Month: March 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

As mentioned yesterday, we are traveling for the next few days. We’ll be making a quick trip west to visit friends and family in Kansas City over the first part of St. P’s spring break. We’re hoping to see many of you while there.

Yesterday was the last day of school before break, and in the parking lot there were several vans with storage containers strapped to their roofs. C. was telling me which friends were going where. As usual, Florida is the most popular destination. I made a comment about how it would be fun to go back to Florida again this year, but it wasn’t possible.

“Oh, I don’t want to go to Florida,” she said. “I’d much rather go to Kansas City!”

I’ve taught that one well.

As it is a quick trip, we don’t have too many exciting plans. Mostly eating food and seeing people. The forecast looks good for the two full days we’ll be in town, which is nice.

Upon our return next week, we will have visitors of our own. Aunt K is bringing cousins W and S to Indy for a few days. The girls are very excited about that.

If anyone else is traveling around over the next week, be safe.

Trying to get caught up on some links I need to share before we take a mini-vacation early next week.

Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in the New Yorker about Clive Doyle, a survivor of the Waco, TX Branch Dividian compound, and the lessons that are still emerging, 20 years later, from that disaster.

It’s a really interesting read. What stuck with me most was how the Federal agents, and really all the law enforcement agencies involved in the action, utterly failed to understand the people inside the compound. It’s hard to blame them, though. As I recall, public opinion was pretty firmly on the Feds’ side. David Koresh and his followers were widely assumed to be religious wackos who were likely involved in all kinds of irreligious, and immoral, behaviors. There was no push from the broader public to be more accommodating to Koresh.

I found this section to be especially profound. I think many of us, whether we consider ourselves to be open-minded or not, tend to dismiss people we view as not just outside the mainstream, but dramatically so.

Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community. Whenever these liberal feats are accomplished, we congratulate ourselves. But it is not exactly a major moral accomplishment for Waspy golfers to accept Jews who have decided that they, too, wish to play golf. It is a much harder form of tolerance to accept an outsider group that chooses to maximize its differences from the broader culture. And the lesson of Clive Doyle’s memoir—and the battle of Mount Carmel—is that Americans aren’t very good at respecting the freedom of others to be so obnoxiously different.

I’m reminded of the old saying that everyone is for free speech, until someone else’s speech annoys or pisses them off. We’re all for freedom of expression for ourselves and people we’re comfortable with. But when someone else expresses them self in a way we can’t understand or that disturbs our sensibilities, suddenly we want to slam on the brakes.

Obviously the commentary on the Waco disaster is forever tinged by the political aims of those making the assessments. But this piece is a good reminder that there’s often more to a situation than the public is allowed to know. And if we claim to be considerate of the views of others, we can’t summarily dismiss groups that we find strange.

That said, the whole multi-wives, some quite young, is outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. Still, those poor people never deserved their fates because the rest of us found them to be weird.

Sacred And Profane

It’s been 60 years since the Milan Miracle, when tiny Milan high school knocked off much bigger Muncie Central in the Indiana boys high school championship game. If you’re not from Indiana, you likely know of the game because of the fictionalized version that had Hickory High winning in the movie Hoosiers.

The Indianapolis Star had a fantastic oral history of Milan’s run over the weekend.

Bobby Plump doesn’t spend a lot of time on “what-ifs.” The shot went in after all, didn’t it? Why worry about what would have happened if the ball clanked off the back of the rim that night in Hinkle Fieldhouse?

”I think the correct answer is this,” Plump says, standing in the exact spot where he took the shot. “If I hadn’t made the shot, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you about it 60 years later.”

Milan 60 Years Later

10:50 AM, Tuesday March 25, 2014, Central Indiana. It is snowing.

I shouldn’t complain. This is only flurries and not expected to amount to much. 366 days ago, we got 9” of snow. Could be much worse. And it might even warm up to above normal temps in a few days. I think we’re owed a nice, long, pleasant spring.

A few items from the notebook.

Today is the 84th day of 2014. The snow pile out in our front yard, where all the snow from the street got pushed in January and February, is almost gone. There’s still a two-foot long lump of nasty ice. I imagine that will be gone by Friday, making it our first day without any snow in the yard since New Year’s Day. It’s been awhile.

A pediatrician I know mentioned the other day that they are expecting a Polar Vortex Baby Boomlet later this year. Of course. People were stuck inside for weeks, missing work and social events. What else was there to do?

Didn’t we just have a bump in the birth rate a few years ago and economists attributed it to the financial crisis? Again, people couldn’t spend money to go out, were stuck at home, one thing led to another…

I think there’s a pretty obvious message in there. Doesn’t matter if the economy is good or bad, the weather hot or cold, or some national tragedy. Biological urges will always win.

With a long car trip planned for later this week, I went ahead and got the girls Frozen on DVD the day it came out. You would have thought I got the girls bars of gold or something the way they freaked out when I showed it to them. There was screaming and yelling and celebrating. And it’s not like it was some big surprise we were getting it. I had already told them we would likely get it before our Kansas City trip.

Between Frozen and “Let It Go” and Despicable Me 2 and “Happy,” it’s been a big year for our girls being swayed by the movie marketers.

Somewhere, somehow, L. has picked up a couple funny verbal ticks. She uses the words “yo” and “dog” to finish sentences all the time.

The other night, at bath time, she told me, “I have to go get my pajamas, yo!”

When she got home from school yesterday, I asked what she wanted to do.

“I want to play on the computer, but I need to eat a snack first, dog.”

Love it.

S. bought a new curling iron last week. C. found it while it was still in its packaging, which was purple and shiny. She came walking out with it.

“Ooooh, Mom! What is this?!”

That’s a classic, and predictable, C. reaction.

M. started kickball practice last week. She just got her team assignment last night, and will be playing with some classmates and some fourth graders who played in the fall. I watched her first practice and she did well at the plate, reaching safely a couple times. In the field, she is similar to in soccer: not super excited to get in the way of the ball. I kind of don’t blame her. This isn’t kickball with a red, bouncy, playground ball. They use a heavy, hard ball that feels more like a cross between a basketball and medicine ball.

A week ago I spent an afternoon brewing beer with some neighbors. We each had a batch going in their cool garage setup, and the extra hands and equipment made it a much more fun process.

My Belgian Pale Ale was fermenting away last Sunday night as I was sitting in the basement watching TV, about to go to bed. I heard a sharp BOOM and then a rattle, like a small explosion. At first, I thought something had fallen in the kitchen above me, or even that someone had busted open a window. I ran upstairs and began turning on lights, finding nothing. I also noticed, despite being nearly 11:00, there was no crying or yelling from the girls’ rooms, as would happen during a storm. S., who was already in bed, didn’t react either. If they didn’t hear anything, I bet the noise came from the basement.

My beer!

I ran back down to the bathroom, opened the shower where I store it, and sure enough there was fermenting yeast all over the wall and ceiling, the airlock was on the floor, and the lid slightly raised. I quickly cleaned up, re-sanitized the lid and airlock, and put it back together.

It appears the airlock got clogged by the rather vigorous fermentation Belgians are known for, trapping the gasses inside. Thus the explosion.

I had to clean the airlock three times in the next day to prevent more blowouts.

Hoping the beer wasn’t harmed too much by the exposure to open air. From what I’ve read, this isn’t uncommon and if you get it closed up again quickly, the beer should be OK.

My habit during KU games is to text with my buddy Ed in Texas. We stood next to each other for three years at Allen Fieldhouse, with a few assorted games since then. This has become a cool way to, kind of, recreate that energy from the early 90s. On nights when one of us couldn’t be in front of the TV, and didn’t want to wait to watch on the DVR later, it was fun to send updates that went beyond whatever the online scoring updates offered.

Sadly, the early tip-off time of Sunday’s game against Stanford got in the way of some family responsibilities for him. He was going to do the DVR thing, so no texting.

Knowing I would be full of nervous energy, I decided to keep a (dreaded) running account of my thoughts. What follows has only been edited for spelling and grammar, and the coda was written roughly 30 minutes after the game ended.

In other words, putting a new age media spin on it, this is a real, raw look at what it’s like to be a fan as your team goes down in flames in March. And now I’m going to go throw up.

12:07 PM: Why is it kids pick up on your nervousness/tension and decide to act like idiots just before a big game? There was just yelling and issuing of threats to knock it off or else.

Just read a bunch of scouting reports on Stanford. Pretty big, an elite point guard who is their key, but otherwise a very steady, unspectacular team. Certainly a threat, but feels like a game where if KU plays smart, and sticks to what they should do, they can win with some comfort.

Jinx!

12:23 PM: First time out, 6-6. Scintillating! Tension headache kicking in right on schedule. S. making the good call and getting the kids out of the house for a couple hours.

12:30 PM: 10-6 Stanford, three straight KU turnovers, time out Jayhawks. Embiid’s back, Naadir’s head. It’s going to be the stupid turnovers that kill this team.

12:36 PM: Stanford 14, KU 11, under 12 TO. Cardinal is shooting approximately 97%. Which is great. Wait, 43.8%? Sure feels like more.

Why does Greg Anthony keep saying “yesterday” when referring to the two teams’ games on Friday? We all know what he’s talking about, but it’s distracting. Wouldn’t be nearly so if KU was up 10. Also feels like Stanford is owning the boards, but it’s 8-8. Weird how the nerves of the game affect your perception of it.

12:43 PM: Under 8 TO, Stanford 18-13. Just a thoroughly delightful game. Don’t know if it’s great scouting report D or the experience vs. youth factor, but Stanford doing a great job of hassling every KU cut, pass, and drive while KU not doing a good job of reacting to the pressure. You can see the KU guys thinking about every motion, uncertain of what to do.

Dwight Powell is like every Stanford big dude ever morphed into one. He has that long, lean body so many of them have had. He bears a slight resemblance to the Collins twins. He just looks like he was born to play at Stanford.

Oh, and he had to write a paper after his game Friday! No state school player has ever had to balance athletics and academics, but guys form the smart schools always seem to have that issue. Crazy!

12:57 PM: 21-19 Stanford. Huge shot from Conner Frankamp to cut the lead to two. Solid defense from KU to slow Stanford down, but just can’t get comfortable on offense. Your typical horrible March game where you’re begging your team to hit a couple shots and they can’t find a way to string 2-3 together.

Also yelled “GOD DAMMIT PERRY” for the first time. Worth following.

1:06 PM: Halftime, 24-22 KU. HUGE defensive stop and then Conner drills a 3 at the buzzer to put KU up. Massive sequence. Shame the 45 minute halftime will drain some of the energy from KU, who desperately needed a boost. 13-4 run to close half.

And it was a shitty half. Neither team played well, so don’t know if that’s good or bad for the second half. Hard to see both teams scoring 40 in the second half. Maybe Wiggins can get going, Selden can hit a shot or two, and those two 3’s will give Conner a boost and he’ll carry them through the second half.

Stanford scored just 0.69 points per possession in that half. Best KU had done in a game this year was 0.79 at Baylor. But KU shot 35.7 eFG% in the half. Only the San Diego State loss was worse. Statistics! What am I supposed to do with these???

Who is the guy sitting behind Jim Nantz and Greg Anthony who put his head down and rubs his forehead every time the camera is on them? Shy? In witness protection? Supposed to be “sick” but at the game?

1:23 PM: Second half about to start. Feeling better than I was when it was 18-11. But still kind of miserable. Good times! KU runs a lob play, and for some reason let Naadir Tharpe, the point guard who can’t throw lobs, throw his typical awful pass. Horrible start.

1:34 PM: ARGHGH. KU goes up 5 and does what they always do. A couple of forced shots, a bad turnover. Boom. 7-0 Stanford run makes it 30-28, Cardinal. And KU’s racking up fouls. Time out KU.

1:40 PM: Two more stupid turnovers, two more Stanford layups. 36-30. Did I mention there is a lot of stupidity going on? 13-2 run overall.

1:50 PM: 40-33 Stanford, 11:21 left. Tarik Black is the only guy playing well for KU. Hmmm, only senior on the team.

Funny thing, I constantly call him tar-EEK even though I know he pronounces it TAR-ik. Well, not funny, really. But you’d think I would have figured that out back in November or December.

Damn shame KU doesn’t have a 7-footer to battle with these Stanford bigs. See, I made it nearly 3/4 of the way through the game before I brought up whether Joel Embiid would have an effect on the game. Given how the other freshmen have played today, I don’t know that he would. But he might challenge some of these inside shots Stanford is knocking down.

1:59 PM: 44-37 Stanford, 7:55 to play. Naadir takes a 3 after one pass. Wiggins finally drives, misses a tough layup. Some kid comes off the Stanford bench for the first time and buries a 16’ baseline jumper. I’m sensing it’s one team’s day and not another’s.

KU has four minutes to make a run, or this game is over.

2:06 PM: What a sequence. KU gets two – TWO – steals in the backcourt and can’t convert on four shot attempts. Stanford gets a run out, bucket, and a foul. Seven-point game 6:52 left. Feels like next possession could be the game.

2:14 PM: 51-49 Stanford, 3:42 left. KU’s pressure turning game around. Got it tied at 49-all but just turned ball over. Playing way too fast on offense. Oh, and Tarik fouled out a minute ago.

Misery index: off the charts.

2:36 PM: Stanford 60, Kansas 57, final. What a nutso last five minutes. Frankamp hit some huge shots to make it close. Needed a little more space on the last chance to tie it. Last time I saw the stat KU went 9-21 at the rim. Shades of the loss to UCLA in 2007. Make layups, win the game. Maddening.

That said, I’m sitting here roughly ten minutes later and have less immediate bummed out feelings than I normally do. Perhaps it was knowing this team had such a wide variance in how good and how poorly they could play. Maybe it was a different emotional investment knowing Wiggins would only be on campus one year. Maybe it was knowing a team full of freshmen would be more prone to crack under the pressures of March.

Damn, they fought hard late. Just couldn’t make tough shots over the big dudes down low.

The biggest bummer is we don’t get to see Jojo play again.

What a shitty way for Wiggins to end his (brief) college career. I think that charge call early (which was clearly the wrong call) shook him a little. But Stanford really put the clamps on him and, as was the case early in the season, he couldn’t figure out how to counter.

I wish Wiggs well, and am thrilled he spent a year in Lawrence, even if it ended poorly for him and the team. I loved watching him, especially on the nights he figured things out and was aggressive. I’ve had arguments with other fans, both KU fans and fans of other teams, about him all year. I think he has a chance to be a really good pro. He just turned 19 and has lots of physical maturing to do. He’s going to gain weight, get stronger, improve his ball handling/control, turn that beautiful shooting stroke into a weapon, and learn how to absorb contact and finish. But he could also be just another super athletic 6’8’’ guy who averages 10 or 12 points a game. But anyone who says it was a mistake to take him, or that his year at KU was wasted, is an idiot.

I’m not going to spend much time worrying about whether Joel Embiid comes back or not. I think it’s highly likely he’s gone. Which is a shame. I’d love to see him play another year of college ball, hopefully healthy the entire year. But I just don’t expect him to turn down the #1 pick or take the risk an extended injury next year knocks him down further for the 2015 draft.

I wrote earlier this year than Wiggs and Jojo were disguising the fact that KU was finally in the midst of a rebuilding year. For the first time in seemingly ever there wasn’t a crop of experienced guys who had paid their dues ready to step into leadership roles. And that showed every night KU struggled. I think that’s the ultimate reason I can’t get too down about this loss. They turned what could have been a bubble team into a conference champion that earned a #2 seed.

Next year three freshmen will be back. I think Frank Mason and Conner Frankamp will both play a lot of minutes and be very good players. Brannen Greene just might be the break-out player in the Big 12. Perry Ellis can get stronger and learn how to finish around bigger players better. Kelly Oubre isn’t as talented as Wiggins, but he is a slashing 6’7’’ guy who oozes talent and will play a similar role. Cliff Alexander was the Naismith high school player of the year, and while he needs to improve his body, has been an absolute beast in high school. I would imagine there will be one more addition to the roster, and it could be a surprise, depending on how the fifth-year senior thing works out at a couple other schools.

KU might not be as rawly talented next year. But they’re going to be pretty freaking good again.

So Rock Chalk, bitches.

I better rush in some picks before the games start here in a bit.

This feels like a wide-open year. I’m of the opinion that Florida is the best team in the country. But they’re not so good that they can’t lose. In fact, it would not a shock if they weren’t the team to leave Memphis in a week with the regional title under their belts.

But beyond Florida, all season it’s felt like there is a group of 8-12 teams that are all kind of equal. On any given night, one of those teams can look like the best in the country. And on another, they can go on the road in their conference and get blasted.

Well, everyone except Wichita State, of course, who didn’t lose all year. I don’t care about WSU’s schedule. They proved themselves a year ago by making the Final Four and taking the eventual champs deep into the second half before falling short.

I think Wichita State is a great team, regardless of their conference or who they played this year. But they’re not getting out of their region. In fact, they best root for their cross-state rivals from Manhattan, because as flawed as Kentucky is, the Shockers will have a brutal time dealing with all their size.

So here are my Final Four picks. Please take with a whole handful of salt.

Florida
Michigan State
San Diego State
Michigan

Florida wins it all.

I hate to be on the Sparty bandwagon, which is always popular this time of year. But the East is easily the weakest region in the field this year. And we all know that Izzo does Izzo things in March. Not really sure what the NCAA was thinking when you look at the East and Midwest. Seems like a much fairer bracket would involve about half the teams in those regions being swapped.

I’m off to light some candles for Joel Embiid’s back…

I watched a few minutes of the ESPN 30 for 30 episode “Requiem For A Conference,” about the classic Big East conference, Sunday evening.

Then, Tuesday, I watched the last ten minutes or so of the West Virginia – Georgetown NIT game. Georgetown played the game at their practice gym, thanks to the circus being booked into the normal home court. It was awesome. The arena was packed, including a healthy WVU contingent. And the building was so small you could clearly hear Georgetown students screaming at Bob Huggins.

“Hey Bob, you’re fat!”
“Hey Bob, you’re awful!”
“You’re wrong, Bob! Sit down!”

Awesome!

Watching vintage and current Georgetown made me realize how my loyalties have changed over the years. When I was a kid, I pulled for the Jayhawks each night they played, but I also fell in love with other teams. Georgetown, in the Patrick Ewing era, was one of those programs.

They were just so fun to watch. They had the cool uniforms and awesome shoes before anyone else started mixing up their looks. Ewing was an iconic college player. And the team, as a whole, was a giant F-you to the basketball establishment, which appealed to my young, contrarian nature.

The day after the epic 1982 national title game, where the Hoyas narrowly fell to North Carolina, one of my fifth grade buddies and I practiced blocking each other’s shots across the court, just like Ewing had done all night to the Tarheels.

The Hoyas weren’t the only team, though. The Illinois team of 1988-89 was one of my all-time favorites. The late 80s, early 90s UNLV squads were fantastic. While the Jayhawks were always my favorite team, in any year I would have a handful of teams I checked scores for each morning, hoping that they would have won.

Even in random games I flipped by, I would always find a reason to root for one team or another. It might just be one team had better uniforms, or another had a player I liked, or maybe there was some story line the announcers were pushing that I bought into. Whatever it was, I could quickly establish a lock-solid argument for wanting Team A to win.

Which is kind of weird. Because you never really love a much as you do when you’re a kid. That early passion is so much more elemental and all-encompassing. Yet I think a lot of kids my age were like me. Whether they were Missouri fans or K-State fans, they also like UNC or Virginia or Louisville.

I guess some of my behavior can be explained by KU not being an elite team when I was first discovering college basketball in the late 70s and early 80s. Not until Danny Manning arrived in the fall of 1984 was Kansas a team that sat high in the polls each week and was a threat to go deep in the tournament in March. So while I listened to each KU game¹, when they inevitably lost in the Big 8 tournament and their season ended, I moved on to the Hoyas or whoever I was enjoying that year.

Now, though, while I may enjoy a team’s style of play, it’s hard for me to get invested the way I used to be. I’ll often only strongly pull for a particular team if their winning somehow helps KU. I admitted earlier this year that I really enjoyed watching San Diego State play. But other than the afternoon they went to Lawrence and won, I haven’t watched them again.

I was trying to think of some lesson in there, some nice way to wrap it all up in a little nugget of meaning. I can’t, though. I kind of miss that ability to watch, and find joy in the play of, several teams. But I have to admit I wouldn’t trade having KU be good every year to get that feeling back again.

Well, here we go. The best and worst time of the year for everyone who is A) a huge college basketball fan and B) lives and dies with a particular program. Best, because you never forget those comeback wins, those times your team knocked off a higher seed, and those deep tournament runs. Worst, well, because you never forget being on the wrong side of Cinderella’s slipper or the night your best player couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn or that turnover in the last second that changed the outcome.

Everything that happens in March stays with you.

As I believe I’ve made very plain here since last November, I’ve never believed KU was a true contender for the National Championship. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they could win it, which is a very different thing. Play this tournament 10,000 times on your trusty computer simulator and KU is going to cut the nets down a few times.

But, because of defensive deficiencies, lapses in focus, youth, and the dreaded major injury, I just can’t buy into the Jayhawks winning four games and making a trip to Dallas in two weeks.

It’s been an oddly manic week for me. After last Saturday’s loss to West Virginia, which would have been an epic smack down if not for the heroics of one Andrew C. Wiggins, I was dreading the opening round game of the Big 12 tournament. Oklahoma State had just beaten KU with Joel Embiid and seemed to be playing with fire and focus they lacked before Marcus Smart’s suspension. Oh, and then there’s the fact KU just can’t guard that dude.¹ I thought it would get ugly early and lead to a weekend of worrying about how the tournament committee would look at a team that wrapped up the toughest conference in the country with three games to play then went into the shitter.

Naturally, that game was a classic, with KU having moments of defensive excellence and, outside of a brief stretch in the second half, containing Smart. It went to overtime, where KU hit the shots to win it.

Suddenly I was fired up about them and looking forward to a long NCAA run.

Those feelings were even bigger midway through the first half of the semifinal game against Iowa State. KU was shutting the Cyclones down on defense, making shots, and imposing their will upon the game. Number 1 seed here we come!

Then someone flipped a switch for both teams and there was a 22-point turnaround that led to a relatively easy ISU win.

Back in the dumps and spending Sunday frantically looking at the teams I did not want KU to face, knowing they would show up in the brackets Sunday night.²

So here we are, on Monday morning, still a bit manic. Pleased that VCU, among a few others, aren’t in KU’s bracket. A little concerned about playing New Mexico for the second time this season, without Joel Embiid who was the difference back in December. But, you know what, Wiggins wasn’t very good that day, nor was Wayne Selden. In fact, both are completely different and more confident players today. So I’m happy to take our chances if we get through the first game, and UNM beats Stanford, with the Lobos a second time.

I was trying to think last week when was the last time KU had to fight a major injury. Not just an ankle tweak, but an injury that kept a starter off the court for multiple games.

Brandon Rush was nice enough to blow out his knee in the off-season, and though he was hobbled the following November, he played just fine in his last NCAA tournament.

Wayne Simien fought injuries his entire career, and plenty of KU fans insist had he been able to play the second half of 2003, the Jayhawks wouldn’t have lost to Syracuse in the national title game. But still, they were playing for the title. His injury didn’t wreck the team’s season.

I think the last major injury that affected the program in March was Keith Langford’s knee issues in 2005. We didn’t know it at the time, but he had undergone micro-fracture surgery twice the previous summer, then played most of his senior year on a knee that probably should have had an entire year of rehab. He broke down late, sat out the Big 12 tournament, and then started the Bucknell game on the bench, playing only a few, ineffective minutes. If he’s healthy, KU may have been a better seed and avoided Bucknell. More importantly, the Keith we knew from his first 2 1/2 years of college would have sliced through the Bucknell defense and the first Killer B loss never happens.

We can’t really evaluate Joel’s impact until this season ends and whether he’s on the court in the final game KU plays. I fear, though, when we look back in the 2013-14 season, it will be with the perpetual regret that Jojo wasn’t healthy and reeking havoc in March.

I look at this team and see one that is about six weeks behind schedule. They had that 7-0 run in January where they looked awfully good at times, and won on talent alone when they weren’t locked in. They destroyed a pretty solid Texas team in February. But just now has it felt like they’ve begun to claim their identity, the way a Bill Self team normally does in late January/early February. Wiggins is making a much bigger impact on the game, playing with confidence and asserting himself into each contest. Selden has gotten better. Tarik Black found his footing. In the right matchup, Perry Ellis has been very good at times.

But there are the never ending, horrific defensive lapses, coming from just about every spot on the court. There are the mindless turnovers. Seriously, for all the talent KU has, how many times a game do they turn and chuck the ball out of bounds for no reason?

If we could turn the clock back even three weeks, and let them play another 6-7 games, I’d feel a lot better about their chances, regardless of defense, turnovers, and Embiid’s availability.

Thus, I’m sticking with the attitude I went into last year’s tournament with: if they make it to the second weekend, I’ll be pleased. The disclaimer this year is a loss in the first weekend without Embiid will be tough to take, but something a lot of us have been semi-expecting since he had to sit down and which would be very different than that young, hyper-talented team of 2006 that lost to Bradley in the first round.

It’s too late to expect miracles on the defensive end, or that the guys suddenly learn how to not throw the ball away 15 times a game. This is a maddening team in that some nights it can be as good as anyone in the game, and others they can play like a bad NAIA team.

They’re my guys, though, and I hope they surprise me this week (and next).

You know what time it is…

Rock Chalk, Bitches.

March gloom came early to KU fans last night, as the news broke that Joel Embiid will not be available to play until, likely, the second weekend of the NCAA tournament after being diagnosed with a stress fracture in his back.

Devastating news for a team that needed him on the court and at full-speed in order to have a chance for a deep NCAA run. If KU does survive the first weekend of the tournament, which is in serious question considering their youth and defensive deficiencies, the question becomes how effective can Embiid be after nearly a month off. And that’s if he is cleared to play.

As I wrote yesterday, I do not have high expectations for this year’s team. But, man, without Embiid…it’s looking pretty bleak.

The only silver lining is that ten years ago, to the day, UConn center Emeka Okafor was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his back and was expected to miss the opening game of the Big East tournament. A month later Okafor was named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA tournament as UConn won the national title.

Obviously Okafor’s injury was either not as serious as Embiid’s, or he was farther along in the healing process, as he played through the NCAA tournament without issue. In fact, he played in the Big East tournament. But his recovery gives KU fans hope that if Embiid can get back on the court this year, he can be a contributor. It’s just a glimmer, but it’s something.

I had planned on getting this post out Friday. But, as some of you may have noticed, there were some issues with the site in the morning and I spent a fair chunk of time trying to get it working again. That also allowed me to finish another long article to throw in here.

So, here they are: some showbiz links.

First, one of two reprints that were circulating recently. It is a really amazing profile of Johnny Carson from 1977. It took me about four days to get through, reading at school pick-ups and in spare moments here-and-there. But it is worth the time.

Observations:
* Johnny was an icon to me, someone I got to see on Friday nights, when I was allowed to stay up late, or over the holidays at relatives’ homes. He was this grand, benevolent embodiment of the pulse of the nation. I didn’t realize he was quietly outspoken, if that’s possible, in a rather liberal way. I’m surprised that my grandparents watched him every night.
* I enjoy the speculation throughout the profile on how long he would continue to work. No one, in 1977, thought he would hang around until 1992.
* I couldn’t help but think about how late night TV has changed. Back then, there was, really, only Carson. Letterman came along five years later as an irreverent nightcap for those who could power through until 12:30. Then, there was the great disruption of the late night landscape in the late 80s, when Joan Rivers and then Arsenio Hall challenged Carson from Fox. Upon Carson’s retirement, all hell broke loose. Today, we have Fallon taking over the just-retired Leno, Letterman, and Kimmel at 11:30. Conan is still out there somewhere. Ferguson and Myers hold down the very late night shifts. Oh, and there’s Stewart and Colbert doing their thing, arguably better than anyone else. We’ve come a long way from the single late night voice to rule them all.

Anyway, it’s a fantastic read if you remember the glory days of the “Tonight Show” or are just a fan of pop culture in general.

Q: On the show, one of the things you control most strictly is the expression of your own opinions. Why do you keep them a secret from the viewers?
Carson: I hate to be pinned down. Take the case of Larry Flynt, for example. [Flynt, the publisher of the sex magazine Hustler, had recently been convicted on obscenity charges.] Now, I think Hustler is tawdry, but I also think that if the First Amendment means what it says, then it protects Flynt as much as anyone else, and that includes the American Nazi movement. As far as I’m concerned, people should be allowed to read and see whatever they like, provided it doesn’t injure others. If they want to read pornography until it comes out of their ears, then let them. But if I go on the “Tonight Show” and defend Hustler, the viewers are going to tag me as that guy who’s into pornography. And that’s going to hurt me as an entertainer, which is what I am.
Fifteen Years Of The Salto Mortale

Speaking of late night forays. here is a recycled profile of Chevy Chase from 2002. The fall of Chevy is one of the more amazing things in Hollywood in my life. He was at the pinnacle of American comedy and, really, disappeared not because he was a recluse or had some religious awakening or massive drug problem, but rather because he, apparently, was a titanic asshole who made a bunch of bad choices in projects and had no goodwill with which to rescue himself.

Anyway, given his semi-resurgence over the first four seasons of “Community,” I found the piece’s closing line especially interesting.

’’You know, everybody has disasters,” says Steve Martin, a friend from ”’Three Amigos.” ”And then you have a hit and then the disasters don’t matter. So, if you think about it, everybody is just one hit away from being exactly where they were. Chevy is one hit away. It will happen. He’ll get that hit. And he’ll be back.”

He’s Still Chevy Chase (And You’re Not)

This oral history of Ghostbusters was perfectly timed, coming out right after the recent death of Harold Ramis.

Originally I was writing it for me, Eddie Murphy, and John Belushi, and I was about a third of the way through. On a beautiful March day, I was writing a line for John when the phone rang and it was Bernie [Brillstein]. He told me that John had died in the Chateau Marmont. I finished the script with Bill Murray in mind.

He was writing for Eddie, too? Man…

An Oral History of Ghostbusters

And, finally, Alec Baldwin sums up the entertainment industry in so many ways. Based on his performances over the years, he seems like a fun guy to hang out with. But he also appears thin-skinned and prone to dramatic outbursts. In other words, he’s a phenomenal actor because he makes us believe he is worthy of respect and admiration when he’s really just as screwed up as the rest of us.

In this “As Told To” piece, he claims he’s leaving the public world to regain control of his life and image. He says that he still wants to work but will give up taking to the press, going on “Letterman,” and “SNL.” We’ll see about that. But it reads as a thoroughly enjoyable train wreck of a piece, whether you like Baldwin or not.

Alec Baldwin: Good-bye, Public Life