Weekend Notes

The quiet weekends continue. We started our latest in-home project, only to be foiled by problematic wallpaper. S painted a little bit. I cleaned some gutters. We started laying out clothes to prep for spring break packing. Other than that, slow times.

Jayhawk Talk

The one event of the weekend was KU closing out the regular season with a pounding of K-State. Nothing unexpected about that, K-State is trash. Even with KU playing multiple walk-ons in the early moments for senior day, the Cats couldn’t build a lead.

No, what was notable was we finally got a kick-ass Darryn Peterson game. 27 points on just one made 3, and only two made jumpers. Everything was at the rim, on floaters, or from the line. Just toying with the defenders, doing whatever he wanted. An EASY 27 points. Obviously KSU being garbage takes some of the shine off that, but the kid looked good and confident. He was sharing the ball. He made a couple jaw-dropping plays with what seemed like minimal effort. He looked happy! Finally, in the last regular season game of the year, it seemed to be happening.

DP scored 27. Tre White 23. Flory Bidunga added a few more highlight dunks to his collection in what could have been his final game in Allen Fieldhouse. Melvin Council was two rebounds short of a triple double. It was a good day.

Now the question I’ve been asking for weeks gets even bigger: is there enough time to to build chemistry, to establish roles, to figure out how to combine DP’s skills with the rest of the team? For a squad that scored 104 points Saturday, the offense never looked super smooth. Peterson made a couple incredible passes that caught teammates by surprise. There was still a lot of standing around and watching him do his thing. If this game happened a month ago, I would be very excited about the future. But with only a couple practices this week before the Big 12 tournament, then a couple before the beginning of the NCAA tournament next week, I don’t think there is enough time to iron out those wrinkles. You never want to lose but perhaps taking an L Thursday or Friday wouldn’t be the worse thing if it meant more practice hours together between now and when losing means the season is over.

But maybe DP is good enough to carry the team past that. Maybe his presence loosens up the rest of the team enough where not being totally on the same page won’t matter. I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it, but there’s a better chance of that happening today than there was a week ago.

Weather

It was really nice Friday, nearly 80°! Storms Saturday morning cooled it off, then a chilly morning Sunday before a nice, afternoon warmup. Today and tomorrow will be around 70° and then we start a traditional March roller coaster. You can’t start thinking it is May or anything, but the worst of winter is hopefully behind us.