This is terrible. According to WDAE:

James Dungy, son of Tony Dungy, found dead

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s department is confirming the death of 18-year-old James Dungy. Dungy, the son of former Buccaneers coach Tony Dungy, was found dead in his North Tampa apartment by his girlfriend early this morning. A death investigation is going on now. At this time, it appears suicide is the cause of death.

The sheriff’s office reports an emergency call came in at 1:30 a.m. from Dungy’s apartment at Campus Lodge Apartments near USF. Paramedics responded, finding Dungy not breathing. They attempted CPR on Dungy, then transported him to UCH hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Tony Dungy was flying in to Tampa Thursday morning.

Update The Indy Star is now covering the story.

Update #2: A myspace page purporting to belong to James Dungy. A bit unsettling if true.

I’ve got to agree with the optimism of Kravitz who says IU makes a statement even in midst of loss. I’m not one to be all that happy with “moral victories” from my favored sporting teams, but not a bad showing, all in all, considering how much room for improvement Indiana has. The Hoosiers lost to the top ranked Blue Devils by eight — but it was a bit closer than that as about 5 of those points came at the end when IU was committing desperation fouls. The Hoosiers shot 20% from 3-points and 54% from the free throw line and turned the ball over quite a bit. Oh, and D.J. White will presumably be recovering from injury at some point.

So, if they can fix that stuff, and have a guy like Marco Killingsworth scoring 34 points against the top defenders in the country, well then they might be off to a pretty good season. As long as they can turn the moral victories into some of the real kind.

The Colts versus Steelers was a good one last night. I just hate Monday Night games though. They mess with my schedule horribly — not finishing until midnight. Then, I’m too wound up to go to sleep for awhile. Now I will grant you, my four month old daughter is still awfully cute, even after only 5 hours of sleep — but less so than if the Colts had played on Sunday and I’d gotten a full night’s sleep.

Oh yeah, the Colts. They really pounded the Steelers who managed less than 200 yards of offense. The Colts won the game 26 to 7. The Steeler’s only score was after an interception that left them on or about the Colts’ 10 yard line. The Steeler’s coach didn’t help in that he was a bit greedy. He passed up at least one field goal opportunity and failed to convert on 4th down. There may have been a second occasion like that. In addition, the Steelers tried for an onside kick to open the 2nd half. It didn’t work, and the Colts were in great field position and went down and scored. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference, but had the Steelers made the more conventional decisions in those situations, the game might have been in reach for them during the 4th quarter when anything can happen. Instead, the Colts gave them a steady dose of Edgerrin James and the game ended with a whimper.

The only criticism I have of the Colts is for the penalties. 106 yards in penalties. That exceeds 50% of the Steelers’ total offensive output. But for the penalties, this game could have been out of hand even earlier than it was.

I forgot to set the TiVo and missed the game, but it looks like the Hoosiers had another huge offensive output. This time they got the triple digits that eluded them last time (when they got 99). The final score was IU 100, Florida A&M 63. Again, it’s too early to get *too* excited because the opponent wasn’t that signfiicant and because it looks like the Big Ten might be pretty tough this year. Still, there is no way they could have had this kind of offense in the past couple of years when their main offensive strategy seemed to be stand around for 30 seconds before watching Bracey Wright chuck a tough shot up from the cheap seats. Their free throw shooting continues to be pretty bad. 57% — which is the same as their 3-point shooting.

IU’s season opener was last night, and might I just say, yippee! I can’t get *too* excited because the opponent was, well, Nichols State. But there was something there I haven’t seen in a long, long time: offense. It was good to see something other than 4 guys standing around outside watching Bracey Wright settle for a bad, long-range shot.

Marco Killingsworth looked to be a man among boys, and Marshall Strickland had 25 points. The final score was 99 to 65. There were problems to be sure – in the 1st half, defense didn’t seem to be a priority. There seemed to be a lot of turnovers, and the free throw shooting was at 65%. Killingsworth was 3 of 7 from the freethrow line — so he can expect the hack-a-Shaq treatment if he doesn’t get that percentage up.

Still, it was fun to watch and very, very encouraging. IU plays #1 Duke in 11 days which could give us an idea of how good (or not) this team is. Offense. What a concept. Now if we could just drag Dane Fife from his coaching job in Fort Wayne, suit him up, and have him leading the defense.

Colts 40, Patriots 21. This takes the Colts to 8-0, and gives Peyton Manning his first win in New England. Bill Belichick is still a no-class jerk. Tonight’s prime example, Belichick throwing the red flag when he didn’t have an actual challenge because he wanted to delay the game when his team was unprepared for the Colts to try for a 2-point conversion.

Last night, the Colts beat the Ravens 24-7 with the Colts Defense coming up huge. The Ravens 7 points came in trash time after Coach Brian Billick’s classless move, calling his time outs as the Colts were taking a knee and putting the Ravens out of their misery instead of running up the score in the last minute.

The offense looked good as usual, but the defense was stifling. Not quite as surprising as the national press would have you believe, given that the Colts led (I think) in turn over ratio last year. Last year, their defense would typically bend but not break and cause a turnover of some sort. So, they’d give up a pile of yards — lowering their ranking — but not give up all that many points, particularly compared with the numbers the offense was putting up.

Anyway, if the offense is 80% of what it was last year and the defense looks as good through the year as it does now, this is going to be a team to be reckoned with.

The Palladium-Item has an article on local boy turned PGA Pro, Bo Van Pelt. He led the Memorial Tournament for a little while on Thursday, and was even for yesterday’s performance. Currently, I believe he’s tied for 12th.

He is a couple years younger than me, and we grew up playing at the same course. I remember sometime around when he was 12 or so, him coming in saying he’d shot even par on the front nine. We thought he was full of crap. Turns out, he was just really good.

Reggie’s career ends with 27 points against Detroit in the playoffs. Thanks for all the memories. I’m awfully sad about this. We’ve got some good players, but no one with Reggie’s magic.

This article reports that Stern greeted with boos in Indiana. The article reports that NBA commissioner David Stern was booed by Indiana fans. It takes for granted that the boos were the result of Stern’s decision to suspend several Pacers after the Detroit brawl. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. There is a conspiracy theory among Pacer fans, probably unfounded that the NBA has consistently offered the Pacers unfavorable officiating in the playoffs from a desire to see bigger names and bigger market teams in the Finals — Shaq when he was with Orlando, Jordan during his second 3-peat, the Knicks when no one else was available. But don’t worry, we’re not completely unreasonable — we blame 2000-2003 on Isiah.