Border Dud

Last year, when Kansas and Missouri played basketball for the first time in nearly ten years, I wrote this:

That’s the good news for MU: things change quickly in college hoops these days. They could add some solid transfers and the young guys who were overmatched on Saturday may be much more comfortable and confident next December. KU could be on probation and have lost a ton of talent. 2021’s embarrassment could lead to an ass kicking BY Mizzou in 2022.

Shows how much I know.

Although Missouri coming in at 9–0 seemed to promise a more competitive game, it was not to be.

It took KU about four minutes longer than last year, but it was again over and ugly pretty early. The final score was nine points closer than last year, so I guess that’s a sign of progress for Mizzou?

It was KU’s best performance of the year, but it’s tough to say it was a turning point in their season. Because Mizzou flat-out stunk Saturday. Well, the team did. The crowd was excellent and I’m sure the game day vibe in Columbia was outstanding.

The Tigers were undefeated, albeit against a pretty terrible schedule. They led the nation in scoring and in steals. Yet I kept thinking, “OK, new coach, a bunch of transfers, weak schedule. They might be better, but no way they have a chance to win, right?”

And then all the computer numbers suggested a narrow KU win. Consensus was in the 2–4 point range.

I wasn’t nervous, but all the KU fans online who were nervous were making me nervous.

Which was silly.

It was an ideal matchup for KU. DaJuan Harris does not turn the ball over under normal circumstances. Playing in his hometown, he was ultra cautious, taking 2–3 seconds longer to attack their pressure to bait them into giving him angles to probe. Mizzou’s lack of height was the perfect front line for KJ Adams to feast on, and he turned in the best game of his career. Mizzou’s half-court pressure kept leaving KU wings wide-open for jump shots. And when the Tigers decided to guard the perimeter, that left Adams and Kevin McCullar free to fly to the rim for uncontested dunks.

I’ll admit I laughed out loud when Mizzou ran a KU out-of-bounds lob play – the one that Ochai Agbaji murdered a TCU dude on last year – but threw the pass about a foot too high and it turned into a dunk the other way for McCullar.

I thought it was very interesting how Bill Self coached the game. It felt more like a late February game, where he was committed to his top seven players. Ernest Udeh played a minute or two in the first half. MJ Rice played one. Cam Martin played his first ever minutes as a Jayhawk midway through the second half, got blocked, didn’t close-out on a shooter, and was immediately subbed out. Other than that, it was the starters, Bobby Pettiford, and Joe Yesufu. Self was not about to give guys he doesn’t trust minutes in Columbia.[1]

It was fun, pounding Mizzou for a second-straight year. KU played well. But did that game prepare them for Indiana next week? Or Texas, Texas Tech, and Baylor down the road? Maybe from a crowd noise standpoint, but certainly not from a level of play perspective.

For Mizzou I don’t know how much you can judge the team based on Saturday. As I said, new coach, a lot of transfers, and the first time playing a high-level opponent. It was a lot to ask. I’m sure Tiger fans are disappointed, but it’s so early in the Dennis Gates era that you can’t take much from it. It sucks (for them) that it was against KU, but based on what I saw, this was bound to happen as the Tigers move into the conference season.[2] I think the area of concern is how the team seemed to give up at a couple points. They looked thoroughly disinterested for several stretches. If not for KU sloppiness, the Jayhawks probably hang well over 100 on them. I thought it was curious Gates pretty much refused to back out of their pressure, but maybe he was taking the long view and thinking, “Well, it’s not working today, but this is how we want to play, so we need to keep doing it.” In the end, it doesn’t matter if you lose by 15 or 30. Especially when the line was only KU –3.5.[3]

Other pedantic notes:

  • I get that the game was officially part of the “SEC on ESPN” package. But why did we need a grainy, low-resolution, static camera aimed at a small section of the Mizzou student section? Why not just shoot it, occasionally, with one of those fancy, HD cameras that the rest of the game is shot in? How did seeing part of the students on the equivalent of a Nest camera enhance anyone’s enjoyment of the game? Once again, ESPN trying too hard to give the viewing audience something they did not ask for.
  • ESPN said that KU had won 8 of 9 and three consecutive games in the series. Apparently they were counting the Hurricane relief scrimmage in the fall of 2017? Because Mizzou beat the Jayhawks three games ago. I mean they even showed highlights of that game. Or perhaps ESPN had already chalked up Saturday as a win for KU?
  • The lead announcer also made a couple notable, factual mistakes. Since it was a rivalry game I’m contractually obligated to say those were because he’s a Mizzou alum, not because of any slips of the tongue.
  • Hearing the Rock Chalk Chant in Columbia, MO was pretty dope.
  • I do not understand why Adidas made the stripes on the sides of KU’s uniforms white, when red would look so much better. Especially since they would be a call back to the uniforms worn by the 2008 national champs.

Time to bring on the Hoosiers.

World Cup / Grant Wahl

Tremendous World Cup quarterfinals Friday and Saturday. The Holland-Argentina game was absolute bananas, with controversy, some first-class pettiness/bad blood, an all-time tying goal, and then a ridiculous penalty shootout. I wish we could have those teams play again.

Morocco being the first African side to reach the semifinals is great. They defeated Portugal on a beautiful goal.

France knocking off England was a great game as well. Shame they had to meet in the quarters. More like Harry Kane’t, amirite? That was terrible, I know.

The most shocking news of the weekend was the death of American soccer writer Grant Wahl. Only 48. At first his death seemed highly suspicious as he has consistently been critical of the Qatari government. While details that he had been unhealthy for a week or so have come out, I’m not sure we should just assume it was natural. I mean, I hope it was, which seems like a terrible thing to say. But that is preferable to the darker alternatives.

I’ve been following Wahl since the late ‘90s I guess, whenever he started writing about soccer for Sports Illustrated. Later he became their top college basketball writer. At some point I learned he was from Kansas City. When SI began putting more content online, he did a periodic mailbag on SI’s site. Once, after he did a very good feature on Nick Collison, I sent him an email not with a question but just saying that I enjoyed his work in general, that piece in particular, and was glad to see someone from my generation from KC making it big. He responded with a nice note of thanks within like 45 minutes. Forever fan after that. A year or so later I sent in a regular question that he included in the mailbag. In 2008, he wrote the cover story about KU’s national title game victory over Memphis. I don’t think he actually coined the phrase Mario’s Miracle, but he got some credit for it.

As he transitioned into soccer full-time, I continued to follow him closely, mostly on Twitter. He was an invaluable source of information, and a constant booster for the sport. Based on the outpouring of grief from other writers, he was a really, really, really good person, too.

Just a terrible loss for his wife and family, obviously. A huge loss for American soccer fans and anyone who enjoys outstanding sports writing.

Grant went to Princeton, but his mom was a Jayhawk. Something that bled into his Tweets on occasion.

  1. I think Mizzou’s lack of size contributed to that. Udeh, Zuby Ejiofor, and the other young bigs aren’t experienced enough to chase small guys on the perimeter so they were not getting minutes Saturday unless absolutely necessary. Ironically getting KJ off the court might have been MU’s best hope.  ↩
  2. Their up-coming schedule is no joke. UCF in Miami (-ish), Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas. Things will get real really fast.  ↩
  3. I love to tell stories about how I didn’t really understand how prevalent gambling was on college campuses until I went to games in Columbia. One of my favorites was being in the room of a friend of a friend on a KU-MU football game day and the phone ringing off the hook as the resident took bets. At one point he said, “I think I need to stop taking bets so I can actually root for the Tigers.” Kind of ironic that sports gambling is legal in Kansas but not Missouri now.  ↩