsman, or at least the hint that a collaborative mischief of personnel and the elements is upon him. In that way, as Dhoni must have worked out years ago, it is as good as a sledge. In the event of a wicket falling, it is a send-off, a withering one without a word even being uttered. Ai hai hai, maar da la - batsman, keeper, everyone, figuratively, literally.****Cricket does not easily forget a big-turning legbreak, such as the one Yasir bowled to Imrul Kayes. Perhaps it is because we understand the impossibilities of what is being done. It is the only occasion in life, for instance, other than when a ring is being put on it (or it is used to pick a guitar string) that our third finger from the thumb comes to some labour. The wrist must unfurl in synchronicity. And already the shoulder is going through a highly unnatural contortion, with incredible strain put upon it. Subsequently there is the pivot on the foot to consider, as well as the driving of the hips through the process of release.These are just the bare biomechanical considerations, but already requiring a rare combination of strength and dexterity. Then come the specific skills. The seam has to be positioned right; there must be enough revs imparted on the ball to first make it drift, then grip and then turn, but not do any of it too much or too little; the release has to come just right, otherwise the ball lands too short or too full, or comes out too flat, or too loopy.We might think then that the chances of a confluence as magnificent as that delivery of Yasirs - a perfect storm of anatomical gifts and acquired craft, of nature and nurture - lie somewhere between Leicester City winning the Premiership and the force of the Big Bang being just right to produce a cosmos. Or something.It is almost irrelevant that he gets the wicket at the end of it, let alone that it is a castling. Would it have been worthier to beat a defensive stroke, such as the one Mike Gatting bemusedly offered Shane Warne, or to bypass an attempt to pad away the ball? Maybe, because to beat a man when he is determined not to be beaten - as opposed to when he is determined to win - appears the harder feat. But to lull a batsman into attacking and then get him is also a triumph in the battle of personality, just in a different way to how Warne conducted it. And just foor fun, try in your head to superimpose the sound of a Moin or Sarfraz to a Warne wicket: ecstasy.ddddddddddddSomething of the sheer wonder of legspin has necessarily dimmed over time. When Qadir was legspinning, it was the easiest thing in the world to shroud him and his craft in mystery. There was no video or internet, no coaches or analysts or biomechanists breaking his action down. He could bowl one googly six times but Chinese whisper it into meaning he was bowling six different ones, and nobody was in a position to dispute it. Growing a goatee was a legitimate bowling tactic then. By the second half of Warnes career, he would have had to work harder to make the batsmen in his era think something was happening when it wasnt, because batsmen were better equipped to know what was and wasnt happening. It was Warnes genius that he could still do it, even as the game and his own pre-eminence within it made it harder for him to do so. Yasir may as well be bowling naked, there is so little to hide in this age.Maybe not all the wonder has gone, though. It is still the genre of bowling most given to producing oohs and aahs and ai hai hais. Warne probably didnt see the ball Yasir bowled but such is the brotherhood, wherever he was, in his head, maybe in his sleep, he must have felt it and appreciated it: ai hai hai.****The legspinner and his wicketkeeper: this summer in England, Yasir and Sarfraz must forge a partnership. It is not a partnership as we understand others to be, between opening bowlers or batting pairs. These are two lonely occupations, one man often only noticed for his mistakes, the other usually the only representative of his kind in a bowling attack. And legspinners do not breed easily, so each one carries the flame for a species, not just for himself or his side.Unique within team dynamics, the wicketkeeper must treat the leggie as an opponent, to be conquered. He must learn to read him as a batsman does, but from the hand, because unlike the batsman, the wicketkeepers line of sight is directly obstructed. The wicketkeeper strives to understand what the leggie is doing better than anyone on his side, and that, perhaps, is why he responds as Sarfraz did in that dismissal. That exclamation is part of the bond that he knows and appreciates better than anyone just what the leggie has done.It is not an obviously prolific partnership. Unlike the prominence of a fast bowler and his wicketkeeper, or the more celebrated associations of spinners and slip catchers, this relationship demands less exclusivity to each other. Take a sample of modern leggies (Qadir, Mushtaq, Warne, Anil Kumble, Stuart MacGill and Danish Kaneria), and youll find that on average, 15% of their Test wickets were either caught or stumped by a wicketkeeper; for some, like Kaneria, the proportion is nearly a fifth, for others, like Kumble, it is less than a tenth. On average, they do not even combine for one dismissal per Test - from this sample, Kaneria-Kamran Akmal came closest, with 39 dismissals in 43 Tests together.That last stat is a statutory warning to not burden these numbers with excessive meaning. Kaneria-Akmal began well but the dysfunction that grew between them from 2006 was central to dysfunctional sides. Kaneria never said so publicly at the time, but each time he came on to bowl, he did so with zilch faith in Akmals ability. Instead, when they are operating together there must be no misunderstanding, no gripes or masked frustrations. Communication is vital, even if it is just to ask whats for dinner tonight before the last ball of the day. A good, working combination becomes a useful index of the health of a side.Sarfrazs work to spin, and to Yasir, has not always been assertive; that they have combined for just one catch in 12 Tests is not simply the by-product of how these pairings operate but the result of several missed chances. Conditions in England for the uninitiated wicketkeeper, as Akmal discovered a decade ago, can be so unique as to derail a career. Not many chances will come in the first place, so the price of Sarfraz not holding on to the few that do will be steeper.There is some promise, not least among seven stumpings. The one to get rid of Dimuth Karunaratne last year in Galle, off a ball that turned a mile, emerged from within the tangle of an attempted shot and was rising another couple when Sarfraz took it, was a peach. This was not as swift or smooth as Ian Healys celebrated stumping of Graham Thorpe in Perth once - to a Warne delivery that he took shoulder high. That was unreal. But Sarfraz did finish this at least, with function if not form. A couple against England last year similarly offset an inherent clunkiness with the alertness to get the job done.Given how their leggie and wicketkeeper have gone on the last two tours of England, Pakistan wont care much how it is done, as long as it is. ' ' '