D's Notebook

Tag: college sports (Page 1 of 41)

Hoops Chat

April 8, 2025 /

A lot of hoops thoughts to work through as the college season has come to a very entertaining end.

Women’s Tourney

Man, UConn roared through the tournament like they were all mad the program hadn’t won a title in nearly a decade. Their performance in the Final Four was as dominant as I can remember any team, men or women, having over the final two games of the season. They eviscerated UCLA and South Carolina with a gorgeous, flowing, democratic brand of basketball. Try to take away one player and two others were waiting to kill you.

L is a big Paige Bueckers fan. In fact, she wrote her high school entrance essay about Bueckers and how she showed perseverance overcoming her injuries. I’ve shared before how it’s really hard to get L to sit down and watch full basketball games. Well Friday and Sunday, she sat next to me and watched every minute of the two UConn games.[1] I was pleased that she, apparently, watches a lot of highlights, because she knew every player and what they run on offense and defense. I was happy for Paige, I was happy for L since she wanted Paige to win, and I was happy that I was able to sit, watch, and enjoy a couple games with my hoopster daughter.

Bueckers was obviously the headline story, but, man, Huskies freshman Sarah Strong was so impressive. Not quite as flashy as Juju Watkins, but she has just about everything in her game. In the void of Watkins being out part/most/all of next year rehabbing her knee, Strong should become the face of the college game.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw a Fox News headline that Bueckers’ apparent lack of popularity outside hoops-heads (I guess?) is because of her race. So they’re just going to ignore the last two years, or the fact that the most popular WNBA player ever and one of the most popular athletes in the world at the moment is another white, Midwesterner? Now maybe the article was more nuanced, or it went directly political and got into how Bueckers is far more outspoken about things that get the Fox News crowd riled up than Caitlin Clark has ever been. But I didn’t read that shit, so can’t be certain.

Geno Auriemma has always annoyed me. I think it’s just his east coast arrogance. He seems to have mellowed a bit in recent years. I don’t know if it was the (super) relative lack of success for the program over the past decade, age, or something else, but he actually seemed kind of likable this weekend. Although I guess he kind of made an ass of himself in the press conference after the title game. Hopefully Paige yelled at him.

L asked if I thought he would retire now. I think it’s hard to do that when you have a player like Strong returning, along with Azzi Fudd and others. And I’m sure he has another stud freshman or two who will join them. Why quit when the program is still loaded?

The women’s Final Four was in Tampa. Although we flew in and out of the Sarasota airport, it was still filled with UConn folks coming in for the weekend when we left on Friday.

Chomp Chomp

Not much about Monday’s men’s title game was pleasing to the eye. Houston’s defense is remarkable, but it completely sucks the life out of the game. Worse, their offense is kind of terrible, mostly designed to throw the ball off the backboard and grab offensive rebounds while hoping LJ Cryer or Emanuel Sharp hit the occasional 3 between all the bricks. I was trying to remember a team with this combo of attributes making it this far. Virginia and Villanova were both intense defensive minded teams that sometimes struggled to score. But both teams were also focused on playing deliberately on offense, and had a couple guys you did not want to let get open looks. The classic Georgetown teams jumped out at me, but they had a hall of famer in the low post so I’m not sure that’s an exact match for Houston, either. Ironically Georgetown’s one title game win in their three chances was against Houston in 1984.

Florida’s defense was not much worse, creating an absolute slog of a game. Worse, the officials had no idea how to manage the physicality and clearly let it get away from them a couple times. Hell, the entire second half was a mess of too many calls followed by no calls followed by terrible calls to try to quell the near-violence. Slamming the ball on the ground in anger is 100% worthy of a technical, but I’m not sure how J’Wan Roberts throwing his hands in the air and screaming after every single call/no call is not also a “demonstrative act.”

All that made for a disjointed, ill-tempered, uncomfortable game to watch. I was glad I had no strong interest in who won.

Well, that’s not true. The Gators winning made me some money. I won one pool, tied for first in another. Sadly I got those in the wrong order. The pool I won shares the money amongst the top four. The one I tied in gives all the money to the winner, and I lost the tie breaker in that one. That tie breaker was extra annoying because the guy I lost to had KU in the Elite 8. I feel like I should win over him based on that alone.

Oh well. Second time in four years I’ve won a pool. And this year was with me being absolutely terrible on day one. Of course it’s also because I picked four number one seeds to get to the Final Four. But I’m on record as having wanted to pick against one of them, just not finding a team below them I trusted to pull the upset. So at least my cop-out was an informed one.

As some of my readers know, I finished second in my fantasy draft, trailing my buddy Nez in Lee’s Summit by 16 points. If only Clemson hadn’t lost in the first round…

I feel a little bad for Kelvin Sampson. He’s truly a great coach who has been unfairly maligned because he sent too many texts to recruits. Well, he did it twice at two different schools, so he deserves some shit for not learning from his mistakes. But that sure seems quaint in the NIL era. Anyway, he might be the current best example of a “culture” coach. You know what you’re getting from one of his Houston teams. Shame he and his son couldn’t come up with better plays to run on the Cougars’ last two possessions. Four turnovers in the last 2:00 nearly matched KU’s meltdown against Arkansas.

Houston might have the two combined most painful championship game losses ever. Not sure 1983 will ever be topped, especially given the talent on that team. But not even getting a shot off on the last two possessions Monday will smart for years.

Still props to them for one of the greatest comebacks in Final Four history Saturday night against Duke. That was thoroughly enjoyable. It never seemed possible until suddenly it was. That was the second biggest choke by a team from North Carolina in the Final Four this decade.

I had not watched Florida at all until the past couple weeks. When they were rolling, they were incredible. Such a great combination of parts. Waves of athletic bigs. Athletic wings. Shooters everywhere. And although he was largely held in check last night, Walter Clayton Jr. is like a low-rent Steph Curry, never afraid of taking a shot from anywhere on the court and, more often than not, nailing them.

Lots of buzz in the KU community that Todd Golden is the favorite to come to Lawrence when Bill Self retires. Golden has some baggage, to say the least. And now that he’s won a title in Gainesville he may not feel the need to jump to a traditional power. He has proven, though, that he understands modern basketball and how to build a team to compete. As soon as this time next year KU AD Travis Goff could have a big decision to make about whether the allegations against Golden are enough to prevent him from being considered to replace Self. Again, all rumors, but apparently Goff has zero interest in Chris Beard when the time comes because of his legal issues a couple years back. Seems like Golden should be disqualified if Beard is.

Jayhawk Talk

What a wild two weeks for KU.

First they lost almost every player who could return from this year’s team, worst of all Flory Bidunga. There had been rumblings for weeks, and you just kind of expect it these days anyway. I was still super bummed when Flory jumped. There were even rumors that Bryson Tiller, who was on campus this spring and will be a freshman next fall, might not stick around. There was a full-on panic as we realized we barely had enough players to fill out a roster, and worry that Darryn Peterson might decide to take his talents elsewhere.

The tide started to turn over the weekend. Self nabbed a couple transfers from the portal, both athletic wings. Then Bidunga announced he was returning to Lawrence. That news broke Sunday in the middle of a family conversation. Which I interrupted by throwing my hands in the air and yelling “FLORY IS BACK!!!!” My family made fun of me.

Flory’s time in the portal was fascinating, and telling of the state of college ball at the moment. There were immediate rumors that Auburn, his second choice a year ago, was offereing $3 million a year, which seemed insane. If that was true, I would happily let Flory walk. I love him and his potential, but he ain’t worth three million bucks.[2] Then there was word of back-and-forth between KU and Flory’s “team,” with Self even flying to Indiana to meet with them a week ago. Suddenly Saturday night, when all signs pointed towards Flory going to Auburn, the tide seemed to shift and there were strong rumors he would stay a Jayhawk. I guess until the revenue sharing model gets instituted, this is how college hoops will be. Even if you’re happy with where you are and your role, you jump in the portal to basically renegotiate your deal with your current school. I want players to get paid, but I’m pretty sure this is an awful way to do it. It hurts all sides. I haven’t read enough about the upcoming House settlement to understand if it will solve this problem, make it worse, or keep it as it.

Anyway, Flory’s back!

(My winning pool entry was titled Bidungapalooza. I sweated that name for a week but it worked out all around.)

There’s still work to do. I would like another big guard who can start. There has to be another big to play either next to or behind Flory. Even then, I worry that too much is being expected of Peterson, who will be the most talented player to arrive in Lawrence since Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid showed up in 2013. You know what, though? KU will NOT be picked preseason #1, nor picked to win the Big 12. There is always pressure at KU, but it will be dialed back a few notches next year, which should be good for everyone from the coaches to players to fans.

  1. She also plays for the AAU program run by UConn sophomore Ashlynn Shade’s parents.  ↩
  2. Message board rumors Sunday were that he’s getting $1.3M from KU this year, slightly better than Auburn’s final, true offer.  ↩

NCAA Picks

March 20, 2025 /

I hate my picks.

That’s how I’ll sum up this year’s NCAA tournament. Which seems perfect for a college basketball season I have mostly hated.

Spoiled KU fan, I know.

As hard as I tried not to, I ended up going with all four #1 seeds to reach the Final Four. Which is an idiotic way to fill your bracket since it has happened exactly one time.[1]

Some people think Auburn is creaky and vulnerable based on their late-season lull. I see a team that was focused on one thing – winning it all – getting complacent late. Some people are screaming the “It’s March, that’s Tom Izzo time!” nonsense but I still don’t think Michigan State is Final Four good. Auburn is, frankly, more Michigan State than Michigan State is this year.

Houston has some injury issues, but if J’wan Roberts can survive this weekend, I think the Cougars roll into San Antonio.

Duke? Come on. They just blitzed the ACC tournament without Cooper Flagg in the last two games, and he’s coming back. Although the ACC kind of stunk, so we should maybe tamp the excitement down a notch or two. And they got the easiest, by far, route to the Final Four. As usual.

I really wanted to pick St. John’s out of the West. In fact at first I did. But I think Florida is the best team in the country, and as fearsome as the Johnnies are on defense, they can’t shoot, which will kill you in 2025. Seriously, a KU-SJU game Saturday could be an all-time brickfest.

I found it hard to pick upsets, too. I have BYU in the Elite 8, for some reason. I could also see them losing their opening game and blowing up my bracket.

I have Clemson and Illinois in the Sweet 16 in the Midwest, but those only require mild upsets. Otherwise my Sweet 16 is pretty chalky.

Yuck.

As for my Jayhawks, they should beat Arkansas tonight. Doesn’t mean they will, but they should. The Hogs will be missing their leading scorer and rebounder, but I believe he didn’t play in the exhibition game between these two teams, either. Freshman sensation Boogie Fland returns, but he’s missed two full months of action with a serious hand injury. He’s probably still fast enough, rust and all, to cook DaJuan Harris. But will he have the ball/finishing skills to match his performance back in October? The Hogs will be quicker on the perimeter, and have a mobile big man that can put Hunter Dickinson in bad spots.

But I think the Jayhawks will come together for two hours and dispatch the Razorbacks. KU 75, Arkansas 70.

That will bring Zuby Ejiofor and the Johnnies on Saturday. Like Arkansas, St. John will be much more athletic at every position than the Jayhawks. There is also that defense, the best in the country, which isn’t exactly an ideal opponent for a team that has clicked offensively only a handful of times across 33 games. This is not the KU team to pull the upset.

However, I did take Ejiofor in my player draft. It would somehow be appropriate if he played like ass and KU knocked off SJU.

Nah, the Hoops Gods are more about punishing my real team for whatever reason than my fantasy team. St. John’s 83, KU 70.

Florida over Houston in the championship game.

  1. That was a pretty good Final Four, with a fantastic ending.  ↩

Early NCAA Thoughts

March 18, 2025 /

Here we are, NCAA tournament time. The time of some of my favorite, non-family of course, moments of my life. And also some of my least favorite. I suppose that’s the good thing about KU’s relative mediocrity this year: if I genuinely have no expectations, there is only opportunity for good memories this week. I expect them to shit the bed, so anything other than that will be a pleasant surprise.

The Jayhawks didn’t do a thing in the Big 12 tournament to change how I think about them. Moments of brain-dead play, often from the most experienced players, against Colorado. Then the Arizona game was the exact opposite of when the teams played a week before in Lawrence. Instead of the Jayhawks controlling the game and the Wildcats making constant runs, even briefly taking the lead in the second half, this time it was Arizona in front and KU rallying. KU made the big plays late in Lawrence; Arizona was clutch in KC. Two pretty even teams playing two pretty even games over six days. Not that long ago this was a game that KU 100% would have won in Kansas City. This year’s team is on a different, worse, level, though.

Crazy that the Arizona game was the first time KU had worn blue in the Big 12 tournament since the 2008 championship game. And even then they only wore blue because of losing the regular season game vs Texas, and thus the tiebreaker when determining who the home team was for the regular season co-champs. This has been a truly glorious era of KU hoops, and this was just another bitter reminder of how the last two years have brought all that to a screeching stop.

As for this coming week, playing Arkansas might be the ideal draw for this team. But not for the reasons you think. The Razorbacks blew out the preseason #1 Jayhawks in an exhibition game back in October in John Calipari’s first game in Fayetteville. Hunter Dickinson didn’t play, and KU clearly didn’t run anything serious on offense. But that game pointed out flaws early, like the lack of shooting and athleticism, that were masked in early wins over Michigan State and Duke. Arkansas has their own issues between injuries and inconsistencies and perhaps some general weird vibes in the program. But losing to them, likely because the Hogs are more athletic and can exploit KU’s deficiencies, would be a perfect bookend to the year. I’m already fearing DaJuan Harris going 2–11 from 3 as Calipari happily leaves him wide open to shoot all night.

But beating them sure would be fun, and I think KU is the better team if focused. Do they have one good game in them?

Should the Jayhawks survive the Hogs another near-perfect storyline opponent likely awaits in St. John’s. I say perfect because that game will shine a bright light on the choices Self made two springs ago. He sacrificed freshmen Ernest Udeh and Zuby Ejiofor for Hunter Dickinson. I contend that was a decent gamble. He had Kevin McCullar coming back, Dickinson was an All American big, and you build around those two established players instead of two raw, rising sophomore bigs.

Udeh has struggled with inconsistency at TCU, although I contend he would have developed better had he stayed at KU.

Ejiofor, however, has been a true revelation this year. His offensive stats aren’t as good as Dickinson’s (17.6 ppg, 10.0 rpg vs 14.6/8.0) but he’s been red hot late in the season. Zuby shoots better from the field and is a better defender. He is a perfect match for Rick Pitino’s style and his teammates, where Hunter is clearly not a good match for the talent around him.[1] None of us know for sure if Hunter is a good teammate or not, but there always seems to be some cloud over the team that might lead back to him. Zuby seems like a guy everyone would love to play with.

Who knows, Hunter may dominate Zuby if the teams play on Saturday. And that may not matter as St. John’s is genuinely the better team. I’m kind of laughing at the thought of KU’s guards facing the Johnnies’ pressure. We have dinner plans Friday and I considered moving them to Saturday so I could avoid the KU game. Then again, it may be a cathartic end to this mini-run and worth my time even if it is ugly.

I’m sure there are some KU fans talking themselves into things finally clicking and the team making a run. I can’t do that. Even in this team’s best wins this season – Duke, Michigan State, Iowa State, Arizona – the team has never been fully locked in. When it doesn’t happen over four-plus months, it’s not suddenly going to happen when the tournament begins. A shame.

Please, never rank KU #1 in the preseason again.

As for the broader tournament, I’m really struggling to come up with interesting picks. It feels like the top 4–6 teams are CLEARLY the best teams in the country. I watched more of the SEC tournament last weekend than any other, and kind of fell in love with one seeds Auburn and Florida, and two seed Tennessee.[2] Those three teams are all loaded with talent and athletes and shooters and can guard. But each also has these awful lulls because they get out of control or play too fast or can’t create in the halfcourt or take ten terrible shots in a row. Then I look to try to find an upset over them and think of how bad Michigan State looked when they lost to KU in November, or how many injuries Iowa State is fighting, or how young Texas Tech is, etc.

I love Houston, but that team also seems to be lacking something that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe because they are a true program team, totally bought into their coach’s philosophies rather than loaded with obvious talent? Which probably means they’re going to race through the bracket with ease.

Naturally Duke got the easiest draw of any of the #1 seeds. Amazing how often that happens. Maybe Cooper Flagg will re-tweak his ankle this weekend and that will doom their efforts to get out of the east. I think that’s something America can get behind in this divided age.[3]

At the moment I lean towards picking all four #1 seeds, which is dumb. I feel like Florida might be the most talented roster in the country, but St. John’s is the most complete #2 seed. Naturally they are together. If KU wasn’t the #7 seed I would complain more about how the west is, by far, the stoutest region. But it doesn’t matter to us.

I’m going to sit on this a couple more days and offer my picks on Thursday.

  1. Bill Self’s fault, not his.  ↩

  2. Side note, why did ESPN used C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” so prominently in their coverage? The song is 34 years old. It was perfect for the 1991 tournament. A year which, coincidentally, Kansas and Arkansas played. But in 2025 seems weird to use it almost every commercial break.  ↩

  3. You know that you know who is pulling for Duke.  ↩

Weekend Notes

March 10, 2025 /

I had a busy morning, so will blow through a few items from another rather laid-back weekend.

Jayhawk Talk

Saturday’s regular season finale with Arizona summed up the season for KU.

Nice start, only to fell apart when Hunter Dickinson went to the bench. Another solid run in the last 6–7 minutes of the first half on the verge of going up 16, only to give up a seven-point swing in the final minute to destroy their momentum.

Then, in the second half, letting Arizona tie the game, stretching another nice lead out, then falling behind, and finally playing great in the last three minutes to win.

All about wild mood swings, but at least they finally won a game against a good team by being the better side in the closing minutes.

Dickinson was spectacular. KJ Adams’ energy early carried the team. His lob dunk that put KU up by 7 late was the loudest I’ve yelled all year.[1] And Zeke Mayo found his mojo again.

I’m not going to get too excited about this game, thinking they’ve fixed their issues and are now dangerous in the NCAA tournament. I’m just glad they figured it out and gave fans a fun game against a name opponent for the first time since November. More on that next week. A nice win to a frustrating regular season.

By the way, it drove me INSANE that ESPN said multiple times that this was the eighth straight year KU wore red uniforms on senior night. I was 1000% sure that was wrong, not because I remember every year clearly,[2] but because I DID clearly recall the crazy Texas game in 2022, a game that I knew KU wore white for.

So I spent the first three timeouts of the game digging back through the six senior night games since this “tradition” allegedly began. KU indeed wore red in 2018. But then they wore white in 2019 and 2020. Red returned in 2021. White, as noted, in 2022. Then red the past two years. So, rather than an eight year streak, it was only three, and then five of eight.

Yet another sign of the dumbing down of ESPN. This is basic shit.

I was also a little bummed that the Lawrence Journal-World finally slapped a paywall on their KU coverage. I’ve been reading their coverage since I was a student. It was a big deal to get an apartment and be able to have the city paper delivered, staying up on all the latest KU news that the campus paper didn’t report. I’ve been following their online coverage since whenever they first started posting on the web. Once upon a time I would have gladly paid for their coverage. But, like so much of print media, it has gotten dramatically worse in recent years. Where once a minimum of three writers covered each KU game, now it is one guy doing it all. And he’s a young dude who tries hard but isn’t all that great at his job.

Worse, with just one writer at games, the old “notebook” stories that were a staple of postgame coverage have disappeared. Every sports fan knows the glory of the notebook pieces, a collection of blurbs no where important or deep enough for entire stories, but of high interest to the serious fan. These were the tidbits that insane people like me loved to digest. Hell, I (eventually) named this website after that concept!

In recent years the LJW started putting video of KU press conferences on YouTube. I’ve found watching those are often more illuminating than one writer boiling them down to their basics. So the only thing I really garnered from them was looking at their photo galleries. A lot of their pictures have enhanced my posts over the years. I guess I’ll have to search harder for those going forward.

HS Hoops

This was sectional weekend on the boys side of basketball. To honor the occasion, I read a fantastic book about a key moment in Indiana high school basketball history. I’ll get to that later this week or next.

The biggest upset in the state came in 3A, where #1 Cathedral lost in Friday’s semifinals to their in-city rivals Crispus Attucks. It just so happened the book I read was about Attucks as well. Apparently the Irish were up 11 going into the fourth quarter and totally fell apart to lose by six. L was not super upset; she was glad the girls went further than the boys.

Big 10 Tournament

L was not at that game Friday. Instead she went with some friends and sat in a suite at the Big 10 tournament to watch the night games, which included eventual tournament champs UCLA.

She’s a big fan of USC’s JuJu Watkins, so was disappointed the Trojans had played during the afternoon session. She asked me if she could buy a shirt, and suggested it would be a tournament shirt. Then she arrived home with a nice, pretty expensive USC shirt. When the Trojans blew a 13 point lead and lost to UCLA in Sunday’s championship game, I told her she had to burn the shirt. Those are the rules.

Super dumb that UCLA and USC traveled to Indianapolis to play for their conference championship. Can we fast forward 5–10 years when we go to two conferences with multiple, regional divisions and return some sanity to the games?

Weather

This winter has sucked. And by that I mean it’s been pretty normal, which is mostly cold and dreary. A few really cold weeks but mostly just two months of temps in the 20s and 30s.

That finally broke on Sunday. It was only 60, but the sun was so warm it felt at least 10 degrees warmer. L actually got a little pink from sitting outside. The coming week will be in the 60s and 70s. Mother Nature surely has some tricks up her sleeves for the next eight weeks, but we’re getting close, people, to shorts and t-shirts weather. Hang in there.

Kid Notes

We’re approaching the final countdown for C’s senior year. She’s trying to find a prom dress, which is turning out to be harder than last year for some reason. We just bought her senior ad for the yearbook. We’re finalizing plans for which of her friends will be hanging out with us on spring break at the end of the month. And we’re trying to figure out grad party plans. I believe she has eight weeks of classes left.

M accepted the offer for a summer internship in Cincinnati. She’ll be working for a company that makes a variety of products, mostly in the hardware/construction space. It’s a marketing position but I’m guessing she’s going to have to learn way more about hardware than she knows now. And it pays pretty well, which is a bonus. She’ll be home for two weeks in early May then head back to Cincy. Timing worked out perfectly and she was able to claim a sublease at a friend’s apartment before another girl could.

L had her second post-op visit this morning. They cut off her first cast, removed her stitches, then re-casted her. Everything looked good and she’s not feeling any pain. Seventeen days in this cast and then she’ll switch to a boot.

We took advantage of the nice weather Sunday and did a seated shooting workout. She got about 180 shots up from various distances and rim-heights. She threw in some ball handling drills, as much as she could do around her chair.

  1. Later, during dinner, C asked me what happened when KU was ahead 79–72. She had heard my screams from two floors above and looked at the score to see what happened. A couple of my KU buddies and I have a long-time saying of “WAKE THE KIDS!!!” when we are yelling during an evening game. We haven’t had too many of those moments this year. It was nice to have one. Also a reminder that C was my one kid who was awake and aware of what was going on when I was losing my mind during the 2022 national championship game.  ↩
  2. You damn well know once upon a time I could remember that kind of shit, though.  ↩

Weekend Notes

January 21, 2025 /

Hope you had a good Monday celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and all he stood for. Equal opportunity, justice, empathy, love. We’ve come a long way since he was murdered. Yesterday was a reminder that we still have a long way to go.

Let’s review some stuff that happened over the past few days.

KU Hoops

I’m about done with this team. Not in terms of watching, I’ll always watch the games.[1] But in terms of thinking they are going to figure it out in time to make a deep run in March. I guess anything is possible when the tournament rolls around. But, as I believe I said last year, this year’s parts just do not fit and I think it’s too late to make adjustments to get them to work together better.

Saturday’s game against K-State was a perfect example. A roaring start, and it looked like another pounding of the Purples was about to be entered into the media guide. But a combination of scheme, talent, and depth issues resulted in a final result that was far too close, and got Jerome Tang clapping like a wind-up bathtub toy as the Wildcats cut the lead down to six late.[2]

Hunter Dickinson finally remembered he’s the biggest guy on the court, and played terrific ball for stretches. But losing KJ Adams to injury and inserting Flory Bidunga into his starting spot meant Dickinson was completely gassed for the last 10 minutes or so of the game. Which made the defensive problems be presents even more pronounced since he could barely move. I get the logic of starting Flory, but with him being a foul-prone freshman, it opens the team up to not being able to rest Hunter because Flory has four fouls late.

KJ has been one of the most frustrating elements of this year’s team. Saturday showed his value, though. He would have guarded Coleman Hawkins better than any of his teammates. Dickinson is too big and slow. Bidunga too young and inexperienced. AJ Storr too small and not smart enough. K-State had a fine strategy of getting KU’s defense to move around, knowing at some point Dickinson would be out of place and/or Hawkins would have a mismatch. It didn’t help that Bidunga kept doubling way too late and no one would rotate to his spot, allowing easy dunks and layups for the Wildcats.

The game reminded me a little of the Missouri game a year ago. KU won, but it was not super satisfying because their rival exposed some weaknesses and it wasn’t the ass-kicking Jayhawks fans wanted.

Fortunately for KU, Iowa State and Arizona lost (and Houston should have lost). They are just a game back of second place. But there aren’t very many gimmes on the schedule and this year’s team does not inspire confidence they are going to show up focused every night. It’s tough to see them stealing a big win or two AND not blowing an equal number of winnable games. Hopefully we win more than we lose, but, to be honest, I’m more excited about/interested in Darryn Peterson and the other freshmen coming in next fall, if Flory will return, and if Bill Self can avoid picking the wrong role players in the portal to play around them.

NFL Playoffs

What a weird weekend. Each game had some serious drama, but other than the Baltimore-Buffalo game, they also didn’t feel as close as they actually were. The best part of the weekend, of course, was Sunday’s two snow games. We just needed a little more snow in Buffalo to make it perfect.

I heard a few prognosticators suggesting Washington had a good chance to beat Detroit. I thought that was crazy talk. Then the Commanders went wild on the Lions, pulling off one of the biggest shocks in recent memory. I felt so bad for Detroit fans. This was the best team they’ve had in the Super Bowl era. And they couldn’t even win a single playoff game at home. In retrospect, it’s amazing they got the #1 seed despite all their injuries. They’ve already lost their OC; their DC seems close behind him. I hope they can keep the core of their team around another year for another run. Detroit fans deserve it.

Both the Sunday games had really weird vibes. In the early one, the Rams seemed totally dead. Then they had the ball and were driving late with a chance to win until a sack blew that up. Philly does not inspire much confidence…until Saquan Barkley rips off another ridiculous run.

Baltimore out-played Buffalo in almost every aspect, expect for holding on to the ball. A brutal set of drops and fumbles killed their chances. Strap yourself in for six months of Lamar Jackson discourse, because he dropped a slippery football in the cold and made one terrible throw. In tight games like this, especially in bad weather, sometimes it comes down to luck. The Ravens had terrible luck Sunday night.

Nothing about the Chiefs impressed me. They aren’t awe-inspiring on offense the way they used to be. Their defensive line is very good, but it feels like if you attack them the right way, they are vulnerable. Yet every other team has huge flaws that make me reluctant to say any of them can beat KC. The Chiefs are just a super competent, if boring, team with a coach-QB tandem that can always find a way to pull things out when they get hairy.

CFP

Not sure that went exactly as expected, thanks to the opening drive by Notre Dame and then their late rally. I don’t think anyone outside the biggest Irish boosters were surprised that Ohio State was clearly the better team and played like it most of the night, though.

I figured OSU would have to work to crack the ND defense, but they had that problem completely solved. I was not surprised the Irish struggled to move the ball. Really it’s kind of incredible they made it this far with such a one-dimensional offense. For every impressive pass he threw, Riley Leonard threw at least three bad ones.

L had a doctor appointment this morning. The physician is an ND fan so I asked him if there were OSU fans in the office to harass him today. “Thank goodness, no. Those are the worst people in the world.” This was a first visit with this doc, but in that moment I knew we had the right guy!

College Visit

C and her buddy E, who grew up in Bloomington, went down to IU on Saturday for a casual visit. They met up with a couple of E’s middle school friends who showed them around town. I’m not certain they’re 100% locked in yet, but C and one of those B-town girls will likely live together next year. I know C was working on her housing stuff yesterday, so call it 98% with the paperwork pending.

They had fun exploring the area, then the Bloomington girls followed C and E back to Indy, went out with them for the night, and slept at our house after. Both Bloomington girls seemed nice, and the potential roommate told us we had a beautiful house, so naturally we liked her!

Polar Vortex

I think most of my readers are experiencing the same winter blast we are having. We can all agree this weather is terrible, right? As I type this at almost noon Tuesday, the windchill is –14. It has been so cold this is the longest stretch in a decade we’ve had snow on the ground in Indy. Which seems wild, but I guess every moderate-heavy snow we’ve had over that span has been followed by a warm-up that melted everything within a week.

  1. Well, not tomorrow when I’m an hour south watching L and her teammates play.  ↩
  2. Good to see Tang has continued the tradition of KSU coaches doing the fly-by handshake after losing to KU. Did Bruce Weber start that, or does it go back further?  ↩

Weekend Notes

January 13, 2025 /

A quieter weekend, although there were still enough activities over the past 5–6 days to justify an overly-long blog post.

Weather

A little over three new inches of snow Friday, on top of the 9+ we received last Sunday/Monday. Our street is one of the few side streets in our area that gets attention; the neighborhood behind us pays a private contractor to pass through and we enjoy the benefits of that. However, there was enough slush left over from the weekend that our street is a sheet of crusty ice today.

The joy of Friday’s storm was that it hit right in the middle of the day. Despite that, CHS did not dismiss early so C had a somewhat tricky drive home. She said she saw at least six accidents on her commute, but she made it safely. She said the four new tires I had to put on her car after her incident a week ago really helped with traction. No shit…

Then three hours later I had to head back to pick up L from practice. Getting to school wasn’t that bad, but the return was awful. We made it home without incident, although it took about 10–15 minutes longer than usual. And we saw lots of slide offs and small accidents.

While battery performance goes in the shitter, the Tesla gets around pretty well in the snow. Its heavy weight, low center of gravity, and dual motor setup makes for a pretty secure ride, as long as you don’t drive like a lunatic. I’m perfectly happy to slow down to keep things under control.

The forecast for this week is dry but super cold. Windchills as low as –20 midweek. Yay! I did have to break down and drive next door to the gym two days last week because the snow drifts in the parking lot were so high. If the windchill is as low as forecast Wednesday I’ll likely be driving again this week.

J Term

Last week was CHS’ annual J-term, a week of electives to ease back into the academic life. This year they shortened it to just one week instead of the two weeks it had been the last four years. That was smart, although the groups that traveled overseas (there were trips to Paris, Kenya, and the Galapagos) all had to leave early to squeeze everything in.

C took a Gilmore Girls session. They wore comfy clothes, read books, went to libraries, watched shows and movies, and went out for lunch or breakfast every day. Very intense stuff.

L’s was more serious. She took a careers in sports course. Tuesday they visited an Indy Car team to learn about their entire operation, including watching the crew practice doing pitstops in the garage. She’s not really into cars but thought that was cool. Wednesday they bussed up to Purdue and got to tour the basketball facilities and watch the men’s team practice. Matt Painter talked to them, as well. She LOVED this, even though she’s not a Purdue fan. Thursday they had a guest from the Horizon League who talked about what she does as a graduate assistant and how she is plotting out her career. This was extra cool because the speaker was L’s eighth grade buddy when she was in kindergarten at St. P’s. L was very interested in this path as well.

This morning they were back to normal classes at the normal time.

M went back to Cincinnati Friday before the snow hit 1) so she could hang out with the dude she’s been dating and 2) because she had a sorority meeting that started at 9 AM Sunday. She’s back in classes today as well.

KU Hoops

Whew! It was one thing to lose to Cincinnati last year in the Big 12 tournament, when Kevin McCullar and Hunter Dickinson were both injured and not playing. To have repeated that results at full strength Saturday would have been a disaster. UC seemed kind of stinky to me. I was worried that was where we headed that direction again. M even texted me during the first half to let me know my Jayhawks were losing to her Bearcats.

Fortunately KU decided to play some wicked defense in the second half and finally put together a little run late to win comfortably. UC’s 40 points were the fewest they had scored in 32 years. It was the fewest KU had given up in a conference game since 1963. I think the defense was very good, but, man, there was something going on in that gym. Both teams missed a million open shots. I’m not sure if it was the rims, if the arena was cold, or what. That was a despicable display of offense, though, and all the tapes should be burned.

I was very glad that I did not spent the several hundred dollars per seat the secondary market had tickets at the last time I checked. The week before Christmas there were tickets in the top of the upper level going for $600 each, which is insane. Some courtside seats were going for $2000 each. I know KU hadn’t played in Cincinnati since 1964, but jeez! I didn’t look to see if those dropped with UC coming into the game at 0–3 in the league, and KU 2–1. Regardless, for the quality of ball those teams played, anything would have been an overpay, so I was perfectly happy watching from my couch 102 miles away.

CFP

Ugh. After living in Indiana for over 20 years, I’ve come to really hate Ohio State. I’m not sure why; their success has never come at the expense of KU. We don’t recruit against them. I’m not a fan of another Big 10 school. Other than 2007, there’s never been a KU team that was in the discussion for the same level of bowl game as the Buckeyes. It’s just that as happens with programs that win all the time, I’ve come to dislike them and many of their fans. It doesn’t help that while most OSU fans I know are great, fun people, I know a few who are total dicks. Like people you never want to be around during games and talk the worst kind of shit after games. Just total nonsense. When you’re dealing with fanbases, the dicks always outweigh the normals.

And we all agree Ryan Day is a total psycho, right? Which is saying something in a sport where most of the coaches are psychos. For some reason his coloring of his hair and beard drives me nuts. Not sure why he’s not in a Just For Men commercial. Admit it, dude.

So, despite nearly 30 years of hating Texas for their political dominance of the Big 12, I was pulling for the Longhorns Friday. A lot of good that did me.

I also grew up hating Notre Dame, but my time in the Indianapolis Catholic community has softened my stance on the Irish. Plus, like a lot of folks, Marcus Freeman has won me over.

So there’s no doubt where my loyalties are next week. Sadly, I think Ohio State is going to overpower the Irish. And I’m now 100% against the 12-team CFP, because it lets clearly mediocre teams like the Buckeyes get hot for a month and win the damn thing.

I might watch a movie instead of the game.

NFL Playoffs

The opening round, so far, was kind of boring. The late game Sunday, with Washington bouncing in the winning field goal, was the only one with any true drama, and I barely watched that game because we had guests.

I guess there was drama in how many interceptions Justin Herbert would throw against Houston. And whether CJ Stroud would match him. I don’t watch the Chargers very often but it continues to baffle me, and many others, why The Ringer’s Steven Ruiz continues to rank Herbert well above Joe Burrow in his QB rankings. Maybe the Vikings and Rams will surprise us with a good one tonight.

HS Hoops

One game last week for CHS. L was able to warm up for the JV game, and count it as a rehab practice, but she was not eligible to return to play until this week.

The JV team started in a 13–2 hole but came back to win by 4. A really nice effort by them. I believe they are 10–3 for the season now.

Varsity was playing a top 10 4A team that has one of the best players in the state. Or, rather, one of the best athletes. This girl was the Gatorade Indiana soccer player of the year and won three state titles in her four years as a soccer player. She also won a state title in basketball as a freshman, and is one of the top 100 hoops recruits in the country. She’s going to Miami (FL) to play basketball. So, obviously, her genetic makeup and work ethic suck.

We held her to five below her season average of 27 points but that was the only high point of the night in a 24-point loss. Any positive momentum gained over the holidays seemed lost Wednesday. Varsity is 9–7.

This week is the Indianapolis City Tournament. The CHS varsity is seeded #1, based on the computer rankings, but our rivals Bishop Chatard are, arguably, the favorites.[1] They beat us last year in the championship game at the buzzer in OT, and I think they are better this season. Although we are the top seed, we have a tougher second-round game,[2] so hopefully our girls don’t slip up and we make it to the championship game Friday.

The JV tournament mirrors the varsity bracket, so your defending JV city champs are also the #1 seed. And they get their point guard back Tuesday! Other than the two top seeds, the other JV teams are trash, so a rematch is almost guaranteed in the title game. Last year Chatard played us close in the first half, then we ran away in the second half for a comfortable win. Their two best players from that team, and their best freshman this season, are all on varsity this year. L doesn’t think much of their JV squad but I’m not sure what she bases that on. I’m cautiously optimistic. And I’m more interested to see how her body holds up this week with three games in four days. She’s still only practicing about 50% of the reps so I doubt she has any of her cardio health built back up.

  1. In this week’s computer rankings we are #8 in 3A, they are #9. In the media poll, though, BCHS is #10 and we are not ranked. Our lofty computer ranking advantage is purely from playing a tougher schedule.  ↩
  2. The bracket is determined by the computer rankings two weeks before the tournament. The #3 and #4 seeds have actually swapped spots in the computer poll since the bracket came out. Last year CHS was the #1 seed but by the time the tournament started, Chatard was actually the highest ranked team in the bracket. Weird, but I guess you can’t roll out the pairings the day before games start.  ↩

Weekend Notes

December 23, 2024 /

Christmas week has finally arrived! The countdown that begins sometime around October 1 in my mind is just about done.

Reading through old posts, I see I often updated you all on my state of holiday spirit. This has been a weird year for me. I’ve listened to less holiday music than anytime this century maybe? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still listened to plenty, probably more than the average person. For the first time in ages, though, I don’t have a radio/speaker in the kitchen that has defaulted to holiday music every day since Thanksgiving. For some reason this year I’ve kept our kitchen music pointed elsewhere. And I haven’t listened to our local Christmas music station once.

I’m not sure why, either.

Weird for a guy who several times a year has a dream that he made it to Christmas day without listening to all his favorite songs.

I also haven’t watched as much Christmas TV as normal. In an average year I’ll watch parts of Elf and Christmas Vacation dozens of time. This year? All the way through each movie once (so far) and then a handful of other times checking in on them. I knocked out A Christmas Story and Die Hard over the weekend. E! is showing an Office Christmas marathon later today that I’ll catch. And I ran through some of my favorite SNL holiday sketches over the weekend.

Still, my spirit seems to be lagging a bit this year and I can’t isolate the cause. Maybe it is the daily reminders that he who shall not be named is already making noise that the next four years will be far worse than his first crack at fucking up the world. Maybe it’s because our kids are older and don’t get excited about the lead-up to the holiday anymore?

Here’s the best way to measure my Christmas spirit: despite understanding how a calendar works, Sunday morning was the first time it hit me that Christmas Eve is Tuesday. For some reason I thought it was Wednesday and I had two full days this week to get ready for our festivities. And I’m the one who does the family advent calendar every day. Yet somehow I was a day behind.

Anyway, today I was off early for a grocery run then hit Costco as soon as it opened. Pro tip: a lot of times during the holidays, Costco will open their doors a few minutes early. I walked in at 9:52 when they weren’t supposed to open until 10. I was out in 25 minutes, which has to be December record. I’ll have to make one more grocery run tomorrow to fill a few holes, grab another dessert, and load up on ice.

We have our first family gathering Tuesday evening. Our guests from Denver will arrive late tomorrow night. Christmas day we will host our annual brunch for about 25. We have plenty of other stuff planned for the week. As usual, you’ll get a full roundup next week.

Now some quick-ish words about the weekend.

CFP

Thanks to our weekend schedule and how the games turned out, I was only able to watch all of the Indiana-Notre Dame CFP game this weekend. The environment in South Bend was amazing; I don’t recall a regular season Notre Dame game seeming like that, although I’m far from an expert on the matter. Irish fans seemed extra fired up and there were just enough IU fans in the crowd to push things to another level. At least until the Irish ran away with the game. It would have been even cooler if the heavy snow that was falling about an hour west of South Bend and drifted to Notre Dame Stadium.

I agree with the snap judgement: not only is having first round games on campus a genius idea, but the quarterfinals really should be on campus as well. This is college sports, though, and things that make total sense rarely happen. Forget what’s best for the game or the fans, or that rewards nearly four months of excellence, the old bowl structure must have final say on where the playoff teams end up.

Of course there was immediate backlash about how IU didn’t deserve to be in the tournament. Which spilled over to SMU and Clemson Saturday. Strangely I didn’t hear nearly as much chatter about Tennessee not being worthy. Wonder why?

I think the big takeaway, if you have to make one based on four games in the first year of the new format, is that 12 teams is too many. The line for where the best team is college football is probably falls in the 5–6–7–8 area most years. That doesn’t mean we will always see blowouts in the first round. I do think they are more likely, though, than classic games.

Again, we shouldn’t burn down the system because of a single year. And also don’t lose three games if you want a shot.

Oh, speaking of how dumb college sports are, opening the transfer portal while there are still games being played might the the dumbest thing yet. College sports always finds a way to drain a little more out of the shallow end of the dumb pool.

HS Hoops

Big games Saturday for the Irish. They took on HCA, the Christian school from around the way. This is the team L and I went to scout a week ago when we watched her buddy play against them. She had shared her thoughts with her coaches, so I guess the result was a measure of her scouting abilities.

Varsity won by nine. The game was close in the first half then we led comfortably almost the entire second half, although we could never stretch it out to blow out territory. We watched HCA lose by nearly 30 a week ago. I think if we had played zone like BCHS did against them, we would have won by more. But we don’t play zone much and I think our coaches were worried since HCA has shooters.

JV got a nice, 17-point win. After the game L announced in the locker room that this was probably her last game to sit out. She said everyone screamed and yelled. Now fingers crossed she gets cleared in a week. JV is 9–3, 7–1 without her, so I joked that maybe they don’t want her back.

Varsity is 6–6. They have a tournament this coming weekend; JV is off until January 8.

KU Hoops

After a sluggish start the Jayhawks got their shit together in the second half and pounded Brown by 34. Not the 70 or 58 point wins the first two times these programs played. But still solid. Eight days until Big 12 play begins. More about the state of the team later.

Colts/Pacers

Both local teams get nice wins Sunday. I only saw part of the Colts game. Fortunately it was the good part.

And don’t look now but the Pacers have won four-straight and five-of-six after blasting Sacramento last night. I had to run to get L from a friends and in about eight minutes of game time the Pacers grew their lead from 12 to 29 at one point. They were cooking! The toughest part of this toughest stretch of the year is still to come, but the team is getting healthy and starting to play much better.

Rickey

The biggest news of the weekend was the death of Rickey Henderson, one of the greatest players in the history of Major League Baseball. He, Jim Rice, and George Brett were my holy trinity of favorite players when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure in my big box of baseball cards in the basement I have whole sheets of his cards in an album, the highest praise from me in the early Eighties.

There was this weird spot in our backyard where someone had let a fishing boat sit upside-down for years so grass didn’t grow, basically turning it into a dirt pit. I used it to practice diving back to first base, as if a pitcher was trying to pick me off, imagining I was Rickey.[1]

There genuinely was no one ever like Rickey with his combination of speed, power, and on-base ability. He along with Bo Jackson were the type of players you had to see to believe, and even then you didn’t fully trust your eyes. He ruffled all kinds of feathers amongst older fans, but for kids of my generation, he was about as cool as it got.

For years there were all kinds of crazy stories about his eccentricities. Later we learned that he was one of the kindest men in the game, someone who remembered where he came from and made sure to take care of those who made his life easier.

Mike Piazza shared this great story of how Rickey responded when voting on playoff shares one year:

“[He] was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people — whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant — Rickey would shout out “Full Share!” We’d argue for a while, and he’d say, “F— that! You can change somebody’s life.”

RIP to one of the greatest.

Not sure what the blog schedule will be for the rest of the week. My Favorite Songs list isn’t quite ready, so I may hold onto it until next week. I may share some links but otherwise this may be it for a few days. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

  1. Remember, I was a geeky, sports-obsessed, only child.  ↩

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.  ↩
« Older posts

Archives

© 2025 D's Notebook

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑