D's Notebook

Tag: college sports (Page 1 of 41)

Weekend Notes

December 9, 2024 /

Well, a lot to get caught up on. Not thrilled about all of it…

College Football

I spent the better part of 11 hours on the couch watching the big conference title games Saturday. Literally. I know I got up to eat dinner. Obviously a few restroom runs. Maybe I ran out to get the mail? Those were momentary breaks, though, and I spent the better part of noon-to–11 PM with my ass firmly planted in the same spot.

Arizona State hammering Iowa State was a surprise. That seemed like a very even game to me on paper going in. I’m not sure ASU is a team you would want to play if you were Texas or Clemson. They have some magic to them, like a six seed that goes on a deep run in March. It would somehow be appropriate if ASU raced through the playoff and pulled off the massive upset to win, since college football is now much more like college basketball. At least in the postseason. Also a reminder that Kansas took the lead on ASU with 2:04 left and gave up the winning score with 16 seconds remaining in October. Gah…

Georgia pulling the mild upset and knocking off Texas wasn’t a huge surprise. The game was in Atlanta and Kirby Smart clearly has Texas’ number. However, Texas not being able to get the win despite the Bulldogs playing with a backup quarterback for a half is concerning if you’re a Longhorns fan. The good news for Texas is they wouldn’t have to play Georgia for a third time until the national championship game. And with Carson Beck’s health in question, I wouldn’t put big money on the Dawgs getting there.

The nightcap was the Big 10 game, with a sprinkle of the ACC game late. I really thought Oregon would smack Penn State around. PSU is great against everyone except the elite teams, and the Ducks are elite, sooooo… Early on it looked like that would be the case. But props to PSU for fighting back and making it a game. The Ducks still look like the best team in the country. Which, of course, means nothing now.

Seeing Clemson was up big early I totally forgot about the ACC game. I did switch over to see SMU tie it then Clemson kick that huge-ass field goal to clinch their spot in the playoff.

As for the playoff itself, I don’t have huge problems with how it worked out. I found it interesting that Saturday evening, as Clemson seemed poised to steal a spot, every announcer I heard suggested that was good for Alabama. Which I 1000% did not understand. I guess they assumed SMU would get completely bounced? So I was super glad that Bama was the team that Clemson pushed out of the final bracket. Not that I like Clemson, but at least they earned their way in and didn’t get destroyed by the 13th place school in their conference.

IU having to go to South Bend was super predictable. All year I’ve been hoping it would be some southern team that had to go into South Bend and deal with cold and maybe snow in the first round. Instead it’s another team from the same state. Not very imaginative, CFP committee!

I have a hard time seeing any of the road teams getting a win in round one, although IU might have the best chance.

Assuming chalk holds in the first round, we get an Ohio State – Oregon rematch. Their first meeting seems like a long time ago, and OSU damn near won in Eugene. Now they seem a little Team Turmoil-ish so the gap feels wider than it probably is. Penn State – Boise State is super intriguing, mostly because we don’t know much about BSU. Other than they also played Oregon close early in the season.

It feels like the champion comes out of the top half of the bracket, meaning either Oregon, Texas, or Ohio State. If you tell me Beck is 100% healthy, Georgia is as good as anyone. Even if he somehow, miraculously heals, I still don’t trust him. I doubt UGa fans do, either.

Now we get two weeks of discussions about how the format and method of picking teams should be tweaked for next year. I’m already exhausted.

KU Hoops

Speaking of exhausted, this may have been the worst regular season week in recent KU basketball history.

Going to Creighton and losing by 13, in a game that wasn’t that close, was bad enough. Worse was that half the Bluejays were sick or playing at less than 100% because of injury. Insult to injury is that Pops Isaacs, who dropped 27 on KU, was declared out for the season three days later. Apparently he scored so many points he re-aggravated an injury he had surgery for over the summer and now has to have a second surgery.

Then a whole level of worseness worse than that was basically not showing up Sunday in Columbia and losing to Missouri. Well, I guess we made a run and got a 20-point deficit down to two late, but that came long after I bailed on the game and spent the lovely afternoon outside doing a final round of fall yard work. Let me tell you, ripping a bunch of shit out of the ground by hand does wonders for eliminating anger and angst caused by sports!

What was super concerning to me about both these games was that KU seemed disinterested, slow, unsure of themselves, and soft. Both Creighton and Mizzou were engaged, hustled, confident, and tough. If there was a loose ball in either game, there was about a 5% chance KU was getting it. The offense seems disjointed. The defense half-assed and tentative. The guys brought in to solve KU’s shooting woes suddenly can’t hit anything. Hunter Dickinson seems like a different, worse, player than a year ago.

Now, this is the same team that beat North Carolina, Michigan State, and Duke. Which seems amazing at the moment. There was a lot of anger in the various threads I’m in after Sunday’s game, calling out coaches and players. In the NIL era, there’s way less benefit of the doubt for players we know are making six figures.

There’s a part of me that wonders/hopes that maybe some horrible virus ripped through the team last week, and that explains how lifeless they looked. A friend suggested perhaps they were worn out after an intense slate of games in November.

Still, you can’t get up for the Missouri game, something is wrong with you. Maybe it’s too many transfers who don’t understand the meaning of that game. But Mizzou has a bunch of transfers, too, and they seemed engaged. Of course, two of their transfers are KC kids so they were well aware of the history wrapped up when those schools get together. Bill Self needs to get Christian Braun on the phone to explain the rivalry next year.

I’m going to assume playing time is going to change in the coming weeks. There will be more focus on the 5–6–7 guys who put in effort and do what Bill Self wants them to do and less emphasis on playing nine or ten each night. Again, NIL era. You’re getting paid to play. If you can’t perform, you don’t deserve the opportunity.

I wonder if there will also be tweaks to the offense. Dickinson needs to stay in the low post, or at least start there. Having him roam the perimeter to set screens then post when there are 10 seconds left on the shot clock is not working and bogs everything down. Especially since he can’t attack the rim after setting a screen because he’s so big and slow. Play inside out, which focuses on his strengths: low post scoring and passing. He in particular has taken a lot of heat from the fans. Mostly justified as he’s not playing as well as he did this time last year. But the team is kind of built around him and his skills, so might as well go all-in with the HD experience, flaws and all.

KU should be fine. The shooters are too good to keep shooting this poorly. The new guys who get minutes will continue to get acclimated and some wrinkles will be smoothed out. Self will figure out a way to hide weakness and play to strengths.

That doesn’t make the aftertaste of the past week any less bitter, though.

Pacers

They’ve lost five of their last six. Their defense is truly atrocious. The only positives are that Tyrese Haliburton has shown signs of life, although he was not great last night, and Johnny Furphy has been getting minutes and playing relatively well.

HS Hoops

One game last week, Tuesday night against BD, which entered the game 1–5. We were missing two varsity starters due to injury. Over the course of the game we lost another starter who got hurt. We had three girls in foul trouble. At one point we had two JV girls and another one who is basically the last girl on the regular varsity bench playing at the same time. In the fourth quarter. Of a close game. Things were dicey. Had L been healthy, she probably would have been on the court a lot.

We were down one at the half, built a seven-point lead, then gave it all back and trailed by one going into the fourth quarter. That period was back-and-forth, but we had the ball, tied, with 16 seconds left and inbounding under our own basket. Despite having two timeouts, we didn’t get the ball in. Naturally BD went down and scored with 1.6 seconds left. A lot of dumbness.

I chose to look at the positive: despite three major injuries and foul issues, we scored 60 points. Last year we only scored 60 points twice, one of those in a double overtime game. If we could just tighten a few things up on both offense and defense, this team could be really solid. The loss dropped us to 3–5.

JV won by 20, which was cool.

This week is a tough one. Three games. No idea how many of our injured girls will be available. We play a decent 4A team, a 3A Catholic rival with a better record but who is 40-ish spots below us in the computer rankings, and the undefeated #6 2A team that beat us last year.

So KU is a mess, the Pacers are a bigger mess, and L is injured watching her teammates from the sidelines. Not the most fun week of basketball in our house.

KU Football

KU fans got an early Christmas present when Wisconsin hired offensive co-ordinator Jeff Grimes. I don’t think all the problems with this year’s offense were on him – I mentioned often that Jalon Daniels still appeared to be injured early in the year – but it took him way too long to figure out how to mesh with a team that returned almost everyone on offense. He also made a number of bizarre calls. No one was sad to see him leave.

Jim Zebrowski takes over as new OC. He coached under Andy Kotelnicki. He was also the acting OC in the bowl game last year, when KU was unstoppable. I approve.

Defensive coordinator Brian Borland also retired, to the surprise of few. He had been rumored to be close to calling it quits for a couple years. Not sure if that meant he was half-assing it and helps explain some of KU’s defensive issues, but it will be good to get someone new blood in charge. Lance Leipold also stayed in-house here, elevating D.K. McDonald. I don’t know much about McDonald, so not sure what to think.

There was a lot of chatter about Texas A&M co-DC Jordan Peterson being a target. Peterson had coached at KU for four years and was responsible for recruiting several of KU’s best players, including DJ Warner, the highest rated recruit in school history who announced he was entering the portal last week. McDonald got the job so quickly I don’t know if that meant overtures were made to Peterson and he declined, or Leipold was just more comfortable going with McDonald.

Both new coordinators will need to hit the portal hard to fill a lot of holes left by graduating seniors.

And in news that received decidedly mixed reaction, Daniels announced that he would return for his final year of eligibility. Two years ago he was the savior of the program. Now a lot of people would rather roll with a freshman next year. Most of that is because Daniels has never had a full, healthy season at KU. There’s not much reason to expect he will be healthy for 12 games next year. Aside from health concerns, maybe having Zebrowski in charge of the offense will be better for JD’s game.

I was excited about Isaiah Marshall potentially starting next year. Now I’m hoping he is patient enough to get a few spot starts in ’25 when JD is hurt and then be ready to take over as a sophomore in ’26.

Jayhawk Talk

December 3, 2024 /

A few thoughts about how the Jayhawks fared Thanksgiving week.

Hoops

A good week. A very good week. With one exception.

First, taking care of Duke in Las Vegas was a nice way to wrap up the first part of the season. KJ Adams basically shut down super phenom Cooper Flag for three-quarters of the night. I loved how the KU coaches made sure to stress it would be a group effort rather than KJ vs Cooper so KJ didn’t get in his own head about the matchup before the game. I was worried he would get called for three touch fouls before halftime and that would ruin KU’s strategy. Happily he was just tagged with one touch foul and was able to stay on the court.

Even happier, KU came out red hot and built a big lead. Duke made a run, KU matched it.

And then came the big negative of the night. After being undercut while making a rebound, Hunter Dickinson was tagged with a flagrant 2 foul and ejection for kicking Maliq Brown in the face.

He definitely kicked with intent. So, by the letter of the law the flagrant 2 was deserved.

But, he was just undercut and nearly flipped while falling, and the Duke player’s feet were in his face when he landed. Seems like a flagrant 1 because of circumstance. But he is Hunter Dickinson, the opponent was Duke, so of course it was a flagrant 2. Really looking forward to Fran Fraschilla referencing this play 87 times the rest of the year.

KU was up by two, I believe, at the time of the ejection. Flory Bidunga had not played well earlier in the game, and a friend of mine had texted about three minutes earlier that we wouldn’t see him again after he made a huge defensive error.

So it was not looking good.

Duke immediately took the lead and it felt like an L was coming.

But Flory played well. The rest of the team buckled down. Adams, DaJuan Harris, and Rylan Griffen made some huge shots and defensive stops, and the Jayhawks escaped with a nice win.

I think Bill Self loved all of this. He got a reason to scream at Dickinson and point out how his stupidity nearly cost KU the game. The rest of the team stepped up when everything seemed to be stacked against them. That was a tough win, even if Duke isn’t playing at nearly the level they will be later in the season.

Same can be said, hopefully, for the Jayhawks.

Saturday they added a nice win against a solid Furman team. I missed all of this game while watching high school ball.

Also a bummer that Shakeel Moore is continuing to struggle with his recovery from foot surgery. He’s played maybe 10 combined minutes in two games and seems to be out indefinitely once again. I’m not sure he’s a true difference maker, but he was the only pure point guard who can backup Harris and he’s a plus defender. There is some question about whether a medical redshirt is an option, so it seems like the plan is to let him sit until his foot heals and then attempt to work him in. Not sure if we should expect anything from him at this point.

Football

Well, I called it.

After three straight wins over ranked teams that put KU on the verge of bowl eligibility after a terrible start, they laid a big, fat egg against Baylor. This L was mostly on the defense. They had a couple nice plays early then seemed to make no effort, giving up big play after big play. Baylor definitely found some things to pick on, but once KU fell behind the effort went to shit.

The offense moved the ball, but Jalon Daniels tossed a couple bad interceptions after seeming to fix that issue. The Jayhawks also had a brutal fumble after a long completion.

It seemed like KU had exhausted their reservoir of good play against Colorado.

A disappointing end to a disappointing season. Change a couple plays here-and-there and the season could look very different. It is crazy to see how perspective changes over the course of a season. Back in August, KU had some of the best betting odds to make the Big 12 championship game and CFP, largely because of their schedule, which was perceived to be weak. They ended up playing the toughest conference schedule in the league. That should mitigate some of the frustration from this year: Arizona State and BYU were the good teams from their respective states, not Arizona and Utah.

Now KU loses a ton of players going into the 2025 season. The best running back in school history will be gone. Daniels could return, but is expected to leave. Cobee Bryant and Mello Dotson will be in the NFL next year. The three top receivers have exhausted their eligibility.

Next year will be a real test for Lance Leipold, as all of Les Miles’ recruits are gone. At first glance next year’s schedule seems to be tougher than this year’s. Leipold has done a decent job bringing in transfers to plug holes, but next year will be the first real test of how well his staff has recruited. Pretty much every skill position, as of now, will be filled by someone they recruited out of high school, most of them underclassmen. We’ll see if they’re ready.

It also seems like OC Jeff Grimes is safe. Maybe he’ll mesh better/earlier with Isaiah Marshall, Cole Ballard, or whoever starts for KU at quarterback next year than he did with Daniels. There are already rumors that there will be a change at defensive coordinator. KU’s D certainly took a step back this year. I’m not smart enough to know if it was because of scheme, depth, or just the lack of pass rush that put everyone else in a hole as soon as the ball was snapped. I know DC is a brutal job these days. It just didn’t seem like the KU defense made adjustments, or of they did they were almost always the wrong ones. Time for a new voice on that side of the ball.

Weekend Notes

December 2, 2024 /

A long, extra-stuffed Thanksgiving weekend is in the books. Let’s run through the highlights.

Thanksgiving

For the first time in ages that we’ve been home for the holiday,[1] we did not host the local gathering on Turkey Day. One of S’s sisters and her husband opened up their house to the family. It was nice to not have to clean before and after, run around wildly the morning of, and hope that we hadn’t forgotten anything as we started serving the food. We provided mashed potatoes, Giada’s dressing, a meat and cheese tray, and pumpkin pie. That took a couple hours of prep, and I had a moment of panic when I wasn’t sure if the potatoes were going to be ready in time. In general, though, a much lower stress Thanksgiving than we’ve had in a long time. And we got to come home, get into comfy clothes, and crash on the couch instead of the hours of dishes afterward. Thumbs up all around.

College Girl

M came home Monday afternoon and was here in time for dinner. She went back mid-day Sunday. It was nice to have her home. She had only visited once this fall, so S and her sisters had barely seen her since summer. She has one week of regular classes before finals begin next week. She’s still not sure of her exam/project schedule, but should be home for Christmas break a week from Friday. Classes are going well. She’s eager to be done with financial accounting and never think about it again. No CPA accreditation in her future.

One of her friends who goes to the College of Charleston begins finals today. That just seems cruel.

College Football

Was this the wildest week of college football ever? Some huge upsets. Some great games. Most importantly, it seemed like there were about 50 games that included some kind of brawl. Fighting in sports is generally stupid, but in this case I approve. Nothing like some good, old fashioned hate to wrap up the holiday weekend.

Regarding the planting of flags on the opponent’s field, I’m 100,000% for it. Rub that shit in. Pettiness is always good. If you don’t like it, don’t lose the game. Take your L like a man instead of starting some punk-ass fight about it. Then go plant your flag on your rival’s field next year.

Of course now we’re going to get all kinds of dumb rules that ban flags on the field, postgame interactions, etc, etc, etc. Sports are dumb. The people that run them are dumber.

KU

I have three games to cover in this section, so I’ll pull them out for their own Jayhawk Talk post.

Colts

I missed most of the Colts game as we were watching a couple of our nephews yesterday. S and I helped the boys with their homework. I had the four-year-old and his pre-K stuff, which involved identifying letters and coloring them a certain way and coloring, cutting, and pasting a series of pictures of puppies so the matching ones went together. S assisted the second grader with his reading and answering questions related to his stories. Some of that was in Spanish, which she does not speak. The rest of us may or may not have laughed at her behind her back.

I was finally able to flip on the Colts game late in the fourth quarter. I saw Anthony Richardson throw three-straight balls that sailed into an area where no one could catch them. It looked like the Colts were going to lose to the lowly Patriots.

Then AR threw three-straight amazing balls. Of course, two were dropped by his receivers. One buried itself into the receiver’s chest so he couldn’t drop it. The Colts tried to screw it up, but converted three different fourth downs on a 19-play drive, including scoring on fourth-and-goal, and then converted the two-point conversion to eek out the win. Although the Pats came up just short on a 68-yard field goal that would have won the game. Not sure if winning is good or bad at this point. Somehow the Colts are still in the playoff picture. I still think getting a top 10 draft pick would be better than chasing the postseason.

SNF

I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve it, but for the second time in a couple weeks we got a prime time NFL game played in snow. Last night’s snow in Buffalo was a proper snow, too, although it looked like it had really dumped earlier in the day. When the Colts played up there in a foot of snow a decade or so ago, that may have been the greatest NFL snow game ever. I didn’t have a ton of interest in the game and was tired after a late night Saturday. But I stayed up deep into the fourth quarter to watch the majesty of football in a driving snowstorm.

Pacers

They might, officially, stink. Losses to Detroit and Memphis, after leading by 19, this weekend.

High School Hoops

Three nights of CHS basketball over the last week.

Tuesday the JV beat WC by seven. This was a wild game full of swings and runs. Lots of horrible calls. One ref was so preoccupied with a WC dad in the stands that he kept screaming at people sitting at the scorer’s table to get him out of the gym. I have no idea what that was about. I hadn’t seen the guy he was yelling about do a thing, and our athletic director didn’t seem super motivated to remove him.

Wednesday was varsity night. For the first three quarters, our girls played the best they had played all season. As the lead jumped up to 23 I leaned over to the dad next to me and said we seemed to have turned a corner, getting tougher and playing smarter since that respectable loss to 4A #2 a week earlier.

Guess what happened next?

That’s right, I jinxed those poor girls.

They lost their minds and blew 17 points of that 23-point lead. Mindless turnovers. Passivity on offense. Missed free throws. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. To top it off, late in the quarter, when our coach really should have been clearing her bench because we were up 15+, there was a loose ball that our freshman starter dove for. Her head cracked against another player’s knee and she went down, not getting up for several minutes. When she was able to walk she looked dazed and had a huge goose egg on her temple. Based on her injury history, we are worried she’s going to miss an extended period.

We held on and won by six but ruined all the good feelings in the process. At practice Friday the girls got to watch film for 90 minutes. All of that film was from the fourth quarter. Which is kind of funny when you’re not the one watching it.

Saturday we drove down to the Louisville area for another boy-girl, JV-varsity doubleheader. These are usually cool, but I was bummed the games were scheduled that way. While I was being a good dad watching the JV girls in the auxiliary gym, there was a terrific boys game in the main gym. In the all-class, coaches poll, JHS was #2, CHS #4. Which would make JHS #2 in 4A, CHS #1 in 3A. We peeked in a couple times and JHS was always up by 6–8, but the Irish made a run and ended up losing by two.

The varsity girls lost by 10. They were down just one at halftime but foul trouble and lack of depth because of the injury killed them in the second half.

The JV girls played really well for three quarters, but like their varsity sisters three nights earlier, fell apart in the fourth quarter and let a 15-point lead get down to two a couple times. We ended up winning by six but it was way too nervy. You know what would have helped? A point guard who takes decent care of the ball. Hopefully we get one of those back in about a month.

Travel

Louisville is two hours away, so we did end up traveling for the weekend. This was my first trip in the Tesla in cold weather. Sub-freezing temps make the battery less efficient and cause charging to take longer. Which meant my brain had been spinning for a couple days on the best way to handle the logistics for this trip.

My plan was to leave home with a 100% charge and then stop at the Supercharger in Columbus, IN, a little over an hour away, on the way down to get back up to 80%. That would give me several options for the return trip.

However, the Supercharger in Columbus was not working. So I drove straight through, arriving at my destination with about 45% charge left. While we ate dinner I explored different options on the Tesla app. It kept trying to send me to Shelbyville, IN, which would involve taking a big right turn on the way back to Indy. It would also have me arrive at the Supercharger with about 5% charge remaining, which was way too low for my tastes with the temps dropping and snow falling. As much as I hated to go the wrong way, it made the most sense to cross the river into Louisville proper and go to a charging station about 10 minutes from where the games were. By the time the game ended, even the Telsa app was sending me that way. I think it was too cold to make it to Shelbyville.

So when the game was over I got L some Chick-Fil-A and we went to Kentucky to grab some electrons. Earlier in the evening the estimate was about a 10 minute charge to get home. By the time we got there, it was cold enough that it took us about 25 minutes. This was a 250 KW charger. Because seven of the eight chargers were being used and the falling temperature, mine maxed out at 85 KW, and was usually much lower than that.[2]

We left the charging station at 10 PM, arrived home just after midnight with about 13% of the charge left. If it had been warmer I would have been comfortable going under 10%, but being new to cold weather EV driving, I wanted as much buffer as I could have.

L didn’t mind. She had her iPad and watched shows both while we charged and on the way home. I was able to pull up the Texas-Texas A&M game on Hulu while we charged. And we lucked out with the snow. Early forecasts had called for 2–3” of snow in Southern Indiana right when we were driving. It was definitely snowing hard while we charged, but still mostly melting. And we drove out of it pretty quickly once we headed back north.

We got the Christmas decorations up across Friday-Saturday-Sunday. The calendar says December. Ten days after pushing 70 we are stuck in the 20s and 30s for most of this week. The holiday season is officially here!

  1. We missed 2021 and 2022 while traveling to Hawaii and Italy.  ↩
  2. Not to get too deep into the details, but you will rarely get the full listed power from a charger. Many elements go into what your car can pull, including how many other cars are charging at that location, weather, the temperature of your battery, and how charged your battery is. In general, you will pull more power early in your charge, and as the battery fills the rate will slow dramatically. The analogy I heard when I was car shopping was a theater filling for a movie. When the seats are all empty, people flow in easily. But as it fills and it’s harder to find an open seat, the people searching for one have to take more time to select one. Same pouring energy into your battery.  ↩

Weekend Notes

November 25, 2024 /

The last weekend update before we dive neck-deep into the holiday season.

KU Football

How ‘bout them Jayhawks?!?!?! Taking the Colorado Buffaloes out to the woodshed on the sturdy legs of Devin Neal. There could not have been a more appropriate day for #4 to go off than the 33rd anniversary of Tony Sands’ record-breaking performance. It was even sweeter after Buffaloes “senior quality control analyst” Warren Sapp trashed pretty much everything about KU in a video he posted last week. Zero respect for Neal or Jalon Daniels or any other Jayhawk. Yet, aside from a couple big plays by Travis Hunter, which will happen no matter what you do, the Jayhawks completely dominated that game.

As was trumpeted often during and after the game, KU became the first school in the entire history of college football to beat three consecutive ranked teams while having a losing record. That’s kind of an odd piece of trivia, since it suggests that you likely either had a hugely disappointing start to the season, had a series of injuries to important players who eventually returned, a lot of bad luck, or a combination of all that. I think option D applies to KU. Regardless, crazy that they are a win away from becoming bowl eligible. Just little, ol’ Baylor stands in the way, which should be easy after going to Provo and beating BYU a week ago, right?

For the record, after the BYU win I told two KU buddies – who both have kids at Baylor – that we were going to beat Colorado then likely blow it in Waco. Going to hate it if I nailed both sides of that prediction.

Once again, major props to the KU coaches and players for hanging in there through all the heartbreak and negatives of the first half of the season and rebounding to become the team we expected back in August. If only they had jumped on that fumble against UNLV, or got one stop against West Virginia or Arizona State, or hung on to the touchdown against K-State…

Oh, and what an amazing day from Devin Neal! I was at that Tony Sands game and remember how KU basically ran the same play over-and-over in the second half and Missouri couldn’t do a thing about it. That’s what happened to Colorado Saturday. Devin put the game on his shoulders and made sure there was no way the Jayhawks were going to lose it. A great final home game for a great, great Jayhawk. Truly one of the greatest ever.

IU

Welp, saw that coming a mile away.

I was kind of in the middle on IU. Yes, they hadn’t played anyone good. Or, better said, they hadn’t played a team that was playing well this year. Michigan and Washington both look like great wins in the media guide. But both teams are also thoroughly mediocre this year. However, IU had also 100% been killing everyone they played other than Michigan. Most notably, they crushed Nebraska a week after the Huskers almost won on the road at Ohio State.

They reminded me a little of the 2007 Jayhawks, who had some great media guide wins (at KSU, at CU, at A&M, at Oklahoma State) but had the immense bad luck of all those teams being down that season. When the Jayhawks got to 11–0 before the Mizzou game, there was a lot of national debate about how good KU truly was.

So I sympathized with IU fans this past week, as so many national writers wrote them off before they had the chance to prove themselves against OSU.

I was always pro-big playoff. As we approach the first 12-team football bracket, I’m re-thinking that stance. It sure seems like it’s going to be the SEC Invitational with Special Guest the Big Ten. Create these giant conferences where only a truly elite team can get through with one or zero losses, then tout the strength of your league as defense for teams losing three games but still deserving a crack at the national title. The politicking is already exhausting.

Is IU one of the eight best teams in the country after the four bye teams? I think so. They might be 11th or 12th, but they’re in there. With one exception they’ve beaten everyone on their schedule, which is all you can ask for.

I think there needs to be room in this expanded system for teams like IU, or ’07 KU, traditional doormats who come out of nowhere with a miracle season. I keep hearing analysts give Alabama, etc. credit for the history of their program. Which is asinine. All that should matter is this year. But if we’re going to the history books to determine this year’s playoff, the teams that have never been there before deserve a boost. Curt Cignetti has done wonders in Bloomington. Honestly, though, this might be the Hoosiers only shot to ever make the playoff. Reward that over a team that is always in the playoffs.

That said, Alabama would probably kill IU. That’s not the point, though.

Determining a division one college football champion has always been an imperfect system. Expanding to a 12-team playoff doesn’t really fix anything the issues that have been there for over 100 years. It will turn the game into more of a mirror of college hoops, where the best team usually does not win the title but rather the team that gets hot for three weeks. And the ultimate benefactors will be the powers that have dominated the game in the modern era, the Bamas, the Georgias, the Ohio States rather than even the second-tier teams in their own conferences.

Colts

Sunday was, maybe, the last nice day of the year here, so S and I did a lot of stuff in and around the house while we had a chance. Thus I only kept a partial eye on the Colts. Losing to the Lions was expected. Anthony Richardson seemed to regress a bit, with several wild-ass throws that had no chance to be caught. But, again, his receivers gave him little help and the offensive line was truly offensive.

Even if Richardson, miraculously, figures some things out between now and next season, this team feels a long way from being a legit contender in the AFC. Too many holes on both sides of the ball, holes that a franchise that doesn’t traditionally go crazy in the free agent market will struggle to fill. Unless Crazy Jim Irsay thinks the end is near and starts spending like a fool.

Pacers

Oh yeah, the Pacers are definitely a mess, too. Fortunately the Sixers are a bigger mess so Indiana is not getting as much national attention for how far they’ve fallen from last spring’s playoff form.

I listen to a bunch of NBA podcasts. I laugh at how, each time the Pacers come up, attention turns to Tyrese Haliburton and how his game has fallen apart. Then, as almost an afterthought, the hosts will close the segment by muttering, “Maybe he’s hurt…”

I legit don’t get why this is in question. He doesn’t move or shoot the way he did last year. Every time he checks out of the game, trainers strap a huge pad to his back and then he sits on one of those giant seat pads like what Joel Embiid sits on. Whether it’s a strain, a pull, a disk issue, or something else, the Pacers and Hali won’t share. But unless/until his back heals, the Pacers have no chance. Even in the weak-as-hell Eastern Conference.

High School Hoops

One week down in L’s stress fracture absence. A couple of good games, both JV and varsity going 1–1.

Tuesday we played the #2 4A team in the state, HSE, a team that has three top 60 recruits. One is the senior who is going to IU next year that L got switched onto twice in summer ball to my great amusement, plus two juniors who have lots of D1 offers. Last year HSE beat us by 35 and returned basically their entire team.

Varsity played their asses off. They held the IU recruit, who was averaging over 30 points a game, to just 19. Which is huge since she’s 6’4” and our tallest girl is 5’11”. Fortunately she prefers to shoot 3’s and didn’t hit one. We trailed by about 15 in the third quarter before making a strong run. We cut the deficit down to four a couple times but just didn’t have the offensive game to make it closer. We ended up losing by 11 but our girls played really well. Our coach usually isn’t into moral victories but was super pleased.

JV lost a very sloppy game. L was convinced had she played the Irish would have won. I like her confidence but that might be stretching it.

Then Friday we played the #9 3A team in the state, JC, who beat us by 17 last year. Their best player from that team is now a freshman at Michigan State, but they return a junior who dropped 28 on us last year and almost single-handedly turned a tie game with 2:00 left into a JC win during a summer tournament game.

We rallied just before halftime to cut a nine-point deficit to six before blowing the game open in the second half. We out-scored them 20–2 in the third quarter, got the lead up to as much as 13 before holding off a few runs and eventually winning by 12. A great, great win for our girls. They have to be scrappy to beat people this year and were definitely that in the second half. The freshman who is the future star of the program had 18 points, five rebounds, and five steals. She runs hot and cold, in pretty much every way, and was the right combo of that most of the night.

JV had no real issues, other than a rough five minute stretch in the third quarter. They are 3–2, varsity 2–3.

This is a tough week, with games against two 4A schools that are both 3–1. However, we are ranked ahead of both of them in the all-class computer rankings, likely thanks to our strength of schedule. Our girls need to stay scrappy.

Weekend Notes

November 18, 2024 /

A Great Weekend To Be A Jayhawk

Saturday, specifically.

First, just before noon Eastern, Bryson Tiller, the #20 recruit in the current senior class, signed to play at KU next year. This was unexpected. KU had chased him hard, but earlier in the week his Overtime Elite teammate Samis Calderon had signed with KU. They are not exactly the same player, but have some overlapping skills and attributes. Most recruiting nerds thought this was an either/or situation. Apparently not.

Now KU has two long, bouncy, NBA-bodied big wings/inside players coming in to join Darryn Peterson, one of the top two or three players in the class. Even before whoever Bill Self adds in the transfer portal later this year, this is going to be one of the very best recruiting classes of his career. As Phog Allen once said, I hope they all try out for basketball when they arrive in Lawrence next year.

Later in the day, this year’s basketball Jayhawks had zero trouble with Oakland. Now this was not the same Oakland roster that beat Kentucky and took Final Four-bound North Carolina State to overtime last March. But they still play a funky style on both ends and are exactly the type of team KU has struggled with the last two years. No struggle at all Saturday evening. KU shot nearly 70% in the first half before cooling off. AJ Storr scored 10 points in about 45 seconds. Shakeel Moore made his debut and looked smooth and comfortable. A solid if unspectacular night.

Finally, to wrap up the day, the football Jayhawks went to Provo, Utah and knocked off the previously undefeated, #7 BYU Cougars. I’m not going to lie: I went to bed when the first quarter ended a little after 11:00 Eastern. If KU entered the game 7–2 or 6–3, I probably would have toughed it out. Or at least tried to. But at 3–6 and having gotten up at 6:00 AM to get L to practice, I was not feeling it. Especially against an undefeated, top ten team.

Shows what I know.

Hey, KU FINALLY GOT A BREAK THIS YEAR! Jalon Daniels’ quick-kick bouncing off two Cougars right to Quentin Skinner to set up the winning score was exactly the kind of flukey play that had gone against the Jayhawks all year. Hell, I’m convinced if that UNLV fumble on their final drive hadn’t bounced off six Jayhawks before the Rebels recovered it, KU would be at least 7–3 right now.

Speaking of that, super props to the coaching staff and players for sticking together. With the K-State loss three weeks ago and a bye week the next, it would have been easy for a lot of dudes to check out for the season. Instead they went out and beat ranked opponents in back-to-back weeks for the first time in school history. Which seems like an impossible thing to not have done in the first 134 years of Kansas football. Anything is always possible at KU, though.

Rock Chalk, bitches.

Colts

It was not pretty, but the Colts got a big win Sunday in New York with Anthony Richardson back behind center. The defense was incredible in the first 29 minutes of the game, forcing the Jets to go three-and-out on their first five possessions. Then they eased up in the final minute of the first half and let the Jets score to cut the Colts’ lead to just 13–7. I was driving at this time and laughed out loud when Colts radio analyst Rick Venturi kind of lost his mind on the scoring play. I’m paraphrasing here but it went something like:

No. No. NO! NO!!!!! (Long pause) Soft ass defense…

I loved it. Because it was true.

The Jets scoring to take the lead quickly after halftime was super predictable.

Guess what? The Colts made some huge plays late, especially Richardson. After taking the lead the defense shut down Aaron Rodgers one last time to seal the win.

All that said, it was another maddening game to watch. The defense was insanely good at times, totally inept at others. The offensive line, which has been erratic all year, was simply terrible Sunday. Richardson played about as consistently well as he’s ever played. It was smart to put him back in. Now let him play out the season.

Pacers

Hammered by Miami in the Emirates Cup Friday. Controlled almost the entire game in getting a revenge, normal win against the Heat on Sunday. That’s how things go in the NBA.

Body Stuff

I had a terrible, random back pain Sunday morning. Like out of nowhere. I was just standing there, not holding anything or twisting or lifting, when suddenly I had this horrible, crippling pain. I had to stagger over to a rug and slowly fall onto my side then roll onto my back. I could barely breathe or even make pained noises it hurt so bad. I’ve had back spasms before but this was waaaaay worse than any of those. After about five minutes it disappeared. I think it may have actually been a cramp rather than a spasm. But I had a big knot in my back the rest of the day. It is still sore this morning. Not fun.

Speaking of not fun, I took L to see the sports medicine doc this morning. I’ll share more about that tomorrow.

Weekend Notes

November 4, 2024 /

This was a fairly quiet weekend thanks to a KU bye week and the girls being busy on their own.

Halloween

Our Halloween was relaxed. We decided to go hang with our old neighbors. It sure brought back memories to sit in their driveway and watch kids scamper through the cul-de-sac. That was where our girls did almost all of their trick-or-treating. As we at chili we reminisced about the various holidays we shared with our friends, including the one when it was sleeting sideways and our girls insisted on going out. We might have been the only people dumb enough to hit the streets that night, and folks were literally dumping their entire candy collections into our girls’ bags. They thought the misery was worth it.

We’ve left a bowl at our house a few times with a sign telling folks to help themselves. And we always come back to an almost-full bowl. It helps that we get very few trick-or-treaters. We did that again this year. C and L were home and said they didn’t hear a lot of kids come to our house. Yet when we got home the bowl was completely empty, robbing us of our post-Halloween candy to share as a family. I didn’t bother to check our front-door cam to see which little a-holes helped themselves to the entire bowl.

HS Football Playoffs

CHS won their opening playoff game against now 0–10 North Central 36–0. It was pretty sloppy with lots of penalties and wasted opportunities. L walked across the street to watch but I didn’t think it would be worth even that meager effort. I believe this is the first year since M was in seventh grade that I didn’t go to a single CHS game, although I still listened to each one and did walk over when our friends from Carmel played NC.

The Irish advance to play #1 Lawrence North, who after a slow first half looked really good beating their arch rivals Lawrence Central. I had that game on TV until the Pacers started. CHS has knocked LN out of the playoffs each of the last two years but this is a very different LN team. I will be watching basketball 80 miles north so likely won’t be able to follow the sectional championship game very well.

College Football

A KU bye week meant no heart-breaking, come-from-ahead loss. Which was a nice change from how this fall has gone.

I watched most of Ohio State – Penn State. I see Andy Kotelnicki’s kryptonite is still first and goal inside the 10. His offense always bogged down in those situations at KU. Even with better talent he still struggles when faced with a short field. It’s like all his creativity disappears and he just runs dives up the middle.

Clearly having either just played KU or having the Jayhawks next on your schedule takes a lot out of a team, with both Kansas State and Iowa State losing Saturday.

I was actually looking forward to watching IU play this week. I knew the game was on Peacock. We are Xfinity customers and I thought we got Peacock for free. Turns out we just get a limited part of Peacock free, and that tier does not include live sports. I was not going to pay $10 to see one game of a team I don’t really care about. But cool that IU is 9–0 for the first time in their history.

Colts

So much for Joe Flacco making a difference. I didn’t watch much of the Colts-Vikings game Sunday night but when I did, I saw an offense that was absolutely putrid. Yep, Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen are going to be looking for new jobs this winter.

Pacers

After beating the Celtics in overtime Wednesday to get their first win of the year, the Pacers blew multiple leads in New Orleans to lose another one Friday.

Worse, for the second time in a week they lost a backup center to a non-contact, achilles injury, this time second stringer Isaiah Jackson. For the moment Myles Turner is the Pacers only true big. I hope they are triple taping his calves and ankles, while also finding a way to move some of their wing depth to find another big body.

College Hoops Recruiting

It’s been a quiet recruiting season, so far, for KU. That was because Bill Self put all his recruiting eggs into one basket, and was waiting on a decision from Darryn Peterson, the #3 overall player in this year’s senior class. Peterson finally made his decision Friday night, picking KU. That’s been the assumption for months, mostly because he’s already signed a multi-year deal with Adidas and all the other schools recruiting him were Nike programs. Still, there were rumors that both Ohio State and USC were making big runs at him.

The Jayhawks got their man and can now, hopefully, start filling around him. KU will lose at least six players after this season, so there are opportunities for any young men who want to play in the greatest building in the game. DP, the highest rated recruit KU has signed since Josh Jackson, is a pretty good start.

Misc

I swear, October is the fastest month of the year. It just flies by no matter how old you or your kids are.

The sun setting at 5:40 is stupid.

Late summer keeps hanging on. We had two days around 80 last week. We are supposed to have a couple days in the 70s this week. It will flip eventually, but zero complaints about the weather at the moment.

The girls both went to parties Saturday. The cops showed up at the one L was at. But, she was quick to tell me, not because of the the actual party. One of her travel teammates had a bunch of people over. Naturally word got out, a hoarde of kids from other schools showed up and they were not allowed inside the house, so they first destroyed L’s friend’s basketball hoops (one of those movable ones) then started fighting in the street. The cops showed up to clear them out but never even knocked on the door where the actual party was. Glad we’ve trained our girls to understand they can have friends over, but can never, ever host a party. We’re not dealing with that shit.

Remember being in high school and hearing rumors that there was a party at so-and-so’s house, or in such-and-such neighborhood, and driving around hoping to find it and then talk your way in? I did plenty of that. But I never destroyed anyone’s basketball hoop. Or fought in the street.

D’s Notes

October 2, 2024 /

Another dive into the notebook for a selection of random notes.

College NIL

Shockwaves went through college sports last week when UNLV quarterback Matt Sluka, who tore up KU in week three, announced he was sitting out the remainder of the season so he could transfer and retain a year of eligibility. He claimed that UNLV had not lived up to their NIL agreement. UNLV fired back that they had provided everything promised and he was looking for a better deal elsewhere because of his hot start.

Before we get to the NIL angle, there’s actually another dumb thing that needs to be addressed. In college basketball, if you play one game, you have burned your eligibility for that season. In football, players can appear in as many as four games and maintain their redshirt option going forward.

That is one of the stupidest rules the NCAA, an organization with a lot of dumb rules, has instituted. Before NIL you would occasionally see a player decide after week four he was shutting it down so he could jump to another program. Khalil Herbert did that at KU a few years back, running all over Boston College one week then not playing again that season before jumping to Virginia Tech. I think this might sneakily be the most destructive element of the modern, free transfer era. It’s bad enough coaches have to re-recruit their own players every year. Now you have to worry about whether they’re going to make a business decision before week five that wrecks your season.

I’m all for player power, but I think they have too much power in this situation.

Back to NIL proper. I just laugh at this, and know more of it is coming. For the 100th time on this site, let me remind you that the NCAA could have nipped this in the bud 20 years ago. All they had to do was share a fraction of the money they made from using players’ names in video games, which was the right thing to do on every moral and legal level imaginable, and then allow schools to throw kids a few bucks when they sold jerseys with their names and numbers on them. But, no, they insisted on protecting the “sanctity of amateur sports,” when college football and basketball decidedly hadn’t been amateur at the highest level for at least a generation, and refused to allow any of that to happen. Now we’re in a wild west where the NCAA has no rules or control and no higher authority is interested in stepping in to create ground rules. The result is kids getting paid flatly to play at specific schools rather than profiting off the use of their name, image, and likeness as was supposed to happen. Boosters are funneling money into NIL collectives rather than university booster organizations or general funds.

Congrats, NCAA! You managed to both destroy college sports while trying to protect it, and create a significant financial shortfall for universities at a moment when they face increasing budgetary hostility from the legislatures that fund them. That is some amazing work!

Replay/Refs

Pretty much every game I watch these days refs make terrible calls. WNBA refs might be the worst I’ve ever seen, worse even than high school refs. At least high school refs are out-of-shape, thin-skinned, semi-pros so you expect them to suck. I think WNBA refs make up the rules as they go some nights. Twice in their playoff series the Fever had to use a challenge in the first quarter because the referees assigned a foul to the wrong player. In each case it was obvious an error was made, but the refs made no move to correct their call, forcing the Fever to burn a challenge early. Fortunately, in each case they won and the call was changed. ESPN’s Rebecca Lobo blasted the refs and league for putting the Fever in that situation. A referee mistake should not force a team to burn their challenge.

Refs suck. You know what else sucks? Replay. In so many ways.

We can see a replay on TV and often in five seconds know if a call was right or wrong, then we sit around for three minutes while the refs try to figure it out. And then sometimes the refs still come up with the completely wrong call. The worst is in college basketball, where they will review an out-of-bounds call, realize the initial call was wrong, in the process see there was a foul that went uncalled, but can only change who has possession, not assign the foul that caused the turnover.

Then there are all stupid rules about what is and is not a catch in football. Or how in baseball a player’s body coming a fraction of an inch off the bag for a fraction of a second somehow means he was out. And so on.

I’m pretty sure I’ve suggested this before but I think replay review should only be shown at real-time speed. We don’t need to slow it down to one frame per second to analyze whether a ball moved a fraction of an inch when a receiver hit the ground. If we’re checking the refs, we need to check them at the same speed they made the call.

Yeah, folks will throw a fit if slow-mo shows detail that real time does not. That’s a downside I’m more willing to live with than how replay is used now.

And every review should be a coach’s review, with a limited number of challenges per contest. Give us back our games!

Kids

I forgot to mention the M got her sorority Little last weekend. It was the girl she/we expected, an architecture student from California. They both looked excited in the pictures we saw, so that’s good. We were worried the new girl wouldn’t be as into the process as M and her Big were last year. Looks like she can at least fake it.

We submitted C’s two college applications she plans on sending Monday evening. One to IU, her top choice, and one to UC. M got her acceptance letters from both schools in mid-November of her senior year, so we should know fairly soon.

Our mailbox has been flooded with promotional material from schools for both C and L. This week C got a package from High Point University. When we opened it up, this book was inside.

It’s a legit, hardback book. She hasn’t checked a box expressing any interest in them, so I assume thousands of these went out unsolicited. I guess at a hair under $70K a year, before aid, they can afford to send some books out. Seems like a weird choice for 17–18 year olds, though.

L has been sick for a couple weeks. It’s been so bad that she’s had to skip a few morning basketball workouts. We’re are pretty sure she had/has mono, but when we had blood work done last week, somehow the mono test got lost. There were other indicators that suggest mono so we’re going with that. Official basketball practice begins in three weeks, hopefully enough time for her to start feeling better.

ESPN

The alleged World Wide Leader is having rough times. Last week they laid off Zach Lowe, one of the best sports writers/analysts across all sports, and the finest basketball analyst they had. Another sign all they care about is the hot-take side of “analysis” that can be chopped up into Tik-Tok videos.

Also, last week I was sitting in a waiting room reading their story about the final home game for the Oakland A’s. It was a great story, and proof that ESPN does still allow some long-form journalism to take place under its watch.

But check out how user-hostile the reading experience was.

I’ve noticed this a lot lately. You get roughly halfway through a piece and this footer filled with disclaimers, etc pops up. You can’t dismiss it. You can scroll up and it will disappear, but when you scroll back down it returns. It remained on my screen until I finished the article. It’s not even a freaking ad, just a bunch of legalese that the reader should be allow to dismiss, or better yet, should auto-hide after a few seconds.

Finally, multiple times Monday ESPN showed graphics for the baseball playoffs that were completely wrong. One had the Royals and Tigers flipped, the Royals playing Houston and Detroit going to Baltimore. At least this one you could kind of explain away. The Royals and Tigers finished with the same record, the Royals getting the five seed thanks to winning the season series with Detroit. Obviously someone didn’t know the tie-breaker rules and either gave Detroit the higher spot because of alphabetical order or because they had a better record over their last 10 games. Or because they didn’t bother to look at MLB.com to get the official bracket. Still super dumb, but understandable since ESPN, like much of sports media, has fired many of their experienced editors and replaced them with cheap talent that doesn’t understand context.

Later in the day, though, they flashed a graphic that had Oakland in the playoffs. The A’s finished 17 games out of the final Wild Card spot. Worse, they had them playing the Padres…on the National League side of the bracket. I guess leaving Oakland means the A’s are also switching leagues?

Weekend Notes

September 30, 2024 /

Another weekend in the books. This one had some familiar elements, yet was still quite different than other recent weekends.

Helene

The biggest event of the weekend was the remnants of Hurricane Helene kind of ruining our weekend. That’s overstating things. Other people had far worse weekends than we did because of the weather. But it was cloudy, breezy, and muggy at best all weekend. Off-and-on drizzle all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And then about five hours of pretty intense rain and wind Friday evening as the biggest waves from the storm blew through between 5:00 and 10:00 PM.

We were very lucky. Our power blinked a few times Friday night, but never fully went out. Which is a miracle given that the line that feeds our house runs through dozens of old trees that are growing into/against it. I was sure at least part of the line had pulled loose at one point, as we kept getting little waves of partial outages. But we made it through. Lots of people around us lost their power for much longer than a few seconds.

We desperately needed the rain, so that was welcome. TV said we were somewhere between an inch and inch-and-a-half of rain for the storm. Normally when we get any significant rain our sump pit in the basement will make lots of noise as it fills and the pump ejects the collected water. It had been so dry here none of the rain made it to the pit and our basement remained eerily quiet.

Driving and walking around Saturday and Sunday there were tons of big trees and limbs down in our part of the city. Lots of power crews working to repair lines. We just had one small branch come down in our yard, along with lots of leaves. Again, very lucky.

We have friends who were not so fortunate.

Parents of one of S’s best friends live on Anna Maria island. We spent our first day of spring break this year at their house while we were waiting for our rental to open. Friday night they had water waist-deep inside their house. Our friend lost contact with them overnight, and she was freaking out. Fortunately cell service came back up Friday morning and they were safe. However, they likely lost everything they own inside the house.

S also found video of the place in Siesta Key where we are going for spring break this coming year. It took a lot of water damage. It is a high rise, so we are hoping our rooms aren’t on the first floor and got through without any damage.

She also has an old friend in Asheville, NC which is apparently in terrible shape because of flooding. S sent her a text and got a response, but no real word on how they are doing.

High School Football

Cathedral picked a great week to have a bye. I’m sure the coaches weren’t thrilled to have a hole in their schedule, but they were able to avoid having to deal with the weather.

Most games here Friday were postponed to Saturday. But some foolish schools decided to play. The worst of the storm was going through right during game times Friday. At their peak, the winds were gusting to around 70 MPH. Oddly there was no lightning associated with the storm, so most games that started just kept on going through the worst of it. A couple games kicked off then stopped when the power went out.

Although the Irish were off, I did have football plans for the night. Our friend Coach H was bringing his team to play NC, the school across the street from us. That game was moved to Saturday morning, so I walked over and watched with Mrs. H. Poor NC entered on a 32-game losing streak. Coach H’s guys did their job and easily extended that streak to 33 games. It was fun to catch up with Mrs. Coach.

The Jayhawks

As the season continues to go down the toilet, I can step back a bit and react from a distance. Noticing things like it’s interesting how you can be mad about one thing during a game, then afterwards realize you should be mad about something else completely.

During the loss to TCU Saturday, most KU fans were steaming about a series of replay reviews and calls/no-calls that went against KU. All were very close, but in the heat of the moment they all seemed horribly wrong.

After the game, though, it was clear KU didn’t lose that game because of the refs. They lost, mostly, because on three massive plays, they missed a total of 187 tackles. They let what is basically a fullback run a punt back over 80 yards for a touchdown. They had the TCU QB dead in the backfield only to let him slip away and complete a pass that not only secured a massive first down, but turned into another score when tackles were missed on the back half of the play.

Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes is taking most of the ire of KU fans because his offense seems unimaginative and predictable while former OC Andy Kotelnicki took his super-fun offense to Penn State and is doing amazing things. And Grimes deserves that ire. His offense is dumb and his play calling at times infuriating. Not giving the ball to the best running back in school history one time when you have first and goal inside the five is just stupid.

But the defensive coaches need to take their share of the blame. They haven’t figured out a way to either get consistent pressure on the quarterback or cover receivers downfield. There are far too many big holes for receivers to get open and run freely. On top of that, this team tackles terribly. It’s like they don’t practice it.

Last year’s defense often played bend-but-don’t-break football. This year they break early and often. They had three take-aways Saturday, and should have had at least one more. And still gave up 38 points.

Honestly, I think you can summarize this year compared to last like this: last year, KU got nearly every break. This year, the Jayhawks are getting none. Watching games, you always expect something to go wrong. I think the players feel that, too. Which means things can get rougher as they lose faith. You know what I always say about KU football and things getting worse…

Colts

Hey the Colts with an impressive win, dropping 27 on the allegedly fearsome Pittsburgh defense. Twenty of those points coming after Anthony Richardson, shockingly, left the game with an injury. Old man Joe Flacco can still fling it. The defense was incredible early and made a couple huge plays late to hold off the rallying Steelers.

Again, I refuse to judge Richardson until the end of the year. But, man, he threw a couple more just incredible balls in the first two drives of the game. Then he got destroyed on two different QB runs and had to leave the game. Will Levis was the other option for the Colts to draft a year ago, and he looks like a disaster at this point, so I think AR was the right choice. It feels like he’s always, always, always going to be a massive risk-reward player, though. He’s got some Joel Embiid in him where even when he does the right thing, he manages to get some total freak injury. But, again, I’m not judging him yet.

Oh, would you be surprised that there were a series of incredibly inconsistent calls by the refs in this game? They both helped and hurt the Colts. Between this and the KU game, I’m about done with football refs. Looking forward to basketball refs ruining my life in about a month.

Royals

The Kansas City Royals are in the playoffs! One year after losing 106 games. What a turnaround, and totally unexpected. I would have been thrilled if they got close to .500 this year. If not for a bad September, the R’s would have been well over 90 wins in 2024.

That stumble to the finish doesn’t exactly inspire confidence for the Wild Card series with Baltimore. But the playoffs are all about pitching and the Royals have three solid starters, when they are on, plus the bullpen has been terrific for the last month or so. If they can just find a way to string together some hits again they have every chance to advance. A Royals-Yankees divisional series would be fun for us old folks.

I expect these playoffs to be much less stressful for me than the Royals’ runs in 2014 and 2015. I’m less invested now, the games move quicker, I drink less than I did a decade ago, and I have lower expectations. I still need to add sunflower seeds to my shopping list so I can recreate some of the magic from those two Octobers.

Weekend Notes

September 23, 2024 /

Another full-ish weekend, with most of our attention focused on the corrupt and disgraceful arena of sports. Sports suck.

Family

Let’s flip our normal order, though, and kick it off with family chat. M came home for the weekend. It was her first visit of the semester and nice to have her in the house for about 48 hours. She had no plans and mostly chilled on our couch while doing homework or taking naps. I told her to let me know if she was missing any specific meals and I would make them for dinner, but she never got around to picking something and/or we had other things going on, so she didn’t get any good home cooking. Which is kind of a bummer. That was always a highlight of trips home for me. This was also her first time coming-and-leaving on her own. When she left Sunday afternoon, S noted how it was nice that one of us wouldn’t spend the next five hours driving to Cincinnati, helping her get settled, then coming right back. Indeed.

Her classes are going well. Much harder than freshman year, since she’s in the business school now, but she’s working through it. Crazily, she showed me how she has her next two-and-a-half years completely planned out. Thanks to all the hours she took with her from high school, she can both spend a semester abroad and then do a co-op without taking any classes another semester and still graduate on time. We are also about to sign a lease for where she will live the next two years. Seems like she just started college and now we are about to lock up her housing up to graduation.

C had a quiet weekend, until she got sick Sunday night. She is home with me today. Fun.

L had a tryout for next year’s travel ball team yesterday. We think she’ll end up on the same team, or at least with the same coach and the same core players, she has been on. So this was more a required show your face type thing. She is really hoping that her old coach is allowed to keep the team together, because she didn’t feel very good yesterday either, and didn’t think she played very well.

High School Football

One reason we couldn’t do anything special for dinner for M Friday was that it was CHS’ homecoming, and the girls basketball team had a tailgate. S and I went and ate pizza and hung out with the girls and other parents for about 90 minutes. We came home after to hang with M. It was hot, the game was at Butler so our season passes didn’t work, and we knew it would be a blowout – CHS beat the school across the street from our house 53–13 – so we didn’t see any reason to stay.

That proved to be even smarter when our first rain in two weeks rolled in midway through the second half. There was lightning, of course, and the game got halted for about an hour. L was there with friends and they left to get ice cream then hang out at a friend’s house.

Jayhawks

This is why, as a KU fan, I should never, ever, ever have expectations when football season rolls around. In 44 years of being a KU fan, conditions have been right to have serious hopes, I’m talking potential conference championship game rather than just go to a bowl game, exactly twice in my life. Both times those expectations got blown out of the water before the season was even halfway finished.

This time it was allowing West Virginia to score 15 points in about 3:30 of game time in the fourth quarter. The defense was terrible, our two alleged all-conference cornerbacks getting roasted all day while the line couldn’t tackle anyone. Jalon Daniels struggled. Shocker. The play calling was odd, again. Yet the Jayhawks were up 11 with under 5:00 to play on the road, after a two-hour weather delay no less. Then they blew it.

While there was plenty to be mad about, and this game pretty much ruined my entire day since it took over five hours to complete and then I was pissed for the remainder of the night, all the attention goes to a couple coaching decisions. First, taking a delay of game penalty right before the weather delay and turning a 4th and 2 into 4th and 7 was idiotic. Especially when our punter hadn’t exactly been kicking the shit out of the ball. Then running to the short-side on the biggest play of the day, when a first down might ice the game, was criminal. As one West Virginia writer pointed out:

Kansas for the last hour: Succeeds for chunks of yards every time they run a speed option.
Kansas on the biggest 3rd down of the game: Let’s try something else.

Maddening.

Jalon missed some more throws that suggested to me he’s compensating for injury/weakness in his body. But the coaching staff had an entire summer to game plan around that, and apparently didn’t. Then they make dumb calls in the game’s biggest moments.

Just like the only other time I had big expectations going into the season – 2009 – this season has quickly gone to shit. Now, the Illinois loss doesn’t look so bad after they won at Nebraska this week. And the remaining schedule is still relatively weak. Given how KU’s best players – aside from Devin Neal and Daniel Hishaw – and coaching staff have performed through the first four games, I don’t have much confidence things will improve. And next year we will roll out a team filled with freshmen and sophomores who haven’t played much…

Again, with Kansas football, it can, and almost always will, get worse. Can’t wait to see what this week brings.

Other College Games

Well, it’s started. All the weird, new conference games that a year ago would have been awesome non-con games. USC traveling to Michigan, for a tremendous game that went down to the final seconds. Tennessee going into Norman and slapping Oklahoma around, which was cathartic to this Big 12 fan. The games were good, but the vides were odd.

I read this weekend how UEFA adjusted how they schedule the Champions League this year, requiring the best teams to play more games against other strong teams. It is starting to feel like college football should do something like that. Just get rid of conferences and throw all the names into buckets based on preseason rankings, and try to make balanced schedules from that.

Here’s a wild bonus idea: Keep the schedules geographically logical, too. Nah, that’s crazy talk. Why would we want schools to play most of their games against rivals from neighboring states?

Colts

Hey, at least the Colts won! Not that they looked good doing it and didn’t try to give the game back to Chicago like three times.

Quarterbacks

Jalon Daniels has seven interceptions. Anthony Richardson has six. I’m falling out of love with the forward pass.

Fever

Like a lot of Indianapolis, at 3:00 eastern I switched from the ugly Colts game over to watch the Fever open their playoff series with the Connecticut Sun. That went well for one quarter, then it turned into a rout. The Sun kept big defenders on Caitlin Clark and made her life hell. CC and Kelsey Mitchell combining to shoot 4–23 from 3 did not help. We’ll see if they can regroup and adjust for game two and get the series back for the finale in Indy. The Sun have handled the Fever pretty easily all season, but it would be cool to steal game two and have the deciding game back here.

Royals

Man, you think KU had a bad week, go check out what the Royals did. Six straight losses. At home. A 13–1 collective shellacking to the Giants over the weekend. Now somehow tied with Detroit, DETROIT, for the second/third Wild Card spots with Minnesota just a game back, and Seattle a game behind the Twins. Detroit closes the season with three against the pitiful White Sox, so they have effectively locked up one of those two spots.

A week ago the Royals had a five-game cushion over the seventh place spot, with a 99% chance of making the postseason. This morning that percentage has dropped to 69% (per Fangraphs). If Minnesota wasn’t nearly as cold as the Royals those odds would be even lower.

Maybe the bats will wake up this week. Or the pitching will do enough to get the R’s to the playoffs and then the bats will wake up. Sure doesn’t look promising this morning.

Weather

Mother Nature finally flipped the switch Sunday and our heat wave broke. Rain moved in midday Sunday, with heavier showers in the evening, and the temps have dropped 10–15 degrees from where they had been. The forecast has highs in the mid-upper 70s with cool nights. Just about perfect.

We put the Halloween decorations out Saturday. The holidays are getting close.

Weekend Notes

September 16, 2024 /

As has become standard so far this fall, Friday night was jam-packed with sports action from the couch. Things were ratcheted up a notch this weekend, as KU was playing, meaning I couldn’t casually watch tennis, baseball, or basketball while listening to high school football. No, this week I would be yelling at the TV while listening to the radio. Sadly, more yelling than I expected. For the most part that worked out ok, although there were moments that big things were happening in each game at the same time and it was tough to keep track of what was going on where. It was also very confusing for S, who was facing away from the TV and didn’t always understand what was causing my outburst when the radio announcers were fairly quiet.

There was plenty of dumbness over the weekend, with some cool stuff sprinkled in. Let’s get to it.

HS Football

On the radio was Cathedral’s visit to arch rival Bishop Chatard, ranked either #1 or #2 in 4A, depending on the poll. CHS had won eight of the last ten in the series, but last year was one of those losses in the weird, split game that started on Friday (and CHS led 21–0 early) then ended with BC making a comeback Saturday morning after the game was halted because of a power outage Friday.

No worries this year. CHS jumped out 14–0 and never let up, winning 30–7. It could/should have been an even bigger win. The Irish had three touchdowns, including a 66-yard pass, called back because of penalties. Two of those turned into 10 points anyway. The kicker missed a makable field goal, then put what would have been a school-record 51-yard field goal off the crossbar at the halftime horn. Still, always satisfying to beat the rival, especially for the girls who have friends there. L went to the JV game on Saturday, another W for the Irish.

The CHS radio guys were hilarious. Both analysts played for the Irish, one graduating about 20 years ago, the other over 50 years ago. They were a little fired up for the rivalry game. They thought each penalty that wiped out a TD was garbage. They show more uncalled holds than usual. By the fourth quarter they were screaming at the refs from the press box. And this was in a game their team was winning! I was entertained.

KU

Welp, so much for all the big plans for this year.

I would have written a lot more about this game had I taken a crack at it Friday. Some seriously dumb coaching decisions. Any hopes that Jeff Grimes would step right in for Andy Kotelnicki have been dashed. I mean, how you don’t give Devin Neal, who averaged almost six yards a carry on the night and is averaging nine yards a carry for the season, the ball on second and two and instead throw a pass that has not worked all night when another touchdown likely wins the game is beyond me. The KU offense, which would get all kinds of run on football Twitter the past couple years for how innovative and fun it was, is now boring and can’t adjust. Hiring Grimes is the first big mistake of Lance Leipold’s time in Lawrence. I feel like he could have grabbed some OC from a Texas high school and got better results.

Aside from one exceptionally dumb play by the defense that could have ended the game – the fumble they kicked around for 30 seconds before UNLV fell on it – they were, mostly, amazing. Especially the front seven, which was not expected to be a strength. Two weeks in a row they’ve controlled the game and been let down by the offense/coaches.

Losing a contest that, after the game, the analytics gave the Jayhawks an 83% chance to win seems dumb even for a program with as much dumbness in its history as KU has. Something about the entire team seems off. The last two years it seemed more like a Mangino-era team that rarely did things to beat themselves. Through three games they seem sloppier and less disciplined than the past two years. That is true from the coaches through the players. Not what I expected from a head coach wound as tight as Leipold.

The headline has to be Jalon Daniels, though. Clearly he’s compromised. Whether it is physical, mental, a matter of meshing with Grimes, or some combination of those three, it’s not working. Bad throw after bad throw. Terrible decisions. Seeming confused rather than playing with the joy he used to take the field with. Maybe he can be fixed/salvaged/cajoled into better football, but it needs to happen quick if that is a genuine possibility.

There was a lot of call on Twitter to bring in Cole Ballard. Friday didn’t seem like the time to do that. If things go sideways in Morgantown this week, it might be time to give JD a break.

You would have thought it was a KU basketball loss for how long the angry, post-game texts flew around after this one.

Technically, a lot of the big goals for this season are still possible. They could still make the Big 12 championship game if the offense gets fixed in the next, gulp, five days. At this point I’m more worried about finding five more wins and going to another crappy bowl than any of that. After blowing two winnable games, I don’t have a lot of confidence those W’s are on the remaining schedule. Playing the Big 12 home games at Arrowhead always had a measure of risk. If this team falls apart and no one is there – aside from the entire state of Iowa when the Clones come to town – it will make this season seem even worse. Remember, with Kansas football, things can always get worse.

We all know timeouts in college are too long. But KU called a timeout with under 2:00 to play in the game Friday just to stop the clock. It was a standard, FOUR MINUTE time out. Just fucking terrible. Even in the NFL, which will cram as many ads into a game as they can, they limit those late game TOs to 30 seconds or a minute.

College Football

I didn’t watch much ball on Saturday as I found few of the games compelling. The game I watched most was Cincinnati-Miami. M made the 45 minute trip to Oxford to hang out with friends but did not have a ticket. She did get to go to a party with one of her best friends and said she had a great time and enjoyed all Oxford has to offer. Nice win for her Bearcats.

The Victory Bell rivalry is tied for the oldest non-conference rivalry in the country, but this was the last game scheduled to be played on campus, and the 2026 game at the Bengals’ stadium is the last one currently scheduled. When I talked to M on Sunday I tried to explain why – UC wants the games at the Bengals’ field instead of having to go to Oxford, Miami wanted to hang onto those home games, joining the Big 12 changed UC’s scheduling priorities, etc – but she thought most of those reasons were dumb. I’m with her.

S and I went out for an early dinner and got to see part of Notre Dame’s destruction of Purdue. I guess the Irish got re-focused after the Northern Illinois loss.

Colts

So the Colts might be a bad team. A really bad team. GM Chris Ballard insisted the defense would be solid this year, especially against the run. Then the Colts gave up over 250 yards rushing in the first half against a team starting a backup QB that was only going to pass if he had to. Seems dumb not to load up the box and force him to pass. And that was before two defensive linemen got hurt. I refuse to hold Anthony Richardson’s dumbness against him until next year. But something about his passes seems hard to catch, because his receivers dropped a ton of balls that hit their hands. Weird. Those drops make his poor decision making on other passes hurt even worse. And still the Colts had a chance until the final gun. They were fortunate the final score wasn’t more indicative how big a beat down this was.

The Cowboys, Lions, and Ravens all lost at home. The Niners lost. Aside from the Chiefs, who nearly lost at home, do you trust a single team in this league? I’m starting to think the uneven play is a function of teams barely playing starters in the preseason and the added week to the regular season making teams/players more cautious in how they handle injuries. But that’s crazy talk, right?

Twitter During Games

It is funny to look back on your feed at how people react to specific plays. When KU ran that stupid screen pass on second and two in the fourth quarter? People were pissed. And remained pissed well after the game ended. Same in the Colts game. There was a rather curious play call on a third down – something that happened several times during the game – and Colts Twitter, to the extent I follow it, blew up. My favorite was one of our young, local weather ladies getting involved. “What was that play call????” It shows how far we’ve come as a society where it’s not a surprise at all when a young woman has a football take, and it’s 100% legit.

Royals

The R’s took two of three in Pittsburgh, and really should have swept the woeful Pirates. Five games up for the final Wild Card spot with 12 games left. A better record over the last 10 games than both the team ahead of them and behind them in the WC race. 97% playoff odds. A clinched winning season. All summer I’ve been waiting for them to fall apart. It would really suck if they finally did it during this closing stretch.

Fever

Another Friday-Sunday weekend for the Fever. Friday they lost their second game in three nights to Las Vegas, this one much more competitive than the first. I checked on that game periodically but there was too much else going on for me to really follow it.

Sunday they closed their home schedule against Dallas. For some reason the game was only on locally on some third-tier station. One that, even on cable, looked piped in on some terrible, over-the-air antenna. The picture was all fuzzy and blurry. It was like trying to watch European soccer in the 1980s. Pretty sure this wouldn’t happen to the Pacers.

Anyway, for the third time this season the Fever and Wings played a tremendously exciting game, with the Fever winning by one, although Dallas hit an unguarded 3 at the buzzer. These teams tend to not play defense against each other, so it is back-and-forth, up-and-down the entire game. That win clinched sixth place for the Fever, and also guaranteed them at least a .500 season. Twenty wins two years after winning five. Not bad. Caitlin had a career-high 35 points Sunday, and broke the WNBA single season assist record Friday.[1] She also collected her sixth technical foul of the year Friday. Her teammates were keeping her away from the refs Sunday so she doesn’t get magic #7, which brings a one-game suspension with it. Maybe just stop complaining.

Weather

Still hot and dry here. I’ve been watering the grass a couple times a week for about a month. Despite that, our lawn got pretty crunchy over the past few days. We were hoping the hurricane remnants would bring us some rain last week, but that fizzled out in southern Indiana. No rain in the forecast, every day in the upper 80s. At least the pool is still open, and staying warm on its own.

  1. The WNBA schedule expanded to 40 games last year, so a lot of season records have been falling. They may add another four games next year, so throw out your record books.  ↩
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