D's Notebook

Tag: college sports (Page 7 of 41)

Ranking Shit: Alternate Hoops Programs

April 4, 2023 /

As mentioned awhile back, I have a few of these in various stages of development. With the college basketball season complete, seems like a good day to dust off this one.

This idea comes from a KU-centric podcast I listen to regularly. During the holidays they had a segment where they selected an elite program they would choose to be a fan of if KU was not an option. This came on the heels of Indiana’s visit to Lawrence in December. All of the hosts were at the game and mentioned how great the IU fans were: very respectful and interested in the history of KU hoops and Allen Fieldhouse while being passionate about their own team.

So today I’ll rank three big time programs that I could support, and three I would never cheer for, if I had not been #blessed to be born in the Jayhawk state.

Programs I Could Follow

3 – Arizona. The Wildcats have been good for the better part of 40 years. They tend to dominate the Pac-Whatever the way KU has dominated the Big 12. They have a fun, loud home court environment. They generally have really good players, many of whom go on to play in the NBA. Good weather if I were to visit for a game. Usually have solid uniforms but they’ve also had some missteps in recent years.

2 – UCLA. My dream school as a kid. One of the absolute coolest athletic programs in all of sports. Tons of history. Peaks and valleys in the modern era, but they really should be decent most of the time. A typically bandwagon LA fanbase so it seems like if I went all-in I could get pretty good season tickets easily. Cool uniforms, which is always a bonus.

1 – Indiana. Kind of a cheat since I live in the Hoosier state, my wife went to IU, and I have a graduate degree from the school. I’ve not liked IU at any point of my 20 years here, so it would take some work. Still, the Hoosiers are in many ways the most similar program to KU. A top five history. Midwest fans who are knowledgable and intense but have an appreciation for good ball no matter who plays it. KU and IU fans are arrogant in very similar ways, too. Assembly Hall is ugly and strange, but is a real monster when the Hoosiers are playing well. Plus odds are at least one of my kids will go there.

HM: Villanova
Pre-Jay Wright retirement they had a cool combination of small, local school with big time national success. Cool uniforms. Not sure if that will be sustained with him gone.

Programs I Could Never Follow

3 – Baylor. I’m not sure there are many actual Baylor hoops fans. Sure, a lot of Baylor alums enjoy the success of their team. But it’s Texas: all they really care about is football. I’ve seen way too many big games in their arena between two ranked teams with a ton of empty seats. For a religious institution, they sure have had a lot of really, really bad scandals, ones that go way beyond paying a power forward to enroll. The school has always shirked any responsibility for the issues inside their athletic programs. Which makes Scott Drew the perfect coach for them. Just like the institution, Drew is, and always has been, a giant phony. He’s as dirty a recruiter as there is but camouflages it behind the shield of Baylor, the Baptist church, and the Bible. He co-opted the success of the Baylor women’s program until he won a title of his own. He has a lot of “Look At Me” to his personality. The shade of green they use is a terrible color for uniforms. Don’t get me started on their neon yellow ones. Chip and Joanna need to go away.

2 – Kentucky. UK fans are a true mixed bag. I’ve met some incredibly nice ones who are a delight to talk hoops with. I’ve met others who are embarrassments to the concept of fandom. You can say that about every fanbase, whether the program is good or bad. But it feels like more Kentucky fans than any others will go out of their way to tell you how good they are and diminish anything your school has done. There are a ton of UK fans in Indianapolis, which is super annoying. More of an NBA than a college feel about every aspect of the program. The Rupp Arena crowd is a weird combo of rich, horse people and Kentucky rednecks, neither group being one I would hang out in. Rupp is loud but it has no charm. Cal is an ass who has been wasting great recruiting classes for nearly a decade.

1 – Duke. Even with Coach K gone, the air of superiority and entitlement around this program is unmatched. I don’t think Jon Scheyer, or any future Duke coach, will ever have any interest in removing the sanctimonious stink of the K era. Most of their “fans” had no chance to be admitted to the school. They use Duke’s academic reputation to hide that the program is exactly the same Nike-fueled basketball factory that Kentucky is. They defended Greyson Allen. Paid Zion’s dad but KU will get punished for it. K colored his hair for years.

Weekend Hoops Notes

March 20, 2023 /

Not a good weekend of basketball. Nope, not good at all.

Jayhawk Talk

Well, I feared playing Arkansas from the moment the brackets came out a week ago. Long, athletic, fearless, a little crazy. They resembled Texas and TCU, teams that gave KU three of their worst losses this year. Saturday afternoon I began to gain confidence. KU was more experienced and had been tested all year. Arkansas dropped just about every big game on their schedule. There was a little turmoil on their roster. They might be more talented, but they certainly weren’t the more steady team. Get a lead, force them to shoot jumpers, and hold on to survive and advance.

For 25 minutes KU were about perfect, leading by 12 with under 16 to play.

Then it all fell apart.

I wasn’t mad or sad that KU’s season was over. I never expected them to repeat, and while my goal was to be the first defending champ since 2016 to reach the Sweet 16, this team outperformed every other expectation I had for them.

No, I was mad at how they lost. They went soft. They missed free throws. They got both a 5 and 10 second violation, neither of which they had picked up all season. They took a couple very quick, nervous shots when there was still a lot of time left in the game. It wasn’t just a game KU could have won, it was a game they should have won. They pissed it away.

A bad end to a great season, with most of the worst errors of the second half committed by the players who made some of the biggest plays of the year.

Would Bill Self being on the sideline have made a difference? Maybe. He might have adjusted quicker and differently to what Arkansas was doing, notably how they attacked off the pick-and-roll. Maybe he would have called a different out-of-bounds play or two.

However, I think it’s a disservice to Norm Roberts and the other assistants to put the loss on them. I don’t think the general message from coaches to players was much different that it would have been had Self been there. It was individual breakdowns that caused the loss more than any tactical choices the coaches made.

Saturday was a great moment for the KU haters. Not only did another highly ranked Jayhawks team fail to play to their seed, but, as it is currently set to be constructed, KU will likely take a step back next year.

For the first time in seemingly ages, there is no player in the system who is set to take over the mantle as Alpha. As Perry Ellis passed to Frank Mason, who handed off to Devonte Graham, who handed off to Udoka Azubuike, who handed to Ochai Agbaji, who handed to Jalen Wilson. I doubt that either DaJuan Harris or KJ Adams have the ability to take on that kind of role next year. There is a very good recruiting class coming in, but none of those guys seem like they are the next Gradey Dick, who himself wasn’t the best player on the team this year.

The easy answer to that these days is to hit the transfer portal. It’s hard for me to see a transfer coming in and being the Alpha from day one. It takes everyone the better part of a season, if not longer, to figure out Self’s system and expectations.

The portal is also problematic since KU already needs to shed a player or two in order to get under their self-imposed sanctions for next year. Assuming all four committed recruits still show up in the fall, some non-senior/non-Gradey Dick player will need to depart. If Self wants to add a transfer(s), that means another has to hit the bricks.

I can think of at least five guys who have a good reason to transfer, either just to get a fresh start or go somewhere where there are better opportunities to play. I wonder how NIL will change their calculations, though. Is it better to stay at KU and not play much and maybe be unhappy, but make more NIL cash, than to find a better playing situation but not have the same NIL chances? Weird times.

Now don’t take my prediction too strongly: KU will still be good next year. But they will be very young and unproven.

Oh, and there’s the little matter of Bill Self’s health. I’m an optimist. I think he’s going to be fine and coaching at KU next fall. It remains a question, though. If you don’t think the coaches he battles with the most on the recruiting trail haven’t been putting the word out that kids can’t trust Self to be their coach, you don’t know a thing about recruiting. [1]

So defending champs no longer. But the Kansas Jayhawks remain the reigning men’s division one basketball national champions for another two weeks.

Rock Chalk, Bitches.

Other Tournament Thoughts

We went out to dinner Friday evening with some friends who are far less interested in sports than I am. I checked the Purdue score at halftime and was surprised they were down, but figured they would rally. I checked again midway through the second half and they were up five. About 20 minutes later we began hearing occasional noise from the bar area, capped by a huge roar. My buddy and I quickly whipped out our phones and saw Fairleigh Dickinson had just hit a 3 to go up five. We watched the last seconds on a phone. Amazing. I don’t know that many people had a whole lot of faith in Purdue getting out of their region this year, but to lose their opening game? Stunning.

Matt Painter is a very good, borderline great, coach. He recruits to a style and gets those players to excel in that system. He sees the big picture and tweaks his system for the strengths of each year’s roster. He makes terrific adjustments within the game. But, man, that dude has terrible, terrible luck in March.

I know some IU people were having a lot of fun with this, especially in tearing down Painter and the “myth” that he is a great coach. There’s definitely a pattern here, but the randomness of the tournament is a bitch. You can never really quantify how coach X or program Y has such bad luck over time. Is it mental? Is it something specific Painter does wrong? Does Bill Self really coach differently in the Elite Eight? Or is it just the roulette wheel of March Madness coming up the wrong color time and time again?

My bracket was looking pretty good until Saturday evening and Sunday. Fortunately everyone else is getting wiped out, too. I picked 10 of the Sweet 16 and have five of the Elite Eight and three of the Final Four left. I’m second of 44, sixth of 155, and seventh of 49 in my three pools. In my fantasy league, I’m tied for second, six points out of first. And that was with the first overall pick scoring zero points in his first game. If you’re going to take a chance on an accessory to murder (uncharged), he really needs to deliver.

I’d rather be wearing KU gear Friday when we leave for spring break than celebrating bracket success.

The Best Conference in 20 Years kind of had a shitty first weekend.

A Sweet 16 without Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, or North Carolina. Wonder how long it’s been since that happened.

It seems like they’ve shrunk the commercial pool even further this year, and we’re seeing the same 5–6 commercials. Or at least we’re seeing an assortment of 3–4 and then each break has one stupid AT&T commercial and then a Capital One commercial. At least the CapOne ads are funny, but they are so overplayed.

I’m really starting to hate AT&T’s Lilly. Especially when she’s referred to as a “special contributor” by the CBS studio people.

Has anyone thought of putting Coach K and Peyton Manning in a commercial together? It seems inevitable as they both do 8000 ads. I’m going to start boycotting any products that use either of them in their campaigns. Branch out a little, people.

Oh, and if you weren’t watching the very first games of Thursday, you probably missed Coach K’s “speech” to all 64 teams. I’m so disappointed in myself that I didn’t predict CBS would find a way to make the tournament about him somehow. Guy went out a loser. Why are we celebrating him?

I do not like three-man announcer booths. They don’t give the games enough room to breath, even if all three people on the mic are good.

Finally, a rules suggestion. If a player is fouled and makes their shot going into a TV timeout, the timeout gets delayed until either he makes his free throw or the next dead ball. Those breaks kill all the drama of the and-one opportunity. This seems like a reasonable ask, especially when it sure feels like the dreaded double timeout occurs a lot more often in March. No, I’m not just saying this because Kevin McCullar missed an and-one free throw after a commercial break.

Kid Hoops

It was a delightful weekend of getting up at either 6:45 or 6:15 to drive on snowy roads in a single-digit windchill to watch L and her travel team take the court again.

They were perfect Saturday, getting two double-digits wins over very physical teams. L looked a little intimidated by the physical play and struggled with turnovers in the first game. She had six total points on the day, and probably rebounded better than she did anything else.

Sunday we faced a team from Michigan in bracket play. They were super tough on defense, and led by 11 midway through the second half.

Our girls made a nice run to take the lead late. But it felt curiously like the KU game. We missed five free throws in the final 3:00. One of our assistants got a technical that cost us a point in that same stretch.[2] The game went to overtime where our best free throw shooter went 1–2 with 20 seconds left to put us up one. The Michigan girls threw in a crazy shot – a banked, running layup from high off the glass – to take the lead with 10 seconds left and we couldn’t get a shot off before the buzzer.

Bummer.

That team went on to win the championship with our game being their closest of the weekend.

There was another connection to the KU game. Like DaJuan Harris, L rolled her ankle. Unlike him, she never came back into the game after getting hurt. Fortunately since we lost she didn’t have to miss another game (or two). When we got home it hurt to walk but didn’t look too swollen, so we’re hopeful she didn’t injure it too badly. The good news is we won’t play games for another three weeks because of spring breaks, so she has a nice, long, built-in rest period.

(Monday morning update: she’s in a boot and it still hurts pretty bad, but still not a ton of swelling or discoloration.)

She had been in the game less than two minutes when she got injured, so she didn’t get a chance to do anything. When she rolled it she was backing down a defender at halfcourt. She went down, lost the ball, and her defender picked it up and went in for an uncontested layup. Two more killer points.

I asked L about the bench technical. She shook her head and said, “Those refs were so soft.” I think she’s been watching Bill Self videos.

Oh, sports are dumb. So, so dumb.

  1. A friend made a wonderful point along these lines. “100% guarantee Scott Drew has already called recruits about Self. At the same time he’s probably going to say something in his next press conference about how everyone should join him to pray for Self’s return to good health.” Phony with a capital F.  ↩
  2. The technical in the KU game was a double-tech, and didn’t cost either team a point, but did put Jalen Wilson on the bench before halftime.  ↩

The Most Wonderful Day of the Year

March 16, 2023 /

The appetizer of the First Four is complete. Now it’s time for the real deal. NCAA thoughts.

Jayhawk Talk

I’m not sure how to feel about this team. Kevin McCullar and Gradey Dick both say their back issues are fine. Can we trust them? Might they be fine against Howard today and flare back up Saturday in the second round? For a team that is not very deep, those alone are massive questions.

Then you throw in that the Jayhawks seem to have been a little low energy since winning in Ft. Worth three weeks ago. Maybe all that championship DNA in the returning players will be enough to kick start a fresh run for the next few weeks. But I’m definitely concerned that the team isn’t firing on all cylinders going into the biggest games of the year.

And Bill Self’s status is still up in the air. He was supposed to appear publicly twice this week, and each of those appearances got cancelled. The team claims he’s been at practice. Will he be on the bench? And if so will he be able to relax and coach normally? Today shouldn’t be an issue. Saturday will.

Update
News just broke that Self will not coach Thursday. Maybe it’s just me but if he can’t coach today, I have a hard time seeing him be ready for Saturday. Hedge your bets appropriately.

Throw all that together and it has my confidence level pretty low before even looking at the brackets. Which takes some pressure off. I’ll still probably be a mess during games, but I doubt that the eventual letdown will be all that bad. I’ll just go back and watch games from last March to improve my mood.

I have KU losing to UConn in the Sweet 16. I think Saturday’s second round game will be tough, but KU will find a way to pull it out regardless of opponent. Then UConn’s depth will overwhelm them. That feels like a game that is either close until the last eight minutes when UConn pulls away, or that KU gets down early, makes a run, but can’t do enough to ever take the lead. Pretty sure that’s the game where we’ll see some crazy lineup because of foul trouble, too.

Now if KU either beats UConn, or plays someone else in the Sweet 16, I have them in the Final Four. Gonzaga would be a great, open-ended game. But the Zags can’t guard my daughter’s team, so KU would win a game in the 80s. UCLA losing its best defender is devastating, so if they were to win three games I can see KU handling them.

Brackets

This feels like such a weird year overall. Other than Alabama, I don’t trust anyone completely. And given what’s going on with that program off the court, maybe the pressure is too much for them.

Purdue has the best player, but I can’t see their young guards handling the pressure it will take to win four games and get to Houston.

Speaking of Houston, if you told me Marcus Sasser would be completely healthy for the next two weeks, I’d put them through. I have Texas beating them, but do I really trust Texas? Yes, they are super old. Yes, they have a great balance of size and athleticism and shooting. Yes, they can lock people up when they want to. But when they look bad, they look really bad. All it takes is one rough night and even the sexiest teams can lose.

Arizona has injuries. The Big East was pretty garbage once you got past the top, so can you trust any of those teams? Are the Big 12 teams too beat up from two months of league play?

My Final Four:
Alabama
UConn
Marquette
Texas

Alabama over Texas

Player Draft

We had our fantasy draft last night. Points only. I won last year after getting the first pick, taking Drew Timme, then a bunch of other guys who all went off in either their first or second game.

This year I got the first pick again! I took Alabama’s Brandon Miller with my first selection. Joining him are Kam Jones, Julian Strawther, Sir’Jabari Rice, Gradey Dick, Courtney Ramey, Amari Bailey, and Dylan Disu. I don’t feel nearly as good about this year’s team.

Hoops Notes

March 13, 2023 /

As you might expect, I have a lot of words about basketball today.

HS Hoops

A quick note about HS ball. Cathedral’s run as defending state champs came to an end in the regional round of this year’s tournament, losing to #1 Ben Davis by 10. The Irish did have the lead at halftime. I had to run L over to a friend’s and when I got home they trailed going into the fourth. Not sure what happened but it was all while I was out. They tried to make a run in the fourth quarter but, like so many times this year, were just too sloppy to get the job done.

It was nice to have one of the top five recruits in the country on the team. But this season proved that the two D1 guards that graduated last year were more important than a big man who often plays passive.

Jayhawk Talk

OK, it’s been a couple weeks, and a lot has happened. So let’s chop this up into parts.

Big 12 Champs

Like so many times in the Bill Self era, KU claimed a title that seemed unlikely in the first week of February. The Jayhawks ripped off a long winning streak while every other contender hit a rough patch. This year’s seven straight wins were especially impressive given the strength of the conference. I never expected anyone, let alone KU, to have the outright conference title clinched four days before the regular season ended.

When the Jayhawks got blown out in Ames on February 4, I looked at the schedule and couldn’t figure out any way KU escaped with fewer than six losses for the season. And then I was also hoping that Baylor, Texas, Kansas State, and Iowa State would all stumble enough to also be sitting at six losses.

So naturally KU won the conference outright at 13–5. Shows how much I know.

The blowout loss in Austin on the season’s final day took a little luster away, but not much. Another notch in the conference championship belt secured.

Bill Self

I was going to have a section dedicated to Bill Self anyway this week. Now it’s going to be longer, and about more, than I expected.

First off, I’m sure I was like most KU fans and freaked out a little when I got my first text message last week saying something like “Self had a heart attack?!?!” and then scrambled to find out more.

Fortunately it looks like Self got to the hospital before he had a proper heart attack. Two stents and a weekend in the hospital are no joke, though. Like most KU fans I hope he’s healthy enough to coach in the NCAAs. But there’s also no reason to risk his long-term health if it’s going to take a month or months for his cardiologists to declare him fit to stand on the sideline again. It sounds like recovery from having stents implanted is generally pretty quick, and many patients often feel amazingly better fast as they suddenly have normal blood flow again.

Scary stuff.

Originally this section was going to be about how the national media, in the last couple weeks, has suddenly jumped all over the Self bandwagon. There are a lot of reasons for that. Winning his second title last year is a big one. There’s how this team, which lost so much from that championship squad, managed to win the Big 12 and claim another #1 seed in the NCAAs, the 10th top seed in Self’s 20 years. And there’s the fact so many top tier, established coaches have left the game in the past couple years. He’s one of the few elite coaches left, and before last Wednesday I think most people expected him to coach at least another ten years.

When the Jayhawks took over first place, it triggered a flood of reflectional praise from nearly every national writer. He’s always had a great reputation amongst the analysts who follow the game closely. It’s like they all suddenly took a look at his record and realized, “Oh shit, he’s even better than we thought!”

Of those columns and articles, this part of Eamonn Brennan’s recent piece on The Athletic stuck out to me:

College basketball is hard. (Self) makes it look very easy. And he has made it look easy for the better part of three decades. Every little twist and turn of the 2022–23 season, every little in-game adjustment he made to help his team win another close game in another hot gym in this butcher shop of a league, is the same notional stuff he has been coaxing out of his guys — the same one-step-ahead brilliance relative to the other coaches, the same ability to regenerate teams each and every year, even as the specifics change over time — that has created one of the largest sample sizes of success in modern college basketball history. Self does this stuff for months at a time, each and every season. Maybe his team goes deep in the tournament, maybe it doesn’t, but the outcomes of single-elimination games in one three-week span can’t and shouldn’t erase everything that happens around them.

All sports are ultimately judged by how you do at the end of the season. Self is one title away from entering the conversation as the best college coach of all time. But all the terrific elements of that section of Brennan’s column show how he has already firmly established himself as the greatest regular season coach of all time. Coach K didn’t win as many conference titles in twice as much time. Roy didn’t. Boeheim didn’t. Jay Wright didn’t. Izzo and Calipari haven’t.

It’s been a remarkable run.

Suddenly I think we are officially on the clock for the end of the Bill Self era. Last week I would have said he would coach into his 70s. Today? I would imagine sometime in the next five years he walks away to give himself a nice, hopefully long window to just be a grandfather, dad, and husband.

Maybe I’m wrong. Self is noted as being a bit of a psychopath when it comes to being competitive. I think he knows how many records are out there for the taking if he wants to coach another decade. Maybe that, combined with this heart issue, is enough for him to change the way he takes care of his body. Maybe he comes back next fall having dropped 20–30 pounds and is full of energy and feeling better than he has since he turned 50 and does coach for another decade-plus.

Yet I also believe that he’s very good at seeing the big picture. He knows his place in the history of the game is secure. If he begins to think that coaching is taking years off his life, I believe he’ll walk away.

Big 12 Tournament

Man, how did KU beat Texas once this year? That’s just a bad, bad matchup. I can’t figure Texas out. When they are good, they are really freaking good. But they’ve had some bad slip-ups. I’m notorious for jumping on the Longhorn bandwagon in March. Two years ago, most recently, I was sure they were on their way to the Final Four. They lost in the first round. I’m not sure I’m ready to this year, but I’m close.

I’m not normally a big, rah-rah Big 12 guy. It would be nice, though, if the conference sent 4–5 teams through to the Sweet 16. The league got a lot of hype this year, all deserved based on the regular season. It’s always a pisser when conferences fall on their collective face in March. See the Big 8 in 1990 for one of the best examples.

NCAA Tournament

I resolved a few months ago not to get worked up about KU’s eventual seed and path in the NCAA tournament. That national championship glow has to last at least a year, right? Also, I’m getting old and have less energy to devote to such things. Play who they tell you to play and it will all work out. The tournament is a complete crap shoot anyway. Sometimes things break your way. More often than not, the luck will be against you.

I expected KU to get sent West. I figured the NCAA, whether out of malice (as some suggest) or just because that’s the way the numbers worked out, would keep Houston in the Midwest. So I wasn’t surprised when the bracket revealed exactly that.

I do not understand why the NCAA always sends out the committee chair to talk to CBS, and that person is woefully unprepared to talk about whatever glaring issue the people in the TV studio bring up to them. As a KU fan I can name at least three times that the chairperson, when asked a KU-related seeding question, said something profoundly dumb or factually incorrect. I’m guessing fans of other schools have their own lists.

Sunday the dumb comment was that Houston got the nod over KU because, paraphrasing, “they were more competitive in their losses.” OK. If you’re looking at raw results, strength of schedule has to come into play, right? And KU (#1) played a much more difficult schedule than Houston ( #96). Being more competitive in losses against worse teams makes no sense.

Listen, there are lots of perfectly reasonable justifications for putting Houston above Kansas. Houston was higher in the NET and most other predictive measures than KU. If the committee chair, who was speaking from beautiful Carmel, IN, had used one of those evidence points, I think there were would have been a lot less bitching.

Much of the problem is that there are just too many metrics to use when evaluating teams, the NCAA seems to adjust their thinking every year without preparing the public, and the Joe Lunardis of the world are always applying this year’s data to last year’s NCAA logic. We’ve been told for several years that Quad 1 wins were perhaps the biggest determining factor in separating teams. That clearly was not the case this year. So next year’s predictive brackets will probably adjust accordingly and we’ll get surprised again on Selection Sunday.

Or maybe the NCAA is just pissed that KU won the title last year, Bill Self is still coaching, and it looks like the school is going to escape the hammer of massive penalties the organization was hoping to drop over the five-plus years they’ve been investigating the program.

But I said I wasn’t going to get worked up about it, or buy into conspiracy theories.

I’m more worried about the draw than the location where KU will be playing. The West is loaded; five of the top 11 Ken Pomeroy teams are in the West. Six of the top 20. That’s a gauntlet for everyone in that region, not just KU.

At first glance, I think a potential Arkansas game in the second round is a brutal matchup. Arkansas is basically Texas without the experience and discipline. Long, athletic, disruptive, and super talented although very young. They seem like a team that KU could either handle by playing even for 30 minutes then overwhelming late with their experience, or that could dominate KU from the opening tip and get an easy win.

Of course Arkansas has kind of sucked for the past month, so while KU fans stress about that, it may be Illinois lining up against them on Saturday. And the Illini are a whole different kind of wild-mood-swing opponent.

Getting out of Des Moines isn’t a given. Especially if Kevin McCullar’s old man back doesn’t cooperate.

While KU indeed claimed the outright Big 12 title, the last week of the season wasn’t the most convincing. Narrow wins at home against West Virginia and Texas Tech, each of which came down to one possession that KU was fortunate on, followed by the blowout loss in Austin. Comfortable wins over WVU and Iowa State in Kansas City helped, but a second spanking by the Longhorns raises more questions.

I worry that this year’s Jayhawks are one of those teams that put so much emphasis on winning the conference championship that they’ve worn themselves out for the Big Dance. Over the last month they are one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country, often a sign of weariness. Fortunately their defense has been one of the five best in the country over the same stretch. Defense might win championships but you’re not winning two, four, or six games in March if you can’t hit shots.[1]

So my expectations are low. I would not be shocked if the Jayhawks only have one more win in them. I am hoping for two so I can at least leave for spring break with them still alive.

Picks to come later this week after I spend more time looking at the bracket.

  1. Unless you have Kemba Walker.  ↩

Weekend Notes

March 6, 2023 /

College Hoops

I’ll save most of my thoughts for a post later in the week. It is always a bit of a relief when we reach this point in the season and have a few days off.

November and December are usually a mix of big games and ones that KU should win easily. I’m always left wanting more from that part of the schedule, as the Jayhawks often have week-long gaps between games.

The Big 12 schedule wears me down. I don’t know if it is just getting older and it’s harder for me to stay up for a late start and then have my normal struggles to come down afterward, or it’s still some remaining DNA from my youth when the Big 8 only played on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but two months of Saturday-Monday/Tuesday turnarounds make me feel like I’m playing and not watching. I want more time to savor those Saturday wins, or recover from the losses.

So when we hit conference tournament week and everyone takes a few days off, it is a nice break before the real stress of March kicks in.

Naturally in a few weeks I’ll be missing basketball. Such is life as a sports fan.

Kid Hoops

L’s winter league team wrapped up their season Sunday. They were supposed to play a semifinal Thursday and would have likely lost. But that team was unavailable for the weekend’s championship, so they forfeited.

Which left us playing a team that beat us by 41 three weeks ago. Fun.

The championship game got moved to Sunday morning. We were the only game in the building, which was weird. It gave our girls an opportunity to go through a real warmup instead of the three minutes of rushed layup lines on normal game day. I think that pregame shooting paid off.

We lost by 8 but played tough the entire game. We had the lead until just before halftime, dug a 12-point hole in the second half, and trimmed that down to four late.

It helped us that they were missing one good player and another girl who sucks but is super physical and fouls all the time and scares our girls.

Also L played her ass off.

She had a season-high 16 points, a couple assists, more rebounds than she’s had all season, and a couple steals. Those points didn’t come from just getting to the rim. She hit one 3, another just inside the arc, and two baseline jumpers.

Several of her teammates played their best games of the year as well. It wasn’t enough, but it sure was better than getting embarrassed.

We went straight from there to a meeting for her travel team. The program director brought in all the 7th–8th grade teams to talk about organization-wide goals, show them some sets they want all teams to run, and then watch the high level high school teams go through a workout. Not sure they got much out of it, but L was happy to see most of her teammates again. They begin practice next week with their first tournament the weekend of the 18th.

HS Hoops

Both Cathedral sectional games were on TV, and we watched each of them. Friday they played their typical sloppy ball and nearly blew an 11-point lead in the last 90 seconds, but held on to win by 4.

Then Saturday they took on one of the two Indiana teams they lost to during the regular season, a 10-point loss in the City championship game in January.

The Irish were ready for revenge. They jumped out to a 14–2 lead before play was stopped for 45 minutes because of a rim malfunction. After play resumed they didn’t lose any of their momentum and led by 25 at half, gave ten of that back early in the third, then went on a 16–0 run and cruised to a 43 point win. FORTY-THREE!!! Crazily it was the school’s first back-to-back sectional titles in 25 years.

They advance to regionals where they will face the other Indiana team that beat them this year: undefeated, #1 Ben Davis. BD beat them by 12 in December. Revenge game #2? If Cathedral takes care of the ball they can beat anyone. But they love to throw it/kick it/hand it away.

More Faux Spring

It was nearly 80 one day last week. It’s been in the low 60s several other days. We had heavy, spring-like rains Friday. A cold snap is coming, but it’s been nice to pretend it is spring for a few days.

We got all our spring garden trimmings done Saturday. Some years I’m all bundled up and taking regular breaks to get those knocked out. This year I was sweating.

An Old Friend

For the first time in several years, I found Boulevard’s Irish Ale at a local liquor store. It bums me out that Boulevard has scaled back their national distribution and eliminated a couple of my favorite beers in recent years. I wondered if it would take a trip back to KC this time of year to ever drink Irish Ale, my very favorite BLVD beer, again.

But I found two six packs and bought them both. I’m going to run back to that store later and see if they got any more that I can nab before it disappears for the season.

Weekend Notes

February 27, 2023 /

Kid Hoops

A week ago L’s team beat some good sixth graders in the best game they’ve played all year. This week they played another sixth grade team and got crushed.

It was a 50–26 loss. And that was with us scoring six points in the last minute. The team we played made at least 7 3’s to our one. They worked us over pretty good on the defensive end. They dominated the boards. Nothing really went right for us.

L was feeling under the weather and looked like she had zero energy. We were missing our best player. We had another girl who hadn’t played with us all year and was clueless. And another girl who has played a couple times but never goes to practice showed up and had no idea who she was supposed to be guarding when we were on defense. Not that any of that made any difference.

Our tournament starts Thursday, the first game against a team that beat the sixth graders that just beat us. So doubting that L’s team will make a run.

In good news, we had our parent Zoom meeting for the travel team Sunday night. They will start practicing in two weeks. We will miss the first tournament of the season because of spring break, so L won’t get a travel game until April. She’s excited to rejoin those girls, though.

Jayhawk Talk

Whew.

I had a bad feeling about this run of West Virginia and Texas Tech back-to-back. It felt like too many people were chalking them up as wins and assuming KU would be playing for, at worst, a tie for the Big 12 title next weekend in Austin. I hoped the team was taking them more seriously than KU fans were.

I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, whether it was the KU guys not being focused or WVU just playing great, but it was too damn close of a game.

I missed the second half for a social event. I was extra stressed because I couldn’t find the broadcast anywhere on Sirius while we were driving. I checked the score when we stopped to pick friends up and was relieved to see KU up by seven late. A few minutes later I checked again and let out an “Oh shit!” when I saw it was a one-point game. Reminded me of almost exactly a year ago when we went out as the KU-Texas game was going on and my peaks at the score of an intense, close, low-scoring game made me want to throw up.

A dub is a dub, especially on a day that saw crazy ends to games in Tucson and Iowa City. With Texas losing to Baylor, the Jayhawks are one win away from clinching at least a share of the title.

Social Outing

S and I attended Cathedral’s annual fundraiser Saturday evening. We’ve gone once before, and that was your standard “dress up, drink, eat, and donate some money” type deal. But this year there was a Yellowstone/Western theme.

If you know me, you know I don’t have much time for the cowboy thing. So I bought a hipster Western shirt and a $20 cowboy hat from Amazon. That was enough to fake the look for a few hours.

It was a fun night. We hung with some friends we don’t see often enough. Saw a ton of St P’s people. It was fun to talk college choices with the others who also have seniors. S ran into lots of people she went to school with back in the day.

We did not bid on anything. Someone did take home a very cute puppy for $10,500. Catholics, man!

M was working the event to get National Honor Society points. One of her friends was tasked with walking around and showing the puppy off to people before bid time. M made sure that girl kept swinging by us. My response each time was that she is four and a half years away from being able to buy her own dog.

Afterward she agreed $10K was too much for a puppy.

I haven’t heard the final haul but several fancy trips also went for over 10K. Again, Catholics!

The Decision

I supposed I’ve buried the lede. As some of you know from direct messages or my Facebook post, M decided last Wednesday that she will be enrolling at the University of Cincinnati next fall. She is excited to have made her final choice and relieved the process is over.

Now begins the work on housing. She confirmed that she can only request one roommate, so she’s back in the pool “meeting” people and trying to find a match.

She got more good news Friday, learning that UC accepts credit from Semester at Sea. That is now on the radar for her junior year, following the path of one aunt and one uncle who participated in that program during their undergrad days.[1]

So she’s going to be a Bearcat. KU plays football in Cincinnati next Thanksgiving weekend, which may be a tough one to attend. The basketball Jayhawks should be in the Queen City sometime in the next two years as well. I already warned her I’m going to be super obnoxious to her on those days, whether I go to the games or not.

  1. That aunt also went back as an adult and served as a counselor, guide, or whatever they are called.  ↩

Jayhawk Talk: Escaping Ft. Worth

February 22, 2023 /

Monday night’s win in Ft. Worth deserves a few notes.

In Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, he attempts to determine what the perfect win is. Now this was British soccer he was talking about, so the standard is a bit different. I think he settled on a 3–2 triumph when your side trails both 1–0 and 2–1 and scores the winner late. That result would be full of drama and angst, have moments of joy, and a big, cathartic ending.

I’m not sure what the college basketball equivalent of the perfect win is. But Monday’s KU win at TCU was not it.

That doesn’t mean the win wasn’t great. It qualified as a Big Monday Win That Got Me So Pumped Up I Couldn’t Sleep For Hours win. Other than the result, though, nothing about that game was aesthetically pleasing.

It felt like both teams were completely exhausted in the second half, with each side missing some very makable shots. All the energy was being poured into defense which left no legs for offense. The weird thing was it felt like KU was totally in control, yet I’d look down and see that TCU could tie on the current possession. Fran Fraschilla mentioned that it felt like KU was up 12. My TCU brother-in-law texted me saying the Frogs should be down 14. Just a weird game.

In the end, though, to walk out of a road gym with a tough-ass win that the Jayhawks controlled almost the entire night, against a team that beat them by 23 in Allen Fieldhouse three weeks ago, was still an outstanding result.

Adding to the strangeness was the pendulum swing of officiating. The refs largely let the guys play Monday. Which is fine. But it feels like there should be some middle point between not calling anything and blowing the whistle every possession. I know some of that is due to how Big 12 teams play such physical defense, with an emphasis on initiating contact. That makes it tough to find a middle ground. No one wants 2.5 hour games with 40–50 fouls. But the last four minutes or so of Monday’s contest felt more like a playground game where both teams agreed to a “No Blood, No Foul” standard.

To be clear, I think that favored KU in those final 2–3 minutes, as TCU was often hunting fouls since they couldn’t get good looks and the refs weren’t bailing them out.

KU is playing its best defense of the year, at the absolute best time. DaJuan Harris and Kevin McCullar are absolutely shutting down opposing guards. Ernest Udeh has brought a big, physical presence that completely changes KU’s defense in the moments he’s on the court. Bill Self loves talking about how teams that consistently win do so by making their opponents play poorly. KU has finally gotten to that level of play on the defensive end.

I LOVED the postgame pettiness from KU. I had not heard/seen that TCU took the game ball from their win in Lawrence and posted some videos with it on social media. I have zero problem with that. You come into Allen Fieldhouse and run the Jayhawks out of the building, you can do whatever you want.

KU grabbing the game ball Monday and responding with their own videos was great. Especially since you could tell they weren’t just reacting but more mocking the Frogs in the process. Oh, and Gradey Dick showing up for a postgame interview wearing one of the shirts handed out to the TCU crowd, with a big, red W written on it in marker was incredible. It’s a shame that guy is going to be a lottery pick because he has definitely has that edge that would drive people crazy if he hung around another year.

An ugly win, but a huge win. KU avoids the TCU sweep. They get a massive road win. They (briefly) take over first place in the Big 12 with three games to play. They grab their 14th Quad 1 win of the season. Most importantly, they seem to be doing the classic Bill Self era thing where they are playing their best basketball in mid-February.

Weekend Notes

February 19, 2023 /

An early weekend roundup, as M and I are headed to Cincinnati early Monday for an admitted students orientation. We will likely do the same at IU in March as she continues to gather information before she makes a final decision.

Kid Hoops

L’s team played a sixth grade squad Saturday. That always worries me because if a sixth grade team is playing up they are usually pretty good. Checking scores, they had beat a team that beat us by 20 by 32, so it seemed a little bleak.

Our girls played their best game of the year from the opening tip and earned a 50–45 win. We lead by double-digits for a good stretch of the game and only let it get close because we were sloppy in the final three minutes.

L had a great first half, scoring eight and getting a couple straight steals off the other team’s best player. She didn’t score in the second half – she only took one shot – but still played great D and had a few nice assists. Her best friend took advantage of being the tallest kid on the court and scored 21.

It also helped that we had a girl who hadn’t played with us all year. She’s a really good athlete and has a decent hoops IQ, although she’s a little raw. L played with her at summer camp last year and they got along really well, so was excited she finally showed up. They look like they could be a really good guard duo together at CHS next year.

Those sixth graders were good. I think they’re a team that locks people up on D then hits a bunch of 3’s. We were lucky that we could handle their pressure, guard them on the perimeter, and when they did take 3’s, they only hit a few. Our size advantage meant we owned the boards as well.

One more week left in the regular season before the tournament and then a return to travel ball.

Jayhawk Talk

LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! WHAT A GAME!!!!!!

Down 17, win by 16. I wasn’t even nervous at halftime, this is just what happens with this program right now.[1] Play like ass in the first half, then completely flip the script and come roaring back after halftime. The fact it turned into a blowout instead of a nail-biter and was against Scott Drew made it even better.

Ok, so I was a little pissed at halftime. But I figured Baylor wouldn’t keep shooting 81% from 3 and KU would shoot better than 9% behind the arc. Still, being down 13 to such a good team, even at home, seemed pretty bleak. With a trip to Ft. Worth on the schedule for Monday, it seemed doubly bleak.

So, for the first time this year, I switched seats. Yes, just as I did for the K-State game last January and for the national championship game in April, I moved from the couch to the chair next to the couch.

And it fucking worked again you naysayers.

In other superstitious notes, I hated the Sunflower uniforms that KU wore. I was advocating for burning them at halftime and taking a technical foul to switch into something else. I guess I have to support continuing to wear them since we came back and won? Shit.

Gameday was in town. Ochai, CB, Remy, and others from last year’s team were back in town. The sun was shining through the windows. The crowd was nuts. KU is in first place in the Big 12 with four games to play. It was a great fucking day in Allen Fieldhouse.

Rock Chalk, bitches.

Signs of Spring

It’s been warmer more often than it’s been colder the past couple weeks. The sun is coming up earlier and staying up later. I just scheduled our mulch delivery for May. Spring break is five weeks away.

But the biggest sign that winter is loosening its hold on us is that our bird friends are returning. We had our first two geese of the year in the yard this week. They always show up when our neighbors take their old-people spring break. Sure enough, the neighbors left on Saturday and the geese arrived two days later.

Then on Thursday we had two ducks splashing around in the pond that forms in our yard when we get rain.

It’s still mid-February and this is the Midwest, so we will get bitch-slapped by Mother Nature a few more times over the next 6–8 weeks. But spring, she is a coming.

  1. Totally not true.  ↩

Jayhawk Talk: Streaking

February 15, 2023 /

A few brief-ish notes about the Jayhawks, who are suddenly in a three-way tie for first place in the Big 12 after a very good week.

Tuesday’s win at Oklahoma State was terrific in many ways. It capped a week in which KU got better over the three-game stretch, beating two very good teams relatively comfortably. It was a fantastic team performance, with the offense looking as good as it has looked all year. That was especially important as Jalen Wilson struggled and DaJuan Harris and Kevin McCullar both rolled their ankles and either missed chunks of the game (Harris) or left the game without returning (McCullar).

Ernest Udeh continued to provide nice minutes. Although his numbers weren’t as flashy as against Oklahoma, he slowed down Kalib Boone. Zuby Ejiofor got back on the court for the first time in three weeks and also guarded Boone better than KJ Adams did.

McCullar was probably playing his best game of the year before he got hurt: 15 points on 6–9 shooting, 8 assists with no turnovers, and though he was only credited with one steal he was super disruptive on the defensive end of the court. He also hit two huge baskets when both Wilson and Harris were out, in a moment when it seemed like OSU could crawl back into the game. The health of his right ankle is HUGE not just for the Baylor game Saturday, but for how KU closes out the final third of the Big 12 schedule.

And Gradey Dick got going! His first three of the game was on one of the prettiest plays you’ll see, with Harris passing to Ejiofor to McCullar to Dick who hit a rainbow at the first half buzzer to give KU a lead they never relinquished. He hit his first three shots to open the second half, which, given the final score, effectively ended the game.

Eighty-seven points. On the road. Against one of the best defensive teams in the league, one that seems designed to give KU fits at its weakest point. And with KU’s leading scorer only playing 28 minutes because of foul trouble, and only scoring nine points in the first 35 minutes of the game.

That, my friends, is a confidence-building win.

I’ve been laughing at ESPN’s Chris Spatola’s recurring line that fans should “call your congressperson” to fix the scourge of replay reviews that are ruining the college game. It’s a little over the top, but I like it. You would think the NCAA, in its efforts to regain control of college sports, would step in and make some changes. I think an overwhelming majority of fans would be fine with restrictions on reviews. But since we know the NCAA won’t do a damn thing about it, I guess Congress is the next step.

One more announcer note, I loved how in one of the KU games Jay Bilas did recently, he threw some subtle shade at how Texas ruined the Big 12 from day one. When ESPN flashed Danny Manning’s career stats, he wondered why those records were only called Big 8 records. “Those other schools joined the Big 8, right? So shouldn’t the records still stand?” While he was broadly blaming the four schools that joined the Big 8 in 1996, everyone knows it was Texas that nuked the existing record books.

As a KU fan, I approve. We need to get Danny back on top of all the conference lists he deserves to lead. As a child of the ‘80s, I enjoyed Bilas sticking up for the era he played in.

I think I complain about this once a year, but it drives me crazy that ESPN can’t be consistent in crowd audio. One game it sounds like you’re in the arena, with all the noise from the crowd pouring out of your speakers. Other nights it seems like they have one, small microphone laying on the press table. While you see fans going crazy, the audio is more like you’re a couple blocks away and only getting a small hint of the roars and yells. Tuesday’s game had great audio. When KU played at Iowa State a week ago it was awful.

Weekend Notes

February 13, 2023 /

HS Hoops

I ended up going to the Cathedral game Friday night after C and a friend decided at the last minute that they wanted to go. Amazingly this is the first boys game I’ve attended in my four years as a CHS parent.

We only stayed for three quarters, as C’s back started acting up around halftime. We saw a very tense game in front of a packed gym. The #8 Irish were playing Fishers, who aren’t ranked but seem to have some good, young talent and gave Cathedral fits on defense all night.

Xavier Booker barely played because of foul trouble, and wasn’t very effective when he was in. Two other key CHS players struggled with fouls as well. Still, their backups went on a run before half and built an 8-point lead. Fishers countered with something like a 14–2 run to take the lead in the third. That spurt ended when they got a T for a player dunking after a foul was called at midcourt. The foul was legit but the T was a little suspect.

It flipped the entire game. CHS had a three point lead when we left, got it up to six, and survived three last minute 3-point attempts by FHS to win by three. I guess Booker had a nice alley-oop dunk after we left but didn’t do much else.

I was not super impressed by CHS. They have a lot of athletic talent but do not play together well, make bad decisions, and don’t take advantage of Booker, who likes to roam outside the lane rather than use his size inside. They have been missing their best shooter, who is another D1 recruit, for about a month. I’ve watched them on TV with him this year and they don’t play much smarter when he’s on the court.

They are now 15–4, with two of those losses to out-of-state teams. They kind of coasted last season and kicked it in when the tournament began, so maybe they’ll do the same this year. It sure helped that they had two guards now playing at D1 schools who could steady the team when things went sideways, and I think those guys not being on the roster hurts more than Booker’s development helps.

But I’m not a coach, what do I know.

Jayhawk Talk

Another slow start in a Saturday game. I’m not sure why these seem to plague KU so much, but you can pretty much count on it happening if they play at 11 or noon central.

Fortunately Oklahoma did not play nearly as well as they did a month ago in Lawrence and the Jayhawks used two huge runs to blow the Sooners out.

Ernest Udeh continued his remarkable development. He’s just doing simple stuff on offense. Screening, rolling hard, and dunking. I had to listen to part of the game on SiriusXM and the KU guys were calling him “Diet Doke” after his third dunk. Not sure he deserves to be compared to Udoka Azubuike quite yet. Smart coaches are going to begin pressuring him when he gets the ball in handoffs on the perimeter, because he clearly is not comfortable and passes it back as quickly as he can.

The real revelation was his defense. He was only credited with two blocks but I know he had at least one more and challenged several other shots. When Tanner Groves started throwing his old man fakes at Ernest, he just stood still, kept his arms straight up, and forced Groves to pass.

You can’t read too much into these late season surges by freshmen. He has put together several solid games in a row, though, and I think KU fans can safely assume he will be in the rotation going forward.

Former Villanova coach Jay Wright did the game for CBS, his second KU game this year. I really like him. He needs to polish his delivery some, but he gives really good insights. Some of that is based on just being a year removed from coaching and his familiarity with what both Bill Self and Porter Moser do. So far, though, he’s much better with Bill Raftery than Grant Hill was. It helps that he clearly really gets along and respects Self and enjoys watching KU play.

Kid Hoops

One game this Saturday, against a team we lost to by four three weeks ago. We were missing our best player, though, and you are never sure who else will show up. Plus L’s knees took a turn for the worse last week and she was going to be a step slow.

Oh, and the team we played had three girls they didn’t have in our first meeting. One of them is the daughter of a former NBA player. I wouldn’t say she’s a star, but she’s better than anyone we have. Another is the big girl L has played against in CYO ball for the last three years. Those two got pretty much every rebound all day. Their guards kept our offense from doing anything. We had three turnovers before we got the ball across the half court stripe for the first time.

In short, it was a disaster. We lost 57–16 and the game honestly wasn’t that close. The other team hit six 3’s (two of them banked in), didn’t miss a free throw, and while I wouldn’t say they were super gifted on offense, they played super smart and made the easy shots their offense gave them.

About that big girl from CYO. She just joined this team, which is through the Catholic high school in Hamilton County, two weeks ago. We had heard her parents were shopping her around, visiting three Catholic and two other private high schools asking the coaches if they would run their offenses around her.[1] This girl is over six feet tall – and has been since 5th grade – her mom had a chance to play in the WNBA and her dad did play in the NFL. But she’s stopped growing, can’t jump, and is slow. She is a beast on defense and rebounding in middle school age-group ball. I’m not sure she’s going to be a stud in high school.

The real key is she has a younger sister who will absolutely be a star. The parents and grandparents are royal pains, but I can see how you take Big Sis and deal with them to get the younger sister in three years.

L had two measly points and was pissed about her play after. I told her not to sweat it. She was playing on a bad knee, against a really good team, and with her usual weird mix of teammates. Chalk it up to a bad day and move on, hoping to do better next week.

Super Bowl

So close to a classic, ruined by a terrible last two minutes.

Listen, the holding call against the Eagles on the Chiefs’ game-winning drive likely did not change the KC’s final score. The Chiefs almost certainly would have made the field goal that won the game from a slightly longer distance.

The penalty did rob us of a potentially amazing ending. Philly would have had the ball one more time, with a chance for another lengthy drive to tie or win. The Chiefs defense, which had made some tremendous plays all night, would have one last chance to contain Jalen Hurts. Maybe the game ends in a whimper with the Eagles turning the ball over on downs. I like to think something special would have happened, one way or the other, had that flag not been thrown.

Instead we got a call that hadn’t been made all night, the Chiefs intentionally falling down at the one, and then letting the clock run down while everyone stood around doing nothing. It took all the drama out of what had been a really good game.

I guess that’s more a critique of how modern football is played in general than last night specifically.

I thought Rihanna’s halftime show was pretty flat. Part of that was the presentation. I bet that whole scene was amazing to watch in person. However, it felt like something was lost in the translation to TV. You couldn’t get the whole perspective of the physical layers or size of the performance. The color choices – bright reds and shocking whites – combined with big differences between light and dark in the stadium was too much for the dynamic range of Fox’s cameras. Most of the colors looked blown out and were hard to look at.

My biggest old man beef was how Rihanna lip synced so much of the show. Props to her for being up on those platforms; I have no idea how they weren’t swaying a lot more than they did. And for doing so while pregnant! But this is the Super Bowl. Show some life, belt out your biggest jams instead of casually riding in-and-out over the recorded track.

I’m sure the Fox News crowd how some other critiques of her performance.

Favorite commercials, in no particular order:
Will Ferrell for GM/Netflix
The Breaking Bad guys for Pop Corners
The Bud Light hold music ad
The Farmer’s Dog piece that apparently made everyone cry. I’m not a dog person so I just thought it was a nice piece.

  1. Petty, CYO sports rumors are the best.  ↩
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