D's Notebook

Tag: high school sports (Page 1 of 16)

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.

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.

High School Hoops Chronicles: Two Game Nights and One Huge Bummer

November 19, 2024 /

Two games to catch up on from last week.

Tuesday the Irish played their Jesuit sisters from down the block. L was excited because the Braves were missing two of their best varsity players, meaning girls from their kinda crappy JV team had moved up, so she was hoping for two wins.

She got them.

CHS dominated the JV game and won by 20 in a game that wasn’t close after the first few minutes. L scored 8 on 3–6 shooting, hitting both of her 3-point attempts. She added three assists and SIX steals. She dressed for varsity but did not get in despite the Irish winning by 23. Her coach looked at her once but since the Jesuits still had starters in thought better of it.

Thursday we took on Mooresville, a traditionally strong program from a mostly rural area just outside the Indy metro area. We got two very different yet similar games.

In JV, we led by 12 at halftime and got it up to 15 a couple times in the third quarter before their coach decided it couldn’t hurt to start pressing us. Not sure why he waited over half the game to do that, because it destroyed our offense. We struggled to get the ball across halfcourt, and when we did made terrible plays once we set up the offense. Worth noting L either sat or was playing off the ball during this stretch. We had two girls who both scored around 10 points in the first half. Both of them took about a million terrible shots in the second half and failed to score. Just a total panic on offense.

MHS got it down to three a couple times but never closer as we held on in the final 90 seconds. L took seven shots, hitting just one, but she was clearly fouled on two of those misses. She added one free throw for three points, grabbed a rebound, had an assist, and accounted for just one of those stupid turnovers. Best of all, she again had SIX STEALS and forced a couple other turnovers. Her offense isn’t really clicking yet, but her defense has been great.

Varsity was another story. CHS fell behind early and trailed by as many as 15, but caught fire in a crazy fourth quarter that felt like it lasted about an hour. We got it down to three with MHS’ two bigs both fouling out along the way. Then we relaxed and the margin got back up to eight. We cut it to three two more times but couldn’t get the defensive stop for a chance to tie. We hit a three at the buzzer to lose by three. L again dressed but did not play. I’m pretty sure MHS hit 99% of their free throws while we hit maybe 50%.

A highlight from this game was a CHS dad getting into it with some MHS parents. I’ve known this dad for nearly 10 years and he’s always been a fool at games. He was ejected from multiple CYO games over the years but has somehow not learned his lesson. As usual, he was overly into the game Thursday. When an MHS mom seemed to lose her mind on a close call, he decided to tell her that she should keep her mouth shut, but in cruder terms. Now Mooresville folks are a little rougher than us Indy, private school folks. Or at least this lady was. I thought there was going to be a brawl. Luckily that was averted. This will not be the last incident this parent is involved in. I always try to not sit too close to him so I don’t get pulled into any confrontations.

JV is 2–1, varsity 1–2.

Now for the bummer.

L had been experiencing some periodic foot pain. It would flare up one day, disappear completely the next. It didn’t seem to affect her play so we decided to just monitor it. She told the trainer one day after practice, who examined her and gave her a bag of ice.

Then Sunday, following a hard practice Saturday to prepare for the #2 team in the state tonight, she could barely walk.[1] We put her in a boot for the rest of the day and Monday morning I took her straight to sports medicine.

The diagnosis was what S expected: stress reaction. Crutches or a knee scooter for the next four weeks while wearing the boot, followed by at least two more weeks in the boot. She will be re-evaluated on January 2. Obviously no basketball during those six weeks, a span of at least 10 games.

L has actually been taking it pretty good so far. I think it’s going to hit her tonight when she has to sit on the bench during the JV game and then behind the bench for varsity. And the longer she goes without practicing the more she’ll realize what she’s missing.

JV is really hurting at the moment. Four girls who weren’t playing much quit this week. Three more were too sick to practice Monday. And now L is out. A couple girls who don’t normally get a lot of minutes have a huge opportunity.

It could certainly be worse. L didn’t tear or break anything, she doesn’t need surgery, and this wasn’t like one of her friends last year who had concussions number four and five and had to stop playing forever. But it still sucks. She’s going to miss roughly half of her sophomore season. Even if she comes back in early January, it’s going to take her awhile to get her fitness back.

About all she can do now is sit in a chair doing dribbling or form shooting exercises. I remember watching videos of Isiah Thomas doing folding chair workouts when I was in middle school. I need to find those for her.

That also means less high school basketball content for me to share. I’ll keep you updated on the game results, but doubt I’ll have as detailed breakdowns as normal.

  1. JV played scout, and L was assigned the part of the 6’3” girl who is going to IU next year. That may seem like an odd choice since L is only 5’7”, but the big girl spends most of her time behind the 3-point arc, so L got to chuck a lot. I was hoping this would carry over to her looking to shoot more but that’s not going to happen now.  ↩

Sports (Mostly Hoops) Notes

October 31, 2024 /

A few sports thoughts, mostly about basketball.

KU Hoops

Much better performance Tuesday in the second exhibition contest against Washburn. Of course, they better have looked better against a D2 team. Hitting shots is always a good thing, and KU actually seems to have multiple shooters this year. They ran a little more of what you expect to see on the offensive end than they did against Arkansas. My man Flory Bidunga is going to really good, maybe as soon as next year.

Assuming Hunter Dickenson is 100% next week, the only thing this team seems to be lacking is an attacking wing who can finish. AJ Storr has that potential, but I haven’t seen it yet. Freshman Rakease Passmore definitely has that in his DNA, he just needs to learn how to apply it better. I think he is going to be one of those players who gets a little better every year and, suddenly, when he’s a senior, is an All Conference level performer.

I still need to do an accounting of KU’s crazy off-season. Maybe I’ll crank that out next week.

Pacers

It was far more nerve-wracking than it needed to be, but the Pacers got a big win over Boston last night. They had leads of both 24 and 21 points in the second half before completely falling apart and allowing the Celtics to force overtime. Pascal Siakam hit what felt like a season-saving 3 that clinched the win. 2–3 feels miles better than 1–4. Bennedict Mathurin also had an incredible game, scoring 30 off the bench. He might be making the leap, but I’m not sure he isn’t best suited to being the first reserve wing instead of moving back into the starting lineup.

Something is officially up with Tyrese Haliburton. His shot looks terrible. His defense is somehow worse than it was last year. There has to be a physical explanation.

High School Hoops

L’s new season is about to begin. CHS had a scrimmage last night against a pretty bad team. The Irish won the five-quarter event by a combined score somewhere in the range of 56–9. The score reset each quarter and I didn’t write each one down, so that’s a guess.

The coach hasn’t announced official rosters yet, but L did not get a varsity number on picture day. She was the tenth girl off the bench in the final varsity quarter last night, then played the first half of both JV quarters. She’s not super thrilled with how that worked out, but I think it’s the best thing for her long-term development. She needs to play to get better. That wouldn’t happen if she was #8 or #9 on varsity, just getting a few minutes here-and-there, often when someone ahead of her messed up and the coach needed to yell at them before sending them back onto the court.

We have two really good freshmen who jumped over L, and then one junior who has missed two years because of injuries is back and took another slot in the varsity rotation. That junior is still very rusty, and makes some bad mistakes at times. But she also has great instincts and made a couple incredible passes last night. L thinks she should be ahead of her, but I understand why the older girl got the nod.

We had a talk about how it was ok to be disappointed at not making the first varsity roster, and how she needed to use that as motivation to keep improving, to stay focused, and to show the coach that she made a mistake. The coach has also said she expects the rosters to be a lot more fluid this year than in the past, with the middle seven-or-so girls taking turns floating back-and-forth between JV and varsity depending on how they are playing, opponent, etc. It would have been really cool to make varsity as a sophomore out of preseason camp. She’ll still get her shot.

The good news is I think our JV will be better than last year. The top six are all sophomores who have played together a lot, really get along, and have fun while playing. Last night they were doing things like back-cutting defenders that they never did last year. Between the higher reps and a more fun JV experience, hopefully L gets over her initial disappointment and remembers this is a game that she only gets to play for three more years.

They start the regular season next Friday night. We have a terrible schedule in terms of travel this year, so I’ll be spending lots of time in the car the next three months.

Bonus Colts Content

I’m still a little surprised, but the Colts did it: they benched Anthony Richardson for Joe Flacco, with initial indications that it is not a temporary move.

As you would expect, the move has sent tongues wagging here in Indy. Richardson’s numbers have been truly terrible, and that is what the casual fan sees. Checking himself out of the game Sunday because he was gassed was the final straw.

But as Steven Ruiz showed on The Ringer, Richardson’s numbers aren’t as bad as they seem. He’s been extraordinarily unlucky in almost every measurable metric. Yes, he makes some really bad throws. But he also has the highest receiver drop rate in the league. I pointed out earlier this year that something about his passes seems hard to catch. The QB’s job is to put it on the receivers’ hands, though, and his are letting him down more than any other QB in the league. He also has the highest rate of being hit as he is throwing, and percentage of accurate passes defended.

Not all of that is statistical noise. Sometimes he takes too long to make a throw, thus the pressure. Sometimes he make passes that are on the money, but to a target that is covered and thus should not have been thrown.

The trap with a prospect like Richardson is that he HAS to play, no matter how bad the initial results are. He had limited reps in college, where he could physically overwhelm people and didn’t have to worry about doing the little things right. Adjusting to the NFL is difficult for almost every quarterback. It is even tougher when in addition to coping with the speed and skill level, more complex defenses, rules differences, etc., the prospect is also trying to learn the basics of the position.

The Colts have been on a treadmill of quarterback mediocrity since Andrew Luck retired. Drafting Richardson at #4 two years ago was a gamble on a once-in-a-generation physical talent turning into a long-term solution behind center. I totally get chasing a playoff run this year, especially when the roster is filled with guys in their primes who may not be around in three, four, five years if/when Richardson figures it out. But I’m also with Ruiz in that benching Richardson puts the bigger plan in jeopardy.

Bonus World Series Comment

I’m glad the Yankees lost. Especially in such a brutal fashion.

L and I stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings after her scrimmage last night to grab some food. For some reason despite there being a million TVs, we could barely see either the Pacers or World Series games. We could see, however, a TV that had MLB Network on, which was running its George Brett special. Right at the point when it covered the three straight losses to the Yankees in the ALCS. Hate that franchise.

Weekend Notes

October 14, 2024 /

Kind of a quiet weekend for us on the personal tip. Plenty of other shit to review on this gloomy, chilly Monday morning.

Northern Lights

Since we live inside the city’s light dome, we weren’t able to just walk out and see Thursday’s northern lights. I was able to get a couple shots, using a long exposure, that showed a bit of the colors.

There were tons of amazing pictures from not too far from us. It definitely would have been worth my time to get off my ass and drive 30 minutes or so to get a bette naked eye view of them. But did I? Nope, despite seeing northern lights being on my bucket list.

Interesting Times At School

CHS parents got this text last Tuesday afternoon.

Screenshot

When the girls got home their eyes were big and they were talking fast. Apparently they were nearly in the midst of all the fun.

C said as they exited campus and headed west, they saw a car that had been pulled over by the police take off through the intersection she had just passed through to the east. Moments later they heard a bunch of loud noises as that car collided with several others that had just come off of campus. That proved these fools weren’t super criminals. Traffic around CHS during dismissal is a true nightmare. It can take you 15 minutes to travel a quarter mile if you hit the lights wrong. Yet these geniuses decided they were going to use that moment to evade cops.

A few of girls’ friends who were behind them got videos of first the car taking off, then the driver and his passenger sitting on the curb in handcuffs.

Word was they were arrested on drug and weapons charges. Awesome.

Two years ago M and C missed driving through an intersection by St P’s where there was a road-rage shooting by about five minutes. Now C and L missed get smacked by a criminal by literal seconds. They’ve obviously been saying their prayers, and/or their dead grandmas are looking out for them.

Royals

Well, it wasn’t unexpected, but after snatching game two in New York, the Royals couldn’t win either of the games at home and lost to the Yankees in four games. Another one-run loss and a two-run loss to end the season. It was pretty much all that was great about the Royals this year – the starting pitching with the bonus of an improved bullpen – and all that was not right – a woefully thin lineup that struggled to score to begin with, but had an even mightier challenge when Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez weren’t hitting.

The Yankees didn’t blow them out and the Royals didn’t embarrass themselves. Playoff baseball, especially the first two rounds, can be super flukey. That benefited the Royals in 2014. Their special blend of Royals Devil Magic did not make an appearance in this series.

Still, a surprisingly fun season. They got me at least partially interested in baseball after falling out of love with the sport because of how management handled the most recent labor stoppage.

It is probably too much to ask for the starters to be as good in 2025 as they were this year. The bullpen was bolstered late in the season and became a weapon, so pitching in general should continue to be a strength for the team. Now if management can go find a bat or two to plug the many holes in the lineup, we could be cooking with gas next year.

That said, surprisingly, the AL Central could be one of the most competitive in baseball next year. Cleveland is in the ALCS. Detroit had an amazing run late in the season and pushed Cleveland to the bring in the ALDS. The Twins fell apart late but entered the season as preseason favorites. In other words, even if the Royals make smart decisions to improve their roster for next year, there’s no guarantee it will be enough to return them to the playoffs.

KU

Hey, no Jayhawks loss this week! You never know, KU could always find a way to lose in a bye week.

It’s been kind of crazy to see how the teams that have beaten KU have done after knocking off the Jayhawks. Illinois is 5–1 and ranked. UNLV is also 5–1 despite their quarterback checking out. A week after beating KU, West Virginia went to Oklahoma State and destroyed the Cowboys before losing to Iowa State this week. Then Arizona State pulled a massive upset beating Utah this weekend. Only TCU has looked worse after beating the Jayhawks.

Mostly that doesn’t mean shit. Anyone who has watched KU this year has seen how flawed they are, both on the field and from a schematic/coaching perspective. Still, four of their losses have been by a single score. The TCU game was a single-score game until the closing minutes. As many issues as the Jayhawks have had, a few breaks here and there and they could easily be 5–1. While I think us KU fans would be waiting for reality to set in, we would feel a lot better about things.

This week brings Houston, and KU opens as favorites. Get a win and it doesn’t necessarily turn the season around, but it could at least change the vibes. Lose this one? Man, things will get ugly.

In totally unrelated news, Purdue fired their offensive coordinator last week. This week they went to Illinois. The ESPN boxscore was all messed up, but I believe they trailed by 27 in the second half before scoring 30 straight points to take the lead. They gave up a tying field goal at the final gun, then failed to convert a 2-point conversion and lost by one in OT. All from firing their OC. Hmmm….

CHS

Friday night Cathedral took on Southside Catholic rivals Roncalli. This was once one of the best rivalries in the city. Before the tournament success factor was introduced, the teams played in the same class and were often either in the same sectional or regional. In our first few years living here, they always face each other in the playoffs, and the score was usually something like 10–9 or 14–13. And Roncalli often won.

But Roncalli, aside from a 4A state title two years ago, has been kind of crappy since their legendary coach retired a while back. CHS beat them 42–0 last year. This year it wasn’t much better, a 35–6 Irish win. A CHS receiver made an insane catch for an 84-yard TD. He dropped two other sure touchdowns on easy balls. The only RHS points came on their final drive with a running clock and facing the CHS reserves.

The #5 Irish are now 5–2 with a big matchup at 7–1 #6 Warren Central to close out the regular season.

The sectional draw was last night. CHS gets the school across the street from us, who will be 0–9, to open. Then a likely matchup against presumptive 9–0 Lawrence North for the sectional crown. CHS has ended LN’s season the past two years.

Halloween Shit

Both the girls had friends over Saturday to carve pumpkins, eat fall foods, and have fun. Tough to get a shot of all the pumpkins but they look nice on our front porch.

Worth mentioning that L had a young man over she’s been hanging with for the past few weeks. He’s a nice kid. They were joined by another couple. Those four stuck to one part of our house while C and her group of ten-or-so seniors stayed in another part. Seemed like everyone had fun. Once things got going S and I kept to our room to stay the hell out of the way.

Closing Time

We closed the pool on Friday. It was sunny and 80° when the guys were shutting it down, the water still at 78° despite me not running the heater in a week. I think you call that perfect timing. Of course, the girls hadn’t been in the pool since August. I had been using it, but as I’ll share tomorrow, I haven’t been able to get in for a week or so, meaning we closed it a week late. Since I wasn’t running the heater I didn’t mind.

Then Sunday morning S and I first cleaned up the leftover pumpkin messes from the girls then stored away all the pool furniture and other summer goodies into the pool house for the winter. Our pool deck is now naked. Appropriately it was super breezy and gloomy while we were doing that, and 15° cooler than the day before. This week looks super fall-ish, although another warm-up is forecast for next weekend.

Colts

The Colts couldn’t get it done against pathetic Jacksonville a week ago, but did enough to win against the equally pathetic Titans this week. Man, Will Levis is fucking bad. Anthony Richardson, who sat out again, may end up being a bust. I’d rather have a dude that can only play every third game than Levis, who throws some of the worst balls I’ve ever seen. Maybe he figures the game out and turns into a solid QB eventually. But watching him Sunday, I was glad the Colts passed on drafting him a year ago.

The crazy thing about watching the Colts is that if they could ever get healthy, they really should have a plus offense. They have two really good receivers in Michael Pittman and Alec Pierce. Josh Downs showed Sunday that he might be better than those two. And AD Mitchell has loads of potential although he has a long way to go. Old Man Joe Flacco gets them the ball just enough to be dangerous. If you can keep Jonathan Taylor on the field, easier said than done, you have terrific balance. Of course, you can’t keep him on the field and there is no decent backup. The O-line has improved, even losing one starter for the season.

But that defense? Woof. They make just enough plays, especially against a shitty team like Tennessee, to make you think they might be decent. But they aren’t decent at all, even allowing for missing important players up front and being too thin on the back end.

Feels like a season that ends in 5–7 wins and puts them too deep into the draft to get a player that can immediately plug a gap next year.

Fall Break

It’s appropriate the weather has finally changed, as this week is the girls’ fall break. They are in school today and tomorrow, then off the rest of the week. We are traveling to Denver to visit our family out there. It looks like we will have a 20° temperature swing while we’re out there, too, so packing could be tricky. Obviously a lot more about this next week.

Weekend Notes

October 7, 2024 /

A busy, warm, disappointing, and significant weekend.

FNL + Party

Friday was a big night for a couple reasons. First, L was having friends over to celebrate her birthday. Seven girls, including her middle school buddy who goes to the rival high school, gathered at our house after school. They are a good group and fun to be around. They are mostly sassy and confident and silly, and while they usually congregate away from us, when we have to interact with them they always make me laugh.

Once S got home we ran them over to Marion University, which was hosting the big Center Grove vs Cathedral game. This was class 6A #5 vs #7. CG came in at 4–2, CHS 3–2. CG had won three in a row in the series and have dominated it over the past decade. In a change, it was moved from the final week of the season to week eight this year for some reason.

It was a wild game.

CHS scored on the first play of the game, a 64 yard run.
Trailing 10–0, CG had an 80-yard TD run.
CHS answered with a 74-yard TD pass.
CG led 30–27 at halftime, and eventually 45–35 with about six minutes to play.
The game ended with this sequence in the final five minutes:
Cathedral touchdown.
Cathedral successful onside kick.
Cathedral touchdown.
Center Grove interception.
Cathedral punt.
Center Grove interception.
Game over.

Huge win for the Irish. Normally you would say these teams are on a collision course for a rematch in semistate. CHS is going to have trouble getting past Lawrence North, who is 7–0 and destroyed #2 Warren Central this week, in sectionals though. They would also likely have to beat #1 Brownsburg between sectionals and Center Grove, and they’ve already lost to them. Anything is possible I guess.

The only bummer to the night was apparently there weren’t a ton of CHS kids at the game. Marion is on the opposite side of the city from school. Since CHS kids come from literally everywhere – something like 80 middle schools are represented in L’s class – you would think that wouldn’t be an issue. Especially for the Center Grove game, which is always huge. But I guess it was an issue. Anyway, L texted us at halftime that they wanted to leave because “no one is here” and it was boring. So the girls were eating cake and ice cream at our house when the Irish made their furious comeback. I kept listening and let them know the result.

Kids, man. Kids.

Royals

Man, so close to stealing game one in New York. Yes, there was a curious, at best, replay call that didn’t go the Royals way that directly let to the winning run for the Yanks. Bobby Witt Jr. got no love from the home plate ump in the 9th. Bummers.

What truly sucked was the Royals pitchers walking 80 Yankees batters. The fifth inning was really when the Royals lost this game. That inning went walk-single-walk-walk-foul out-fielder’s choice-walk. Two runs scored, both on bases loaded walks.

You don’t expect to lose in Yankees Stadium because you walked in more runs than you allowed on homers.

The Royals are a resilient bunch, though, and I think the loss will get them more re-focused than discouraged. Hopefully the pitchers are a little more locked in Monday while the hitters can keep generating runs.

Oh, and this ALDS schedule is nuts. Three days off in a five-game series? When these teams played a five-game ALCS in 1980, games one-through-three were played on consecutive days. And that was with a night game on Thursday in Kansas City and a night game Friday in New York. Since the Royals swept that series, I don’t know if an off-day was scheduled before either game four or five. But in 2024, there are scheduled off days between games one and two, two and three, and four and five if needed. Dumb.

KU

Same old same old. A disastrous end to the first half. A lead in the fourth quarter. The inability to stop the opponent when it mattered most. A fifth loss in a row.

Lawrence radio guy Derek Johnson posted this amazing stat on Twitter after the game: In each of their losses, at some point in the second half KU has had at least a 74% win probability. Add those up, and the odds of going 0–5 over that stretch is 0.01%, or about 1 in 10,000. Yet KU found a way to do it. Never say we can’t do amazing things in football season!

I think that stat also points out the truth to this season, something I pointed out last week. KU got just about every break possible last year. This year, though? No breaks. Or when they get a break, they find a way to fuck it up.

The offense and OC Jeff Grimes have taken the bulk of the criticism this year. The offense was fine Saturday. Yes, there were a few bad choices, notably in the two three-and-outs after KU forced turnovers because of hopelessly conservative play calling. One first down late in the second quarter and Arizona State never gets a chance to tie the game going into halftime. Jalon Daniels, who might have had his best game of the year, rushed a throw to a wide open Quentin Skinner that cost KU four points in a four-point loss.

Those aside, Saturday was on the defense. Yes, they forced two turnovers and blocked a field goal. But there were, yet again, massive holes for ASU to exploit all night. Almost no pressure on the quarterback. KU got destroyed at the line on running plays and gave up 313 yards rushing! Not technically on the defense, but they also gave up another long punt return to a player who should have been tackled seconds after fielding the ball by one of three players.

I know they were missing one defensive captain the entire game, and Cobee Bryant left the game late with what appeared to be a bad injury. That doesn’t excuse how bad the D looked as a whole, and has looked all season.

I read a theory this week that the transitional recruiting class between Les Miles and Lance Leipold, which was ranked in the 110s nationally, is what is killing this team. There are a ton of seniors of various types, a lot of freshmen and true sophomores, but not many of those third year players who maybe aren’t ready to start, but have been in the system and can come in briefly to spell the starters when needed.

I have no idea if that explains KU’s defensive woes or not. I am starting to think last year’s performance was a fluke. DC Brian Borland should definitely be under as much pressure as Grimes, because he hasn’t found a way to scheme around talent issues.

I genuinely hated sports late Saturday night. The Royals and KU games overlapped some. I had the Royals on the TV, KU on the MacBook. It was harder to follow both than my attempts to listen to CHS and watch tennis or football earlier this year. Higher stakes, I guess. KU and the Royals both scored at about the same time once, which was fun. The Yankees scored the go-ahead run at nearly the same moment Arizona State tied the game going into halftime, which was not fun.

Oh, a couple of my KU buddies and I had talked about going to this game a while back. We didn’t go forward because, for some reason, tickets even on Southwest were over $500. I was glad we chose to stay home. Not just because of the loss, but also because it was 106° at kickoff. I read somewhere this was the hottest temperature at kickoff for an ASU game this century. And, (in)famously, whatever Sun Devil Stadium is called these days has all aluminum bleacher seating. I can’t believe the game was nearly sold out.

Colts

No Anthony Richardson or Johnathan Taylor, plus a couple key defensive injuries. An offensive lineman breaks his leg during the game. And the Colts hadn’t won in Jacksonville in 11 years.

So no surprise that after giving up their third ridiculously long touchdown of the game, they trailed by 14 late. I went outside to water some plants, figuring my weekend didn’t need any more sports disappointment.

A few minutes later I noticed S looking at the window trying to get my attention. I strolled over and glanced inside at the TV and saw the Colts were kicking a PAT to tie. Apparently Joe Flacco and Alec Pierce did their best to save the day, but the Jags kicked a field goal to win at about the same point in the clock as where Arizona State beat KU. Perfect.

I don’t think the Colts are terrible. But they are definitely on the bottom half of the mediocre middle of the NFL. That middle is so big that any team in that group can beat any other, so the Colts might still manage six or seven wins. I wonder if they would be better served to start thinking about the draft and focusing on getting the best pick possible. Which means as tempting as it will be to keep starting Flacco when AR is healthy, you have to focus on both developing Richardson and determining if he is the man going forward. You can’t delay that question another year while you’re chasing a Wild Card spot with Flacco.

LB

Some milestones for B girl #3.

She turned 16 Thursday.

Saturday we got her travel basketball assignment for next year. She’s with the same coach she’s been with. It does suck that we’ve lost two more of her best friends she’s played with the last three years. We might steal one of those girls back but we’re not confident. Travel ball at the high school level is brutal when it comes to roster building. You have very little say in who you get, as teams higher in the pecking order can “steal” girls if they need them. That happened to one of her besties, and from what I’ve heard from that girl’s mom, she does not want to play with the team that picked her. L is hopeful they can get her switched back to our team, but I’m doubtful.

L is still suffering from the lingering effects of mono, but will try to go back to preseason practice this week. She feels mentally bad about missing two weeks, but also feels physically bad any time she breaks a sweat. Knock on wood I don’t get a call at 6:30 AM Tuesday that she’s sick at practice, or just can’t continue and needs to get picked up.

Sunday she passed her driving test. She’s been doing a great job with her practicing, so there wasn’t much doubt. Her instructor even said “Piece of cake” when they returned. She can officially get her license on Jan. 1, although she’ll obviously have to wait another day.

Weather

A gorgeous, warm weekend to wrap up an unseasonably warm week. Saturday I hardly watched any football during the day, partially because I knew I would be watching both the Royals and Jayhawks at night. But also because I wanted to sit outside and read and enjoy the beautiful day.

All last week they were saying this week would be much different. It is cooling off a little; we’ll be down in the upper 40s for a few mornings. But days will still be in the low 70s, slowly warming back to the low 80s by the weekend. These are the days you have to hold on to because even when they are mild, the Midwest winters will suck the life out of you.

Weekend Notes

September 23, 2024 /

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

Family

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

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

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

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

High School Football

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

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

Jayhawks

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

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

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

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

Maddening.

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

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

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

Other College Games

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

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

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

Colts

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

Quarterbacks

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

Fever

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

Royals

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

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

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

Weather

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

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

Weekend Notes

September 16, 2024 /

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

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

HS Football

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

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

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

KU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

College Football

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

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

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

Colts

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

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

Twitter During Games

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

Royals

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

Fever

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

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

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

Weather

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

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

Archives

© 2024 D's Notebook

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑