D's Notebook

Tag: holidays (Page 1 of 19)

Weekend Notes

November 4, 2024 /

This was a fairly quiet weekend thanks to a KU bye week and the girls being busy on their own.

Halloween

Our Halloween was relaxed. We decided to go hang with our old neighbors. It sure brought back memories to sit in their driveway and watch kids scamper through the cul-de-sac. That was where our girls did almost all of their trick-or-treating. As we at chili we reminisced about the various holidays we shared with our friends, including the one when it was sleeting sideways and our girls insisted on going out. We might have been the only people dumb enough to hit the streets that night, and folks were literally dumping their entire candy collections into our girls’ bags. They thought the misery was worth it.

We’ve left a bowl at our house a few times with a sign telling folks to help themselves. And we always come back to an almost-full bowl. It helps that we get very few trick-or-treaters. We did that again this year. C and L were home and said they didn’t hear a lot of kids come to our house. Yet when we got home the bowl was completely empty, robbing us of our post-Halloween candy to share as a family. I didn’t bother to check our front-door cam to see which little a-holes helped themselves to the entire bowl.

HS Football Playoffs

CHS won their opening playoff game against now 0–10 North Central 36–0. It was pretty sloppy with lots of penalties and wasted opportunities. L walked across the street to watch but I didn’t think it would be worth even that meager effort. I believe this is the first year since M was in seventh grade that I didn’t go to a single CHS game, although I still listened to each one and did walk over when our friends from Carmel played NC.

The Irish advance to play #1 Lawrence North, who after a slow first half looked really good beating their arch rivals Lawrence Central. I had that game on TV until the Pacers started. CHS has knocked LN out of the playoffs each of the last two years but this is a very different LN team. I will be watching basketball 80 miles north so likely won’t be able to follow the sectional championship game very well.

College Football

A KU bye week meant no heart-breaking, come-from-ahead loss. Which was a nice change from how this fall has gone.

I watched most of Ohio State – Penn State. I see Andy Kotelnicki’s kryptonite is still first and goal inside the 10. His offense always bogged down in those situations at KU. Even with better talent he still struggles when faced with a short field. It’s like all his creativity disappears and he just runs dives up the middle.

Clearly having either just played KU or having the Jayhawks next on your schedule takes a lot out of a team, with both Kansas State and Iowa State losing Saturday.

I was actually looking forward to watching IU play this week. I knew the game was on Peacock. We are Xfinity customers and I thought we got Peacock for free. Turns out we just get a limited part of Peacock free, and that tier does not include live sports. I was not going to pay $10 to see one game of a team I don’t really care about. But cool that IU is 9–0 for the first time in their history.

Colts

So much for Joe Flacco making a difference. I didn’t watch much of the Colts-Vikings game Sunday night but when I did, I saw an offense that was absolutely putrid. Yep, Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen are going to be looking for new jobs this winter.

Pacers

After beating the Celtics in overtime Wednesday to get their first win of the year, the Pacers blew multiple leads in New Orleans to lose another one Friday.

Worse, for the second time in a week they lost a backup center to a non-contact, achilles injury, this time second stringer Isaiah Jackson. For the moment Myles Turner is the Pacers only true big. I hope they are triple taping his calves and ankles, while also finding a way to move some of their wing depth to find another big body.

College Hoops Recruiting

It’s been a quiet recruiting season, so far, for KU. That was because Bill Self put all his recruiting eggs into one basket, and was waiting on a decision from Darryn Peterson, the #3 overall player in this year’s senior class. Peterson finally made his decision Friday night, picking KU. That’s been the assumption for months, mostly because he’s already signed a multi-year deal with Adidas and all the other schools recruiting him were Nike programs. Still, there were rumors that both Ohio State and USC were making big runs at him.

The Jayhawks got their man and can now, hopefully, start filling around him. KU will lose at least six players after this season, so there are opportunities for any young men who want to play in the greatest building in the game. DP, the highest rated recruit KU has signed since Josh Jackson, is a pretty good start.

Misc

I swear, October is the fastest month of the year. It just flies by no matter how old you or your kids are.

The sun setting at 5:40 is stupid.

Late summer keeps hanging on. We had two days around 80 last week. We are supposed to have a couple days in the 70s this week. It will flip eventually, but zero complaints about the weather at the moment.

The girls both went to parties Saturday. The cops showed up at the one L was at. But, she was quick to tell me, not because of the the actual party. One of her travel teammates had a bunch of people over. Naturally word got out, a hoarde of kids from other schools showed up and they were not allowed inside the house, so they first destroyed L’s friend’s basketball hoops (one of those movable ones) then started fighting in the street. The cops showed up to clear them out but never even knocked on the door where the actual party was. Glad we’ve trained our girls to understand they can have friends over, but can never, ever host a party. We’re not dealing with that shit.

Remember being in high school and hearing rumors that there was a party at so-and-so’s house, or in such-and-such neighborhood, and driving around hoping to find it and then talk your way in? I did plenty of that. But I never destroyed anyone’s basketball hoop. Or fought in the street.

Weekend Notes

October 28, 2024 /

These summaries are usually heavy on the sports. After a weekend like the one just passed, that is problematic. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, good happened for teams I follow over the past three days. Just a reminder that sports are terrible and I’m dumb for letting them hold such large sway over my life and mood. You people who waltz blissfully through your days without being affected by the result of a game have it right.

So, I’ll try to keep these brief.

KU Hoops Exhibition

No Hunter Dickinson, no Rylen Griffen, no Shak Moore. So you couldn’t expect too much facing a hungry Arkansas team in John Calipari’s first competitive appearance as the Hogs’ head coach. You know what, though? It would have been nice if the guys who did play didn’t, mostly, play like ass. If juniors and seniors weren’t totally out-played by freshmen and sophomores. If this more athletic lineup that could shoot actually looked athletic and hit some shots.

You can’t read too much into these exhibitions, especially when KU’s roster was limited and there was the added significance that this one had to the home crowd. And, honestly, I think Bill Self wanted the team to play poorly so he can show them how far they need to go. I guess we’ll find out in two weeks against North Carolina whether the message was received.

KU Football

Lucy + Charlie Brown = the KU football experience.

A dropped touchdown pass. Fielding a kickoff at the one yard line and stepping out of bounds, followed immediately by a safety and then a Kansas State touchdown thanks to a short field. A missed PAT. Not being able to get a first down in the closing moments, K-State kicking a long-ass field goal, then not being able to recognize/deal with the Wildcats blitzing on every down of KU’s final possession. Then, the saddest moment in recent KU football history: Jalon Daniels fumbling while valiantly-if-hopelessly scrambling to try to keep the game alive.

All of this was 100% predictable to anyone who has been a KU football fan for decades. In fact, we should start printing BINGO cards of random stupid shit just to track the impressive ways the Jayhawks find to blow games.

Of course what really sucks about all of this is Saturday’s game was right there to win. Change any two of those moments above, the Jayhawks break their 15-year losing streak to the Cats and maybe save their season. But it’s KU football and, well, you know…

That weird, winning percentage list of KU’s losses this year now shows that a team has a roughly one in 50,000 chance to go 0–6 based on the Jayhawks’ highest win probability moment in each game. Wild. And infuriating. KU has now lost by six, three, four, eleven, four, and two points.

Colts

Sunday might be the moment that broke the Anthony Richardson experiment, at least temporarily. It started with the usual stuff. A gorgeous, 69-yard TD pass squeezed in between over a dozen bad balls (He was 2–15 pasing in the first half). Easy throw after easy throw bungled, with the occasional beautiful ball downfield mixed in.

Then, in the midst of a key drive in the third quarter, after scrambling madly on consecutive plays, Richardson tapped his helmet and went to the sidelines before a third down play. Oh no, another injury.

But, wait, he wasn’t injured. He was just exhausted after running for his life on consecutive plays. So he checked himself out of the game.

Yeah, this is not going to go over well with Colts fans.

It didn’t matter that Richardson returned on the next series and threw three of the prettiest balls you will ever see, one broken up on a great play, the second dropped, the third caught and initially ruled a touchdown before review put the ball at the one. Folks here are going to see the wild inconsistency and add taking himself off the field like a middle schooler and lose whatever patience they had with Richardson.

The Colts have been losing close games. The playoffs should be in reach. Joe Flacco may not have the long-term upside AR has, but he also doesn’t miss the easy throws and make the huge mistakes the starter makes. Eventually the Colts will make the switch, it will likely be too late, they’ll punt the Richardson referendum down the road another year, and the front office will be facing some serious heat over their jobs in the winter.

The Colts have now lost by three, three, four, and two points.

Pacers

Whoa.

Destroyed by the Knicks Friday night. Not a surprise. You knew New York would be out for blood after last year’s Eastern Conference semifinals, in which the Pacers anhiliated them on their home court in game seven. Tyrese Haliburton scoring more than zero points would have been nice.

Then losing to Philadelphia, who was playing without both Joel Embiid and Paul George, at home Sunday. That’s a much bigger deal than losing to the Knicks in a revenge game. We had family over so I missed almost all of this one. Hali missed two free throws that would have tied the game late in overtime. He’s not off to a great start.

I am officially Concerned about the Pacers. They travel to Orlando tonight, not a team you want to face when you are struggling. Then they get Boston, at New Orleans, at Dallas. They better tighten shit up quick.

Fever Coaching Change

This isn’t necessarily a bad moment for me personally, but the Fever announced Sunday morning that they were not bringing coach Christie Sides back next year. She got a lot of heat early in the season, when the team looked disorganized and confused. But then she got a lot of credit when the team rounded into form and made a playoff run.

Normally I would think her dismissal had to do with player dissatisfaction.

However, the Fever hired a new president and GM since the team exited the playoffs. Because of that, I think this is more just a philosophy deal, a disconnect between Sides and her new bosses. Like half the league has fired their coaches in the past month, which seems a little weird.

IU

Oh, I guess I owe S’s Hoosiers some props. They destroyed Nebraska a week ago, while we were in Colorado, and that was the first moment I thought they were legit. Saturday, after hosting ESPN Game Day for the first time, they took care of Washington to go to 8–0 and sit tied for first in the Big Ten. An absolutely astounding turnaround. And in the perfect year, with the expanded playoff.

They travel to Michigan State this week, host Michigan next week, then have a bye before they go to Ohio State. Two-and-one and a home playoff game is very much in play.

Big Moments

It is sad that the two best sports moments of my weekend came from teams I don’t really care about.

Freddie Freeman’s 10th inning, walk-off, grand slam homer in game one of the World Series was an incredible moment. I was thankful I switched over just in time to see it live. Glad it happened to the Yankees, too.

Then Washington’s Hail Mary to beat Chicago Sunday was also fantastic. We had this game on, but with family over I could only keep one eye on it. Seemed kind of wild up until I was finally able to sit down and watch for the last minute or so, which took that wildness to another level. I legit screamed when Noah Brown caught the tipped ball for the win. Our neighbor is a Bears fan. I should check on him.

Halloween Fiestas

L and her man went to a party Friday night. She dressed as Catwoman, he as Batman. They were cute. They couldn’t stay long since she had practice early Saturday. I think they were both fine with that, as neither of them are into the party scene much at this point. I’m not a prude or anything, but I legit don’t understand how so many parents let high school kids go wild in their homes.

Saturday one of S’s sisters and her husband hosted their annual party, which is much more small kid centric than it used to be. Or at least our kids are bigger now so we’re not in the target audience of the gathering. We made an appearance, ate some chili, laughed at the little kids’ constumes, had a drink or two, then left when the pumpkin carving nonsense started. When our girls were the little ones that always seemed like when things went a little off the rails. A couple of our nephews were already trending towards problematic when we were walking out.

Weekend Notes

October 14, 2024 /

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

Northern Lights

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

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

Interesting Times At School

CHS parents got this text last Tuesday afternoon.

Screenshot

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

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

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

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

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

Royals

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

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

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

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

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

KU

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

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

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

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

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

CHS

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

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

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

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

Halloween Shit

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

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

Closing Time

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

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

Colts

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

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

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

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

Fall Break

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

Holiday Weekend Notes

September 3, 2024 /

It was an action-packed weekend. At least for watching sports from the comfort of my house. Friday night in particular was kind of crazy. High school football on the radio. Indiana Fever and US Open on the TV. Royals-Astros Gameday coverage on the Mac. With bonus weather monitoring on every screen. I guess I’ll break things down by subject rather than day.

KU Football

A slow start turned into the blowout it was supposed to be Thursday night for KU. Not sure you can make any great assessments of the team given the opponent. I thought Jalon Daniels looked a little rusty, but I also don’t know how open the playbook was. It seemed like the coaching staff was doing some experimenting with the offensive line. A pick-six for Mello Dotson, likely not the last for this defensive backfield this season. Devin Neal scoring touchdowns, Luke Grimm catching passes. We’ll find out a lot more about the Jayhawks next week when they go to Illinois.

The first game at Children’s Mercy Park seemed to go just fine. Word from people who went is that it was a great atmosphere. The replay system not working early and likely costing KU two scores was kind of a bummer.

HS Football

A week after beating preseason #1 Ben Davis, #3 Cathedral got a reminder their schedule is still brutal, losing to #6 Brownsburg 30–14. They got there a rather odd way.

BHS jumped out to a 17–7 lead Friday night before lightning was spotted. Although the storm was 10 miles away, and moving away from the stadium, the game was delayed over an hour before a second series of storms popped up and officials decided to postpone the game until Saturday afternoon.

Things didn’t get much better in the resumed game. CHS was playing with their primary running back – who ran for 168 yards week one – hobbled Friday, then without him completely Saturday. L heard Sunday he’s probably having surgery and out for the year. Not sure if he was worth 16 points but I think he would have helped. If he is indeed out for an extended stretch, the Irish’s already brutal schedule looks even more formidable.

Weather

Last week was hot, sticky, and nasty. The heat index was up around 110 a couple days. Friday night three rounds of storms came through, and torrential rains and heavy winds blew the heat away. The humidity stuck around through Saturday. Then Sunday morning it was 52 and 100% pleasant. The extended forecast has a bunch of mornings like that, with a few even colder, and daytime highs mostly in the mid–70s with a few mid–80s sprinkled in. September is a truly glorious month.

US Open

I watched a ton of tennis last week and into the weekend. Week one of the Open might be the best week of tennis of the year, hell one of the best sports weeks of the entire year, with great matches in progress just about any time you turn on your TV from noon to midnight.

Weekend highlights were Frances Tiafoe’s two wins and both Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic losing early. It was a bummer that Coco Gauff went out early, but at least she lost to another American. In general it’s great to have several decent American players in both the women’s and men’s game at the moment. It sure makes for better crowds in New York.

Royals

Crap on a stick.

Last Wednesday afternoon the Royals were tied for first place and were up on co-leaders Cleveland going into the seventh inning, nine outs away from a four-game sweep of the Guardians. Then the Royals melted down a little and they’ve yet to recover, losing six straight games. Three injuries during that span have not helped. At least they still have a cushion in the wild card race for the time being.

It’s been a bit of a charmed summer for the Royals, totally unexpected and built on out-of-nowhere quality starting pitching. The pitching has still been fine, at least the starters; it’s been the bats that have let them down over the past week. They were nearly no-hit Friday and have gone deep into other games with just one or two hits. Maybe, hopefully, surely the hitters can lock back in and they can hold on to one of those wild card spots to complete this surprise season.

Fever

I know I’m not alone in having watched more WNBA games this year than in the rest of my life combined. I now know exactly when the Fever are playing, and on what channel. Unlike other sports, which S doesn’t really pay attention to, for the Fever she gets kind of locked in. Ironically our basketball playing daughter will still just breeze through and watch a few minutes, but rarely sits down and watches long stretches with us.

Two more wins over the weekend for the hottest team in the league. The Fever are now over .500 for the first time in five years. Which sounds made up. Have they really been that bad, for that long? Again, since I never watched I don’t know if that is a real stat or not.

It’s been fun watching this team figure each other out since their disastrous start. Kelsey Mitchell is a revelation, and a perfect backcourt partner for Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston finally settled down and started playing like the former #1 pick she is. Lexi Hull is one of the most fun players to watch, and seemingly can’t miss a 3 since the Olympic break.

And, of course, there’s Clark. She was starting to get comfortable before the break, but has looked like a first team all league player since getting some time to both rest and work on her game. In those seven games she’s averaging 24.6 points, 5 rebounds, and nine assists. And that’s with her teammates still booting 3–4 passes a night, or blowing open layups.[1]

She’s added a floater. Her teammates are getting better at anticipating her crazy passes. She’s handling the physicality of the league better. She still makes a few horrible passes a game, but when she’s averaging almost nine assists a game, you’ll take those. And her outside shot still isn’t locked in. That will come next year. Any questions about her transition to the pro game have been answered.

The only real bummer to the Fever turning the corner is it has kept us from going to a game. Tickets were crazy expensive at the beginning of the season, as you would expect. I planned on waiting until the hype died down and the team fell deep into the bottom of the standings before trying to grab some for a weeknight game. So much for that. I was looking at tickets for tomorrow’s game and even upper level seats were going for $200 each. That seems excessive, especially when L isn’t super into watching. Although she would go if given the chance.

Oh, one other WNBA note. The yammering idiots on TV need to drop the whole Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese thing and focus on the real issue: how stupid are the four teams other than Indiana and Chicago who passed on drafting Reese? She’s getting 20 boards a night over the past three weeks and leads the league in rebounding for the season. From watching Chicago Friday, it’s obvious that some of those numbers come because her coach leaves her on the court deep into blowouts to pad her numbers. But 20 rebounds is 20 rebounds.

The rookie of the year argument is pretty much over, as CC is both having a better and more impactful year while Chicago is dropping like a rock despite Reese’s play. That shouldn’t hide the fact that Reese is having a phenomenal rookie year of her own.

College Football

It’s always hard for me to dive in this first week of real college football action. There’s so much other stuff going on, both on TV and in real life, that it’s hard to lock in. I had plenty of games on but other than Notre Dame – Texas A&M didn’t get super focused on any of them.

That was a big win for the Irish. Notre Dame’s defense looks incredible. They have a cake schedule. They will be one of the top four teams in the playoff. The obvious joke is they will then lose to Alabama or whatever SEC runner-up they play in the first round. But that game will be in South Bend. In December. Surely Touchdown Jesus will scare up some lake effect snow, or at least nasty windchills, to aid the Irish.

Family Time

We didn’t do anything big family-wise for the holiday weekend. M stayed in Cincinnati. C and L went to the CHS game with friends Friday, but neither went back to the resumption on Saturday. L went to the gym with basketball friends Sunday. C went to the Pitbull concert Sunday night. We had the in-laws over for dinner Sunday, and three of the nephews over to swim on Monday. S and I went to dinner with friends Saturday.

I also found a little project for myself over the weekend. It scratches one of my biggest itches and will have a direct effect on some of my blog posts. I doubt most of you will be as interested in it as I am, but I’ll still share more details about it soon.

And with that, summer is over. Preseason training for school basketball started for L today, and I was up at 5:15 to get her to school on time. A perfect way for her to knock out some of her driving in the dark time!

  1. As the father of a lady baller, I will say the most frustrating part of the women’s game is how many layups are missed. That, more than any other area, is where the difference between men and women is glaring. It’s a lot harder to make a layup in traffic when you release the ball a foot/foot-and-a-half below the rim than within a few inches of it.  ↩

Weekend Notes

April 2, 2024 /

Easter

A relatively chill, long Easter weekend for us.

Having kids in Catholic school means it was a four-day weekend, stretching from Good Friday through Easter Monday. Not that we took much advantage of it by doing anything special.

M had a high school friend visit her at UC on Friday, so she didn’t come home until Saturday morning, with her pal giving her a ride to Indy. Then she spent Saturday evening with friends. Most of the rest of her weekend revolved around napping, homework, and laundry. Normal home from college stuff.

I ran her back Monday morning. Her first class isn’t until 11:15 so we didn’t have to leave super early. She only has three more weeks of class and her last final is April 25. Her summer is right around the corner.

A couple of S’s siblings were traveling for the holiday, so we decided to scrap the big family gathering this year. Instead we had her dad and stepmom over for dinner with the girls Saturday, then went out for an early breakfast Sunday before the church crowds hit our favorite spot. We walked in to only a few other folks being seated. By the time we left it was starting to fill up quickly.

We pulled some of the patio furniture and cushions out and used them Saturday and Sunday, which were warm and breezy. But we had to put all the cushions back into storage as soon as we were done with storms in the forecast.

Our lawn service has already been around, both treating and mowing the yard last week. It looks pretty great, lush and green. Most of our blooming plants and trees are starting to pop. It sure feels like spring. It makes sense that it might snow Wednesday.

College Hoops

I popped in and out of basketball coverage all weekend. I probably watched more women’s ball than men’s.

With that in mind, allow me to first blast the NCAA for allowing the situation in Portland to occur where one of the three-point lines for the women’s games was improperly drawn. They didn’t figure this out until after four Sweet Sixteen games had been played, and then Texas and North Carolina State agreed to play their Elite 8 game on the non-regulation court so they could, you know, actually play when they were supposed to.

They even had extra games to figure it out, with the women’s regionals being staged at two sites instead of four. This combined with a handful of other “incidents” so far in the tournament show how the NCAA still doesn’t give the women’s game nearly enough respect despite the massive increase in ratings and interest.

Oh, and don’t get me started on how bad the refs are in women’s games. You can make a long list of objectively incorrect calls in every game. There was the Oregon State girl who had position for a rebound, an LSU player crashed into her sending both to the floor, and the Oregon State girl was called for the foul. Or a jump ball that was called in the Iowa-LSU game by a ref who could not see the ball, which was clearly in the left arm of an Iowa player while two LSU players were latched onto her right arm. If I thought about it longer I could come up with a lot more.

The women’s Final Four is kind of perfect. You have undefeated South Carolina, looking for redemption for last year’s loss to Iowa. I’m not sure America felt super strongly about the North Carolina State – Texas regional final, but with the NCSU men making the Final Four, having their women make it as well is a nice story. Then you have Iowa-UConn, Caitlin vs Paige, in the matchup America wanted.

On the men’s side, man, UConn! I thought Illinois was a damn good team and then the Huskies laid a 30–0 run on them. Thirty to nothing, in an Elite 8 game! Outrageous.

Good luck to Alabama stopping that absolute wagon of a team. I’m no UConn fan but you have to admire their squad. It is a near perfect college team. There are pros on it, but I’m not sure there are any All NBA guys amongst them. They remind me a little of the 2008 Kansas team. Coincidentally, they now rank just behind the 2008 champs as the fourth-best team in the KenPom era. Two more convincing wins could push them up higher on that list.

What a weekend for my Purdue friends. They finally got the Final Four monkey off their back. After Big Dog losing to Duke in the Elite 8, Carson Edwards going off but not being enough against Virginia, those great late Eighties teams flaming out every year, and then losing to double-digit seeds over-and-over, capped by last year’s loss to a 16 seed, getting over that hump against Tennessee had to feel amazing.

Who is waiting for the Boilermakers in the Final Four? An 11 seed in NC State. The Hoops Gods are funny sometimes.

There’s been a lot of discourse about how Zach Edey is officiated. To me it’s a near impossible task. He is pulled and grabbed and shoved on every play. And he also pushes off, shoves, and otherwise manhandles whoever is guarding him on every play. I will say he gets a great whistle. It seems like refs are so afraid to call him for anything because they don’t want to punish the big man that they sometimes let obvious fouls go unpunished. I saw a couple that were particularly notable over the weekend. If KU had played Purdue I probably would have seen a lot more, and been a lot more worked up about them.

Officiating Edey is an impossible task. I get that. What I don’t understand is why refs let Braden Smith travel pretty much every time he has the ball. It’s uncanny how he clearly moves his pivot foot without ever getting called for it.

How about North Carolina State! After Jamal Shead’s incredible bad luck Friday, it looked like Duke would waltz into the Final Four. Instead DJ Burns and his buddies dominated the Blue Devils in the last 10 minutes and kept their improbable run going to Glendale.

Duke still fouling with 1.9 seconds left was some funny shit.

I’ll get to my thoughts about KU’s future in another day or two. I do think the transfer portal should not open until the day after the Final Four, though. It’s super annoying to be blasted with messages about players entering the portal or rumors about guys who may come to KU when there are still games being played. A couple teams that were still alive in the Sweet 16 had already received commitments from guys in the portal.

Shut all this nonsense down until the day after the championship game to create a little free agent frenzy that can extend media attention on college hoops a little deeper into the spring.

Holiday Wrap Up

January 2, 2024 /

I dropped our Denver relatives off at the airport early this morning and returned to a quieter and emptier house than we’ve had in about ten days. The decorations are still up and the college kid is still with us, but the holiday season has ended.

We had a busy and mostly fun week-plus of holiday celebrations. S’s brother from Boston and his family were in town for about a week over Christmas, staying with another sister. The Denver folks came in for four days over New Year’s and bunked-up at our house. Over the holiday week we had a Christmas Eve gathering at another local’s house, Christmas Day brunch and dessert at our house, New Year’s Eve at our house, and New Year’s day bowling followed by a lunch at a local’s. Also sprinkled in there was a sleepover at our house by the Boston cousins and then an adult lunch at the new Restoration Hardware in the massive DeHaan Estate.

Other than a few small cousin meltdowns and S spilling red wine on M’s white jeans – which miraculously came out with no trace! – we survived without too much nonsense.

The girls all had good Christmases. They mostly got boring, teenage stuff like clothes, makeup, and shoes. M did get a mini-Keurig for her dorm room, which is kind of fun. Both M and C spent New Year’s Eve with friends. L had the boyfriend over a couple times, plus we went to watch him play basketball Thursday (then watched him play again before L’s game Friday. More on hoops tomorrow.).

We had a few days of really nice weather. After we had done all our meal prep for the next morning, S and I took a long walk Christmas Eve afternoon as it was in the mid–50s and sunny. The neighborhood streets were packed with like-minded folks, all in good cheer for the big day ahead. It was pushing 60 Christmas Day until clouds and rain moved in during the afternoon. The last few days have been unceasingly dreary and much colder. There is snow in the forecast a couple times over the next week, although at this point it doesn’t look like anything major. As always in Indiana, winter is inevitable.

M will go back to Cincinnati on Saturday, weather permitting. C and L start J-term next Tuesday. We don’t have big plans while they are all still here other than a trip to Louisville Thursday for basketball.

That’s kind of a broad, generic summary of how the past ten days passed. It was almost all good, which is the most important part. I hope all of you had happy holiday celebrations and are starting 2024 healthy and at least theoretically rested and recharged.

Wednesday Notes

December 13, 2023 /

A good, old fashioned notes dump like the old days.

CHS Lockdown

There was a lockdown for about an hour at Cathedral yesterday. Apparently someone called 911 claiming to be inside the school with a gun. About a million cops showed up and no person with a gun was ever found. We live in wonderful times, friends.

Our girls seemed more annoyed that they had to stay and finish the day after the all-clear than worried/scared by the threat.

Visitor/College Break

M’s roommate from UC came for a quick visit Monday and Tuesday. She lives in Toledo and M visited her last summer for a weekend. Because of her holiday schedule she was only able to come down for about 24 hours. But M showed her around our area and introduced her to a few high school friends, although they mostly hung around with other UC kids.

A funny thing about M’s friend group at school is one of her best guy friends grew up less than a mile from our house. He went to the rival high school and never knew each other, but they had mutual friends. The past several days their local group has been gathering either at his house or ours.

It was a little weird getting M home last week. My first thought was, “OK, it’s Christmas break!” Then I realized her sister had almost THREE full weeks of class left before they were done for the semester. M did a lot of sitting around that first week, but most of her friends are back in town now and her social activity has started to pick back up. She’s also done some babysitting and has several days blocked off to watch either nephews or other kids between now and her return to school next month.

Holidays

M’s arrival has messed up my mind regarding the holidays in more ways than one. I was a little surprised to realize Monday we were two weeks from Christmas. The first half of the Christmas season seems to have raced by. I think a lot of that is because of L’s game schedule, which has kept us very busy the past two weeks.

Anyway, it was a bit of an alarm to make sure I am focused over the next two weeks to get all my holiday movies and shows knocked out. I haven’t watched Elf or Christmas Vacation nearly enough (one full time each, several partial viewings thrown in as well).

Sports Illustrated

Man, what a mess. An American icon that has been crumbling for years likely had its final downfall a week ago when it was discovered that the magazine was using AI to both write articles and labelling those articles with AI-generated writer names and headshots.

SI was an integral part of my childhood, and then remained essential deep into adulthood. The arrival of each week’s new volume on Thursday was one of the biggest moments of your kid week. My copy remained in the folder I carried to class until it was dog-eared and nearly memorized, not replaced until the next one came.

Magazines everywhere are dying. It feels like SI could have survived as it was generally more of a high-level view of sports, one which can still be relevant in the Internet age. The magazine, and its publishers, have made about a million bad choices in the past 20 years, though, and it was already an insignificant blip on the sports journalism map before this scandal.

And then they gave the Sportsman of the Year award to Deion Sanders, which seems absolutely asinine on every level. Given how ultra-commercial his whole deal is, my first thought was that he, or his publicists, paid for the honor. Or exchanged it for access. Something classic SI would not have engaged in.

Should he have been in the issue somewhere? Absolutely. But whatever waves he made this year were more because of the work his handlers did to create his story and image than anything he actually did. Many people had a bigger impact on the sports world than Deion.

As one college football expert said recently on a podcast, Deion deserves immense credit for what he’s already done at CU. But the fact is that team got worse each week of the season, there was all kinds of internal turmoil in the program, and Deion proved that if he really wants to deliver on all the promises he’s made, he has a lot to learn about coaching and running a power conference program. That expert has confidence that Deion is capable of making those jumps. But you can’t give a student an A+ for a project that was turned in incomplete missing required elements.

Memorial Stadium

The first phase of demolition at KU’s Memorial Stadium started on Monday. I loved all the people who made comments long the lines of “It was a dump, I watched a ton of bad football there, but I also have a lot of great memories there.” Very true.

In my first game there in 1980 I saw Dan Marino. I was there for the Tony Sands game. For Monte Cozzens. For Eric Vann’s 99-yard touchdown run.[1] Two wins over Oklahoma. I also sat through ice storms, bitter cold, blazing heat, and gusty winds while the Jayhawks were getting housed by Nebraska, OU, and others. When I lived in Lawrence, I was there damn near every home game.

The rumors last week that KU is looking to play some of their home games at Arrowhead in Kansas City next year are interesting. I think they realize the team has a chance to be even better next year, and don’t want to play games in front of 20,000 in a stadium that is under active renovation. Sell a bunch more tickets to bring more money in. Maybe rope in some new fans, or re-energize KC-area fans who stopped making the drive to Lawrence at some point during the Lost Decade. And potentially get the stadium renovations in Lawrence done faster than expected and be ready for the 2025 season. I don’t think you move all the games to Arrowhead, but it makes sense to play a few of them there if the Chiefs are open to the idea.

Andre Braugher

Such sad news that Andre Braugher has died. What an amazing career. His two biggest roles, as Frank Pembleton on Homicide and Raymond Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, were two wildly different characters. It was shocking to see the same actor who portrayed the hyper-intense Pembleton make amazing comedy as Holt. He made it work.

  1. Never understood why these announcers called it a 98-yard run.  ↩

Weekend Notes

December 4, 2023 /

Jayhawk Talk


What a game Friday night between #5 KU and #4 UConn! Since this is rolled into a Weekend Notes post, I’ll chop my thoughts up into chunks tied to the four quarters of the game.

Opening tip to 10:00: This is awesome! The Jayhawks are unbeatable! UConn are frauds! The crowd is AMAZING! Why is Jason Sudeikis hanging out with Sue Bird?

10:00 to Halftime: OK, that could have ended better, but we still have a seven-point lead. And most of UConn’s points were unreal makes at the end of the shot clock. We’re fine, but we need to get the offense back into gear.

Beginning of second half to 10:00: This team sucks. Bill Self is an idiot for not recruiting more shooters. Why is DaJuan Harris playing so bad? UConn isn’t even full strength and they’re going to beat us. I hate this game and sports in general.

10:00 to final horn: What a team! What a win! I love Kevin McCullar and KJ Adams! This was an incredible game and I would have been fine losing it because it was so well played. Bravo sports!

Then I proceeded to stay up another hour watching all the postgame interviews. That put me in bed around 1:00 AM. 9:00 PM tips are dumb. Especially on Fridays.

The Huskies are super tough to guard because of their motion and actions out of it, and KU shut them down for the first ten minutes and last 5–6 minutes. That was an incredible defensive performance. UConn’s comeback was largely fueled because only the KU starters could keep that level of intensity up, and it cost them on the offensive end.

Still a lot of questions about KU’s ability to score, but you toss them aside for a few days after a win that fun.

A bonus to the night was parents of a couple UConn players bitching about their seats. They claimed KU put them in the upper row. Once the game started and you saw two rows of UConn fans right behind the bench – the exact seats you often see Big 12 player parents sitting in – it was obvious someone in Storrs decided that the parents needed to take the upper level seats in their allotment while more important people got the cool seats. Typical entitled east coast BS. Besides, there isn’t a bad seat in Allen Fieldhouse. Even if you have to lean under a beam to see the court.

College Football

OH MAN, WHAT A MESS!!!! AND IT’S GLORIOUS!!!!

I don’t have a huge beef with how things shook out. You can make legit arguments for six teams, and with only four spots, someone is going to get screwed. Obviously a huge bummer for Florida State. It absolutely sucks to go undefeated in a Power Five, err four, errr three, Power Whatever conference, and get the shaft. Michigan and Washington were awarded for doing exactly that. FSU gets the shaft because their quarterback is hurt, which seems like an odd decision point. If you take Alabama, you have to take Texas, who beat Alabama convincingly in Tuscaloosa. Georgia had their shot and blew it.

It was garbage how the biggest topic of last week was not the games themselves, but the hypothetical that the SEC would get left out. Actually my beef was more with some of the horseshit logic used to carve out a spot for an SEC team. The SEC commissioner suggested that if you throw out Texas’ win over Alabama, Bama was actually the better team. Which, first off, is debatable. And then THERE IS NO BETTER DATA POINT THAN A HEAD-TO-HEAD RESULT. Until it threatens the SEC’s spot in the championship playoff. That’s when you throw it out.

The commish also suggested that the SEC deserved a spot simply because of history. There’s no doubt the SEC has dominated college football this century. That means nothing for this year. Georgia doesn’t get extra points for being two-time defending champs. Bama doesn’t get a bonus for being the best program in the game since Nick Saban took over. The playoff is about the games played in the last four months only.

I don’t buy into the conspiracy theories floating around that ESPN wasn’t about to let their future partner the SEC get left on the outside. It is, though, another blow to college sports that a lot of folks are buying into those theories this morning. I think it’s just a super flawed process that had no clear outcome that would have been fair to all. However, you don’t have to be a conspiracist to have known there was no way that it would be Alabama and Georgia who would get screwed in the process.

Mostly I got fired up because the SEC nonsense actually had me wanting Texas to win Saturday so they could put the squeeze on the SEC. I guess KU gets a cut of the Texas CFP payout, so that’s cool. But I’m all about Washington for the next month.

KU Bowl Game

KU goes to Phoenix to play UNLV. Which is kind of weird since the teams will play week three next season in Lawrence.

Seems like it should be a high scoring game, which is how all bowl games should be. I probably just cursed it into being a 17–14 penalty-fest.

Jayhawk fans are now holding our collective breath that no key players decide to sit the game out as they prepare for the draft. Which is dumb. For us fans, not the players. It’s dumb because this game is basically meaningless. It will be cool if KU wins its first bowl game since 2008 and gets its ninth win. Grand scheme of things, though, this is just an exhibition and if Devin Neal or whoever decide they’d rather protect themselves for their pro career, its just a bummer, not something to lose sleep over.

Colts

The Colts remain in the playoff hunt thanks to a truly stupid win in Nashville. Were this not already a pretty long post, I would dive into the details. I mean, the Titans punter got flipped completely upside down and that was NOT the play he might have destroyed his leg on. Let’s all just accept it was a stupid game in every single way and move on.

Holiday Vibes

We went to a Christmas party briefly Saturday. We hung out for maybe 90 minutes then bugged out. It’s not that it wasn’t fun. We just didn’t know a ton of people and weren’t super in the mood to mingle with strangers. Also, S and I both realized we couldn’t hear shit. Everyone was crammed into two connected rooms and our old people ears just were not working at all. S had a long conversation with a lady and I could only catch snippets of it because they were operating in the 5’1” to 5’4” airspace and my ears being a foot higher just could not keep up. I don’t think my hearing is terrible in normal settings. But, man, put me in a crowded room and it goes to shit pretty quick.

M has her last final tomorrow morning, so I’ll be picking her up around noon. We keep telling her that is super early, and our finals always went much deeper into December. I swear we usually wrapped things up at KU right around December 20. UC did not have a fall break, which I guess helps.

Her roommate is already done and went home yesterday. M also has some friends who have a final this Friday at 5:30, which seems like kind of a dick move.

Holiday Weekend Notes

November 27, 2023 /

For the first time in three years we were home for Thanksgiving week. We packed a lot in, and it deserves a wide-ranging, extra-long breakdown.

College Visitor

I picked M up Tuesday around noon after her last scheduled class of the week. We grabbed lunch at Hangover Easy, a place just off campus I’ve wanted to try just because of their shirts. It was solid, but I couldn’t find any shirts for sale. I guess I’ll have to get one online.

That night she (and C) went with me to L’s game. M had a couple nights out with high school friends, but didn’t do anything too crazy. She thought about going to the IU-Purdue game with one of her best friends but they slept too late to make it to Lafayette in time. Seemed like she behaved herself. Unlike me during my freshman Thanksgiving break, when I may have consumed as much alcohol as I ever did before or have since.

S ran her back to school Sunday evening.

She will be back soon. UC has class this week then go straight into exams. She only has two true finals. One of them would normally be on the 9th, but all tests for that course are done outside class, so she’s hoping she can come home earlier in the week.

Oh, she was also elected as social chair of her house. Most of the new officers don’t take over their duties until January, but since she has to plan the formal this spring, she’s already pretty deep in finding a venue and getting all that arranged. Shocking she would be social chair, right?

Hawaii Basketball

Mixed results for KU out in Oahu. Smashed Chaminade in round one, as expected, with Kevin McCullar becoming the first KU player ever to record back-to-back triple doubles.

Then smashed by Marquette in the second round. That game never felt close, which was super annoying. There was the added bonus of Shaka Smart acting like a clown and then pretending he didn’t know why anyone was upset. It’s always a shame when someone acts like a punk then wins the game. Thanks to the Purdue-Tennessee game taking about five hours to play and this one starting after 11:00 PM eastern, I recorded it and watched first thing Wednesday morning. Good call, as I was able to fast forward through most of the second half. I would have been up until 4:00 AM pissed had I watched live.

Finally an encouraging win over a tough Tennessee team in the consolation final. Jamari McDowell stepping up might have been the best development of the week.

KU has some holes, but I think as a few players get more comfortable, those holes will get smaller. And Bill Self will figure out how to hide them better as the season continues. This is a good team that can get a lot better.

Jim Irsay

Oh boy…

In case you missed it, the Colts owner appeared on HBO’s Real Sports and, as is his general MO, was very candid about his life. Which in general is a good thing. Until he claimed that the only reason he was arrested a decade ago when he was pulled over for driving under the influence was because he is a “rich, white, billionaire.”

Please note he was pulled over and arrested in Carmel, IN, which isn’t exactly the most diverse suburb in our area, nor one that has ever been noted for its anti-capitalist views. Hell, the new mayor who was elected earlier this month refused to denounce a local mom’s group that used a quote from Hitler in their literature.

So, sure, the white cops in a super white, conservative suburb decided that they were going to stick it to the man by arresting the Colts owner.

It’s sad that someone who has done so much to both own up to his mistakes and help end the stigma around mental heath disease can’t take responsibility here and resorted to pretending that he, with endless resources and likely decades of people looking the other way at similar behavior, is the person oppressed by a racist police department.

Thanksgiving

Last year we were in Italy for Thanksgiving. Two years ago Hawaii. So it was nice to be back home again in Indiana for the holiday this year. We hosted, and had just 16 this year. We’ll be closer to 30 at Christmas so this felt super manageable.

I did the bird, Giada’s dressing, and potatoes. We delayed our meal until later in the day to allow for a sister-in-law and her kids to return from their trip to Denver. That made the day a lot easier than eating around 1–2 as we usually do. Although that last 45 minutes always gets crazy no matter what time you eat.

KU-UC

Several of you asked over the past week. No, I did not drive down to Cincinnati for the KU-UC game Saturday night. Had the game been played at noon, I could have made it work. However, the 7:30 kickoff was the exact moment that L’s game was scheduled to tip. As much as I love my Jayhawks, I love my daughters more, and chose to be a good dad.[1] Plus, M wasn’t interested in going back on Saturday and we really didn’t want to make the drive both Saturday and Sunday. Oh, and it was very cold.

Naturally I was annoyed that I missed it given the result. When we walked out of the CHS gym, KU had just taken a 21–10 lead into halftime. As we were pulling into our driveway Devin Neal was scoring his second touchdown of the night to extend the lead. Once I was seated in front of the TV I made M come down and watch with me. The next hour or so involved a lot of me waving the wheat and sending her bean emojis – 🫘 – with her flipping me off and telling me how much the Bearcats “freaking suck” in return.

Good times!

Sooooo happy for Jason Bean. Sure, the UC defense had basically given up by the fourth quarter, but it was fantastic for him to cap his regular season college career with two more long touchdown runs. His 340 total yards were both super-efficient and impressive. The guy has taken a lot of abuse, verbal and physical, over his career. He tried to leave KU last summer but no one wanted him. And, in the end, he is as responsible for KU’s turnaround as Jalon Daniels is. JD beat Texas two years ago. But Bean nearly beat OU that same year, did beat OU this year, and led the Jayhawks to two conference road wins this season. KU won eight total conference games from 2009 to 2021. Jason Bean has been the starter in six Big 12 wins over the past two years. When this season seemed to be on the verge of going down the toilet because Daniels could no longer play, Bean stepped in and KU barely missed a beat, winning eight regular season games for the first time since 2007.

There is a lot of praise to go around for the KU turnaround, from Lance Leipold and his staff, to Travis Goff and the athletic department, to players like Daniels, Neal, Kenny Logan, Cobee Bryant, etc. Bean’s name needs to be high on that list as well.

Eight wins! The Big 12 was a true adventure this year, with results often not making sense from week-to-week. KU was pretty damn steady, though, with the only real blip coming over the past two weeks because Bean was hurt and Cole Ballard had to drop his clipboard and fill in for 2½ games. KU was damn close to 11–1, and who knows, maybe they can stick with Texas longer if Bean had practiced as the QB1 all week instead of finding out about 30 minutes before the game that he was the starter.

Rock Chalk, bitches.

Other Football

As much as I hated all the hype that surrounded Ohio State – Michigan, that was a hell of a game. Incredibly entertaining.

M asked me if the weekend after Thanksgiving is when most rivalries play. I liked that she picked that up. I switched to Indiana-Purdue a few times during the OSU-UM game and that game felt very familiar. For a good chunk of my life the Kansas-Missouri game was at the end of the year,[2] and at least one team was usually pretty bad. Some years both sucked. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a cold-ass stadium in late November with 24,000 other people watching two shitty teams battle for bragging rights and not much else.

The Colts are 6–5? The Colts are 6–5! They would be playing in a Wild Card game if the season ended today. They have a pretty favorable schedule remaining, too. They – especially Gardner Minshew – do not make it easy each week, so I wouldn’t go printing playoff tickets up just yet.

Poor Detroit fans. It’s been since early in the Barry Sanders years that they had a good team to root for on Thanksgiving. When it finally happens again, they get curb-stomped by a mediocre Green Bay team. Just a cursed franchise.

Oh, and the Buffalo-Philadelphia game was straight-up awesome. Rain and a sloppy field. Josh Allen doing good Josh Allen things. Jalen Hurts doing Jalen Hurts things. Maybe the biggest and most clutch field goal in adverse conditions since Adam Vinatieri’s kick in the snow 21 years ago. And then a fun overtime to top it off. That was a fine way to end a terrific weekend of sports.

Pacers

The Pacers are a wild-ass team. Last Tuesday they clinched a spot in the quarterfinals of the NBA’s new In-Season Tournament with a 157–152 win over Atlanta. When we got home from L’s game, the Pacers were down by 20. I know everyone makes a run in the NBA, but coming back from 20 down to build a 12-point lead is kind of crazy. Even then the game came down to the final minute, and the Pacers just did not miss. Tyrese Haliburton had 37 points and 16 assists. Buddy Hield was 6-for–6 from deep. I don’t know that Bobby Knight purists love them, but I sure enjoy watching this year’s team.

They scored 131 the next night…and lost by one. Which was kind of incredible given what they did the night before. Then they dropped another 136 in a win on Friday. They are on pace to shatter the record the Sacramento Kings set last year as the most efficient offense in NBA history.

  1. Guess who has a game the same time as the KU-IU game in Bloomington in two weeks?  ↩
  2. I believe if you dive into the site’s archives you can find some of my thoughts about football rivalries and when they should be played.  ↩

Weekend Notes

October 30, 2023 /

What a weekend, filled with swings of mood and weather.

KANSAS FOOTBALL!!!!!!!

Kansas 38, Oklahoma 33. LET’S GOOOOOO!!!!!

One of the biggest wins in program history. That alone would make Saturday’s win over the #6 Sooners memorable. It just had so much of…everything, I guess, that no KU fan who watched it will ever forget it.

This feels like a game that could easily turn into a 5000 word account. So I’ll try to keep it brief(-ish) by just bullet-pointing how bizarre it was.

  • KU jumps out to a quick lead with a pick six on OU’s first possession. Apparently my cable feed was working on a 20 second delay because I saw four tweets about Mello Dotson putting KU up 7–0 before I saw the play. At first I thought it was a joke because my TV was lagging so much.
  • KU went up 14–0 and then were the victims of the worst personal foul penalty in the history of college football, Craig Young flagged for a late hit when he neither shoved nor tackled Drake Stoops, and Stoops head butted him TWICE after the play was over. KU fans were quick with “Dollar Signs” memes.
  • After Oklahoma scored and got the ball back, the game was stopped for an hour because of lightning. On a day when the temps were in the 30s. Midwest weather remains undefeated.
  • After the delay Oklahoma took approximately nine seconds to tie the game. Then KU fumbled the kickoff and OU immediately took the lead. I started having vibes of the 1991 Nebraska game when KU lead 17–0 after the first quarter and we were all losing our minds then we still managed to lose 59–23. Calvin fucking Jones.
  • Much maligned quarterback Jason Bean missed WIDE OPEN receivers in the end zone on two straight plays and KU settled for a field goal before halftime. You can’t miss opportunities like that and hope to beat OU.
  • KU forced a fumble and then Bean ran it in from 39 yards out on the next play. Only for him to short hop a ball to an uncovered receiver on the two-point attempt. KU was 0–3 on two point attempts for the day.
  • On third and goal early in the fourth quarter Bean scrambled and rather than diving into the end zone, slid, his knee touching just short of the goal line. Just a horrible, horrible mistake. KU Twitter was in full meltdown mode until we noticed the flag on the field. Fortunately Bean was bailed out by a personal foul on OU and Daniel Hishaw gave KU the lead on the next play.
  • On the ensuing kick, KU booted it short, OU fumbled, and the Jayhawks recovered. Hishaw went 20 yards on the first snap to extend the lead, literally high-stepping the last five yards. It was this game’s Monte Cozzens moment. Somewhere in the student section a kid who shares my name was nearly passing out like I did on that day in 1992. Only KU was called for holding. Three plays later came a badly missed field goal. Instead of being up 12, it was still just a five-point game, and OU seemed to have snatched back the momentum.
  • Literally seconds after Fox’s Jason Benetti said that Bean had avoided the mistakes that plagued him in big moments, he threw an interception deep in KU territory. It wasn’t entirely his fault – the ball went through a receiver’s hands – but it was a poor throw. OU took the lead a couple plays later.
  • On the next possession Bean threw a terrible ball for another pick. The game was over, as OU was inside the KU 40 with 2:52 left. I was literally throwing things and cussing. Luckily C and L were gone and S was upstairs getting ready for the party we were going to so I was the only witness.
  • Only in what may be the biggest upset of the day, the Jayhawks had all three timeouts. KANSAS FOOTBALL, which has been taking timeouts at all the wrong times for 15 years, had all three time outs late in a close game. Unbelievable. The defense got two-straight tackles for losses and held on third down. When OU lined up to go for it, a wide receiver – A WIDE RECEIVER – got called for a false start. OU punted.
  • KU had about 2:00 to go 80 yards.
  • After getting two first downs the Jayhawks faced a 4th and 6. Lawrence Arnold got open, hauled in a perfect strike from Bean, and raced 37 yards for the first down. Again, KANSAS FOOTBALL got 37 yards on a fourth down that meant the game against a Top 10 Oklahoma team. Wacky, wild shit.
  • One play later Devon Neal nearly fumbled behind the line but scampered in for the go-ahead score with 52 seconds remaining.
  • Dillon Gabriel had done this shit against Texas earlier in October. I doubt any KU fans were super confident he wouldn’t do it again. I feared the worst. Gabriel completed a 40 yard pass to get in range to take a shot at the end zone on the game’s final play. KU broke up the pass and mayhem ensued. Although even that play was a mess. Instead of knocking the ball down, Kwinton Lassiter tried to pick it off. Which he did out of bounds, but he also gave the OU receivers a shot at the ball. Never easy with this program.
  • Finally, the field was rushed and the goalposts came down.

Whew! What a fucking game. Not sure it was healthy for my heart but the result made it all worth it.

The first KU win over a Top 10 team since the 2008 Orange Bowl.
The first win over Oklahoma since 1997.
The first win at home over a Top 10 team since 1984.
Lance Leipold became the first KU coach to beat both Oklahoma and Texas since the 1930s. Granted, KU and Texas didn’t play for a long, long time. Still he did in three seasons what about 100 other KU coaches couldn’t do in nearly a century.

And the added bonus that the Fox crew was in town for their pregame show. Although no one really watches that, but, still. Urban Meyer said nice things about Kansas, Lawrence, and the program. I know most Americans find him to be of the highest character and his opinions to be unassailable, so you can’t put a dollar value on how much that helps KU going forward.

Oh, and KU will go to a bowl game in consecutive years for the second time in program history.

Pretty fucking cool way to spend four and a half hours of my Saturday.

So, where does this win rank all time?

It is certainly one of the three biggest wins of my life, right up there with winning the Orange Bowl in 2008 and beating Nebraska by 1000 points in 2007.

Honestly, if the team lays a big, fat turd in the last month of the season, much of the luster of this win gets wiped away. But grab two, three, even four more wins and this has a legitimate claim to the #1 spot on that list.

Rock Chalk, bitches.

KU Hoops

Yuck.

A seven-point loss at Illinois in an exhibition game. Illinois controlled most of the game on both ends. KU’s offense was pretty bad. I’ll chalk some of that up to not running anything super complex. But the absolute lack of outside shooting is a major concern because it confirms the biggest fear about this team.

You can’t overreact to an exhibition game, so I won’t. But my go-to complaint all year is going to be wasting a scholarship on a player who arrived with a domestic assault charge and was kicked off the team when he was charged with rape, instead of filling the clear hole that the team had. You can never, ever have too much shooting.

In super exciting news for all college hoops fans, there are now apparently more plays that can be reviewed. Which is awesome! We need to make games last longer because all action stops while the referees stare at a TV screen and try to decide if they want to overrule themselves or not. Based on the reviews in the KU game, referees still can’t figure out how to not spend three minutes reviewing a play that takes the announcers and TV audience no longer than five seconds to see a clear decision. Either go to limited coach’s challenges or just get rid of replay. It is literally the worst.

Did I mention that we beat Oklahoma in football?

NFL

Looks like the Colts are shitty again.

And I guess the Ravens are indeed the best team in the NFL for the moment. Or maybe the Bengals? But probably the Eagles. Sorry for the jinx last week, Chiefs fans.

Other Shit

Cathedral won their football sectional opener 42–2 Friday night. They will have a tougher game this week.

S and I went to dinner Friday with the families we hung out with most over spring break, the first time we had all been together since graduation party season. It was a gorgeous night and we were able to sit outside.

Meanwhile I wore a coat this morning when I took L to school.

The Cathedral boys lost in the state soccer final Saturday, 2–0 to the, now, three-time defending champs.

L’s team had a scrimmage Thursday night. She played about 19 minutes, all in the second half, against a varsity team. She didn’t do much. 0–3 from the field. A rebound and a turnover. Offense was pretty ragged. Not sure she was on the court very much with the girls she’ll play with when the real games start. They have another week of practice to get ready for that.

We went to S’s sister’s house Saturday for their annual Halloween party. It was very odd going without any of our kids. S spent a lot of time on Pinterest coming up with our contribution to the spread.

« Older posts

Archives

© 2024 D's Notebook

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑