D's Notebook

Tag: college sports (Page 11 of 41)

Planes, Marbles, and Automobiles

April 4, 2022 /

Events have lined up so that it makes the most sense to combine what should have been two posts into one today. I’ll try to be as brief as I can to both get it out and make it readable.

Spring Break ’22


Spring Break in Siesta Key, FL was largely a success. The weather was mostly good-to-great. We had the pleasure of spending time with a few sets of good friends. The girls all had friends close by for at least parts of the week. Our location was ideal – a block from the Village, Siesta Key’s central dining and shopping area – and our house served its purpose.

M brought one of her best friends with us and she stayed through Thursday. They had a couple good friends on the island and we rarely saw them other than when they came home at night and before they left in the morning.

C didn’t have any friends close, but one of her besties was up on Anna Maria, and she came down for a day, then C went up and spent the next day with her.

L had a few friends about that she kind of drifted in-and-out with throughout the week.

L’s godparents were staying not too far from us, and we spent three days with them on the beach. Two of their adult kids drifted in-and-out for parts of the week.

Our old neighbors – who we have traveled to Hawaii, Mexico, and Captiva with – flew into Ft Myers Wednesday and came up to spend Thursday with us.

There were also about a million Indianapolis Catholics on the island, so we were constantly running into people we knew.

Ahhh, I mentioned a few rough spots.

The winds were outrageous Wednesday and Thursday, while Friday morning was rainy. We still got decent beach time in each of those days.

When we arrived last Saturday the line for rental cars was massive. I stood in it for about 20 minutes when a guy came over and told us he had been in line for four hours and while he had been checked through, he was still waiting for them to give him his keys. He claimed there were two people working the desk and had to run back-and-forth to the lot to grab keys as cars were turned in and cleaned.

Who knows if that part was true, but the four-hour wait looked legit. Since we just had a reservation but had not paid, we decided to bail and get an Uber to our house. Two problems: we had M’s friend, which put us at six people and we couldn’t find a ride that would take six plus luggage. Second, only S had the Uber app on her phone and the network was fried, so my download was going to take hours.

We reserved the biggest car we could find, then asked that driver if he could hook us up with a second.

“I can call my brother! Is that ok with you!”

That was indeed ok! Especially if he let us pay cash.

Turns out they were two brothers from Colombia and thoroughly delightful. They got us where we needed to be and I had a great conversation with Mauricio over the half hour trip.

Monday I Ubered back and waited less than five minutes to grab a minivan for the rest of the week. If we didn’t have to take C to Anna Maria and bring M’s friend back to the airport, we could have skipped it. But it was nice to have.

That was minor compared to our issues getting home.

You may have heard Southwest had some issues this weekend (and may still be struggling). We got to the airport early for our 1:35 PM flight. Grabbed some seats near our gate. And sat and watched as we heard rumors that Southwest flights were having issues getting out while also watching the radar that looked completely awful just to our north. Soon the entire airport was on a ground hold because of that weather.

But our plane had made it in from St. Louis, and we watched a fresh crew walk onto it. Once the airport reopened, we would be good.

Or so we thought.

We waited for four hours before our flight was cancelled. Along with every other Southwest flight that had been sitting around. Sarasota is not a huge airport, but there were at least five completely full flights that just got taken off the schedule. Ticket counters had lines hours long. We heard there were also massive waits for help on the Southwest phone line.

As we sat around and tried to figure out what to do one of L’s friend’s moms texted me. “Mallory told me your flight got cancelled,” the text read. “We have a big SUV and I think we have room for all five of you. Do you want to ride with us?”

Yes, we did want to ride with them!

They were down in Ft. Myers, so it took some back-and-forth to figure out a plan, but they arrived about 90 minutes later, we piled all our shit in, and headed north.

We’ve made the spring break drive home from Florida at least twice, and know how much it sucks. I have to say, we totally lucked out. We drove through some weather for an hour or so, then some heavy fog for about an hour after that. But otherwise it was clear sailing all the way to Indiana. We had to make a brief detour to avoid a big slowdown near Seymour, but otherwise never wavered from our course or hit any stop-and-go traffic at all. It seemed like any other Saturday night, not one when a quarter of the country is making the same trip.

With three adult drivers we just passed off to each other and never stopped for longer than it took for eight people to use the bathroom, fill up with gas, and grab some snacks. We rolled into our driveway exactly 15 hours after we left Sarasota, which is pretty great time!

We heard lots of other people were driving back Sunday and traffic was its usual, awful spring break self. We are super thankful that our friends ignored the texts they were getting from other people looking for a ride and reached out to us, and that our drive home was uneventful.

So that was spring break 2022. Siesta Key certainly felt more traditionally “spring break” than anywhere we’ve ever gone before, between its packs of kids roaming around, more open drinking, and less stringent rules. Anna Maria, where we stayed last year, is getting more crowded, but still has a strict 10:00 PM noise curfew and more families with small kids than high school and college kids running around.[1] We would have loved to take our house from last year and plop it down on Siesta Key.

Jayhawk Talk: Marble Time


For the tenth time in history, and sixth time in my life, the Kansas Jayhawks will play for a national championship tonight.

I have vivd memories of most of those days, mostly of being unable to concentrate at school or work, or that I had a stomach bug in 2008 and watched KU win while in pain and with my head on a pillow.

I wonder how I will remember today years from now, or if being nearly 51 means the game will be imprinted into my brain much differently than the previous five.

I would love to set up tonight’s game with a recounting of KU’s cathartic win over Villanova in Saturday’s national semifinal.

However, as part of our travel issues Saturday, I didn’t see a minute of that game live. The Sarasota airport is tiny, and has only one restaurant/bar outside security. And that place was not seating anyone because they were closing.

Down in the baggage area, where we waited for about two hours after our flight was cancelled, there were no TVs at all. And because there were thousands of people flooding the cell network, I couldn’t get any sports site to load to even do a simple game cast, let alone watch CBS video of the game. I chatted with or waved to a handful of other very nervous Jayhawks looking for a way to follow the game.

So I relied on friends texting me at every TV timeout with score updates. I have to say, that’s a pretty stress-free way to follow a game! Especially when your team jumps out to a 10–0 lead and never looks back.

Our ride arrived with about 6:00 left in the game, just as Villanova cut the KU lead to six. We made a quick stop at Chick-Fil-A then I was given the first driving shift. While I ate my dinner. In a driving rainstorm. Fortunately we had a couple long red lights before we hit I–75 and I knew KU that had basically closed out the game before we got on the road.

It was the most anti-climactic Final Four game of my life. Well, I guess Villanova blowing us out four years ago was pretty anticlimactic, too. But this time I wasn’t feeling the full, pure joy I would be feeling had I watched live. I couldn’t really celebrate until we stopped in Valdosta, GA and I was able to catch up on texts and Tweets.

I did watch the game after we got home. What a performance! Ochai Agbaji found it again. David McCormack played the best game of his career. KU was fantastic on defense. DaJuan Harris and Christian Braun both hit some huge and timely shots. Jalen Wilson continued to destroy people on the boards. It may have been a reduced Villanova team, but they are still a bitch to play against and never stopped playing hard even when down 19. If KU had slipped up, they were fully capable of winning.

So much to be excited about after that game. But also so much to worry about, like the odds that Ochai starts 6–6 again, that Dave can play like that against Carolina’s bigs, that DaJuan will drill 3–5 3’s, that Jalen can do his rebounding thing against UNC, that we won’t leave Brady Manek open for 3’s, etc.

But I LOVE how this team is playing. Carolina presents some tough challenges and are playing as well as anyone in the country. In fact, over the last 10 games, UNC and KU are the two best teams in the country according to one statistical measure, with nearly identical offensive and defensive effectiveness numbers.

Maybe Carolina’s athletes are too much for KU, and having just beaten Duke they play free-and-loose and run the Jayhawks out of the building.

But they also have a first-year coach and just won a massively emotional game. Can do they bounce back and be as focused tonight?

I keep getting vibes off this KU team. The way they act on and off the court. Before, during, and after games. They way they keep picking each other up, with a different set of guys being the stars each night. I love how Bill Self has embraced the moment, saying it’s time for KU to make runs like this and finish them off. I love how the national narrative has become that this year is about finishing what the 2020 team was unable to do thanks to Covid.

I feel like this is their night and this is KU’s year. It’s been 14 years since they grabbed all the marbles. Anthony Davis and company kept KU from doing that again in 2012. I think Ochai, DaJuan, CB, J-Will, Big Dave, Remy, and Mitch get it done tonight, winning one for Jayhawks everywhere, and for Wilt Chamberlain, who came so close against Carolina in 1957.

Rock Chalk, bitches!

  1. The night C stayed up there she said one of her friend’s parents got a $75 fine for having kids out on the balcony after 10. They weren’t drinking or smoking, just hanging out, making a little noise. Along with the fine came a warning that a second offense would mean they get kicked out of their home. They don’t play on AMI.  ↩

Rock Chalking to NOLA

March 28, 2022 /

What a god damn game! (Excuse the blasphemy.)


KU never makes it easy in the Elite 8. It’s a hard-ass game in a killer tournament where one bad performance can wreck a season of excellence. For every Kansas-Duke in 2018 and KU-UNC in 2012 – wide-open, flowing games where the teams exchange big shot after big shot until one finally flinches – you have way more games like Kansas-Villanova 2016, which was a disgusting rock fight that was physically draining to watch.

KU has a special gift for playing tight in that round, for missing chances to break those games open, for trying to make a five-point play when they just need a single bucket, and for guys who have shot lights-out for weeks suddenly being unable to find the rim. Or just flat playing like garbage like they did in 2007 against UCLA and 2017 against Oregon.

For 20 minutes Saturday, it sure felt like we were headed down that ugly path again. Miami, a team that according to the advanced stats had a shocking similarity to 2011 VCU, used a 9–2 run late in the first half to go into halftime with a six-point lead over the Jayhawks. If not for a fantastic defensive possession by KJ Adams, who played just the final 30 seconds of the first half before the benches got cleared, it could have been worse.

Kameron McGusty was torching the Jayhawks. Every single KU player seemed tentative. They kicked the ball around needlessly. They bricked all five 3-point attempts, four of which were basically unguarded. They missed six damn free throws.

Nightmare time was coming.

I only know what my halftime texts were like, but I imagine they were similar to others by KU fans all over the country. The gist of mine was that Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun needed to stop being scared of making a mistake and play with abandon. Miami is a nice little team, but they can’t match those two when they are at their best. I was more direct: Bill Self should tell Ochai his jersey will not go in the rafters if he doesn’t stop playing like dogshit. Or something like that. Och had 20 minutes to reclaim his legacy and not have idiots like me being irrationally angry at him the way we were angry with Jacque Vaughn for playing terribly in his final tournament game.

Now, a quick rewind. I was a little more tense than usual because of where and how I watched the game. We are on spring break in Siesta Key, FL. We spent the day with some friends a few miles down the beach and rather than come home, I borrowed their condo room and TV.

While happy to be able to watch with minimal loss of beach time, their condo did not have the ideal tech setup. Yes, they had a large TV with HD cable. However, there was something weird about the aspect ratio on their TV and the sides of the CBS picture were cut off, as if the picture had been stretched. This had the added effect of making everything on the screen look very flat. So arcing jumpers looked more like lasers. I dug through every TV and cable box setting I could find and couldn’t get the aspect corrected.

Their cable would also blink out for half a second every so often.

And their wifi was absolute crap and I couldn’t load Twitter or any box scores.

Plus I had barely one bar of Verizon signal, so texts were coming in sporadically.

None of this helped my nerves.

Finally, my hosts’ 15-year-old son and five of his friends came in to grab some food right as Miami was making their run before halftime. I couldn’t throw things or drop loud F-bombs while they were around because then I would look like a complete lunatic. One of them noticed the score and said, loudly, “DAMN, MIAMI IS BEATING KANSAS???”

Long story short, I was feeling some stress. And given Bill Self’s face was as red in the first minute of the game as it had been all year, and he’s not know for being carefree and easy in the Elite 8, I must admit my confidence was low that things would get much better in the second half. I didn’t think KU was necessarily doomed quite yet. Still I figured the next hour would be an absolutely awful experience and likely add a few more days/months/years to the total that KU basketball has taken off my life.

Fortunately Ochai, Christian, McCormack, DaJuan Harris, Remy Martin, Jalen Wilson, and Mitch Lightfoot played maybe the best half of basketball KU has played all season and all that stress went away.

It was breathtaking. Their defensive pressure was astonishing and totally shut down Miami’s attack. The long outlet passes, which had been like a 50–50 proposition all year yet worked every time in that opening surge. The withering offensive attack. McCormack playing like a man who did not want his career to end despite some serious physical struggles.

Just as the second half began L came up from the beach with her godmother (our hostess). C came up a few minutes later. They sat with me, and enjoyed watching me as much as the game. I screamed. I yelled. I smacked the table and the couch. I howled when Braun dunked on one possession and hit a massive 3 on the next to give KU a lead they never gave up. I ran towards the TV screaming when Ochai finally hit a 3-pointer. Yet I was still probably 43% calmer than I would have been at home. I would have busted out the old “run around the house” move after a few of those plays.

The game was tied at 40-all. The final score was 76–50. That’s a 36–10 run for my fellow liberal arts majors. That was right up there with the run to close the Sweet 16 game against Purdue in 2017 and the run to open the national semifinal against North Carolina in 2008 as best runs in Self’s KU tournament history. Sure, it was just Miami. As noted above, though, KU has lost these games before. To not just win, but to destroy Miami’s souls along the way, was an amazingly cathartic moment for KU fans.

KU fans have waited all year for this team to figure things out defensively. It seems they have finally done it, slowly but consistently, over the past six weeks. By one measure, KU has been the best team in the country since Feb. 1 when you look at combined offensive and defensive effectiveness. It’s not always a lock-down D, but it does just enough to limit teams from getting what they want on consecutive possessions. Which is exactly what you need in March.

Now, after a bracket that seemed to be breaking for KU every step of the way they go to New Orleans and face…Villanova. No program has created more nightmares for KU in the last decade than Villanova. The Wildcats kept KU out of the Final Four in 2016. They ran them out of the Final Four in 2018. They beat the team that had Wiggins, Embiid, Selden, Ellis, etc back in November of 2013. I believe Bill Self is something like 3–5 against Jay Wright, but it sure feels worse than that because of those March losses. Wright’s teams always seem built to counter Self’s teams perfectly on both ends.

Let’s not forget that one of those Self wins was in Detroit in 2008, when KU ran Nova off the floor in the Sweet 16.

It might help that Villanova lost second-leading scorer Justin Moore to a season-ending injury Saturday. KU can’t be sure of the health of McCormack, so that could be a wash.

Win that and you get Carolina or Duke. No media frenzies in either of those matchups.

But that’s all a week away. Us fans get a week to bask in the glow of a 16th Final Four while the team rests and preps. I can worry about Villanova on our flight home next week, which hopefully gets us home just in time for tip.

Rock Chalk, bitches!

Sweetness

March 24, 2022 /

Ahhhh, Sweet 16 week.

I’ve always said this is the best week of the tournament for the real hoops fan. Provided your team is in it, of course.

The frenzy of the first weekend has been thinned out and we can get down to some real, serious hoops. There’s always an interesting story or three for the national media to latch onto. And there are usually a couple “I HAVE to watch that game!” matchups.

This year I think those marquee matchups are Texas Tech – Duke, Houston – Arizona, and North Carolina – UCLA. Not that the others aren’t intriguing in their own way, but these are the most interesting games on paper.

Plenty of storylines. Obviously St. Peter’s finding a way to continue their miracle run is top of the list. Well, CBS will make it about whether Duke can cap K’s career with another Final Four. Is this finally the Purdue squad that can overcome the program’s history and get to New Orleans? Charlie Moore!!! Will the Midwest remain the region of chaos with a surprise champion or has the chaos just cleared the way for KU to get to the Final Four?

I’m obviously most concerned with that last one.

Like most KU fans this has been a strange week, with me wavering between confidence and fear. We’ve built up Providence to be Gonzaga-lite and the 10/11 seeds making up the opposite regional semifinal as the next cruel trick the Hoops Gods will play on KU fans. “This is 2011 all over again,” has been a familiar refrain.

Smart, more emotionally balanced people have pointed out the bracket also broke for KU in 2008, although that Elite 8 game was far from stress-free. It broke in a different manner, but still for KU, in 1988. So there are two data points to balance the disaster of 2011. Both of them ended with a KU title. Sooooo….

We should probably stop thinking about history and consider the actual opponents.

Providence will be a tough test. Some analysts have dismissed the Friars because of the “luck” they’ve won with this year.[1] To others that makes them battle-tested and ready for any challenge. They are extremely experienced, with an average age older than that of the Oklahoma City Thunder! They are long. They are solid, if not exceptional, on both ends of the court. They get to the free throw line a lot. They have a player who seems ideal for giving Ochai Agbaji fits on the defensive end of the court.

Still, looking around the Sweet 16, I’d rather KU play Providence than Arkansas, Houston, or UCLA. That doesn’t mean KU is guaranteed to win. Sweet 16 games that feature chalk matchups are pretty much coin-flips these days.

If KU plays well defensively and efficiently on offense, they win. If they fuck around and give Providence open shots and don’t play smart on offense, it could be a very tense night. The Friars are good enough to win and it not being some fluke night where everything broke right for them.

The Elite 8 would bring one of two super interesting matchups. Either Charlie Moore and Miami, who are very athletic, have some great wins this year, and just destroyed Auburn for much of their second round game. Or a streaking Iowa State team for the third time. A Cyclones squad that probably should have won in Lawrence back in January.

There are scary things about both of those opponents. But, man, I need to stop being such a KU fan.

The Jayhawks are the best team left in the Midwest bracket. And while the best team doesn’t always win, they should win, dammit. And if they don’t, I’m going to be on a beach in Florida all next week.

KU 77, Providence 68

Rock Chalk, bitches.

  1. I admit I don’t totally understand KenPom’s luck rating. KU won a bunch of close games, too, but rank 105 in luck. I guess that says KU should have won those games, based on the peripherals, while Providence should have lost a good chunk of their close games.  ↩

So Much Hoops

March 21, 2022 /

Jayhawk Talk

It happened! It finally happened! A highly seeded KU team played a less talented team in the round of 32, saw that team go nuts from behind the 3-point line, and still managed to gut out a win and advance to the Sweet 16.

The Creighton game was not a lot of fun to watch, at least as a KU fan. Ochai Agbaji suddenly can’t shoot, seems to be forcing bad shots, and plays soft/lazy on defense. Jalen Wilson played like an absolute dog in the first half and kept bricking 3’s early in the shot clock. Christian Braun made a couple extremely bad turnovers without much defensive pressure in moments when KU seemed poised to take control. Dave McCormack was ineffective most of the day. And Creighton, who shot around 30% for the year from 3, kept draining triples. I’ve seen this movie before. I did not like it.

A Creighton run cut the KU lead to one with under 2:00 to play and left me throwing things and feeling like I was going to either puke or pass out. Or both. Then the Jayhawks made a series of massive defensive plays. Creighton bricked a few of those 3’s that had been dropping early. And KU escaped with a win to advance to Chicago.

Despite all of that, there was plenty to be happy about. KU didn’t falter or fluster despite Creighton’s constant runs. The Jayhawks didn’t play particularly well on offense and still scored 79 points. They dominated the boards.

However, the biggest thing to be happy about was Remy Martin. Thirty-five points in two games. Thursday he turned a close contest into a blowout in about three minutes. Saturday he was the only KU player who could score in the first half. This was the player KU had been waiting on the entire season!

I found it interesting that CBS kept saying that Bill Self sat Remy down for three weeks. I don’t think that was ever clearly communicated as the plan while it was happening, so I’m inclined to think that is more adjusting the narrative after the fact. Which, whatever. All that matters is that he seems healthy, locked-in, and playing really well now.

Hopefully this week Ochai can figure out/fix whatever is ailing his game. And Dave McCormack can heal up and be ready for a rugged Providence team.

Until a week ago, most KU fans would have been completely satisfied with making the Sweet 16, or at least that had been the case since Remy’s injury saga began. After a Big 12 tournament title, the re-emergence of Remy, and a number one seed, expectations changed.

AND THEN THE MIDWEST BRACKET BLEW UP. WHAT BAD THINGS COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN NOW????

More on that later this week.

Other Assorted NCAA Notes

The first week of the NCAA tournament is A LOT. Thanks to long games on both Tuesday and Wednesday, I was up until or past midnight five straight nights. I finally bailed early Sunday. But as we sit here on Monday of Sweet 16 week, that first First Four game seems like a long time ago.

Late edit: I wrote most of this Sunday evening. Before the TCU-Arizona game captured my attention and kept me up until 12:30 again. I’m a little fried this morning.

Games of the weekend?

TCU-Arizona was amazing. Frogs got hosed.

It was soooo fun that Kentucky went out in the first round to St. Peter’s, even though that meant the Marion County sales tax coffers took a hit.[1] And it also destroyed my bracket. As a fan of a Blue Blood that has taken some heat over early exits, I am always ready to celebrate when another Blue Blood shits the bed.

But Carolina-Baylor had to be the game of the weekend, right? I missed most of the game while L was playing, but was following the score (as much as spotty cell service would allow). Then I listened on our way home. I heard Brady Manek go ballistic from three and then get tossed for throwing an elbow. I heard Carolina slowly meltdown, but never thought they would totally blow it. I got home in time to see Baylor complete the comeback through an insane ending, then the Heels pull away in OT.

What a damn game. I guess the officiating sucked. I know that from one friend who was at the game – and got a picture with Roy! – and from all the articles I read about it on Sunday. Apparently the refs totally lost control and then didn’t know how to get it back. What an embarrassment. Especially given numerous other blatantly incorrect calls over the weekend. Each time defended by the completely needless Gene Steratore. Refs stick together more than cops, man.

There are a lot of problems with college basketball. Unfortunately many of them stem from the officiating, generally in the lack of consistency from the refs. NBA refs aren’t perfect, but you generally know how a game will be called and that doesn’t change unless the game becomes overly physical. The NBA refs also being subject to public critiques makes the product better and more consistent. But the NCAA allows refs to hide from the media, puts a mouthpiece like Steratore on CBS, and never issues anything like the NBA’s Last Two Minute Reports. Typical NCAA, whistling past the graveyard as their product melts down.

The final play of regulation and all of overtime in the TCU-Arizona game was also an absolute disaster. I can’t believe Jamie Dixon didn’t murder a ref.

This time of year I always marvel at the evolution of how we view the tournament. Remember when you could only watch whatever was on your local CBS station? So, like, if a Big 10 team was playing, there was no way I could watch KU here in Indy? Eventually CBS started posting the scores of every active game on the screen. I remember “watching” a few KU games that way before 2008.

Then for a few years you could stream any game for free. That’s how I watched the first three games of KU’s 2008 run. I recall that our Internet service wasn’t ready to try to stream a basketball game. There was a lot of buffering and choppiness to the feed. Sometimes it just stopped working for long stretches.

Finally the current, perfect system where every game is live across the country on four different channels. There’s plenty to complain about CBS’ coverage, but our access to games is not one of those things.[2]

I will complain about the commercials. There are too many commercial breaks with too many of the same commercials. There are too many commercials that feature mascots. Way too many AT&T commercials, most of which are dumb.

I must say, the Coach K one is perfect, though. It is a wonderful representation of what a smarmy, entitled ass he is. That was what they were going for, right?

I would be fine never seeing the Special Olympics commercial again. I swear I’ve seen it 5000 times over the past two weeks.

Worst part of the tournament? Back-to-back long time outs. Just brutal that every commercial break is somehow 2:30. I’ve seen coaches signal for a 30 second time out and then had to sit through five commercials, plus a delay while the refs make sure the CBS sideline reporter can give their meaningless update.

I could use less Grant Hill, too. I think he’s just a bad match for Bill Raftery, who remains great. Hill rarely offers any commentary that strikes me as particularly unique or insightful, or that benefits from his long playing career. He often seems more concerned about telling bad jokes that show how he is buddies with Jim Nantz and Raferty. Please, tell another joke about who doesn’t grab the dinner check!

Brackets and Pools

My brackets suck. I was in last place in all three after day one. That’s what having Kentucky in the Final Four will do to you. Not one of my upset picks came through. Auburn going out Sunday removed one of my two finalists.

BUT…I was able to rejoin a player pool with friends in Kansas City that I hadn’t been involved in since 2005 or so. I got the first pick, taking Drew Timme. Most of my other picks have done well, too. I still have six of my eight players alive, and I’ve only had one single-digit game out of 16 played. I have a 67-point lead going into the Sweet 16.

Youth Hoops

L had her first real AAU tournament over the weekend. Two pool games Saturday followed by a two-game bracket on Sunday.

I went to the first game Saturday (I left to watch “my sons” play, as L called KU) and saw both Sunday. They got smoked by 27 in the first pool game, then lost by five to a team that beat them by 20 two weeks ago. L had a single bucket in both games. The girls looked shook in that first game but I heard they settled down and played solid in the second.

Sunday they pounded the first team they played by 25. We had a running clock five minutes into the second half then the refs stopped the game at the 2:00 mark. Apparently that’s what you do in these tourneys when it’s a 20 point game to keep things moving. L was 1–3 from the line and 0-fer from the field.

Although the other semifinal was on the court next to us, both winners had to hop into their cars and run to the high school 10 minutes away for the title game.

That was a good game for the first 8–9 minutes, then our girls went on a nice run to lead by 10 at half. It never got closer in the second half, we got it up to running clock territory, and won by 17. L had a nice game, although she was a little sped-up at times. She scored 8 on probably 4–12 shooting. She was firing! She scored twice on what I call the Josh Jackson play, taking a pass from the weave outside the arc and cutting to the basket. Although Josh dunked where she flipped in runners. She also had two steals that turned into layups.

They got medals. Sure, it was the consolation bracket, but they still said champions! She, and her teammates, were pretty happy. And they did it without two players, one who is their best rebounder.

HS Hoops

Amongst all the NCAA and AAU ball, Cathedral was playing at semistate on Saturday. They had a 19-point lead early, an 18-point lead moments after halftime, and found themselves tied with 90 seconds to play. I doubt that was stressful.

A short jumper, a put-back, and a dunk later and the Irish had advanced to the state championship game. They play undefeated, #1 Chesterton. I know nothing about them, although they are three spots lower than Cathedral in the computer rankings.

  1. Although it seemed like there were a lot of Michigan and Murray State people in the stands Saturday. I doubt they drink as much as Cats fans.  ↩
  2. They did pilot showing every game of the tournament here in Indy in 2005 and 2006. That was weird. The first year they didn’t publicize it at all. I only knew about it because a friend had a neighbor who worked for the NCAA and told us where to find the “secret” channels, which were buried in a part of the digital cable spectrum where there weren’t any other stations. I also think back then they didn’t stagger games the way they do now, which made for a less satisfying experience.  ↩

EN-CEE-TWO-AY Picks

March 17, 2022 /

It’s finally here: the first normal NCAA tournament in three years! It’s also supposed to be well into the 70s here in Indy today, so it might be the most perfect day ever.

I did not do a ton of research in preparation for making NCAA picks. I listened to a couple podcasts that had sections on picks, and I skimmed a few articles. But no deep-dives.

So I guess picks first followed by some KU talk?

Final Four:
Gonzaga
Kentucky
Houston
Auburn

Gonzaga beats Auburn for the title.

I’m very confident in the top half of the bracket. That bottom half? I went back-and-forth several times and would not bet anything significant on either of them. Which totally means Memphis is going to shock the Zags and Purdue or Baylor will blow out Kentucky, while Houston and Auburn cruise to New Orleans, right?

If I knew that Kerr Kriisa would be completely healthy and playing at full strength I would swap Arizona for Houston. His ankle injury looked nasty, though. Maybe he’ll be more Kirk Hinrich in 2003 than, I don’t know, name someone who wrecked their ankle in early March, had to play injured in the tournament, and suffered for it.

What about my Jayhawks? I have them losing to Auburn in the Elite 8. Which is weird because I’m way out on Auburn. They’ve fallen apart over the past month and don’t have great guards. But I don’t see anyone on Auburn’s side of the bracket that should give them too many issues. I have Wisconsin losing to LSU, which is probably my biggest upset of the tournament. And likely dumb since LSU is a mess. Even if the Badgers make it to Chicago, I have a feeling Auburn will overwhelm them. If Auburn wins three games I think they’ll have their mojo back and their size and athleticism will be too much for KU. Exactly like it was in 2019. I hate Bruce Pearl.

I know Iowa is a trendy upset pick over KU in the Sweet 16. But Iowa’s offense is only marginally better than Kansas’, and the Jayhawks play much better defense than the Hawkeyes. Keegan Murray will be a bitch to guard, but KU has a chance to get stops where I won’t think Iowa does.

How narratives form this time of year is always interesting to me. Iowa is considered super hot, winning 12 of their last 14, including eight wins over tournament teams. They seem more popular out of the Midwest than KU.

However, over Kansas’ last 14 games they went…11–3 with nine wins over tournament teams.

KU was good all year where Iowa had a three-game losing streak early in the Big 10 season, so their trend is more impressive, thus they are the hot team, I guess.

Regardless, that could be a very fun game to watch if it comes to pass.

Weekend Hoops Notes: Tourney Time

March 14, 2022 /

I watched a ton of hoops this weekend. The most in ages. Especially on Saturday, when I barely left the couch. Two of our nephews stopped by and one of them, the nearly six-year-old, asked C, “Why is Uncle D always watching basketballsports?” Basketballsports. One word. Made me laugh. You picked the wrong weekend to get any attention from Uncle D, buddy.

Some notes on what I watched.

Jayhawk Talk

WHOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!

Just a week ago KU was fortunate to not have ended the regular season on a four-game losing streak, and KU fans were pessimistic about the future. After three wins in Kansas City, including their toughest win of the year over the (alleged) toughest team in the conference, all of a sudden KU fans were thinking Final Four and more.

First, that was a good-ass win Saturday in the Big 12 title game over Texas Tech. Tech probably should have swept KU in the regular season, coming a miracle Ochai Agbaji 3 away from winning in overtime in Lawrence. I figured they would be playing free and easy and confident Saturday. It took them awhile, but midway through the second half they finally had a little spurt and took a 54–51 lead. It felt like they had KU on the ropes, especially with KU going through a sequence where they kept kicking the ball around or forcing shots that weren’t there.

KU took a timeout, settled down, and then closed the game on a 23–11 run. Jalen Wilson was a stud in the second half, getting just about every loose ball and scoring some big buckets in traffic. David McCormack battled his ass off. Dave elicits so many feelings from KU fans, not all good. But we’ve reached the point in his career, and he’s reached a level of play, where you can’t help but admire how hard he works. Now I worry more about his health causing issues for KU the next three weeks than his play being key in losing.

And Remy Fucking Martin! Hello, stranger! He got a few more minutes and a little better each game in Kansas City. Tech is one of those terrible matchups for DaJuan Harris due to their physicality, and Remy stepped right in. He’s tiny, too, but he was too damn fast for Tech to contain. The biggest play of the game, likely, was him stepping in and forcing a turnover on an inbounds play after a KU score. Seconds later Wilson scored, KU was up eight, and the game was over.

KU hit free throws, played some of their best defense of the year, got some important rebounds, erased a second-half deficit, and won a game against a #3 NCAA seed with Agbaji not doing much within the offense. That’s some good shit right there, Jayhawks fans.

Other than Mitch Lightfoot hurting his knee, the weekend went about as well as it possibly could for KU. Oh yeah, there was this, too.

I screamed. And watched replays about a thousand times.

It came on the sixth anniversary of this, no less!

High School Hoops

Both of the Cathedral Regional playoff games Saturday were on local TV. C watched them both with me, the other two girls drifted in and out. In the opener, they took on Terre Haute North. CHS dominated early, were up by as many as 16 and seemed totally in control through the first half. THN started hitting shots in the second half, got it down to a one-point game, but never had the ball with a chance to take the lead as the Irish won by five.

In the nightcap CHS took on Ben Davis, who beat them by one point three weeks ago. We missed most of the first half watching KU, but flipped over just in time to see Cathedral hit a 3 at the halftime buzzer to go up by four. Then they curb-stomped Ben Davis in the third quarter, hitting threes, getting blocks, forcing turnovers, and throwing down a few dunks. They led by as many as 22 and never let BD get closer than 15 in a meaningless fourth quarter.

On to Semistate next week.

Other College Games

I flipped around a lot when not watching either KU or CHS. The Indiana-Iowa game was tremendous fun. Iowa fans don’t take over Indy quite like Iowa State fans take over Kansas City, but it was still a great atmosphere for a great game with a tremendous finish.

Michigan State – Purdue was a lot closer than I expected. Purdue just can’t seem to be steady enough on the defensive end to close out these games easily. This really should be the team that gets Purdue fans over a lot of their angst built up over the past 40 years. I think they certainly have a decent chance to make it to New Orleans. But it seems like those odds should be way better than they actually are.

It was treeeemendous catching the end of Virginia Tech – Duke. If Biden doesn’t declare a national holiday when Duke goes out in the NCAAs, I will support impeachment. I can’t wait for K to whisper to his media apologists that this season being disappointing – by Duke standards – was somehow the fault of someone else.

I flipped on UCLA – Arizona late, after seeing Twitter buzz that the Bruins might be taking out the Wildcats and give KU a chance to move up to the #2 overall seed. As soon as I turned it on Arizona went on like a 23–5 run and took away any drama. First time I’ve seen them all year. They are impressive.

Brackets

We were out to dinner when the brackets dropped, so I avoided the long, slow reveal. Or what I assume was long and slow.

There was a whole list of teams I wanted KU to avoid. The biggest name on that list was Kentucky. Despite their loss this weekend I think Kentucky is probably as good as anyone and, strangely for a UK team, playing with relatively little pressure. Plus they destroyed KU six weeks ago. I didn’t want really any long, athletic SEC team, Memphis, Illinois, Iowa, or Villanova either. KU got just one of those schools, Iowa, in what could be a spicy matchup in Chicago where the Iowa fans outnumber the Jayhawk fans.

But both teams have to win two to get there. KU will face one of two slow, defensive minded teams in the second round, assuming they get past the 16 seed. San Diego State is athletic and seems like a lower-budget Texas Tech. Creighton has been through the battles of the Big East and were hot over the last month. Both teams offer a threat because of their pace and ability to guard, but KU should be good enough to beat either of them. They’ve been battling ridiculous defenses in the Big 12 for 10 weeks, and went 17–4 against them.

Auburn was a nightmare matchup until they hit their recent cold stretch. I’m not sure they make it to the Elite 8.

I think the most likely team to prevent KU from reaching the Final Four is Iowa, followed by Wisconsin, then Auburn and San Diego State. Iowa is as hot as anyone, has athletic wings, and white guys that can shoot from anywhere. Wisconsin seems custom-built to beat KU in March. That said, KU is 6–2 against Big 10 teams in the tournament in the Bill Self era.

I haven’t broken down the brackets yet, but I’m feeling more a lot more confident about KU than I was a week ago. They seem like a solid bet to win two and then roll the dice in tough matchups in Chicago. And, dammit, I’m thinking they have a decent shot to win four. Which will make the pain if they don’t hit harder.

Weekend Notes

March 7, 2022 /

Spring?

That first weekend each year when the weather turns warm is always a delight. Living in the Midwest you know there will be plenty of wild weather swings before spring completely arrives. Yet even in a year like this when winter wasn’t all that bad, these weekends are welcome.

Saturday it was in the mid–70s here, breaking a daily high temperature record. I did some yard work to prep for the growing season and sat in the sun reading a book for about an hour. I wore shorts all afternoon. Other than the rather gusty winds, it was an ideal afternoon, feeling more like mid-May than early March.

We had loud, nasty thunderstorms overnight Saturday. Sunday was a little cooler and more cloudy, but with less wind. Much of my day was spent in the car or gyms, as we’ll get to, but S and I were able to take a walk late in the afternoon and it felt really nice. Sunday night/Monday morning we got nearly two inches of rain, setting another daily record.

The weather has already turned, and this week will be much cooler. Snow keeps flipping into and out of next weekend’s forecast. But the warmth is coming, and better days with it.

A lot of important hoops this weekend. So much that I’ll make a (relatively) quick pass at it all. Which you all will probably appreciate.

Jayhawk Talk

Big 12 (co) Champs!

There is a tinge of disappointment over going from leading by two full games with five to play to needing a nervy overtime win at home to salvage a tie with Baylor. It’s still another notch in the conference title ledger, though.

I saw very little of the game, as S and I had not one but two adult social engagements Saturday. (Look at us!) We did reach our second spot of the night just as the game was nearing the end of regulation, and after saying hello to the folks we were hanging with, I scampered over to a big screen to watch. As the game went into OT, I rejoined our crew but kept one eye on the game. When David McCormack dunked to put KU up five I slapped the table and said, “OK, I’m ready to be social!” That got some laughs. I was with a bunch of IU people so they all appreciated my need to focus on hoops.

Without seeing most of the game I can’t make any judgements. It’s concerning that Ochai Agbaji played one of the worst games of his career. The entire offense seemed to suck. But, hey, the defense was solid, they rebounded, they took care of the ball. I guess if you’re not going to score, you better do those other things.

I will be interested if Bill Self rests any of his players this week in Kansas City. I’m not sure it will provide any benefits in the NCAAs, unless guys have legit injuries they need to rest to heal. But it might be good for Ochai not to play 35 minutes two or three times this coming week. And, hey, perhaps let Remy and Yesefu play more than five minutes and give them a chance to get through mistakes and build some rhythm and confidence going into the games that really matter.

Then again, if I don’t expect a deep run in the NCAAs, maybe the Jayhawks should pull out all the stops to win the Big 12 tournament.

Duke/Coach K

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

When we got home Saturday I LOVED reviewing Twitter to see the sheer joy from around the country at the KU-Texas game going to overtime and ruining ESPN’s early coverage of K’s last game. Mark Titus even suggested that Self blew the end of regulation intentionally to ensure overtime and overlapping coverage.

And then for Duke to lose, their coaches to act like pricks to the Carolina staff, and K to scold the home crowd? It was the biggest chef’s kiss I can imagine. Just beautiful, beautiful stuff.

Listen, he’s the greatest coach in the history of the game. I’ve said that before. He’s won five titles playing at least three different styles of basketball. He’s adjusted as the game has changed, often quickly. But he’s always been a sanctimonious prick who puts himself above the game and acted like he hasn’t benefitted from a corrupt system more than any other coach.

Ya’ll know I had some issues with Roy Williams. But, dadgummit, he had the decency to announce he was done and disappear and not turn an entire season into an ego trip, and then get mad when his fairy tale ending got upended. I just hope someone beats Duke before the Final Four so K’s farewell tour doesn’t cloud the entire tournament.

KU Rumors

Just before we left the house Saturday some KU-NCAA rumors broke. They are just rumors at this point, and incomplete rumors at that. By the time you read this some real news may have arrived that renders the next paragraph or two meaningless, so keep that in mind.

The biggest rumor is that Bill Self and Kurtis Townsend will each serve two-year postseason bans. There was uncertainty whether that ban will begin this week or next March. As the rumor spread, there were a lot of “This could be Bill Self’s last 20/10/5 minutes of the season” Tweets. Hmmmm…

The key to the rumor was the insistence that this was just the top headline of the potential punishment, not the entire penalty. There could still be much more, like reduction in scholarships, recruiting limits, forfeiting games that Silvio De Sousa played in, etc.

I had to laugh at myself scrambling through Twitter once we got to our first stop of the evening looking more for confirmations/expansions of the NCAA rumors than the score of the game being played at that moment.

Awards SZN

The Big 12 coaches awards came out Sunday night. Ochai was the unanimous player of the year, to no one’s surprise. Despite his rough final week, no player ever challenged him for the award.

Much grousing in the KU Twittersphere about Ochai being the only KU first team pick. I don’t think it’s worth the time to argue. You can make a case Christian Braun or Jalen Wilson (and, to some people, both) deserved first team honors. But each player had stretches where they struggled, KU faltered late, and their numbers weren’t dramatically better than the guys you have to argue against to put them on the first team. Be thankful for the recognition and use the “snub” as fuel for the next month.

I think Mark Adams should have won coach of the year, and it shouldn’t be close, but Texas Tech losing two of their last three did take some shine off his season. Still, did anyone expect the Red Raiders, who lost their head coach, some decent talent, and brought in second and third tier transfers instead of marquee names like Remy Martin and Marcus Carr to challenge for the league crown until the final week?

I guess you can make a case for Scott Drew. He did have to get this team through a ton of injuries. But I think him winning the award was more about him, and Baylor’s PR team, winning the battle of narrative, making the Bears’ entire season about those injuries. Conveniently ignoring that he still had two (likely) lottery picks and a bunch of guys who won a national title last year even when they were battling through the injuries.

Drew winning didn’t bother me. Until someone reminded me that he won Big 12 coach of the year two years ago. When KU went 17–1 and won the league by two games. Yep, Scottie and the Baylor crew definitely have pictures and emails that they aren’t afraid to use against other coaches and the media.

High School Hoops

Cathedral won their first sectional title since Jalen Coleman-Lands was a sophomore. Friday night was their big battle, against rival Tech. The Irish trailed by six late in the third quarter before going on a 14–0 run that helped them pull away and win easily. In Saturday’s final they beat Lawrence North, who had ended their season three of the past four seasons, comfortably.

Cathedral is now the best team left according to the computer ratings, and have the highest odds with win State at 26%. They do have to beat a team they lost to two weeks ago to get out of regionals this weekend. But they seem to be coming together and playing to their talent level at the right time.

Kid Hoops

L had three games this weekend.

Saturday, while we were out, her winter league team played for their tournament championship.

I honestly have no idea how they came up with this tournament, which was just a little four-team bracket. Three teams were from the pool they played their regular season games against. The fourth team was a fifth grade team from L’s travel program. I asked her travel coach if he knew how they came up with that combination. He said the fifth grade team is really good; they won a national tournament last summer. They probably beat the hell out of some sixth grade teams in the regular season, he said, so they moved up another level to play in our tournament. He also believed the four-team brackets were done to get the tournaments over before travel season began this weekend.

Seems weird to me.

Anyway, L’s team played those fifth graders Saturday for the title. We watched the fifth graders beat an eighth grade team in overtime in their semifinal Tuesday. They have a girl who is almost six feet tall who hit a couple 25-foot shots and a bunch of shooters around her. I told L “Watch #33,” a shooter who camped out in the corner waiting to launch threes all night. “If you guard her, don’t ever leave her.”

Another team dad texted me updates throughout the game. At halftime he said L got a steal and layup right before the buzzer to put us up 8–7. We were up the entire second half between 1–3 points. Every few minutes he’d send me another picture of the scoreboard. Finally he sent one with all zeros on the clock and us winning 28–27.

Champs!

Well, watered down, weird bracket champs.

They actually got rings, although as the last game of the night no one who runs the league stayed to hand them out and L’s team got the ones that said “Finalist” not “Champion.” I guess no one looked at which bag they handed to which team. Oh well.

When we got home I asked L about her game. She said she had eight points, at least 10 rebounds, and “I shut 33 down! She only had four points!” The dad who sent me in-game updates confirmed all that.

So a great end to what was, at times, a frustrating season. The weird schedule (playing more 6th grade A teams than 7th/8th B teams), the lack of practice time, the absence of any organized offense. Flags fly forever. And I guess cheap championship rings last forever. Or at least until they get wet and tarnish.

Sunday it was straight into the travel season. Her team played in a two-game shootout. They are the third rated seventh grade team in their program and opened with a game against the #2 team. That squad has one girl that is a stud. She has size and can do almost everything. The only thing that stopped her were the refs who called anything remotely close to a travel a travel. I think they were a little harsh on her, but it was to our benefit so I didn’t complain or anything. We were down 12 at one point but made a great run late and trailed by one with under 2:00 left. We just couldn’t get the stops and scores needed and lost by five. It was a great effort, though.

In the second game we played a team that had a lot of size and knew how to use it. They took threes when open, but generally just punished us inside. L somehow drew the low block on free throws and gave up three-straight offensive boards in one sequence. It was demoralizing. We were down 13 at half. We got behind by as many as 22 in the second half to fall into running clock territory, and never got it closer than 16.

L had a weird day. She came off the bench in both first halves, started both second halves. She was scoreless in the first game, scored three in the second. But, man, she was as aggressive as she’s ever been getting to the basket. Before we left the house she told me she has a spin move that has been working. I rolled my eyes a little because I had never seen it. Sunday, though, she kept getting by her defender with it. She just could not finish. She was probably a combined 1–15 in the two games. Almost all those misses were either off that spin move or on runners. The runners were all forced and didn’t have much chance. But that spin move…it worked almost every time! Well, expect for making the shot. She even recognized when the defense caught onto the move and made a sweet pass out of it to a cutter. Who naturally missed. It was that kind of day for our team.

They start real practices tonight and I’m excited to see them learn the offense, get comfortable playing together, and improve over the next few months. They don’t play again for two weeks, but I’m expecting better things then.

Jayhawk Talk: TC-Whew!

March 4, 2022 /

March is here! The days are getting a little longer, brighter, and warmer. Spring break is three weeks away. We’ve had a few geese in our yard already, the onslaught to come. The City of Indianapolis is fixing potholes! Baseball is about to start.

And KU fans are freaking out.

My experience with the Jayhawks this week was tempered by not being able to see much of Tuesday’s TCU game in Ft. Worth. L had a game at the same time and we made it home in time for the last 10 minutes or so. Which turned out to be the worst 10 minutes to see. At least her team won. 53–7!

I was able to watch all of Thursday’s rematch in Lawrence. It had everything. A big KU spurt early, fueled by 12 quick Ochai Agbaji points. A LOUD AFH crowd. Defensive lapses, poor shot selection, and getting bullied by a more athletic team. A six-point deficit early in the second half accompanied by thoughts of hopelessness and anger at pissing away a two-game lead in the conference race thanks to getting swept by TC-freaking-U. An eight-point lead with under 2:00 to play that was nearly thrown away.

Basically the 2021–22 Jayhawks distilled into their essence.

But the dub is the dub, and a win Saturday against Texas means KU gets a share of the Big 12 title.

I can’t freak out too much about the TCU games since they are the epitome of a bad matchup for this year’s KU squad. Every team has those, and it sucks that KU had to play the Frogs back-to-back, at the end of the season, because of Covid issues in January. I was disappointed at how little fight KU showed when I was watching Tuesday. I was heartened by the fight early and late Thursday. I was concerned about how many dumb mistakes they made in the middle 20 minutes Thursday.

And, let’s be honest, KU people freaked out this week because it was TCU. It didn’t matter that they beat Texas Tech last Saturday. That was their only impressive Big 12 win. It wasn’t until we saw them, and saw how long and athletic they are, and that for the first time maybe ever they actually play decent ball, that we realized, “Oh shit, these guys are good.” Not sure what to make of a world where TCU is solid in hoops.

KU got a very friendly whistle Thursday. I can’t decide if that was because “KU gets every call at Allen” or just that KU was so freaking bad on defense that a ton of TCU’s shots were so wide-open KU didn’t have a chance to foul.

Well, it was a friendly whistle other than the ridiculous technical on Mitch Lightfoot. College refs are such clowns. In the NBA, if guys start yapping at each other, and continue to after being warned, both players hit get with a T and you play on. College refs always have to make an example of a player to give the impression they’ve taken control of the game. It wasn’t just the T itself. It was how the ref called it, signaling the foul EIGHT TIMES as he walked to the scorer’s table. An absolute “Look At Me!” clown show of an effort by that guy. Big 12 refs have called so many garbage T’s on players this year for things that happen on dunks, I guess KU was due.

That said, Mitch has been in college for 18 years. He knows how refs are. Take your dunk, run up court, and talk your shit when you set up for defense when – maybe – the ref has other things to worry about. Although that guy was clearly itching to call one. It likely wouldn’t have mattered.

My brother in Jayhawk-dom E$ said Jamie Dixon looks like a guy who doesn’t wash his hands after he uses the restroom. I laughed hard at that, because it seems like a pretty fair assessment.

I seriously can not figure out what this team’s deal on defense is. The athletic guys get lazy. The heady guys are constantly putting themselves in bad spots where their limitations kill them. Dave McCormack is perpetually trying to block shots that aren’t lockable, leaving the lane open for offensive boards. They all make poor/wrong rotations. They all communicate poorly. They just can’t seem to figure it out.

I wonder if it is all a matter of trust, and the lack of trust in the guys to their right and left mean everyone is constantly cheating one way or the other, and end up in a bad spot.

Or maybe they just suck. It is maddening, whatever the explanation is. And since it is March, it ain’t changing. I feel like the offense will be fine when they get away from Big 12 teams. I’m already having anxiety attacks about them scoring 79 but giving up 84 to some team that hasn’t scored more than 70 in two months. Or being up nine with about 3:00 to play and collapsing to blow a game that was won. You can’t play a junk defense for 40 minutes, but KU’s base defense isn’t stopping anyone at the moment.

Of course the 2006 Indianapolis Colts had an atrocious defense, and got gouged by Maurice Jones-Drew for approximately 400 yards in the season finale. Then they got their shit together and won the Super Bowl. You never know.

KU has played eight of its nine Big 12 home games. Four of those games were blowouts.[1] The other four were all games that either went to overtime or were decided in the final 10 seconds.[2] For those of you who gamble, that offers some interesting options for Saturday’s game against Texas.

Finally, KU fans, I admit I cursed Ochai last week when I wrote about how efficient he was, and how he never took a shot that I questioned. He’s scored 27, 13, and 22 since in the three games since. But even those 20+ point nights came taking way more shots than he’s taken this year. He’s forced some mid-range stuff he hasn’t forced all year. And he’s missed too many shots at the rim.

He’s had such a beautiful and remarkable season. I hope he’s not running out of steam as the weight of the last four months gathers on his shoulders and the pressure of March awaits.

My bad for the jinx.

  1. West Virginia, Baylor, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State  ↩
  2. Iowa State, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, TCU  ↩

Weekend Sports Notes

February 28, 2022 /

Jayhawk Talk

A large game in Waco Saturday. KU looked fantastic for the first 15 minutes against Baylor, then, other than a brief spurt in the second half, pretty pedestrian.

I was as low-key about this game as any late-season, Big 12 contender matchup in years. I listen to three different KU-focused podcasts and all of them insisted last week that Baylor was a great matchup for KU. I think that was putting too much into the teams’ first matchup, which was as dominant as KU has looked all year. That sentiment must have gotten into my head, though, because I didn’t have the usual nervousness going into this game.

I also thought all the pressure was on Baylor because of that first game and the margin between the teams. If KU lost they would still be in first place. Texas Tech losing to TCU earlier took some more pressure off.

For awhile it looked like that was all true. KU looked great early, hit their usual lull before halftime, and struggled to match Baylor’s adjustments through the second half. Or at least that’s what the general narrative of the game is.

In truth, KU missed a ton of open shots. Especially Ochai Agbaji, who despite scoring 27, missed a handful of, for him, relatively easy shots. Jalen Wilson was back to December Jalen Wilson. The bench was non-existent, although Remy Martin did score five, balanced by his typical terrible defense.

I’m not throwing those details out there to diminish Baylor’s performance or poo-poo the loss. It’s just to say I wasn’t all that worked up about it. It’s not like Baylor made KU look silly, like KU pissed it away as they had the game in Austin a few weeks back, etc. KU lost to a really good team on the road while having their worst offensive game, efficiency wise, in some time. Not a loss to lose sleep over.

Of course it helped pretty much everyone else in the Top 10 dropped a game last week.

It’s almost March. I’m more concerned with how the team is playing than the result. KU lost because the missed shots they normally hit and struggled to guard Baylor’s athletic bigs. That’s pretty much the blueprint for a KU loss this season.

Youth Hoops

L’s winter team had their final regular season game yesterday. As has been usual, they were missing four players and had to recruit a replacement from the C team just to have a sub.

Comparing scores, the team they played had lost by seven to the team we beat a week ago. So I was hoping for good things.

Not sure what went on in that other game, but our result showed why using playground logic is bad. We took a 2–0 lead, gave up an 13–0 run, and never got it under nine again, losing by 20. This team had good, little guards that could handle the ball and shoot 3’s. They had two big girls who looked awkward but could post and score, move their feet a little on D, and rebounded the hell out of the ball.

L scored eight and had three assists. She was aggressive but did not have the distance dialed-in on her jumpers and had a bunch of airballs. She also had her best, and smartest, play of the year. She had the ball at the top of the key and one of the big girls on her. She recognized the mismatch, got the girl leaning left, blew by her on the right and laid it in. A simple play, but a smart one. She hasn’t had the results she’s wanted, but I think her hoops IQ continues to improve. She’s been frustrated by this season. I keep telling her that things are going to get better, and more fun, once he AAU season begins.

Her AAU coach was in the building and watched the first half. He told me he was excited to have her and her St P’s buddy on his team. They start their practices tonight and are supposed to play in a shootout on Sunday, pending enough teams registering. Meanwhile the winter league team plays a tournament game tomorrow and a championship game on Saturday, should they win their first game. The “tournament” is kind of whack, but I’ll share more about that later.

Winter Olympics

I realized I never wrote anything about the Winter Olympics. Which should be like a mortal sin to the blogging gods: the Olympics have been one of my go-to content sources over the last 18 years.

It’s not that I didn’t watch. I did watch quite a bit in the first week, but tailed off significantly in the second week.

I guess it was fatigue from a third-straight Olympics being held with a 12–13 hour time difference and how that affects how us Americans can watch the events. There was the prime time evening window, which is probably way more convenient in the Pacific time zone than the Eastern. I don’t think I watched past 11:00 PM more than two nights. I often caught a few minutes of live events in the morning before I took L to school. That was pretty much it, though. And, as I said, in week two I lost some interest.

The lack of crowds sucked, especially since here in the States we’ve been back to full crowds for quite a while.

There was also the fact they were holding the Winter Olympics in an area that gets like 10 inches of snow a year. The starkness of the ski slopes covered in artificial snow while all the surrounding hills were a dull brown kind of cut into the vibe you want from the winter games. Naturally there was a nasty snow/wind storm that affected some of the ski events. Those were the sports gods letting the IOC know you need to stop chasing Chinese money and put the games where they belong. Seriously, I think the Winter Olympics should always be in the Alps, Scandinavia, or Canada. Fuck China. And fuck Russia, too, while we’re at it.

I laughed out loud at the ski broadcasters discussing how the snow in these games was so different than what the competitors were used to skiing on in Europe. One of them said the snow was “very sensitive.” Snowflakes on two levels!

Once again I found I enjoyed the newer events that grew out of the X-Games more than anything. The halfpipe snowboard events, especially, are crazy fun to watch. Ayumu Hirano winning the men’s gold was an insanely impressive performance, even with the judges trying to screw him. I loved the analyst getting noticeably pissed as the judges refused to reward runs that included elements that had never been done in competition before.

Also fun to hear the cross country analyst again, who screamed like someone is dying anytime there was a close race.

I suppose my favorite thing about the games was Instagram stalking the competitors. I spent too much time looking at Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami’s page. Please don’t tell my wife.

Baseball

Rob Manfred and the owners suck. For the first time in at least 15 years I turned off auto-renewal for my MLB subscription. I doubt losing my $120 will bring them to their senses, but I also don’t feel obligated to sign back up right away when an agreement is reached. There are a lot of problems with baseball, and the owners seem intent on making every one of those issues worse while adding more to the pile.

Jayhawk Talk: Some Notes

February 23, 2022 /

One last breather before the biggest and toughest stretch of the year, via a good, old-fashioned thumping of Kansas State.

I’m not sure why K-State decided to force the tempo Tuesday night. They damn near beat KU a month ago playing their normal style of ball. Why they thought they could come to Lawrence and win a track meet is baffling, and perhaps the final nail in Bruce Webber’s coaching coffin.

(A quick aside about Bruce: as a KU fan I love making fun of him and his insecurities. But he is a good coach and K-State is a solid team. If not for Covid blowing through their team early in the Big 12 schedule, they could easily be in the conference title mix. I’m interested to see whether the K-State AD thinks he can get someone who coaches as well as Bruce but is more PR friendly and, thus, plays better to the public, or if he’ll give Bruce a chance to coach this young roster one more time.)

To be fair, it wasn’t a total disaster until the last ten minutes. Twice the Wildcats cut big leads down to single digits. I wonder if their pace on offense took away from their defensive effort, because KU got a lot of great looks and knocked most of them down.

We aren’t here to talk about K-State, though.

I don’t have any big observations from last night; you can’t take much from a game like that because, as good as KU is on offense, they aren’t going to shoot 64% very often.

So a few tidbits.

As tends to happen this time of year with seniors, I’m trying to enjoy what is left of Ochai Agbaji’s KU career. He is having one of the most remarkable offensive seasons of any KU player in recent memory. Ochai is deadly from behind the arc, in transition, in the mid-range, attacking the hoop, and in set plays designed to free him up for lobs. He is as well-rounded offensively as any KU perimeter player of the modern era.

Ben McLemore and Brandon Rush are the closest comps for Ochai, and both his usage and efficiency numbers are beyond what those guys put up. He and Bill Self have made adjustments to get him better looks after his mini “slump” that came as teams clamped down on him.

It has been an amazing season, made even better by how unexpected it has been. I thought he’d be good this year. But 20+ ppg, conference player of the year, and likely All-American status? Never saw that coming.

Jalen Wilson’s comeback this year has been great to watch. Going into such a funk just because he got a DUI on the eve of the season was weird.[1] His emergence has given KU a three-headed monster on offense.

I think it’s weird that he can’t jump, though. It makes it more amazing that he’s grabbing over seven rebounds per game. There have been multiple times this year when he is wide open and you would expect him the throw down a big dunk. Instead he lays it up. Or, knowing he can’t jump over an approaching defender, makes some crazy Euro-step that forces him into a tougher shot. I think he needs to get some of those weird shoes with the platform soles under the toes that are supposed to increase your vertical.

It has also been fun to watch Joe Yesufu figuring it out. He still plays about 10% too fast in half court sets, but he also looks more comfortable and is providing good minutes.

As it has been all season, the topic of choice on KU Twitter is Remy Martin. The current debate is whether he will play again or not. There is also lots of speculation about what is really going on, some suggesting he is healthy and has either bailed or he and Self can’t agree to work together so they’ve agreed for him to be “injured.” I have no idea, no inside dope from people in the locker room, so I’m not going to hazard any guesses as to Remy is really hurt or not.

I will, though, make a guess about whether he returns.

Since KU has been playing well, I can see Remy and Self coming to an agreement that he’s going to take his time and target next week, when KU plays four times in seven days, for his next comeback. Ease him in for the two TCU games to give DaJuan Harris and Yesufu some relief. See how he feels/recovers and if he has any chemistry with his teammates. If it works you roll him out for the season finale against Texas and go from there, hoping he can provide 10–15 minutes off the bench in the postseason.

But if he doesn’t play next week, he’s done. And it is about more than his knee.

A weird ending to a brief Jayhawk career.

Last night’s uniforms? I hated them upon their Twitter reveal. But, to be fair, similar ones Nebraska revealed a few weeks back had already affected my opinion.

I thought they looked better on TV, at least in the wide shots. Up close, when you saw the sunflowers across the chest and on the side stripes, I did not like them. Another miss for Adidas and whoever at KU came up with these.

As a uniform guy, I did love one element in them that I think KU should use going forward.

First off, Adidas needs to scrap these random one-off uniforms. It’s fine to wear a throw-back uniform occasionally to celebrate a specific team. But I hate these over-designed ones that we see once before they are forgotten. They can’t generate enough sales revenue to make them worth it.

Red uniforms are always a hot-button issue with KU fans. I used to be a big proponent, but have softened in recent years as KU has expanded its uniform options.

My big idea takes an element of last night’s set and KU’s history: have a home alternative uniform that has red letters, numbers, and accents. KU used to wear uniforms with red details rather than blue as their standard uniforms. That’s what Clyde Lovellette wore when he led KU to its first NCAA title, and KU has honored those a few times. Jo Jo White wore red letters. Blue is KU’s brand, so the Jayhawks should generally have more blue than red in their uniforms. But pulling out throwbacks with red detailing say four times a year would be both historically accurate and pretty dope.

Or just bring this style back and solve all the uniform problems.

Now it’s on to Baylor in Waco, the two-fer with TCU, and hosting Texas. All in a calendar week. 2–2 gets the Jayhawks no worse than a shared Big 12 championship.

  1. Also, call Uber/Lyft!  ↩
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