D's Notebook

Tag: football (Page 1 of 28)

Weekend Notes

January 21, 2025 /

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

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

KU Hoops

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFL Playoffs

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

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

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

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

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

CFP

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

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

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

College Visit

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

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

Polar Vortex

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

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

Weekend Notes

January 13, 2025 /

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

Weather

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

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

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

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

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

J Term

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

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

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

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

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

KU Hoops

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

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

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

CFP

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

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

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

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

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

I might watch a movie instead of the game.

NFL Playoffs

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

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

HS Hoops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend Notes

December 23, 2024 /

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

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

I’m not sure why, either.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now some quick-ish words about the weekend.

CFP

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

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

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

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

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

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

HS Hoops

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

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

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

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

KU Hoops

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

Colts/Pacers

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

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

Rickey

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIP to one of the greatest.

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

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

Weekend Notes

December 16, 2024 /

A slightly quieter weekend. No sitting on the couch for 183 hours watching football. I actually got out of the house both days. Multiple times! Let’s review.

College Girls

I’ll share the biggest, best news up top: C got her acceptance letter from IU on Thursday. That’s the only school she’s really interested in, so I think she’s locked into being a Hoosier.[1] She’s pretty excited. Coincidentally she wore an IU shirt to school Thursday. It’s like she knew the letter was coming.

She found out a full month later than M did two years ago; apparently IU did rolling acceptances two years ago based on when you got your application in and switched to letting most early admission candidates know on the same set of days this year. We kind of wish they had waited another seven days so we can keep C focused for finals this week. Nothing to sap a kid’s motivation like telling her she’s been accepted to the college she wants to attend.

C and L have a review day today, three full days of finals, then a half day on Friday before they begin their holiday break.

M wrapped up her finals Thursday morning and was home by early afternoon. Seems like it was a good semester. Financial accounting was not her bag – is it anyone’s? – and that will be the first B on her college transcript. But she’s in marketing, not the CPA path, so surviving and advancing is the real goal with that class.

HS Hoops

We spent 3+ hours at CHS watching ball Saturday, so I’ll start with a review of last week’s three games.

Tuesday we traveled to ZHS, a big suburban school that tends to be good. Last year they beat us by 19 but we knew they are very young this year. We took advantage, winning by 20 in a game that was not that close. We hit shots, played good D, and made hustle plays. JV also won by 20. A good night.

Thursday we played a fellow Catholic school from the suburbs. We expected them to be trash. They were. Yet we only won by 20. A classic example of playing down to our competition’s level. Seriously, their varsity looked like a JV team, at least on offense. They were a scrappy team on defense but were just atrocious when trying to score. Each time we’d get the lead up to 20 or so, we’d go brain dead and let them cut 8–10 points off the deficit. JV also won easily.

The most exciting part of this night was driving to the game in an evening snow storm. There wasn’t much snow, but it was cold enough that the roads slicked-up quick. Throw in rush hour traffic and it took us 50 minutes to make what would normally have been a 20–22 minute trip. The only time we slipped or slid was pulling into the GCHS parking lot.

Finally, Saturday we took on undefeated #6 2A team EH. They went to Semistate the past two seasons but lost a ton of seniors from last year. We knew they have a truly great guard, but if we could contain her and limit the rest of the team, we’d have a good chance to win.

Until one of our two best players didn’t show up because she was sick. And we decided to let their best player go ahead and score 35. We had to put a JV girl on her for a couple stretches because of the missing player plus foul trouble. We kept digging holes and trying to climb out but let it get out of hand in the second half. The margin got over 15 points a couple times, we ended up losing by 13. JV won by 50. We were kind of incredulous that their varsity can be so good and JV so bad.

Roughly halfway through the season varsity is 5–6. JV is 9–2.

It is finals week so we don’t play again until Saturday.

Friday night L and I went to watch her middle school buddy play for our big rival school. Coincidentally they played the team we face this coming week, so it was a scouting trip, too. L proudly wore her CHS sweatshirt and left her coat in the car. I admired her confidence. There are tons of St P’s families at BCHS, so we got to see a lot of old friends.

Her buddy didn’t play much or very well, which was a bummer. L took mental notes on both teams to share with her coach.

We let her drop her crutches on Saturday. She’s not officially cleared but we also let her go over to the Y and shoot a little without her boot on Sunday afternoon. She said she lost her jump shot. I kept to myself that she didn’t have much of one before she got hurt.

There’s still some pain in her foot, but not like it was before the resting began. Two more weeks in the boot before she gets re-evaluated. Knock on wood, between some more rest, shoe inserts, and tape she’ll be cleared to play in our January 8 game, and then in the City Tournament the next week.

KU Hoops

Well that was better.

Bill Self compared North Carolina State to Missouri in terms of their physical abilities and style of play. I didn’t see much of that Saturday, although maybe it was a representation of the difference in playing at home vs on the road.

Naturally, most of the game took place at the same time as the CHS games, so I was following along and just made it home in time to see the final minutes, then watched the recording.

It is kind of crazy that KU has now beat NC State 13 straight times. That doesn’t seem possible in a non-conference matchup between two power conference teams.

Colts

I only saw the first half, as we went out to dinner Sunday evening. When we got home and I checked the highlights, I was pleased that I missed the second half. What a horrific effort that was! Jonathan Taylor fumbling a touchdown for a touchback for no reason. A completely idiotic trick play that turned into a pick-six for the Broncos. I remain in the You Have To Play Anthony Richardson camp. But days like yesterday make that a very tough place to be. He misses soooooo many throws, often the easiest ones, often badly. I’ve said it multiple times and I’ll say it again: even when he makes a good throw, there’s something about his ball that makes it very difficult to catch. I saw a couple in the first half yesterday that were relatively well-placed and for whatever reason the receivers just couldn’t bring them in. Maybe they’re surprised when the ball actually gets to them?

I don’t exactly have my finger on the pulse of the city, but I gather a lot of impatience with the direction of the franchise. 2023 seemed like a great year to be drafting a quarterback. In retrospect, the Colts may have been smarter to draft a non-QB a year ago, tank last season with a fill-in, and then grab a QB in this year’s draft. As with just about everything else they’ve done since Andrew Luck retired, the Colts managed to mess that up, though.

Pacers

On a bit of an upturn? They’ve looked better over the past week and won three-of-four. Their next nine games are brutal though – at Phoenix, at Sacramento, at Golden State, OKC at home, back-to-backs at Boston, Milwaukee at home, at Miami, and Phoenix at home. Is 3–6 a best-case scenario?

  1. Cincinnati is the only other school she applied to.  ↩

Weekend Notes

December 9, 2024 /

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

College Football

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KU Hoops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pacers

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

HS Hoops

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

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

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

JV won by 20, which was cool.

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

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

KU Football

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jayhawk Talk

December 3, 2024 /

A few thoughts about how the Jayhawks fared Thanksgiving week.

Hoops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So it was not looking good.

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

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

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

Same can be said, hopefully, for the Jayhawks.

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

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

Football

Well, I called it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend Notes

December 2, 2024 /

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

Thanksgiving

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

College Girl

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

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

College Football

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

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

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

KU

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

Colts

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

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

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

SNF

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

Pacers

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

High School Hoops

Three nights of CHS basketball over the last week.

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

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

Guess what happened next?

That’s right, I jinxed those poor girls.

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

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

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

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

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

Travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend Notes

November 25, 2024 /

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

KU Football

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

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

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

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

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

IU

Welp, saw that coming a mile away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colts

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

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

Pacers

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

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

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

High School Hoops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend Notes

November 18, 2024 /

A Great Weekend To Be A Jayhawk

Saturday, specifically.

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

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

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

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

Shows what I know.

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

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

Rock Chalk, bitches.

Colts

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

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

I loved it. Because it was true.

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

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

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

Pacers

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

Body Stuff

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

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

Weekend Notes

November 11, 2024 /

A busy weekend with more driving than normal, some big events I was not able to watch live, and the standard wide range of topics to discuss.

High School Hoops

L’s sophomore season kicked off Friday with a trip 90 minutes north to play Norwell, class 3A runners up last year. We played their varsity over the summer in a close, fun game we closed with a big run to win. NHS lost several seniors from a year ago, but are traditionally a very good program with a strong youth program, so we figured this would be a tough night.

JV was a disaster. It looked like our girls had never faced a trapping defense before. We trailed 17–8 after one quarter and that was as close as the game got. We scored one in the second quarter, four in the third, and three in the fourth to lose 58–16. L played most of the first three quarters, scoring just two on 1–4 from the field. As a bonus she had to run off the court and throw up in the second quarter. We’re hoping it was just something she ate before the game and not her body still trying to get the mono out of her system. We let a freshman score 22 on us. She was good, but she was not 22 points in a JV game good.

The dad I was sitting with and I guessed we had between 20–25 turnovers in the first half. L later confirmed that they turned it over 23 times in those 14 minutes, 50 for the entire game. That’s what happens when JV just serves as a scout team in practice.

Varsity was a little better. Our girls had an early lead then gave up a 30–10 run, but trailed by just 10 at halftime. Then they gave up nine-straight to open the second half and were in trouble. They made a great rally in the fourth quarter and cut it to four a couple times, but never got closer and lost by eight. We sat by some very nice Norwell people, which was a bonus.

L was officially on the varsity roster, but did not suit up for that game. She definitely had a lot of work to do to climb into that rotation. Two games this week.

HS Football

While L and her teammates were in action up near Ft. Wayne, CHS was playing #1 Lawrence North for the sectional football championship. None of us could not get a good signal in the gym, so could only get updates when someone ran outside for a few seconds. CHS threw a pick six early and trailed 7–0 at halftime. The CHS defense had three interceptions of their own in the first half but the offense could not turn them into points. The game got away from the Irish in the second half and they lost 24–7, ending their season at 6–4. It was their first loss in a sectional game in the five years they’ve played in 6A. If they lose in sectionals again next year I believe they’ll move down to 5A for L’s senior year. Unless the IHSAA changes the rules again to keep CHS from dropping a class.

KU Hoops

Also at the same time as L’s game was the big North Carolina – Kansas game in Lawrence.

College basketball on Friday nights is dumb. I know, I know, Saturdays and Sundays are for football this time of year. Doesn’t make this scheduling any dumber. Move this to December when weekend slots are a little easier to find. Still, you can’t criticize the schools too much since they agreed to play a home-and-home series rather than drop this in an NBA arena or attach it to some kind of special event on a neutral court. KU just finished with IU. They start a series this year with Duke that has two neutral court games and two on campus. Bill Self continues to check boxes on places he wants to take the Jayhawks in the final act of his career.

Try as I might, I could not get any score updates on my phone, although the occasional text from a friend came through. The other KU dad on the team got a running score update from Google, so we saw that KU jumped out to a big lead then blew it all after halftime. Just as the varsity game ended his wife was somehow able to get ESPN to stream on her phone, so we watched the last 90 seconds of KU’s win. We both felt a little bad about being pumped about the win while our girls were hanging their heads about their losses.

I watched the recording of the game Sunday and was pretty pleased. A great start from a super-balanced team. Obviously taking the foot off the gas in the second half was not good. It was like they just stopped playing defense. Zeke Mayo belongs at this level. Hunter Dickinson needs to get his stamina back. If Flory sticks around a few years he might be the best rebounder of the Self era. I like all the options this team has, and they should get better playing together as they get more comfortable.

I have a few broader thoughts about the team, but seems better to save those until I’ve seen them in a real game a few more times.

Hey, guess when KU plays next? Tuesday night at 6:30 Eastern. Guess what high school team will be playing at the same time again? I’m not enthused about how the schedules are lining up this season. At least we can get a signal in the CHS game so I can keep one eye on the Jayhawks vs Irish grad Xavier Booker.

Dude’s Day

L and I got home around 11:00 Friday night. I stayed up a little bit to have a snack, talk to S a little, then make sure my car was charging before setting my alarm for 7:00 AM and going to bed. Saturday was M’s sorority’s “Dude’s Day” and I needed to be back on the road around 8:00.

Why “Dude’s Day?” Because kids these days want to be inclusive and make the event open for any relatives who aren’t biological dads who join in the fun. That said, I think I only met actual dads.

Anyway, I got to campus around 10:00. M introduced me to a bunch of sisters and their dads, we ate some food, then she asked me if I wanted to go to a frat party. It would be dumb not to, right? She also told me the young man she’s been spending time with would be there and he was “excited to meet you!” Oh boy.

I’m not drinking much these days, for a few reasons. So I wasn’t looking to get smashed with my daughter or anything. Fortunately for me M admitted on the way to the party that she was hungover from the night before and didn’t feel like drinking. Made the day cheaper/easier for me!

Anyway, we got to this party and hung around for an hour or so. Her best buddy from St P’s/CHS found us. Unlike M she was drinking and was very excited to see me, which was funny. And I got to meet M’s young man friend. He was nervous and goofy. As long as he treats M well it’s all good.

We did not have tickets to the football game (UC was playing West Virginia) so we went to a restaurant/bar to watch and eat. I have one friend who lives in Cincinnati, O-Dog that some of you know. Guess whose daughter gave us the table as she and her friends headed to the game? Small world.

We spent an hour or so there before the group split up. It seemed like a lot of girls were hung over and some of them needed naps. M and I moved outside where we hung with some more of her sisters and dads for another hour or so. The apartment she will live in the next two years is a couple blocks away, so we cruised by it when we left. We ended up going downtown to walk around a bit and enjoy the nice day.

We met up with one of her roommates and her dad for dinner at this fun sushi place right off campus. For some reason the sushi is always half price. It even says that on the menu, “All sushi is always half off.” I’m not sure what the angle there is, but I like it. I spent just $25 on a sushi dinner for two! And the sushi wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either.

I walked M back to her house and hopped into the car for the ride home, pulling into the garage at about 9:00. It was fun seeing M in her environment. I know she was excited to introduce me to her friends and the other dads. A couple of the dads were pretty cool so that was a bonus.

KU Football

Guess what I (mostly) missed while hanging with my daughter? The Jayhawks rolling over Iowa State in the game I had been dreading all year. I’ve only seen highlights so don’t know how much of Arrowhead was filled with ISU fans – the pics I saw showed the stadium was not very full of any fans, Clones or Jayhawks – but the important part was KU played extremely well on offense, made a couple big defensive plays, and finally got a few breaks. It was fun to get the updates as KU ran up the big lead early, then nervously watch as they bungled things a bit on the fourth quarter before Mello Dotson effectively ended things with a pick six as I walked to my car. Clearly the concerns about Jalen Daniels’ health early in the year were correct, as he has seemed more comfortable and like the old JD for the last month. If only he had been able to play like this in September and October…

Alas, we’ll have to settle for being the best 3–6 team in the country, with a visit to #9 BYU and #20 Colorado in KC the next two weeks.

Colts

Man, the Colts are a true disaster. Joe Flacco throws a pick six on his first pass of the game, before I could get the TV on after dropping L at practice. He throws another interception in the first quarter, and was lucky not to have thrown a third in the opening 15 minutes. Later he lost a fumble. The Colts dropped an easy touchdown pass. The defense made some nice plays then fell apart late. There’s just no consistency in this team. Shane Steichen seems committed to Flacco going forward, even with him looking terrible the past two weeks. There were boos aimed towards Flacco throughout the game Sunday. It makes no sense to stick with him, even if you have no faith that Anthony Richardson is the answer. At this point you play AR and allow him to try to figure things out while aiming for a high draft position next year to get some kind of impact player for a team that has very few of them.

Pacers

I also missed a Pacers loss to Charlotte Friday, but was able to watch them beat the Knicks Sunday despite being short five players. Tyrese Haliburton bounced back from his zero point, five assist performance against the Knicks two weeks ago with 35 points and 14 assists. Bennedict Mathurin scored a career-high 38. My man Johnny Furphy even got some first quarter minutes, although he did not score.

I am glad the Pacers only play the Knicks three times in the regular season. A truly maddening team to play against. I’ve said this before but it amazed me what those Villanova dudes got away with in college, between the constant bumps and shoves and not-so-subtle elbows the refs somehow always missed and then the constant bitching after every play as if they were the ones being pushed around. That they all still get away with it in the NBA is exponentially more maddening.

Other Shit

The weather is still unreasonably nice here. I probably wore shorts for the final time until spring break last week, although I’ve thought that a couple times and had to bust them out a few days later. Our lawn service is still coming, which is kind of crazy. Usually by now they have finished and I borrow my sister-in-law’s mower to do my one mow of the year to chop up any remaining leaves.

I’m obviously avoiding the biggest story of the past week. I don’t have the energy to get into it. I will just share that I took C to vote when she got home from school on Tuesday. S had voted the week before and waited nearly an hour. It took C and I longer to actually go through the ballot than to wait and get checked in. The lady running the door asked C if she was a first-time voter and everyone cheered for her when she said yes. Shame the day was all downhill from there.

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