D's Notebook

Tag: high school sports (Page 1 of 17)

More Hoops Notes

June 24, 2025 /

A day later I still have a lot of Pacers thoughts. And I still need to catch you up on a very busy weekend. So this may turn into two posts, depending on how long I yap about the first topic.

Pacers Followup

I became a Pacers fan when we moved to Indy in 2003, but they have never been at the top of my sports fandom rankings.[1] Although they have climbed a lot over the past year! Still, when they lose I’m not as mad or upset as I am when KU loses, or when good Royals teams have lost. So I was a little surprised how emotional I was when Tyrese Haliburton went down Sunday. For the Pacers season to end like that was devastating. To get so close and then it end not just because the other team was better, but because your best player’s body failed him was a massive gut punch. I was kind of in shock when it happened, saying “Oh no,” over and over when he hit the crowd, hoping he would get up.

But it really hit me after the game was over. Seeing Haliburton on crutches, waiting for his teammates as they walked to the locker room was tough. We invest all this time and emotion into sports, and it becomes a huge part of our lives when a team goes on a run like this. I know Haliburton is a mega-millionaire, as are most of his teammates. And no one “deserves” a result in sports. But in those moments it feels grossly unfair.

That said, his injury made the actual loss easier to take. Although they fought hard, the second he went down, most of us knew the Pacers had no chance to win. It was sudden and resolute. A loss is a loss, but something about the drama being stripped away made it suck less. It shouldn’t matter but to me, at least, it did.

I found it funny in a morbid way that some people accused the Pacers of gamesmanship for the way they reported Haliburton’s calf injury after game five. Like they were exaggerating to throw the Thunder off. Add that to the list of weirdness in the conversation about Hali.

Big props to Rick Carlisle. I did not appreciate what a great coach he was until this year. He coached the Pacers when we first moved here and had one great team, and another that was poised to be great until it flamed out in epic fashion. At the time it felt like he was just doing what everyone else is the league did: play power basketball based on toughness and size and defensive excellence.

He won a title in Dallas, but that was a year when the playoff bracket opened up for a variety of reasons and riding one of the best players in the world going on an epic hot streak.

I was not super excited when the Pacers hired him for the second time in 2021. That was because I had no idea of the coaching journey he’s gone on through his career, always open to new ideas and perspectives, learning to match what he asked his teams to do to the talent they had. The past two years have been the culmination of that. A year ago the Pacers were this insane offensive team that couldn’t guard a high school roster. In time Carlisle made adjustments both in set and what he asked his players to do. To their credit, they bought in. Eventually, when the team got healthy this year, they settled into a withering style on both ends. In retrospect, as good as that system was for the regular season, it was perfectly suited for the postseason, where half the goal is just to wear down your opponent over seven games. Podcaster Zach Lowe said Monday that he spoke to a player who faced the Pacers this postseason who told him that the Pacers are an awful team to play against.

Carlisle also seems like a genuinely curious and empathetic human being. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate him sooner.

Also deserving of credit are the players for buying into Carlisle’s system. It is based on constant motion, on pressuring all 94 feet, on fighting over screens rather than switching or going under. Basically killing yourself every minute you’re on the court. That only works if everyone buys in. It took some time – Pascal Siakam has admitted he had no idea how fast the Pacers played and how much he’d have to improve his fitness to fit in when they acquired him a year ago – but eventually that happened. In the process it unlocked players like Aaron Nesmith, TJ McConnell, and Obi Toppin, who had struggled to find their NBA footing. And it elevated Andrew Nembhard from role player to starter.

And props to Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan for deciding to build around Haliburton’s unique skill set. A lot of front office’s are reluctant to buck trends or ask players to sacrifice for the greater good. For at least two seasons it has worked for the Pacers.

The Pacers made an interesting trade a week ago, swapping some draft picks with New Orleans. It was an odd time to make a deal, in the middle of the NBA Finals, but it was primarily viewed as an effort to unload picks this year when the Pacers are facing a salary crunch. It didn’t seem super important at the time but they also re-acquired their first round pick next year which had been traded around a few times. With Haliburton out for the coming year, suddenly that looks like a great move. I think the Pacers should still be decent next year, mostly because they play in the Eastern Conference. But swapping the #23 pick this year for one that could be in the teens next year seems smart. Hell, depending on other roster decisions and the health of other players, that could turn into a very nice pick/trade asset.

Ah what to do this summer. Myles Turner is a free agent. There are not a ton of teams that have the need nor salary cap space to sign him, which may reduce his value. The Pacers have said they would love to keep him, but to do so will push them into luxury tax territory for the first time in franchise history. He just turned 29 and seems to be declining just a little. With Hali missing next year, is it worth the cap hit to keep Turner around and hope he can still be as effective in two and three years as he enters his 30s? Tough decision. I think I would lean to letting him go, as emotionally painful as that might be to a guy who has spent his entire career in Indianapolis. But is a reduced Turner in ’26–27–28 better than trying to develop some young guy over that same span? Seven footers who can shoot the 3 don’t grow on trees.

That choice is tougher since the Pacers have no backup centers under contract. They lost their two opening day backups in the first 10 days of the season to achilles injuries, and playoff role players Thomas Bryant and Tony Bradley should be third options at best.

Do you move any other pieces to clear space to keep Turner? Bennedict Mathurin has two years left on his rookie contract. As much as his change-of-pace is perfect off the bench, I’m not sure he totally fits in with what the Pacers want to do when their starters are on the court. With Haliburton out, will Mathurin defer to players he probably thinks he’s better than? I like his potential but the fit has always bothered me. This could be a sell high moment for chemistry alone. Or maybe Carlisle relishes the chance to make adjustments that cater to Mathurin’s skill set.

The post-Finals discourse has been interesting. At least in the pods I listen to and the articles I’ve read, it’s been as much about how this Pacers team captured the attention of the NBA world as the Thunder winning and potentially kicking off a dynasty. Some of that was because of Hali’s injury, but it was also an appreciation of how ridiculous the Pacers were over the last two months.

I also think it’s funny that there is a lot of hate for the Thunder among hardcore NBA fans. How can you hate a team from a small market that just won their first NBA title? There are complaints about their playing style (the constant fouling on defense combined with the foul hunting on offense), their lack of interesting personalities, their whole “we do interviews together” bit, the way their front office has both stacked up tons of future drafts picks and lucked into some good players they may not have deserved, and the fact the franchise was stolen from Seattle. I say wait until they’ve won another title or two before you start hating them. Every franchise should want to be like the Thunder.

Kid Hoops

OK, L had a very busy week last week. Also a concerning and frustrating one.

Last Monday she had a PT appointment that went very well. Her activity got amped up and she got through the session without any pain. She was cleared to play up to 20 minutes per day for the coming week.

Wednesday night we were back at action in the local summer league. She played about five minutes in the first half against an experienced, tough team and held her own. Then she never came back in. I was keeping score so couldn’t see if she was having an issue, so I wondered if maybe the coach was saving the rest of her minutes for game two. After the game she said she was having intense pain in her foot and could barely walk.

Oh shit.

Fortunately the pain was on the opposite side of where her surgery was. She was wearing new shoes and I wondered if that was the cause, but she claimed they fit her fine. She managed to play a few minutes in game two but was still struggling. We also lost both games and the girls got a long “talking” to after the second one from their coach. I put talking in quotes because there was a lot of yelling.

Friday morning they got on a bus and drove down to Lexington, KY for a team camp at Transylvania University. Calling it a camp was a little silly: this was just an excuse to play up to eight games in three days. There were no skills sessions or anything.

I told her to let me know how things went Friday, but never heard anything. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

I drove down Saturday morning and when I walked into the gym, she was on the court in their first game of the day. That seemed good. When I reached our other parents they said she had just scored on a nice layup. She had another one later.

After the game, though, she came up and was limping badly. Still opposite of where her surgery was. She was beside herself and eventually dissolved into tears. I told her again that I really thought this had more to do with her foot struggling with overloading because of rehab and her new shoes than anything serious. I also said if she was in that much pain she did not have to play, and would be happy to talk to her coach about it. I think that was part of her worry, talking to the coach.

They had three hours until their next game so she went back to the dorm to rest while us parents went downtown for lunch. I checked in on her an hour later and she said she would talk to her coach on her own. After she messaged me that the coach was nice about it and told her it’s more important to be healthy in the fall than now.

When I went back to the gym for game two, L looked much happier, like a weight had been lifted. She ended up sitting out the rest of the games over the weekend. We’re going to give the foot a few days to heal and then try going back to her old shoes to see if it is just a fit issue. She doesn’t have PT this week but when we go in next week we’ll see if her therapist has suggestions about getting everything to fit properly.

As for the team, they played really well. In fact they won the “tournament,” which was great given they were down to seven players after L sat out. If our best player, who wrecked her knee a week ago, had played I think we would have destroyed all the teams we played. None of them were very good. But it was a good chance for the girls to learn how to fill roles they haven’t filled before. A couple of L’s classmates who were not very good last year played really well over the weekend.

Sunday’s game were rather strange. The games Friday and Saturday were all 20 minute, running clock halves. Sunday’s first knock-out round had 16 minute running clock halves. And then the semifinals and finals were both “overtime” games: played with a five minute clock that stopped on dead balls. I’m not sure if this was to save the girls after already playing so much or because they needed to gym for something else at 1:00 PM.

We won our first OT game 4–1. Then the championship game 7–4, the other team hitting an uncontested 3 at the final buzzer.

Us parents thought this whole concept was a little silly, but our coach told us after it was actually great from her perspective. It gave her a chance to work on late-game stuff that’s often hard to replicate in practice. You can tell girls there are 2:00 left and you are down two, but there’s no real pressure there. These two OT games were pretty sloppy, partially because everyone was wiped out, but also because you could tell the girls felt that pressure of the clock.

Lexington

Just being down there one night, and watching a lot of basketball, I didn’t get to spend much time exploring Lexington. One of the other dads and I decided to watch the Independent League Lexington Legends play some baseball Saturday evening. We got into the stadium for $11, got a burger and beer for another $12, and enjoyed about four innings of mediocre baseball before we ducked out. Pitching at this level is suspect, and it was already 5–2 Legends when we took our seats in the third inning. When we left in the seventh, it was 15–4. Lots of bad defense, too. But it was a really nice night at the old ballpark.

Rupp Arena was only a half mile from the Transylvania campus and my plan was to walk over in one of the breaks. But it was approximately 999° all weekend, and I didn’t want to die of heat exhaustion in Kentucky. We drove by on our way out of town and it was as had been described to me many times: a massive, nondescript building on the outside that is attached to shopping and hotels. There is a large parking lot across the street that I was hoping I could pull into to at least take a quick picture. But even on a Sunday morning with no activities scheduled, the gates were down and I was going to have to pay to get in. I’m sure it’s nice on the inside. But it has zero character on the outside and is not in the middle of campus. Allen Fieldhouse it ain’t.

  1. I actually wrote nearly 1000 words on my history as a Pacers fan and decided none of you wanted/needed to read that.  ↩

Weekend Notes

June 16, 2025 /

A full, fun weekend that had healthy doses of sadness and even a little fear.

KC Trip

As mentioned Friday, I headed back to Kansas City for the weekend to attend the memorial service for Jack N, the father of one of my closest friends. We’re at the age where these are happening more frequently, but no matter the circumstances they are never easy. It was a fine service and honored the deceased in a way I think he would have appreciated.

That was the reason for the trip. I obviously did more than just attend the memorial.

I flew in Friday afternoon, my buddy Dave picked me up, and we headed directly to Joe’s Kansas City Barbecue, where I knocked out a jumbo Z-Man, fries, and a frosty Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat. Joe’s never disappoints.

On our way to Dave’s house, which was my home base for the weekend, we stopped at a liquor store. I was thrilled that they still had some Boulevard Irish Ale not only in stock but in the cooler. Where it was once kind of easy to find in Indy before St. Patrick’s Day, it has disappeared in recent years. An unexpected bonus!

That evening Dave and his wife had plans, so I took my Irish Ale to John N’s house. Despite having just returned from an overseas trip and planning for his dad’s services the next day, he was gracious enough to invite me out not just to visit but so I could avoid having to watch the Pacers game in a bar. I figured KC drinking holes would lean heavily towards the Thunder.

Anyway, John and his family and I had a good conversation while watching a little of the Royals game and all of the Pacers game. More on that in a bit.

Dave let me borrow his car, a 2019 Audi Q5. Fitting the theme for the weekend, it was like being with an old friend! I found it interesting that despite being just two years older than my Q5, his drove very differently. I’m no mechanical expert but I think his engine was tuned slightly differently, making it feel smoother than mine had been. However, his media screen was not touch capable, so I drove myself a little crazy trying to tap the screen to have Siri read texts to me without any success. There’s your mini car post for the month.

Saturday morning Dave and Maureen took me to Gram & Dun for brunch. I ate what was, without a doubt, the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had. It was amazing.

After the service and reception, our friends the Murrays hosted a small gathering, which eventually moved to Waldo Pizza for dinner. I’m almost positive I had not been to Waldo Pizza in 22 years, so that was excellent.

Saturday also just happened to be the 22nd anniversary of the day S and I got married in KC. It was kind of wild to be back there, sadly without her, when that day rolled around. I was pleased to hear the lady who guided us through our pre-marriage classes is still active, and our good friend Ann remains close with her. I was also glad that it wasn’t 102° like it was the day we got married.

Sunday morning Maureen, despite it being her birthday, made sure to send me off with a wonderful breakfast. I was on the mid-morning flight back home. When the weather is right, there may be no easier trip in the world than flying between Indianapolis and Kansas City. Two new airports that are super easy to navigate and don’t get super busy. I was door-to-door in exactly three-and-a-half hours. Had I driven, I wouldn’t have been to St. Louis yet in that time.

One other travel note, the Racing Louisville FC women’s soccer team was on both of my flights. Apparently there are no direct flights between the ‘Ville and KC, so they must have bussed up to Indy. They lost to the KC Current Saturday evening. I did not mention the result to the players who were next to me in the boarding line Sunday.

I know a lot of the people I saw this weekend are readers of this site. It was great to see you all, although sad it took a funeral to get me back there this summer.

Pacers

Man, the NBA Finals were on the Pacers racquet, to use a tennis term. Up 2–1 in the series and leading by 10 points late in the third period, with Obi Toppin going to the line for two free throws. I had a bad feeling when he missed both, which turned out to be a key moment in the Thunder coming back to even the series at two games.

I watched the entire game, as already noted, at the N’s house. And while I was paying attention, we were also catching up. So my attentions were, at best, split 50–50 all night. For example, the play when SGA pushed off, traveled, and then got an and-one that gave OKC the lead barely registered. Had I been watching that play at home in my normal seat, I would have been screaming and yelling, possibly punching things, and maybe had to take a walk outside. For sure I would not have been able to sleep after the game. I shared this with a non-KC friend and he said, “That might be the healthiest move: force yourself to watch games with people who will make you unfocused on the result and less stressed.” Only took me (almost) 54 years to figure that out!

You hate to say the series is completely over after how good three of the first four games have been, but the Pacers have certainly blown their advantage and put themselves in a tough spot. At least they get to come back home for game six regardless of what happens in Oklahoma tonight. Never count them out, but they are running out of chances.

HS Hoops

It was an open recruiting weekend for high school sports – there were a bunch of college softball coaches on my flight Sunday who had been in Kansas City for a big tournament – and CHS played four games in an annual event here in Indy. Friday they went 2–0, including waxing a team that beat them last year and has one of the best rising juniors in the state. She scored 30+ but our girls kept the rest of the team in check. L didn’t play much in the first game, but got in for most of the fourth quarter of game two. Her travel coach was there and sent me a picture of her inbounding the ball. I shared it with S and she noted that L’s legs are back to being the same size! She’s got her muscle back after the weeks of cast and boot.

Saturday S went to the games and sent me some good updates. That might have been the highlight of the weekend; I’m not sure she’s ever sent me updates before! L played a little more, and a little better in each game. She got to the rim and scored while faking a defender in one. In the other, she scored, got fouled, and swished the free throw.

They beat a good team in the morning game, and then played the team they lost to in sudden death overtime a week ago in game two. We were waxing them, up almost 20, when things got bad. Like seriously bad.

S sent me a message saying our best player had suffered a “devastating” knee injury, probably tearing her ACL. S said the girl was screaming, other players were looking away, and it was just a terrible situation all around. A little later she updated me that it seemed like she had actually dislocated her knee, and the on-site trainer had popped it back into place. OK, 😱🤮

Then another five minutes went by and S texted me that one of L’s best friends had just broken her finger and left the game.

Obviously our girls were a little shook by all this, and tried their hardest to blow all of that lead. L got a lot more minutes and admitted to me later she was not ready to handle the ball against pressure yet. Glad I missed all of that.

But our girls hung on to go 4–0 for the weekend.

We don’t have an update on our star. S was concerned that despite just being a dislocation she could have also torn ligaments as well. I guess we’ll find out soon. That’s a serious bummer for her and our team. And our other injured girl will have surgery on her finger and be out the rest of the summer. The girls have 10 games this week and just eight healthy players, one of whom is still rehabbing her dumb foot and not in full basketball shape yet.

I thought summer was supposed to be fun.

Oh, and L was up in the air trying to block a shot when she got sideswiped by a teammate and knocked to the floor. She has a massive bruise on her hip and actually got some whiplash when she hit the ground and her head snapped back, so her neck is super sore and tight.

It might be time to get her some golf clubs.

US Open

With the travel I did not watch as much of the US Open as I normally would. I was home in time to see the wild final three or four hours Sunday, which included a long weather delay, a moment late in the tournament when six guys were tied for the lead, some epic meltdowns and classic US Open destroying the best golfers in the world stuff, and then JJ Spaun rolling in a ridiculous 60-foot putt to ice his first major victory. Conditions had eliminated most of the best and best known golfers, but the final two hours were a lot of fun to watch.

Royals

They stink.

I’ve not written much about them this year. I’m not watching them as closely as I did the back half of last season, but I am tracking scores each night. There have been a lot of bad Royals teams over the years. This one may well be the most frustrating because they get good-to-great starting pitching almost every night and just cannot hit the ball. It doesn’t matter whether I check the score early or late, I’m almost certain the Royals will have no more than two runs, and most likely none. It’s really uncanny how poor they are at scoring. I guess this is balancing how great they were last year at getting runners in scoring position home.

A Night Of Hoops

June 12, 2025 /

A full evening of basketball with some big moments worth sharing.

Pacers

WOW! Up 2–1 on the massive favorites thanks to two amazing quarters.

Oklahoma City was the better team for two periods Wednesday, the first and third. Sadly for them, the Pacers were even better in the second and fourth and now lead the NBA Finals.

I only saw the second half – more on that momentarily – but that was a fantastic game. The teams made runs at each other all night, neither able to land a knockout punch until the closing five minutes or so when the Pacers strung together makes and stops while the Thunder all seemed to whither under the pressure of the pace, moment, and crowd.

Bennedict Mathurin has driven me crazy this postseason. It has often seemed like he’s trying to do too much, and he’s had several moments (especially in the Cleveland series) when he let his emotions get the best of him. He was magnificent Wednesday. 27 points, from every part of the floor, and always within the offense. He’s the only guy on the Pacers roster who can play the way he does, getting his shot when the offense breaks down, so it is a massive bonus that he seems to be locked in for the moment. Now we just need him not to try to force things Friday night.

TJ McConnell did TJ McConnell things. In one sequence he got two steals and accounted for four points in about 15 seconds. Those four points tied the game before the Pacers took over. Obi Toppin had some more rough moments early, but he was fantastic in the closing run. So good that Rick Carlisle sat Pascal Siakam for the final four minutes, not because Pascal wasn’t playing well but because Toppin was so good.

It was a mature, big boy, classic NBA Finals win. It may not mean a thing in the end, but if the Pacers win this series, standing up to the Thunder in game three will be as important as their game one comeback.

It was so fun seeing the NBA Finals played here in Indy. The crowd seemed lit, and the parts of podcasts I’ve been able to listen to so far raved about how great the environment was. There’s been grousing from some about two small market teams playing each other in the final. That ignores both that these are two of the most fun and interesting teams to watch – way more fun than the Knicks, Lakers, or Celtics – and that these are two super passionate fanbases in insanely loud arenas. Everyone worried about the names on the fronts of the jerseys and airport codes is missing a series that is everything you can ask for on every other level.

High School Ball

I missed the first half of the game because it was week two of high school summer ball. And the most important aspect of that is that L was back on the court last night for the first time in nearly five months.

She was not cleared to play a week ago, so sat out a close loss to the defending 4A champs and a nice win against another 4A team on Wednesday, then a 2–1 trip to a shootout in Lafayette last Friday.

But this week she was cleared to play 10–15 minutes. She ended up playing the lower side of that across two games, partially because that’s how the rotations worked and partially because they practiced and then lifted weights in the morning so she was sore all over.

She did ok.

In the first game she played the last four minutes of the first half. For her only shot attempt she found herself open on the wing, stepped into a long–2, and drained it. Her only other scorebook entry for that game was a turnover when she waited a little too long to pitch it ahead on the break and a girl made a fantastic play to pick her pass off.

We won that game, against the team that lost in the 3A state title game last season (we would have played them to go to state had we won our first semi-state game), in overtime. That team immediately played again and lost that game in overtime as well. Their best player is this amazing junior. She scored 18 in the first half against us. I didn’t see the official book from either game, but she had to have scored close to 60 points for the night. And these are 40 minute games with running clocks.

In our second game L played the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. She had a rebound and nothing else. She and one of her travel teammates were battling for a loose ball and apparently she cussed, sending them both into giggling fits. After the game I mock yelled at them both for not taking the game seriously.

She looked slow, sore, and out of shape. While she’s been watching practice the past two weeks, she wasn’t a full participant until Monday, so she still needs to integrate into what her teammates are doing. I told her not to push things, not to get frustrated when things are hard, and not to worry when she fails. Rehab is a long process and we’re not to the end yet. The important thing is to get back on the court, start getting her body back in basketball shape, and give us a base to work over the second half of summer. The goal is that she’s back to 100% and ready to fight for minutes in October.

Freedom!

March 27, 2025 /

A quick kid update.

L had her cast taken off this morning. Everything looked great. No swelling, no pain. The doctor said the incision and tendon anchor in her foot all seemed fine. When he had her rotate her foot inward, an action that triggered her pain pre-surgery, she could do so without limitation or pain.

She will be in a boot for the next six weeks and can finally put weight on it again. He wants her to keep the crutches handy for now, but she can transition away from them as she feels comfortable. She can take the boot off and get in the pool next week if she wants.

Biggest of all, she can take normal showers again! For the past five weeks she’s had to put a waterproof covering over her cast, then sit on a stool and be assisted by S to clean up. And, of course, her left leg hasn’t been cleaned since the morning of her surgery. When the cast came off today, she made a face from the odor. Not sure how the nurse kept a straight face. I ignored her invitation to come over and take a whiff.[1]

She’ll begin physical therapy soon after we return from spring break. There will be at least six weeks of that. The doc said that assuming she progresses as he expects, she’ll be able to start non-contact activities in early June.

The kid has been through a lot the last five months. With a few understandable meltdowns excepted, she’s done terrific dealing with it all. Better things are ahead, fingers crossed.

Also, Monday was the CHS basketball banquet. It’s a pretty chill affair. The team and families gather at school and there is cake and cookies, a slide show from the season, and the coaches talk. There were also awards, three selected by coaches, two voted on by players. Last year L won the Rising Irish award as best underclassman, selected by the coaches. Monday she won the Team Choice award for being a great teammate and leader, respecting coaches/referees/opponents, and for upholding Holy Cross values. Basically normal L stuff. Her teammates voted on this one, so I thought it was great that they recognized how she did her best to still be part of the team even when she was unable to play.

I am obviously hoping that she can return to form and be a contributing player next season. But stuff like this, which reflects more who she is as a person than an athlete, makes me prouder than anything she does on the court.

  1. Classes were dismissed early today because of a water main break. First thing she did was get in the tub to thoroughly scrub that leg.  ↩

Weekend Notes

March 10, 2025 /

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

Jayhawk Talk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HS Hoops

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

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

Big 10 Tournament

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

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

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

Weather

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

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

Kid Notes

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend Notes

February 24, 2025 /

As I mentioned in Friday’s Playlist, last week was a very odd one in our house.

Monday was a school holiday. Tuesday the girls got up and went to school, then C called me as soon as they arrived saying she had thrown up in the parking lot. So back home she came. She puked again that night, so she was home again on Wednesday.

Wednesday was also L’s surgery day. We left the house at 7:35 and were back home around noon to begin the process of managing pain. No real issues there; she’s pretty tough and doesn’t complain much. She’s been keeping her foot elevated and wiggling her toes, as instructed. Two weeks from today she’ll switch from a splint to a cast.

Thursday is S’s day off, so she was home to help with L. C finally went back to school.

Friday was an eLearning day to prepare the CHS campus for the big annual fundraiser Saturday. L was doing just fine in the morning and we were discussing whether we would drive down to the semi-state game Saturday morning. After lunch and her round of meds, she started feeling bad. Eventually she spent about two hours throwing up. Curses! I have to tell you, I was impressed with how she was able to keep her leg elevated and still puke into a bowl. By the evening she stopped vomiting but still felt terrible. I told her we would just watch the game from home as she did not want to start feeling bad two hours from home and be stuck in the back of the car another two hours if we had to turn around.

Saturday morning we watched the game – more on that in a bit – and shortly after she had another round of throwing up. Some of her travel teammates planned on visiting but postponed for obvious reasons. She felt better in the afternoon so had her first shower on her new shower stool while wearing her waterproof cast cover. I assume that went well; I was not involved.

Finally Sunday she felt better and kept food down. Her travel coach and his daughter stopped in briefly. I told her it was lucky it took her two days to process whatever C had given her. I was super worried she would wake up sick Wednesday, we would have to postpone surgery, and that would mess our timeline up.

This morning both girls felt 100%, at least in their stomachs. L’s foot pain is manageable. Her doctor told her she didn’t have to rush back to school, but she’s too tightly wound to miss any more class. I think the getting around is going to be a big pain, as unlike when she was in a boot in December, she can’t put any weight on her left foot. We insisted she take her scooter, which she kind of hates, to give her more support and safety, especially in the hallways between classes.

Oh, and C leaves on her senior retreat tomorrow and will be gone until Friday afternoon. So I’ll be carting L to-and-from school.

Maybe we’ll have a full, normal week of classes for both girls next week.

End of the Road

Semi-state did not go as we hoped. CHS fell behind Roncalli early, climbed out of a couple holes, and tied the game at 21 early in the second quarter with a 9–0 run. Next thing you knew, RHS had ripped off 15 straight points and the game was basically over. I believe we got as close as 8 or 9 once, and they pushed it out as high as 21 points. The final was 72–54. Ouch.

Biggest factor in the game was RHS hitting their first seven 3s. That will win you a lot of games. Twice we hit 3’s and they immediately answered. They shoot a lot of 3’s normally, but pretty sure they hadn’t hit seven-straight before Saturday. We didn’t help ourselves in that 15–0 run by missing three layups and four free throws. But, still, RHS was the better team so not sure that made a difference.

It was hard to gauge things by streaming the game but the officiating didn’t help, either. The fouls in the first quarter were 6–0 against us. Which seems kind of dumb as RHS was playing more physical than we were. One of our starters was called for a touch foul 20 seconds into the game. Naturally, if you know her, she committed a clear and very dumb foul 30 seconds later and had to sit until the third quarter. Our best inside player had a similar experience. She got called for a touch foul in the first two minutes, then crashed into a girl a minute later and had to sit. Poor officiating + bad IQ = trouble.

As if to even things out, the refs called the first four fouls of the second quarter on RHS. That’s when we made our run to tie it. After that the fouls didn’t matter since RHS couldn’t miss and we couldn’t hit.

We heard one of our parents got ejected at halftime for being all over the refs, but as I wasn’t there and only got tidbits of the story, can’t really share details. Not surprised this parent got tossed, though. They have a history.

As happens this time of year to every team but the eventual champion, it was a very disappointing end to a fun couple weeks. We were double City champions (JV and varsity), beat our arch rivals twice in three weeks, and then won our first sectional in 20 years, followed by the first regional in 24 years. Adding a semi-state would have been tough; Roncalli lost to the #1 team in 3A by 13 in the semi-state championship game Saturday night. It would have been fun to have had that opportunity, though.

If you’ve paid attention to these posts, you know I’ve quoted the computer rankings often. Those rankings were locked after sectionals two weeks ago. The four state championship games this Saturday are, according to the computer, #3 vs #5 in 4A, #1 vs #3 in 3A, #1 vs #4 in 2A, and #1 vs #2 in 1A. Seems like the computer is pretty accurate.

We played two of the remaining eight teams, losing to one of the 3A contenders and beating the #1 1A team.

Jayhawk Talk

A nice bounce-back win vs Oklahoma State Saturday. The Jayhawks became the first team, I didn’t track if it was P4 only or any D1 school, to lose a game by 30+ and then win by 30+ in their next outing. At least they’re making history, I guess! Funny how much better the team looks when they can knock down outside shots.

Two very good things from Saturday. Flory Bidunga had 16 rebounds in 21 minutes. I remain on record that he will be the best rebounder of the Bill Self era if he returns for another year.

Second, Diggy Coit got going, hitting three straight 3’s to blow the game open in the first half. I think most people forget he was a very late signing and did not go through summer as part of the program. Throw in his size and Self’s traditional reluctance to give transfers much leeway, and he started waaaay behind everyone else. It seems like he’s finally getting comfortable with his role. The CBS guys claimed Self said Diggy is the most vocal leader on the team. Which is kind of concerning since our team is mostly 4th, 5th, and 6th year guys. But it bodes well for next year. I’m sure Diggy will start some games, but he seems like an ideal 6th man who can come off the bench, hit some 3’s and steady the team in minutes when Darryn Peterson, Elmarko Jackson, or whoever else fills one of the starting backcourt slots needs to sit.

Tonight we get to experience one of the true joys of the far-flung conference: an 11:00 PM Eastern tip in Boulder. I am NOT staying up to watch this game. Hope it works out better than when I went to bed instead of watching the BYU game last week.

College Girl

M spent the weekend in Toronto, Canada. I guess it’s a thing for fraternities at schools east of here to go to the Toronto area for their formals. I believe the key is the lower drinking age. That was the plan for her boyfriend’s frat. So they got on a bus at 8AM Friday and spent 12 hours driving north. Then 12 hours returning yesterday. That sure sounds awful to me. I remember going on a date party where we got on a bus in Columbia and headed to St. Louis, less than two hours away. That was both a very fun bus ride and a terrible one. College kids + lots of drinking = well, you know.

My comment to S was that you better not break up with your partner halfway through the bus ride. Or if you’re just going as friends, as a couple of M’s sorority sisters did, not realize three hours into the ride north that the dude you’re going with is kind of a douche.

I guess the formal was fun, and M said Toronto was very cool.

She has been struggling to find a summer internship, sending resumes out since the fall with no bites. She finally had one for a job in Cincinnati last week, then drove to Dayton for another. And this week she has a phone interview with an advertising firm here in Indy. It is run by a CHS grad, and a former neighbor of ours is rather high up there. I think she wants to stay in Cincy for the summer, but would be perfectly fine with the Indy one. If both those fall through, or nothing else pops up, she’ll take the Dayton one if she has to. I just hope she gets an offer.

Weekend High School Hoops Notes

February 17, 2025 /

I would wish you all a happy Presidents’ Day but, well, you know.

Speaking of bullshit, I’m splitting what would normally be in the Weekend Notes post into two entries this week to separate the fun from the bullshit. Although there will still be some bullshit in this post.

Regional Champs!

Saturday we drove about an hour west of the city to Greencastle for the regional round of the Indiana State basketball tournament.[1] Indiana high school sports are full of oddness. One of the oddest aspects of the basketball tournament is that each regional site hosts two games but those games aren’t necessarily related. In Greencastle, the early game was a 2A contest followed by our 3A matchup. We had no need to show up early to scout a possible semi-state opponent. It has something to do with geography and trying to keep teams from having to travel too far. I’m sure there’s some formula involved that makes sense, but there are always some weird assignments.

I was a little worried that our opponent, Northview, would pack the gym since they had an easy 30 minute drive down a state highway where we had to drive halfway around the 465 loop then halfway to Terre Haute. NV did bring a decent group of fans, but since the Greencastle gym holds nearly 5000 people, they didn’t seem super intimidating.

As big as this gym was, it was one of the quietest games I’ve ever attended. I think it was because our two sections on opposite sides of the court probably didn’t fill close to half the total seats, leaving lots of empty space, and because the building has a domed roof that all the noise seemed to disappear into. I heard our coach better than I’ve heard her at our home games when we have maybe 200 folks in attendance.[2]

The team got to bus over Thursday afternoon to practice there once before the actual games which was cool. That gave the event a more big time feel than sectionals.

Anyway, the game is what you care about, right?

NV came in at 20–6 on the season, but hadn’t played a very impressive schedule. I looked at the scouting report L brought home and it seemed like their offense revolved around a quick point guard and a big wing who worked out of the high post. I was confident but still super nervous when the game started.

Like most things in life, this was needless anxiety.

Our senior point guard, who is a D1 soccer recruit and rarely shoots, hit her first 3 of the season on our opening possession. On the next two possessions we worked carefully against NV’s sagging zone and got multiple shots in close that we could not get to drop. Eventually we hit another and that was, kind of, the game.

We led 9–0 after one quarter. Our trapping press destroyed their offense. We were doubling their big and daring their guard to shoot. We got nearly every rebound.

They finally hit two free throws to start the second quarter and basically played us even that period, leading 18–7 at the break.

After halftime we lost our composure. NV swapped their sagging 2–3 zone for a trapping 1–3–1 one and we turned the ball over on our first four possessions. And each turnover was more because of dumbness on our part than good D on theirs. We threw the same entry pass three times and each one got knocked away easily because the pass was horrible and our girl posting didn’t seal her defender. Midway through the quarter NV hit a 3 and suddenly it was a six-point game. We called a timeout. Their fans were fired up. Their players jumping on each other on the way to the bench.

That was a good time out. Moments later we got three straight steals out of our press. We kept threatening to completely blow them out but were just careless enough with the ball that we never got the lead over 15 points. The game was basically over with three minutes left as we casually tossed the ball around to kill time. Eventually they would foul us, we’d hit a free throw or two, they’d go down and hit a quick shot, then we’d start killing time again.

That point guard who hit the opening 3 for us? We learned during the game that she had been home with 103° fever two days earlier. She looked absolutely beat the entire second half. If the NV coach was smarter he would have attacked her when she brought the ball up. She looked like she might fall over if anyone pressured her very hard. In fact, both teams looked utterly wiped out for the entire fourth quarter. You’d think it was a 70–65 game, not one where both teams struggled to combine for 60 points. I wonder how many players would have tested positive for flu, Covid, or something else had we lined them up for nasal swabs after the game. Good thing it wasn’t a close game because I’m not sure either team had the energy to make winning plays.

Our coach cleared the bench with 55 seconds left and the reserves dribbled out the clock.

38–23, first regional title in 24 years. An impressive win that would have really raised some eyebrows if we could have hit our easiest shots. We missed 10–12–14? shots right at the rim, including multiple layups on breaks. We had at least three possessions where we grabbed two offensive rebounds but couldn’t do anything with them. We were very careless with the ball, something that needs to improve next week. Which, I guess, gives the coach something to focus on in film today.

It was also one of those games where even when we screwed up, things still went our way. There were several times when we turned it over, only to steal it right back or force NV to throw it away. One of our players turned the ball over on three straight possessions, then she drilled a 3 on the fourth possession.

Our defense continues to be fantastic, going back to our sectional opener against Chatard. I’m not sure why it took us so long to start pressing and trapping, but it has been working.

It’s been really fun to watch the girls enjoy this run. Each time they started to build momentum this season, they would have an all-around bad game to ruin it. But they’ve now won five in a row, six of seven, and nine of 11. It’s not always pretty, but they’ve been getting it done. Their work has been paying off and all the smiles and hugs after the games the past two weeks will be my lasting memory of this run.

Other than L cheering from the bench and getting to hold the trophies and cut the nets, my favorite memory (so far) came after Saturday’s game. I saw our senior who had carried us in sectionals but struggled Saturday being hugged by her dad. This dude and his wife are very tough on T. Like ridiculously tough. But I caught him hugging her, whispering to her with a smile on his face, then giving her a kiss. I don’t think much of this dad because of the stories I’ve heard about how he treats her. This moment, though? Fantastic.

A new feature to the Indiana state tournament is keeping the semi-state bracket empty until after the regional round. Unlike the NCAA tournament, where you can plot out every team you might play on your path to the Final Four, in Indiana you only know your sectional and regional brackets. The tournament is split north-south from the beginning, and Sunday the four remaining teams in each half of each class were drawn in a live broadcast to determine who plays each other next week.

We knew we were in the tougher half of the draw, which featured us (#9) plus numbers 3, 4, and 10. The North side of 3A has numbers 1, 2, 22, and 70.[3] And even though it is a blind draw, we knew exactly what would happen. Sure enough, our ping pong ball popped up first, immediately followed by Roncalli, a Catholic school on the southside of Indy. For some reason the schools stopped playing each other two years ago, but before that it was an annual game that while not as intense as our rivalry with Chatard, was still a highlighted one on the schedule.[4]

We are 18–9. They are 17–8. They’ve won eight straight. They lost to several teams we beat, but I also am pretty sure they were missing a starter for much of December. They seem healthy and locked in. They also have a sophomore who is their best player, and was largely responsible for L’s kickball team losing both of the City championship games they played in. So we need to beat her.

Now, the real peach of this whole deal is where we play them. While the matchups for semi-state were selected Sunday, the host sites were already locked in. The IHSAA allegedly looks at each semi-state quad of teams and tries to send them to the host site that makes the most sense for travel, how many fans each school will bring, and so on.

Our quad features the two Indy teams, one from halfway between Indy and Cincinnati, and one from Evansville. So, naturally, we’ve been sent to play in New Albany, which is two hours south, just across the river from Louisville. Like so much about Indiana high school sports, it makes no sense. Although I guess if you draw a triangle between Indy and the two other schools, New Albany falls on the base of that line.[5]

As an extra bonus we have the first game, which tips at 10:00 AM. So we’ll be leaving our house by 7:30. Earlier if the weather is bad. The team will bus down the night before because otherwise that makes for potentially a super long day.

Why a super long day, you ask? Because the teams that win the early games (the second is at noon) get to hang around for the semi-state championship game. Which is scheduled for 8:00 PM.

For years I’ve heard stories about happy fans from small towns taking over other cities as they burn time Saturday afternoon before the semi-state championship game. Now we have a chance to live that experience.

I mean, I want our girls to win. But I’m not going to be mad if we come home after the first game. L isn’t even playing, for crying out loud. We may have to pack sleeping bags so we can put the seats down and nap in the car if we do have to stay. I guess we can drive over to Louisville and kill time there, although, as you’ll see in a moment, L will not be in walking around mode that day.

The important part, though, is the Irish added another trophy and set of nets to their collection, the program’s first regional title in 24 years. Might as well get the first semi-state one in 25 years since we’re making the drive.

Under the Knife

L was again on the bench in street clothes Saturday. They have a light workout today and a full practice Tuesday, and then she will be done as an active basketball player for several months.

At our follow-up with the specialist last Tuesday we scheduled her for surgery this Wednesday. We were hoping that the timing would work to get her in right away, but were worried that spring break in six weeks would complicate things and we’d have to wait, thus pushing recovery and rehab out further. The doc said that because of L’s age and fitness, he was comfortable taking her cast off a little bit early which would allow her to get on the plane and go to Florida on March 28.

So, surgery Wednesday to remove an accessory navicular bone then re-size/re-attach a tendon. She’ll be in a splint for three weeks, then a cast for three more. After the cast comes off she’ll stay in a boot and on crutches until she’s cleared to begin PT. He is confident that, again, because of her age and fitness, she will recover quicker than most. But we’re still looking at four months minimum to be fully cleared. Which means, officially, no travel ball this year. She is very bummed about that, and the whole process. She’s had a few bad days over the past couple weeks, as this all became real and consequences realer. But hopeful this means junior year will be better, personally, than her sophomore year has been.

  1. Biggest thing to ever happen in Greencastle? John Dillinger’s biggest bank robbery took place there in 1933.  ↩
  2. In this big gym that felt more like one a small college would use, there were exactly three banners hanging from the rafters. All for boys basketball. One for 1931, when they were State runners up, one for 1932 when they reached the Final Four, and one for 1933, when they again were runners up. I wonder if they had some 6’9” kid who seemed like a giant back then, or just a class of great players who weren’t quite good enough to get over the hump in Indy.  ↩
  3. All rankings based on the Sagarin computer ratings that can be found here.  ↩
  4. To be consistent, if the bracket was fair we would be playing #4 while Roncalli would be playing #3.  ↩
  5. The Apple Maps directions from each school to the New Albany gym shows 94 mile, 109 mile, 109 mile, and 125 mile trips, with CHS being the most distant.  ↩

Weekend Notes

February 10, 2025 /

Well, one big topic to get to, and not the one most of the rest of the world is discussing today, so I’ll blow through the first two subjects quickly.

Jayhawk Talk

More stupidity. This team seemed to quit in the second half against K-State. Afterward, Bill Self said his players showed poor effort in practice Friday. This entire team is too old to not figure out the effort thing. And they get paid too much. But we’ll probably crush Colorado tomorrow and fool people into thinking they are close to figuring it out. I feel another blowout loss to a more athletic, engaged team in the round of 32 coming.

Meanwhile top recruit Darryn Peterson, ranked #2 in his class, played the #1 recruit’s team Friday and scored 58 points, including a game-winning 3. Next year can’t get here fast enough.

Super Bowl

I don’t like either team, rooting against the Chiefs has brought me more aggravation than joy in recent years, and I had zero interest in some of the peripheral aspects of the game involving famous people watching from the stands, so I kept the game on mute and worked through my YouTube queue most of the night. Obviously I should have done this a few Super Bowls ago. That was a total ass kicking. Crazy that Nick Sirianni was probably one game away from getting fired back in October, and now he’s a Super Bowl champion coach.

I didn’t watch a single commercial, either, so no opinions or comments about that part of the evening.

I did watch the halftime show. I like the idea of Kendrick Lamar, and am 100% on his side in the whole Drake beef. But my old man ears can’t decipher what young guys with his style are saying, so I can only give his performance a solid B. C was disappointed he didn’t choose a few other songs and bring in more guests than SZA. Apparently old conservatives were annoyed with the entire thing, which is a true bonus.

L went to a party at a friend’s house. She gave another friend a ride back to our house so his mom could pick him up, since we live about halfway between his home and the party. They arrived when there were still about three minutes left in the game. I explained to the friend how I was from Kansas City but not a Chiefs fan. Which probably really confused him as I was wearing a Royals World Series champs shirt.

Sectional Champs!

OK, time for the topic of the day.

Cathedral won their first sectional championship in 20 years with a dominant performance Saturday night.

The girls took on the Polytechnical school from downtown that has a few nice players and was picked as a “darkhorse” to win the sectional in the paper last week. There was never much doubt. We jumped out by double digits early, pushed it to 20 early in the second quarter, and other than a couple lulls around halftime never let up.

The only real drama came when Poly’s coach got ejected in the third quarter. We’re not sure what happened. I saw her get warned in the first half but hadn’t noticed her doing anything too crazy. I did hear their fans going nuts when they thought one of our girls should have been whistled for a five-second call (they were probably right). Seconds later the coach got a T. She was seated on the bench, but I guess she kept jawing because she quickly got T number two.

We hit three of four free throws then Poly hit a 3 and got two free throws to pump up their fans, but that burst was short-lived.

The only down side to the night was that had L been healthy, she definitely would have played. Our coach cleared the bench with 3:00 left, which is very early for her. And I bet a healthy L would have got some minutes well before that.

She did get to help cut the net down though, which she was excited about. She wasn’t on the court, but she is in the trophy picture of a team that made a little school history. Amazing it had been two decades since the last sectional champion, but until this year we were slotted into one of the toughest 4A sectionals in the state. Moving down to 3A had an immediate benefit.

It was fun to see how happy the girls were, especially for our four seniors. Girls basketball at CHS isn’t a glamour sport. There are often more visiting fans than Irish ones at our home games. The boys team gets better warmups and gear. CHS teams play difficult schedules in every sport but that seems to hit our girls a little harder. They earned all that happiness they got to display this weekend.

Our Friday semifinal was more interesting than the championship game, even it if was less competitive.

We played CA, the school that won a game 115–5 last month. Well, their coach was suspended for the game by the state athletic association because of that. Which seemed weird on a couple levels, but whatever. CA is led by his two junior daughters, who have attended four different schools in the past four years.[1] The better of the two sisters is a ranked recruit that lots of Big 10 schools are looking at. But the team is basically the sisters playing off each other, while their three teammates are expected to screen, rebound, and play D.

Although they were ranked well behind us, they still had the most talented player on the court and we were coming off an emotional win over our arch rival. So, you never know, right?

No doubt Friday. We opened on a 22–0 run and that was pretty much that. TWENTY TWO STRAIGHT POINTS!!! Final score: 65–27. We shut down their star and other than letting her sister hit three 3’s, contained the rest of the team. Dominant.

The best thing to come out of these games was that one of our seniors, T, has finally shaken off the bad luck that plagued her all year. I swear this poor kid is shooting 20% because she has shots rim out in the cruelest possible ways. Wide open shots will bounce around the rim 3–4 times before falling off. Layups will spin out or catch the wrong side of the rim. It’s impossible to accurately explain but if you just watch her work to get open and shoot, you would guess she scores 15 points a night. In reality she averages less than 10 ppg.

L and T became good friends last summer, with T often coming over to hang out at our place. I know she has a tough home life. Her parents are very hard on her. She has four older brothers who all played D1 football and the parents expect the same from her. You can see the weight on her shoulders getting heavier each time she misses a shot.

Tuesday against BC she was very good on both ends of the court, keying our pressure and hitting a couple big shots early. Friday she got the defensive assignment of the better CA sister and completely shut her down. Saturday she was on fire, scoring 19 points before halftime. Most of all, you could see her playing free and easy. She hit a 3 in every game, the first time this season she’s hit one in consecutive games, let alone three-straight.

Saturday, as the team was celebrating, I found T and told her whatever she’s been eating, DO NOT change it. She laughed and said she agreed that she wouldn’t change a thing.

The Irish advance to the Regional round of the state tournament.[2] We will play a team that is 20–6, but against a schedule ranked 194. They are #26 in 3A to our #9. According to the computer rankings, we are a 13-point favorite with a 78% chance to win. We just need to keep everyone focused and get any illnesses out of the way early in the week (L is home sick today) and we should be fine. The computer says we have pretty good odds.

  1. That’s as far as I know. They were in 8th grade on the southeast side of town, freshmen in a different district on the southwest side, spent sophomore year in Florida, and this year came back to an inner city school. Who knows if they were somewhere else for 7th grade, or will move out-of-state again for senior year.  ↩
  2. I could get real geeky about the structure of the Indiana playoff bracket, but I’m guessing no one wants to read about that. Long story short, Regionals were two games in one day for a long time, but a year or two back reverted to the old school style of Regionals being a single game, then the Semistate round consisting of two games. If we are lucky enough to win this week, I’ll share more about that.  ↩

More Hoops Talk: I Am A Fraud

February 5, 2025 /

Me, in Monday’s post:

I’m not sure if I have a worse feeling about tonight’s KU game or Tuesday’s CHS one.

Shows what I know about ball.

Jayhawk Talk

Well, that was much, much better. Arguably KU’s best, wire-to-wire, performance of the year, jumping on Iowa State early and never letting up. The offense was humming, moving the ball quickly and finding the open man. Aside from a few ill-advised drives by guys who couldn’t shoot and Rylan Griffen missing four wide-ass-open 3’s, you couldn’t ask for much more on that end of the court.

And the defense was locked in all night. Iowa State is in a bit of a funk, but KU’s switching defense thoroughly baffled the Cyclone guards. You could see them setting something up and then, suddenly, they were faced with KJ Adams in front of them and they had zero interest in either driving or pulling up.

The question is was this a one-off performance, or have they genuinely found something and can start playing to their talent level? They are about to start the most important stretch of the year, as their next six games are all about as favorable as you can have. Now that run begins with a suddenly frisky K-State team in Manhattan and includes back-to-back visits to the Utah schools over four days. I’m not saying they should go 6–0. But 5–1 would be a terrific boost before a brutal closing stretch that includes Texas Tech, Houston, and Arizona.

Wild stats that came up during/after the game:

Bill Self is now 38–0 in Big Monday home games. Video game numbers.

Baring a total collapse by Houston, this will be the first time in 24 years that KU has gone more than one year between conference championships. Again, that just doesn’t seem right, even having lived through Self’s domination of the Big 12.

HS Sectionals

Man, I was convinced the Bishop Chatard would blow the doors off our girls Tuesday night. We beat them by three for the City championship three weeks ago, and that win seemed a little flukey. The Trojans were four-time defending sectional champs. They have a tough-ass senior who I figured would not let her team lose. Throw in some illness/general bad vibes on our team over the past week, and I was prepared to have to shake the hands of our BC friends after the game and wish them luck moving forward while getting out of the gym as quick as possible.

Again, I don’t know shit.

Our girls played their best 15 minutes of the season to start the game. We forced at least 10 BC turnovers in the first quarter and led by eight after 12 minutes. Midway through the second quarter the lead was up to 28–13 and our top scorer had barely played. We were ridiculous on D and knocked down some shots. It didn’t feel sustainable, but 15 point leads give you a lot of rope to work with.

By halftime the lead was down to just to seven when we gave up an offensive rebound and put-back at the buzzer. It felt like BC had all the momentum so the break was well timed.

Except we didn’t do anything to start the second half, turning it over on our first two possessions. By the end of the third period we were down five, the BC run 28–8 since our largest lead. Moments later, the deficit was up to eight and our student section resorted to yelling “Let’s play football!” at the BC students across the way.[1] Fun chant, but seems like they had lost hope. I understood it; the game felt over.

But one of our freshmen hit her first 3 of the season – it might have been her first made jump shot of the season – and we followed with a long two. Next thing you knew one of our senior leaders was driving and flipped up a tough attempt from five feet that would have made it a one-point game, but it rimmed out. BC went down and scored off the miss and hit a free throw to push it back to six with 3:00 left.

The next three minutes were literally insane. Drunk as a game can get. Off the rails. Bananas. Etc.

The dad who normally sits next to me was home sick and couldn’t get the streaming broadcast to work so I was texting him updates. Thus I can kind of recreate the final minutes.

BC is up 48–42, they are in a box-and-one defense to keep our best player from getting the ball, and we seem to have no idea how to attack them.

Somehow we strung together a couple stops and baskets, got another steal from our press and one of our seniors, A, went to the line with 1:57 and a chance to tie the game. She hit one-of-two, down one.

BC ball, they turn it over.
We give the ball right back to them.
They turn it over again.
We call a timeout with 54 seconds left.
After the timeout A is fouled again, this time she hits both, we are up 49–48.

BC has the ball and we knock a rebound out of play. They are inbounding under their own basket. Our defender tips the pass, but the BC inbounder grabs the loose ball and immediately passes to their center who lays it in. 50–49 BC, less than 30 seconds left.

We turn it over with 17 seconds left. Shit, game over again, right?

Our other freshman steals the ball in the backcourt and gets fouled going to the rim. She hits both, 51–50 us, about 10 seconds left.

BC inbounds, makes a cross court pass that the same freshman steals. She sprints down the sideline and whips a pass as she tries to avoid getting fouled to keep the clock running. She gets absolutely jacked and flies out of bounds, where she lands and grabs her head. She has a history of concussions so this did not look good. She stays on the ground for several minutes before she goes to the bench. The refs did call a foul when she got trucked, so we will go to the line up one with 3.9 left. We sub in a girl who doesn’t play much, but had hit 4–4 free throws on the night.

Naturally she misses both.

A BC guard got the rebound in the corner, took three dribbles (they had no timeouts left), and let it fly from halfcourt. It looked good on the way and I had visions of their 3-pointer that beat us at the buzzer in overtime a year ago.[2] But this shot crashed off the backboard and had no chance to go in.

Pandemonium on our bench, the BC girls were on the ground in tears. Both locker rooms are in the same corner of the gym, so there was a lot of awkward standing around by the families while waiting for both teams to exit as the girls for the next quarterfinal warmed up. Luckily our best BC friends are great people and I was able to chat normally with them. When their daughter, one of L’s best friends since forever, came out she mocked shoved L a few times before they gave each other big hugs. She plays a lot so the loss was tougher on her than it would have been on L had we lost. I love that all those years together at St. P’s don’t get pushed aside because they are on different teams now.

What a win for our girls! They played out of their minds to start the game, then made an incredibly tough comeback after blowing their lead. It isn’t always pretty, but our girls might be tougher than I give them credit for.

When I picked L up from practice Monday I mentioned how that might have been her last practice of the season. She flatly said, “It wasn’t.” She had faith where I lacked it. While she is on the sectional roster, she did not get to dress, but was allowed to sit on the bench. There’s a good picture on Instagram of our coach screaming after the final buzzer. You can see L’s curls flying in the air as she jumps in the background.

Now is where things get tricky. Pretty much everyone said, before the game, that whoever won Tuesday’s opening game would be the heavy favorite to win two more games and advance to regionals. So now there’s all that pressure of not screwing it up after winning the toughest game. And we might be playing without a starter because of that injury in the closing minutes.

In Friday’s semis we play the third-best team (of course) in our sectional. This is the squad I mentioned last month that won a game 115–5. They have one of the best juniors in the state and play a frenetic style. But they are only 8–13 for the season, most of those wins against bad teams. Against common opponents they are 1–5, we are 4–2. Again, though, anything can happen in a single elimination tournament.

Last week when we played that 1–18 team, CE, a few of us laughed that their opponent in their sectional opener sent coaches to scout them. Why scout a team that bad? Well, those coaches should be fired, because CE beat them by six! Good for those girls!

  1. The Irish beat the Trojans 31–7 this past season.  ↩
  2. On that play they called a timeout after we made one-of-two free throws to go up 2, and had 4.9 seconds to get a shot off.  ↩

Monday Hoops Notes

February 3, 2025 /

Yeesh. Quite a weekend for basketball stuff, so I guess that will be my focus today. Let’s get the worst of it out of the way first. Feel free to skip; it ain’t brief.

Jayhawk Talk

I’ll begin by saying I’ve never been happier to have missed watching a KU game live than I was Saturday. Yet I was still angry and frustrated later that evening because I had checked the score just as KU took a 21-point lead on Baylor late in the first half and felt pretty good about how things would turn out. The next time I checked the score it was a four-point game. This was concerning. The final time I checked the score Baylor was up by seven with a couple minutes left. That’s when the relief kicked in that I hadn’t devoted my late afternoon/early evening to watching this shitshow and would then sit and stew about it the rest of the night.

Coming on the heels of last weekend’s disaster against Houston and then Tuesday’s near disaster against UCF, I think we can officially call this a trend. Or, better yet, just what this team is. Which is not very good, relatively speaking. With an angry Iowa State team, that got wrecked at home by a mediocre K-State team Saturday, coming to Lawrence tonight, it sure feels like it’s going to get worse, too.

I guess there is still the opportunity to make adjustments that paper over some of this team’s issues. I doubt even the most optimistic of KU fans thinks that’s likely, though. Making this feel like not only a lost season, but a lost mini-era. And hopefully not the end of something bigger.

The transfer portal/NIL era was supposed to be a gift for Bill Self. He had just won his second national title and Jay Wright had retired, leaving Self as the unquestioned Best Coach in the Game. The NCAA probe was also over. Self was going to clean up in recruiting, whether in the portal or with high school kids, and put himself in a great position to win at least one more title before he decided to retire.

The problem is that his portal success has been decidedly mixed. Kevin McCullar Jr. was great for a year and a half, arguably the best player in the country for the first six weeks of the ’23–24 season until his knee gave out on him. Hunter Dickinson is flawed and takes a lot of deserved heat for that, but for the most part he’s been good to very good. Zeke Mayo has been KU’s best player most of this season, although he mixes in the occasional stinker.

But pretty much every other transfer has been anywhere from mediocre to terrible. And that has wrecked the culture of the program.

What made KU so good for those 14 straight years they won the Big 12? It was the continuity in the program, the proverbial Culture. The Jayhawks didn’t always have the best talent, or the best pro talent I guess. But they always had the best combination of talent and experience. It was those top 50–60 recruits that stayed for three and four years and learned how to play for Self and understood the rigors of the Big 12 who made the biggest plays in the biggest games.

Those guys are gone. DaJuan Harris and KJ Adams have such limited games that they can’t fill the Ochai Agbaji, Devonte Graham, Frank Mason, Landon Lucas, Perry Ellis, Jeff Withey, Elijah Johnson, Tyshawn Taylor, Sherron Collins roles of carrying a team that is struggling in crunch time to a win in Ames or Manhattan or even in Allen Fieldhouse. I just don’t think that’s in Dickinson’s DNA, even with him being a second-year Jayhawk. And none of the other transfers or freshmen have any idea what to do in those moments.

There’s another big red flag here, one I’m reluctant to address. KU had won the Big 12 and was headed for a number one seed in the NCAA tournament when Self had his heart attack in March 2023. Without him, and without Harris who rolled his ankle just before halftime, KU blew a big second half lead over Arkansas in the second round of the NCAA tournament. That was seen as a blessing in disguise, as under-seeded UConn was waiting in the next round and would have destroyed KU, just like they destroyed everyone else that spring.

Since then it’s been an uncharacteristically mid run for KU. Some good wins in the early part of each season, followed by more really bad losses than I can remember as teams learned how to attack KU and the Jayhawks seemed to have no answers. Last year they were blown out in the second round by Gonzaga. Has this team done anything for the past month that suggests a third-straight second round loss is their ceiling?

Some of KU’s issues are talent. Harris and Adams are such one-dimensional players that when they can’t do those things well – basically defense for Harris and effort for Adams – they are giant holes on the court. Putting more pressure on the other three players out there with them, most of whom have their own flaws. Dickinson is a scoring savant in the low post and can grab 10 rebounds without trying. However, he’s a huge liability on defense if he has to take more than one step. He’s regressed when he takes shots away from the basket. Mayo, as hot as he can get, also has games where he can’t hit a thing and forces things to the point where he turns the ball over. And so on.

If you read back through my KU posts for the past 21 years, you’ll find that I was always whining about something each team doesn’t do well. But the teams that didn’t shoot well could still get to the rim and score there. Ones that struggled to guard could at least rebound. Teams that were offensively challenged could choke the life out of the game on the defensive end.

This year’s team has no identity, no strength, no experience to fall back on when they can’t hit 3’s and can’t get to the rim and the defense breaks down and they get out-rebounded. Their two homegrown senior leaders are players that should be backups or complimentary players, not the guys who make the tough ass plays in the last three minutes that turn an L into a W.

Self recruited this roster, and the ones the two previous years that also had massive flaws. The bad portal players have been so bad that they counter-balance a lot of the credit he should get for bringing in McCullar/Dickinson/Mayo. High school recruiting has been uneven for several years, although the incoming class seems like a return to form. He’s refused, for whatever reason, to recruit over Harris and Adams, and neither of them has improved much in their time on campus.

No matter how much we want to ignore it, we have to wonder if Self lost something in his health scare two years ago. Has he dialed back his intensity, and that spills over to the team? Is his preparation time less rigorous than it was? Does he process things a half step slower than he used to? Is there some other issue that he hides in public but which affects how he coaches? I sure hope this is all coincidental, but it’s a question that has to be considered.

A good buddy of mine shared this hot take after the back-to-back Creighton-Missouri losses in December: this would be Self’s last year. He thought this team would drive Self to pull a Jay Wright and go sit on a beach or work on TV. I argued that Self has raved as much about Darryn Peterson as he has any recruit ever, and there’s no way, health allowing, that he won’t be back to coach him next year. But, I added, after that all bets are off. If the passion is gone, he could retire any time after next season.

After the last week I have to wonder if leaving after this year might truly be on the table. Again, I sure as hell hope not and am frantically lighting candles, saying prayers, and rubbing rabbit feet to guard against this option. We need to keep kicking that nightmare scenario down the road as long as we can.

In reality Self just won a national title three years ago. He was chasing his third, which would place him in the truly all-time elite list of coaches, and made some big swings that ended up being huge misses. I don’t think he suddenly forgot how to coach, or his methods stopped working in 2023.

The modern era of Kansas Basketball began on March 10, 1984, when Ron Kellogg hit a baseline jumper to beat #6 Oklahoma in the Big 8 tournament championship game. We Jayhawk fans have had things pretty good for over 40 years. I think it’s way too early for us to start worrying about KU falling into the pattern that Indiana has been stuck in for over 20 years. There are some concerning cracks in the foundation, though.

HS Hoops + Injury Update

The final week of the regular season was not great.

Tuesday we took on Carmel. The JV game went down to the final seconds, and we hit a shot with about three ticks left to get a one-point win. I enjoyed the Carmel coaches getting super heated with the refs for not giving them a time out as the clock ran out. It went on for several minutes after the game, and then our athletic director had to keep one of the coaches from approaching the refs as they left the gym. I would have been equally livid had that happened to us. L again didn’t play much, and she was annoyed about it after the game. On the one hand I understood her frustration. On the other, she is clearly compromised and can’t do a ton so I totally got why the coaches didn’t play her much. She had four points, an assist, and three steals.

The varsity game was kind of a mess. Carmel lost their best player to a knee injury a month ago and had gone 2–6 since. If we played smart, we should win. We were up with a couple minutes left until we let a freshman hit consecutive 3’s to give them the lead. Our offense couldn’t get a thing going on the other end and we lost by three. Carmel is really well coached and has some nice players, but this is not a game that a team that wants to make a serious run in the tournament should lose.

Thursday we traveled 75 minutes south to play one of the worst programs in the state. They had sent word earlier in the week that they only had six JV players, so asked if the JV game could just be two quarters. Lovely. We’re spending over an hour in the car for half a JV game then a varsity game that shouldn’t be close.

JV took care of business, winning easily. L was even more limited in minutes and had just an assist and a turnover.

Varsity jumped out to a big lead, I think it got as high as 30 early in the second half, but then got sloppy and never reached running clock territory. We ended up winning by 24. The JV parents were annoyed because CE had 11 girls dressed for varsity. They easily could have moved a couple down for JV so we could have played a full game. I mean, the varsity team ended the season 1–19. It’s not like they go 10 deep with decent players.

JV ended the year 17–3. A terrible, blowout loss to start the year. The other two losses L is convinced we would have won had she been healthy and available. A really good season for a team dominated by sophomores. I just wish a few of those sophomores were obviously kids that could step in and start for varsity next year.

Varsity ended the regular season at 14–9. Three of those losses were by three points or less. I can’t say I’m super confident about sectionals because this team has never really locked in for multiple games in a row. They struggle to make shots and are too reliant on our leading scorer for offense, and she’s far from an unstoppable player. Our defense is spotty. We have no size so struggle to rebound. We don’t have a deep bench. Oh, and there’s the matter of playing our arch rival we beat three weeks ago in the opening game of the tournament. I’m not sure if I have a worse feeling about tonight’s KU game or Tuesday’s CHS one.

It’s a knock-out tournament, though, and anything can happen. When two Catholic schools are playing God obviously sits back, eats popcorn, and watches rather than taking a side.

L did make the sectional roster, so she’s continued to practice with the varsity. In theory. I don’t think she did much Friday or Saturday, and Saturday her foot hurt so bad that she went back to the crutches when she got home.

If you’ve made it this far I’ll share the biggest bad news of this post last: she is scheduled for an MRI on Thursday, and we’re pretty sure she’s going to need surgery. That will knock her out for most, if not all, of the travel season. I’ll share more about that once we get results/confirmation, but it’s obviously been a rough couple of weeks for her. She didn’t make varsity to start the season, had to stop playing three games in, was never fully healthy when she returned, and is now looking at another long stretch without basketball. I think she’d love a do-over for her sophomore year, at least for basketball.

NBA

HOLY SHIT!!!!

The biggest, dumbest trade in NBA history took place late Saturday night. Luka Doncic to the Lakers, Anthony Davis to the Mavericks. Plus other parts and picks.

If you don’t follow the NBA, Doncic is one of the three best players in the world, when he’s healthy. He’s been out since Christmas, though, and has a history of not taking care of his body. Which may have been the reason Dallas moved him. Davis was once a top five player in the league, but now probably somewhere between 15–20 most nights, with the random night he can still go nuts. But Doncic is seven years younger than Davis. And Dallas didn’t get nearly enough back for him.

This is an insane trade if you’re Dallas. You are basically gambling that Doncic’s body is going to fail on him sooner rather than later. But instead of leveraging his ability and age, you treated him like he was an equal to Davis.

It makes no sense to me why/how you make this trade. Worse, it hands a golden ticket to the Lakers, who somehow always come up with deals that get them superstars just as they are reaching their peaks. If Luka listens to LeBron and gets healthy and takes his fitness seriously, they could be a monster next year.

The NBA pods were insanely fun the past 24 hours as people tried to make sense of this trade. The conspiracy theories are A++++ at the moment!

A few hours later, Sacramento sent De’Aaron Fox to San Antonio. This wasn’t as seismic, and the Kings actually got a decent return. What made this huge was that Victor Wembanyama now has a legit running mate, along with several other nice, young players around him. This probably doesn’t do much for the team this year. It does make them title contenders as soon as next year.

I have college buddies who are big Mavericks and Kings fans. When the Fox trade broke last night, I told them I am now going to start getting worried that either Tyrese Haliburton or Pascal Siakam gets moved before the trade deadline Thursday.

Fever

There was some actual good basketball news in our house: the Fever made some great moves over the weekend. First they re-signed Kelsey Mitchell, Caitlin Clark’s backcourt running mate. Then they traded for two former All Stars with championship rings, Natasha Howard and DeWanna Bonner. Both are on the back ends of their careers but have experience and size and versatility that the Fever needed. Finally they added shooter in Sophie Cunningham. Through all that they also managed to keep super-sub Lexie Hull, for the time being at least.

We’ll see how these all work out, but on paper they make the Fever much better. Especially when you figure Clark should be steadier and stronger as a second-year player than she was as a rookie.

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