Month: March 2021 (Page 2 of 2)

Me, just over two years ago:

Kansas football always finds a way to disappoint. I’d love to be surprised this time.

And,

My basic philosophy for KU football these days is that it can’t get any worse.

Never stop being you, KU football!

Since Les Miles arrived in Lawrence there have been rumors. Rumors about his health, his emotional investment to the program, his cognitive abilities. There was the curiously frequent turnover of offensive coordinators. Somehow Les was going into spring practice with the fourth OC of his two-plus years at KU, which seemed to point to consistent static between that position and the head coach.

So it seemed just a matter of time until his tenure as head coach of the Fighting Football Jayhawks came to an early end. I must admit, though, that allegations of sexual harassment that were buried by LSU was not on my BINGO card of reasons why Les would leave.

If you get past all the losing, Kansas football is kind of incredible!

Miles’ behavior at LSU, or alleged behavior, was plenty of evidence to relieve him of his coaching duties.

But the real bad guy in all of this, at least from KU’s perspective, is athletic director Jeff Long.

Long has kind of been a disaster. He was hired with one overriding purpose: hire his buddy Miles to stabilize the football program. Until this week, that was largely successful. The football team has not gotten better on the field, but Les stuck to his stated goal of only recruiting and signing high school players. He appeared to, finally, have solved the scholarship issues that had been present since Charlie Weis ran off nearly half the team and replaced them with Juco players.

With the most recent recruiting class – KU’s best in nearly a decade – Miles seemed to complete that task. His departure may rip that apart, starting another cycle of scrambling desperately just to get enough kids to field a full program again.

Despite that success, Long has fucked up about everything else he’s put his hands on at KU.

He decided to fight previous football coach David Beaty over his buyout, reporting a series of minor infractions to the NCAA to undermine Beaty. The resulting legal proceedings ended up costing KU nearly as much in legal fees as if Long had just paid Beaty the money he was due to go away. In the process Long made a former coach look bad, which is a great way to create an environment that other coaches want to be a part of. Oh, and there was the little issue of KU already being involved in the biggest ever recruiting scandal, and Jeff Long DECIDED TO GIVE THE NCAA MORE AMMUNITION.

This was a truly mind-blowing decision. Seriously, KU has had a lot of dumb administrators over the past 20 years – pretty much every AD has been incompetent or a criminal since the creation of the Big 12 – but this could be the single dumbest decision anyone associated with KU athletics has ever made.

Also along the way, without consulting Bill Self, Jeff Long told the NCAA that Adidas could be viewed as a booster of KU when the school was fighting to get Silvio De Sousa cleared to play. Again, there was already an NCAA investigation underway into the relationship between KU and Adidas. Yet Long somehow thought anything he said to get Silvio eligible would not be used as the central element of the NCAA’s broader case against KU.

Next came his bizarre press conference after the NCAA gave De Sousa a two-year suspension, when he claimed the NCAA told him that they were asking the question as “a hypothetical” only. Checkers and chess, and Long was the one playing checkers.

(I wouldn’t call it a huge disaster, but Long was also largely responsible – rumors say without involving either Self or Miles – for getting Missouri back on the basketball and football schedules. This was inevitable, but most people around KU seemed both surprised and disappointed by the timing of the announcement. Long acted like he had brought the Palestinians and Israelis together. My thought was, “Hey, maybe wait on football until we think we can win a couple Big 12 games.”)

There’s also his overall personality. He has always come across as a needy, camera-hungry, attention whore who thinks he’s being clever and funny but who actually makes people either laugh uncomfortably or stand there in awkward silence.

So, to sum up, he didn’t fully look into the reasons why his good buddy got fired by his previous employer, he shit all over a former coach who wasn’t very good but worked his ass off and deserved better, he pissed off the basketball coach, he got totally worked over by the NCAA (which is extremely tough to do), and has made the worst possible decisions at nearly every step of an NCAA investigation.

Les clearly had to go. But the lawyers inside KU’s administration – who have not made the best decisions in recent years, either – better be working on a way to get Jeff Long out of Lawrence before he can do any more damage to the athletic department. I don’t care if KU has to wait months to hire a new football coach: someone other than Jeff Long needs to be in charge of determining Les’ replacement. Although after all the buy-outs the money people behind KU have written over the last decade, I’m not sure the school can shake enough change loose to make Long go away quietly.

I said it couldn’t get worse. I should have known better.

At the Lawrence Journal-World Matt Tait has an interesting idea: follow the path that Wichita State took last fall when they fired Gregg Marshall and elevate Emmett Jones as interim coach. Jones is best situated to keep the current recruiting class together, and he deserves a shot as much as anyone else on the staff to run the program. Spring is an awful time to hire a new coach. I’d say let Jones be the iCoach for the next eight months rather than force in a subpar candidate. Best case, Jones keeps the program steady and earns the job. It also prevents Long from making another “inspired” hire. Worst case, Jones is in over his head but this gives a new AD plenty of time to search for a new coach who can start recruiting his own players to KU next November. The Jayhawks were only going to win 1–2 games at most next fall, regardless of who was coaching. If Jones is completely inept it’s not like it will cost the team a bowl appearance.

Actually, I take that back. There is the perfect candidate out there. He’s won in a tough location. His success has translated to different environments. Hell, he’s even from Kansas.

That’s right, Ted Lasso is the man to finally turn KU football around!

Believe!

Compared to other recent weekends, this past one was pretty laid back for us. It helped that there was no KU game.[1]

The biggest factor in the lazy weekend was that my latest round of balance therapy really triggers my vertigo, and Sunday I spent almost the entire day on the couch giving my body a break. My therapist said making the vertigo kick in is the best way to speed the re-training of my brain, so I’m going to trust it was a good thing that I was worthless yesterday. And only slightly better today.

Friday night was busy, though. That was L’s basketball tournament night. Her team opened against the second-worst team in the league, a team they beat easily in the regular season. That game had been one of L’s best of the year, when she knocked down three quick jumpers to build an early lead.

Friday was not much different. She opened the scoring by swishing two free throws. She hit a baseline jumper. She pulled up on a drive and hit a ten-footer. And she made a sick move into the lane, getting the defender leaning one way then crossing her over and tossing in a nifty little runner. That move got some oohs and aahs in the stands. She had eight points in the first half, added four in the second, but missed two wide-open shots on inbounds plays that could have given her a career-high 16. Twelve points in a 16-point win was plenty.

We were a little concerned at how long her coaches both played L and kept pressing. L played almost the entire second half and they were still pressing up 15+ with under 5:00 left. Their opponents only made two field goals all night. The championship game was immediately after, so seems like you would want to rest your top scorers in an easy win. L said she was fine afterward, though, so we didn’t sweat it.

The other highlight of the semifinal was a dad in front of us from the other team. He was getting all worked up about everything. The poor play of his team. The calls the refs were/were not making. He wasn’t yelling loudly but just looked beside himself about everything.

The greatest parent moment all season came as we were starting the second half. We were sitting right at mid court and he was directly behind the ref. As she prepared to hand the ball to our girls to start the half, he starts berating this poor lady. It went on a few seconds as the girls were lining up and eventually we caught his point of contention: he believed it should have been his team’s ball because we took the last shot of the first half. He was 1000% convinced he was right. Finally the ref took the whistle out of her mouth, gave him a shitty look, and with much disdain said, “The team that has the possession arrow at the end of the first half gets the ball to start the second half. It doesn’t matter who took the last shot.” She popped the whistle back in, blew it, and handed the ball to our girl. Meanwhile the dad angrily shook his head.

WHAT. THE. HELL. DUDE?

Maybe that’s why he was arguing so much: he had no freaking idea what the rules of basketball are, or have been for roughly 40 years. Shocked the Indiana Basketball Police didn’t come out and force him into an education camp.

On to the final, where we would take on a team we beat 12–10 in the regular season. That game was physical and ugly. We had an 8–2 lead and had to hold on for our lives to win.

The first half was entirely back-and-forth. They lead by three, we scored four-straight, they scored, we scored, and so on. We had a three-point lead late in the half when L made a bad turnover at half court and have up a layup. It was 11–10 at half. So progress from the first game, I guess. Our best inside player had three fouls, though, which caused some concern.

Midway through the second half we had a 15–12 lead and then it all went to shit. We had all ten players and our coaches, good guys that they are, made sure that every girl played. Coaching a big team is tough. I’ve done it in basketball and kickball. You do your best to give girls equal opportunity. But I’ve always thought you throw that out in close tournament games. There is a significant drop off in ability from the first five to second five on this team, and I’m not sure a few of them needed to be on the court as much as they were. Still, I give the coaches props for giving every girl a chance.

The other team started pressing and trapping and we lost our composure. Girls who can barely dribble against no pressure were just melting against this defense. We made bad passes. We couldn’t get the ball inbounds. When we got the ball to one of our guards, everyone abandoned her to face the traps alone. It was a disaster. I think we went four-straight possessions without getting the ball across mid court. Next thing you know it was 24–15. 12–0 runs in sixth grade C-leagues are are killers. We had some chances to get back into it but just missed too many shots late. We were 1–8 from the line, which did not help. Final score was 27–20. L finished with three points.

A disappointing score but L said she had fun. She made some new friends from other schools, and she’s excited to see them at future CYO games. Amazingly she said she’ll miss the practices most. She’s normally not a big practice fan but said they were fun because they goofed around a lot.

One funny ref note from the championship contest. It was the classic “One ref calls everything, the other ref calls nothing” game. I hate these. The active ref got into a yelling match with the opposing coach before the opening tip because his team wasn’t ready to play when the ref was, and again during the first half over a call. But he was generally making decent, fair calls. In the second half, when the game was especially frenetic, L was bringing the ball up the sideline and getting bodied by her defender. Eventually the ref blew a whistle and called a pushing foul. Before he signaled who the foul was on, he yelled down at the defender, “HEY! Get off her!” I was thinking the same thing so was glad we were on the same page.

Now we are off to spring sports. C is playing soccer for the first time in four or five years, joining a bunch of other eighth graders on the St. P’s team. She has already had to leave a practice because she got hit by a ball that was kicked hard, so this should be great. In another upset. because her eighth grade trip to DC has been replaced by a trip to Cleveland/King’s Island, and will be later in May than normal, a bunch of girls decided to play kickball one more time. The head coach and I thought we were done; 8th graders don’t normally play in the spring because the DC trip falls right in the midst of the season. Now we both have to mentally prepare ourselves for another season. I tried to talk C out of it, reminding her of how her fall season ended perfectly. She wasn’t interested in my logic. Oh well…

C will also run track, which she is very excited about. There are a couple new coaches on the team who have a ton of experience, so it will be fun to see if that translates into better training and results.

L will also play kickball again. There is no 7th grade team this spring so the girls teams will scrimmage each other, which should be awesome. The head coaches of both asked me if that would work for my girls, and I told them it would be fine. L will also run track for the first time. Two springs ago her classmates tried to talk her into it but she declined. After going to C’s meets and hanging out with her friends who were running, she decided it looked cool. It helped that she beat some of those girls when she would help them warm up. We’ll see how that translates to actual races.

In a huge upset, L has told us she’s done with soccer for the time being. She really wants to focus on basketball. This has been a source of controversy, as S and I debate whether should she focus on what she’s having more fun with or what she has a better chance to play for four years in high school.[2] We’ll see what L decides to do in summer – try out for club soccer or find a basketball league/clinics – but after years of soccer we appear to be done with it for at least the short term.

Oh, and M is about to try out for the tennis team at CHS. She’s been taking lessons for six months, but this will be the first time she has ever played. Sophomores can normally get cut, but since that class missed last spring, that grade will be no-cut with the freshmen. She’s very excited about it, and has several friends playing, too. She also thinks the uniforms are super cute, so there you go.

A couple weeks back I alluded to a health procedure I was about to go through and promised to share details down the road. I just wrapped up my seventh visit to a health care professional over the past two months, have an idea what is going on, and can finally give you an update on what’s going on with my body.

Sometime last fall I started feeling “different.” I was having frequent headaches, my vision was often funky, I was always tired, I had weakness in my legs, and had occasional spells of vertigo. I figured the headaches were because of new glasses, the fatigue from my sleep apnea, and the vertigo was brief and random. Put all that together and I didn’t worry about it too much. Minor annoyances that seemed to pass and I figured they would work themselves out.

By Thanksgiving they were getting more pronounced, so I mentioned them to S and asked if I should start with getting my glasses re-checked or touching base with my cardiologist. Since new glasses seemed to be the trigger, we started there. My eye doc checked my prescription and made a small adjustment, but didn’t think glasses should be causing me all those issues. I got new lenses right before Christmas and immediately everything got much worse. Crushing headaches, much worse vertigo, and a general malaise. The weekend before Christmas I pretty much sat in bed or on the couch all day because moving around made me feel so bad.

Now S was very concerned. She worked that Monday and talked to my doc on the family medicine side, who said I needed to come in right away. Because a few of my symptoms fell under the large Covid umbrella, I had to see the “sick” doc rather than my normal PCP. He tested me for Covid (negative), had some blood work done, and referred me to a neurologist. Trying to schedule with a specialist around the end/beginning of the year is a huge pain and I wasn’t able to see her until late January.

In the meantime I decided I didn’t have anything to lose and went back to my old glasses. Almost immediately the headaches went away. It took about three weeks for my eyes to adjust, but suddenly my vision wasn’t an issue. But the vertigo was still there, and pretty much a daily, constant occurrence compared the the momentary spells I began with in October.

When I met with the neurologist, she sent me to do both a VNG balance test and a brain MRI. In the VNG testing you wear goggles that track the movement of your eyes while both following moving objects and as you sit/lie in various positions while both hot and cold air is blown into your ears. Weird, right?

When I scheduled my MRI they asked if I was claustrophobic. I laughed and said, “I guess we’ll find out.” I didn’t think I was but I also had heard that an MRI tube can be uncomfortable.

I arrived for the MRI and the techs asked if I wanted to watch TV or listen to music. I figured with my glasses off TV would be useless so I asked for music. They asked if I wanted a warm blanket. That seemed silly – the room was plenty warm – so I declined. They said the tests would take about 30 minutes total. I’d do one without contrast that would take about 15 minutes, they’d slide me out, pop an IV in, and then send me back in for 15 more minutes. Seemed easy enough.

I laid down, they put the gear on my head, and slid me inside the tube. My first reaction was that the top of the tube was close to my face. Very close. I wasn’t sure I liked that very much. The techs were patting my legs to let me know that most of my body was outside and reminded me I had a button to squeeze if I needed anything. I took a deep breath. Then I thought, “I should push that button.” But that’s stupid, I’m safe and it hasn’t even been a minute yet. “Just chill out you loser.”

They called over the intercom and said they were warming up the equipment so I would likely hear some loud noises and we’d get started in about a minute. “I can do 15 minutes of this.” I thought.

But I kept having an urge to sit up, which was impossible with that wall three inches from my face. Fifteen minutes suddenly seemed like a very long time.

After talking myself down a few more times, my body finally said “Hell no!” I didn’t have a full-on panic attack, but I definitely wanted to get the fuck out of that tube. I fought it for another 20 seconds or so then squeezed the buzzer and told them I didn’t feel very comfortable.

They rushed in, got me out, and immediately began comforting me. “It’s no big deal, this happens a lot. Just have your physician prescribe a sedative and reschedule.”

I felt like a big dumbass. I think I was in the tube between 60 and 90 seconds. I texted S to let her know what happened. When she got home that night she said her partners all said, “MRI’s suck! They didn’t automatically sedate him? That’s crazy!” Where was this advice before I went in?!?!

I rescheduled for a day S could drive me, about 10 days later. I’m not exaggerating: at least five times in that stretch I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking about the MRI tube. I saw no way this was going to work out well.

On the day of my second attempt I took one of the two tabs of Xanax my doctor prescribed me 90 minutes before the test. After an hour I didn’t feel any different. The label said I could take the second if needed. When I told S I was still nervous she said, “Take it, you dumbass!” So I popped it and we headed to the imaging center.

Because of Covid she couldn’t go in with me and I was on my own. I’ve heard that Xanax makes some people very mellow and sleepy. Not me, I was edgy and wide awake. I did not see any scenario in which this worked out.

When I entered the MRI room, I opted for the TV goggles, hoping not seeing the tube wall would help me stay relaxed. I accepted the warm blanket. And since I had failed once I think the guys moved a little quicker than normal. I watched ESPN’s NBA show The Jump for about 15 minutes, remained calm, and survived the MRI. When I got home I took a two-hour nap. I guess the sedative effects of the Xanax finally kicked in.

Expert advice: if you need to have an MRI, ask for the sedative!

I should back up for a moment. When things got bad in December, S said she was worried that some of my symptoms were indicative of multiple sclerosis. I was worried I had a brain tumor. On the nights when my headaches were especially painful I would search for brain cancer symptoms, treatments, and prognoses. Uplifting stuff!

I got the MRI results the night of my test. It was pretty clean. No signs of MS or tumors or other red-flags. That was a huge relief.

I had not seen the results of my VNG testing yet, but my neurologist’s assistant called and shared that it showed I have peripheral vertigo. She referred me to a balance therapist. I had my first therapy session last week, and while there was told that I have some fairly significant damage to the vestibular nerve in one of my ears, and that was the most likely cause of my vertigo/balance issues. They started me on a regimen of exercises that are designed to retrain my brain to work around this damage.

What’s weird about that is I haven’t experienced any of the triggers the therapist suggested can cause this damage: a sudden, high fever; an infection; some kinds of antibiotics. And while this is not related to my auditory nerves, I also haven’t had any noticeable hearing loss in that ear. Well, aside from the usual stuff an almost 50-year-old who has listened to lots of loud music would have.

I’ve been doing the exercises three times a day. For the first couple days I noticed an immediate improvement, which seemed too good to be true. Perhaps it was a mirage, because the last three days I’ve been as off-balance as I’ve ever been.

I met with my neurologist’s nurse practitioner this morning to go over everything. She said based on the combination of MRI and VNG results, they were very confident the nerve damage was the explanation. She said she has never seen anyone fail to get better after going through the therapy process. I asked about the causes, since I had not had any kind of traumatic experience, and she said it is kind of a mystery: some people go through a singular event that triggers it, in others it appears without explanation. And it can happen in healthy people just as easily as people who already have issues.

It has been a rather strange 4–5 months. These issues all fall into the “annoyance” category rather than being truly debilitating. There are certain situations that I know will trigger things. When the symptoms kick in I feel very “off,” but it’s not like I am unable to do normal activities. They just feel very different and I have to take some extra care. While I feel off-balance, I never feel like I’m going to fall. I’ve had to cut back my workout routine a bit. Which is annoying in the winter when the extra pounds add up far too easily. I will head to Florida in two weeks at my highest-ever spring break weight.

I’m hopeful my medical team is correct on the cause and that the treatment will in fact get my brain to work around the issue so I can move beyond this.

I also had my annual check-up with my cardiologist two weeks ago. Since I had the two episodes of irregular heartbeat in 2019, I haven’t had any repeats. Or at least ones of the length that sent me in to get my heart tested. Every now and then I’ll feel my heart do something odd, but whether that is truly my Afib kicking in, or it’s just me being more sensitive to normal variances I do not know. My EKG came back clean. Blood pressure probably a tick higher than ideal, but in line with where it has been. She said to stick with my CPAP as it’s the best thing I can do to keep my heart in proper rhythm. I hate the CPAP – S really hates it – but if it keeps me healthy it is worth it.

Bottom line: getting old kind of sucks as your body does weird things. But I know I’m lucky that, so far, all my issues have been identifiable, manageable, and not life threatening. As I prepare to enter my sixth decade, that’s about all I can ask for.

College basketball and lots of reading slowed down the visual media I consumed last month. Or at least compared to the past two months. Still some solid recommendations if you’re looking to add to your watch lists.

ZeroZeroZero
Another entry in the gritty series revolving around the drug trade and its ramifications on society genre. This might be the bleakest damn show I’ve ever watched. Lots of wicked violence – including one of the most gruesome deaths I’ve ever seen (out of the corners of my eyes) – lots of good people getting sucked into horrible situations, intra-family murder, and a truly psychopathic character that I won’t soon forget.

So not uplifting, but a hell of a series. It follows a single shipment of cocaine from Mexico to Italy and shows all the little waves that spin out from that shipment and how they affect the world. It’s really well done, if you’re into this kind of show.

A-

Soul
Re-upped with Disney+ for awhile in part to watch this. I heard wonderful things before watching, so my expectations were high. And it largely fulfilled them. It always amazes me how Pixar can take these stories that are rather simple at their core and make them so emotionally impactful.

A

Narcos: Mexico, season two
I wrapped up my viewing of the currently available Narcos seasons with this, the second that focuses on the 1980s drug empire built by Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. This season takes a long time to get moving, but the final 3–4 episodes are very good. It struggles a bit because Felix spends long stretches of the show doing a “Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part 2” act of smoking and brooding.

B+

The Wolf of Wall Street
Another past classic I’ve never seen. This felt like many Scorsese films: the first two thirds will floor you and then the final third is full of difficult moments. In this case I thought the final third was almost slapstick and goofy. That knocks the grade down just a hair. But otherwise, tremendous fun. Scorsese isn’t known for humor and this movie was full of laugh-out-loud moments. So, sure, a lot of Scorsese goodness, and a typically great DiCaprio lead. All of that is fine. But Margot Goddamn Robbie! Seriously…she should be illegal.

B+

Mulan
This was a bit of a surprise. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the original, animated movie. I didn’t have a whole lot of interest in watching this updated version, either. But we turned it on when a four-year-old nephew was over and enjoyed the first 45 minutes so much we started it over after he left so we could follow it without his questions and comments. Just a stunning visual presentation. Everything about the way this movie was presented was A+. We all enjoyed the story, too, although parts of it were pretty predictable.

B+

Formula 1: Drive to Survive, season one
This seemed like the show of choice for a lot of podcasters last summer, when they were bored and looking for new things to watch and follow. I resisted, simply because I’m not an auto racing fan other than the last weekend of May. But I caved when it came up on yet another podcast and I was looking for something I could watch in a couple nights.

And it’s pretty, pretty good. The producers are obviously doing a lot of selective editing and storytelling to heighten the personal dramas that are involved in the story. Many of their choices are ridiculous. But they also make for a quickly compelling show for an audience that is largely ignorant to the sport it covers.

The photography of the actual racing is phenomenal. Super high quality cameras on and in the cars, long stretches of uncut video to give a real sense of the feel of racing on Formula 1’s road courses. It’s pretty spectacular.

B

Strapped: Tallahassee
The No Laying Up boys tried a Pandemic era Strapped season last summer in Peoria, IL. It was, to my eyes, by far the weakest season in the series’ history. Because of Covid protocols they couldn’t add the local flavor that has made so many of the previous seasons such great watches.

Although this was also shot during the pandemic, it was later when folks were a little smarter about being safe, in Florida where some people DGAF about Covid, and they had an excellent guide who opened some local doors for them. It still lacked the local food and bar scene elements. But bringing in a golfer and coach from Florida A&M University to tell the story of running a golf program at a historically Black college gave the season enough heft to make it feel closer to how the show felt in the Before Times.

B+

It’s March! That means Daylight Saving Time and brighter evenings are two weeks away, astronomical spring is three weeks away, and Madness in right around the corner. We had snow on the ground 27 of 28 days in February. There are still piles in parking lots and other areas that were packed up following our big storm two weeks ago. But the last of the snow on most lawns melted Saturday afternoon as we had back-to-back days in the 60s.

The last weekend of February was all about hoops in our house.

Kid Hoops

L finished her regular season with two games Saturday. They were originally scheduled to play a morning double-header, but that got adjusted so that they played at 8:00 AM and 7:00 PM. Which is fun.

The morning game was against one of the first place teams in the division. Their shortest girl was taller than our tallest. Their inside player was probably 5’8” and weighed over 200 lbs. She couldn’t move very quickly, but she could post, drop step, and calmly tossed perfect passes to cutters when we doubled her. Beast. Our coaches switched to a zone for the first time and it at least slowed them down, but was really just delaying the inevitable.

Somehow we were only down six midway through the second half when their coach got a T. She was a piece of work: a screamer and yeller who stomped up and down the sidelines. Apparently she just got T’d up for being on the court. We hit one free throw to cut it to five, missed the second, then turned the ball over on the inbounds pass.

Our girls faded after that and we managed to lose by just 14.

In the nightcap we were playing a team that got moved up from the 5th grade A league. The league does this to get teams enough games when others are wiped out because of protocol issues. L and her teammates were excited to play fifth graders and end the season on a high note. I told her if the team got moved up, they must be good.

And they were. They were clearly a year-round team, and were well-drilled on both ends. They made our girls look bad in the first ten minutes. It didn’t help that we had all ten players and the coaches had to sub often. Somehow we got it together and went in to halftime tied at 10.

The second half was a bit of a shit show. Both teams were playing hard and aggressively. Yet somehow the fouls were 8–3 against us late in the half. Just after a teammate put in a missed L layup to give us our first lead of the game, the outside ref called a shooting foul against us from 30 feet away with about a minute left. Even the other team’s parents in front of us turned around and admitted it was a ridiculous call. They hit one of two to tie the game and the next minute was a series of missed chances by both teams.

We missed a shot with just under ten seconds left, they got the board, pushed it hard, and got a shot from the baseline just as the horn blew. Once again the outside ref – from midcourt – called a foul on us. Several of our parents totally lost it. Our best player’s older brother, who is a high school player, started screaming at the ref “That’s 10 to 3! How can you call that!?!” A few other parents were yelling as well. It was a good time.

They hit one of two to give her team the win.

L says that one of her teammates’ parents talked to the ref after the game and claim that he said he was tired and wanted to avoid overtime. I obviously can not verify this actually happened. It seems laughable to admit that. But given the way he called the game – we were behind all but about 30 seconds of the half – it’s not totally unreasonable. L made a very good point when she heard this, “If she missed both free throws I bet he would have called a lane violation to give her another shot.”

That same parent went back to the archived stream of the game and made a screen shot of the final play. Looks pretty clean to me.

Not only was it 10 fouls to three, but the other team shot 16 free throws to our two. This wasn’t West Virginia at Allen Fieldhouse, where all the forces of nature line up against the Mountaineers. Our coaches are pretty mild mannered but I started to wonder if they had done something to piss this one ref off. That same ref who made the last two calls overruled an out-of-bounds call from the opposite side of the court when the opposing coach looked at him and pointed his team’s way. Something uncool was definitely up.

What was I doing during all of this? After my sports coordinator experience, I have a hard time getting on youth league refs. They have a hard, shitty job. They get yelled at constantly. I doubt they get paid much. So I did no yelling. But when L got absolutely rocked by a defender with no call midway through the second half, I got up out of my seat in the bleachers and moved behind the bleachers so I could stand on my own. Some of it was so I could pace. Some of it was to avoid the other parents from both teams who were already getting loud. And some of it was just to put space between myself and the referees.

The refs have been frustrating all season. They are all adults, and some take only a mild interest in the game in front of them. Several hold running conversations with refs on neighboring courts while they are supposed to be watching the game in front of them. If there’s a more interesting game a couple courts over, you will catch them watching that action instead of the court they are supposed to be managing. Some duos split the court in half, with one never moving past the half court line. I’ve lost track of how many times a ball has gone out of bounds and the ref five feet away was looking at something else and couldn’t make the call. Seems like a lot of them are just in it for socializing and getting a check, rather than helping the kids learn how to play better and giving them a fair chance to win.

The funny thing was that L said the refs they had in the morning game were the best she’s had all year. They called more shooting fouls than anyone had called all season, but it also seemed to be a fair whistle that let the girls play but also penalized excessive contact.

Fortunately our tournament is at a different facility, so we should not get those evening refs again. I don’t know if it is because of Covid or something else, but L’s tournament has a strange format. Her team is in a nine-team division, and rather than giving the first seed a bye and doing a normal 8-team bracket with the remaining squads, the league split the division into two pools. The top four teams play on one side, the bottom five on the other. At first I assumed the winners of each pool would play each other for the championship. But they don’t. Whoever wins each mini-tournament will be the champion on their pool.

Honestly, that seems pretty fair because there’s a stark difference in ability, talent, and results between the top four and the rest of the division. Not sure why the top teams don’t all get a chance to beat a weak team before they play each other, though.

That works out well for L’s team because they were in fifth place when the brackets were released.[1] So they get a bye. And they’ve beaten all four teams in their pool, although one was just a two-point win without our best player. They play this Friday, back-to-back if they win their first game. Hopefully it will be less stressful than the past two weekends have been.

KU

WHOOO HOOOOO!!!!

Big win for the Jayhawks Saturday, handing Baylor their first loss of the year. I honestly didn’t think they had it in them. But they played their best game of the year – except for shooting the 3 – and took advantage of a Baylor squad that is still trying to find their footing after a long break for Covid. If KU could ever shoot decent from outside again I would get excited about their March prospects. But despite all the preseason evidence that this should be an outstanding 3-point shooting team, I’ve finally resigned myself to the truth that they aren’t, and 3–20 nights are going to be much more common than the 16–37 nights. They just miss sooooo many wide open looks that I can’t trust anyone to hit a shot when it matters.

It was great to see Marcus Garrett super energized for maybe the first time all season. He was on a mission to make Jared Butler’s life miserable. He hasn’t done that much this year. My theory is that he’s been constantly directing traffic and covering for his teammates’ mistakes, which keeps him from locking down on his guy. I wonder if he’s also dialed back his effort just a touch to both stay on the court as much as possible and avoid the injuries that derailed his last two seasons. Even if purely a subconscious choice, it could be a factor. With KU playing awesome team defense of late, that’s given him the freedom to be the Marcus Garrett that was national defensive player of the year last season. Another good sign for March.

They closed the Big 12 season winning six of seven, the only loss Tuesday in overtime at Texas, a game they could have easily won were it not for missed free throws late in regulation. Twelve and six in the Big 12 is also impressive, given where they were a month ago.

Playing all 18 games is a huge accomplishment on its own. If I’m looking at this week’s list of rescheduled games correctly, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, and Texas are the only other Big 12 teams that will play all 18 games.[2] There’s still plenty of time for someone in the program to slip up and ruin the season by forcing a pause in activities during the NCAA Tournament. But I think everyone on KU deserves a lot of credit for handling safety protocols as well as anyone has and both protecting the players while giving them the opportunity to play their whole schedule.

February 2021

• Wild Pink – 40
• Julien Baker – 35
• Crowded House – 27
• The Hold Steady – 25
• Pillow Queens – 24

Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.