Destruction, Terror, and Mayhem
Holy shit! What a goddamn game. It’s taken me until noon Friday to calm down a little bit after a thoroughly satisfying Thursday night of hoops. I went to bed after 1:00, and slept only fitfully between the lingering adrenaline and the trips to the bathroom caused by that last beer at 12:30. This morning my pulse was still a…
Tourney Notes, KU Edition
And now for the mighty Jayhawks. Sunday was everything this year’s team is about, compressed into 40 minutes. Moments where they looked completely brilliant. Moments where they faced a serious personnel issue and eased past it with no problem. Moments where they looked totally dominant on the glass. Moments where they could get, and make, any shot they wanted. And…
Tourney Notes, Weekend Wrap Part 1
A much, much better weekend of hoops after a ho-hum first two days of the tournament. Quick catch up for Saturday. Although I lost my runner-up, I was just fine with Villanova going out. I’m in a weird place with ‘Nova. I’ve watched them quite a bit since Butler joined the Big East, and I’ve always been impressed with the…
Tourney Notes, Day 4
The least entertaining first round of the NCAA tournament in recent memory is in the books.[1] There were some solid games, but a shockingly low number of upsets. And only a handful of “text all your friends and tell them to turn game X on immediately” moments. KU rolled. Which was good. They did exactly what I expected them to…
Tourney Notes, Day 3
Day three, and the first marathon of the tournament. I hung in there pretty valiantly, but must admit I packed things in about 11:15 eastern when none of the games were particularly close. Fortunately I didn’t miss any amazing comebacks or crazy last-second shots. All-in-all, it was a kind of boring day. There were a couple close games, a couple…
Tourney Notes, Day 2
Hate to admit it, but I did not pay as much attention to day two of the tournament. Once again, I had the games on for roughly three-quarters of the evening. But this time instead of missing the first half of the first game, I skipped the second half of the second game because I was tired and knew the…
Tourney Notes, Day 1
I got to watch three-quarters of the first night of the tournament last night. A few quick thoughts. The Mt. St. Mary’s – New Orleans game was fun. A couple teams flat going at each other for 40 minutes. New Orleans got some local run because their head coach and one assistant coach are from Bloomington. I thought head coach…
The Draw
A few weeks back, in the midst of a particularly satisfying KU game, I told the group of friends I text with during the game that if KU won the Big 12 again this season, they should refuse to play in the NCAA tournament and hang a banner for being regular season national champions. You may laugh, but there is…
No Conference Love
I’ve been pimping Mark Titus’ work for several years, first when he was with Grantland and now that he and many Grantlanders have resurfaced at The Ringer. Even on the rare day when I’m not super interested in the subject of his articles, I’ll at least skim them. That was the case with his piece last week about the woeful…
Frank and the Jayhawks
The college basketball season always seems to fly by. Despite covering five full months – and bumping into the first week of a sixth – it feels like a much quicker run. Wasn’t just a week or so ago that KU was losing to Indiana in overtime in Hawaii, then beating Duke in New York four nights later? Yet here…