A belated rundown of this past weekend.<\/p>\n
Cathedral finally had their first home game of the year. Since they only have one after this, and it has already been tagged as homecoming, Friday became senior night. Which was a little weird.<\/p>\n
I stayed home and listened to an easy 37\u20136 win over Cincinnati LaSalle. LaSalle has won four Ohio state titles in the past eight years, but this year\u2019s team was kind of dog crap. Or so it sounded on the radio. Until the scrubs gave up a late TD the Irish had gone 11 straight quarters without allowing a score. Granted those were mostly against bad teams, but the defense does seem to be getting better as the season goes on.<\/p>\n
After a gritty, gutty, ugly-ass 14\u201311 win over Iowa State, THE JAYHAWKS ARE RANKED!!!!! AND GAMEDAY IS COMING TO LAWRENCE!!!!! WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!!!!<\/p>\n
I missed 85% of the game between basketball, prepping for L\u2019s birthday party, and picking up dinner for the kids. I was able to watch the closing minutes of the fourth quarter, which was not a great experience. KU couldn\u2019t move the ball, the defense was in full bend-but-don\u2019t-break mode, and it seemed inevitable that Iowa State would win, either in regulation or overtime.<\/p>\n
Which should have been what happened. But the Football Gods smiled on KU one more time as Iowa State missed a relatively easy field goal that would have forced OT, and the Jayhawks went to 5\u20130.<\/p>\n
I felt terrible after the game, more like KU had lost than won. I think some of that was just the stress of the afternoon and then diving into the game in the worst possible moment. Later in the night I realized KU fans shouldn\u2019t feel bad about any football win. I should be enjoying the W, the record, and the change of tone in the program. Sweating \u201cbad\u201d or \u201cugly\u201d wins is something the coaching staff and players should be doing, not us fans. The bubble is going to burst at some point and it will be dumb for me to have not enjoyed the success that I\u2019ve been craving for years.<\/p>\n
From what I heard on Sirius while driving and read\/listened to afterward, it seems like the defense actually played really well. Some of that is surely thanks to an Iowa State offense that isn\u2019t the most efficient in the world. But, even if you give the \u2018Clones credit for the three field goals they missed, surrendering only 20 points to a conference opponent would normally be a pretty big deal for the KU defense. It still is a big deal, and it saved the team on a day the offense sputtered, it just got lost a bit in the overall ugliness of the contest.<\/p>\n
In the few minutes I did watch I got super annoyed with the ESPN2 broadcast. On KU\u2019s next-to-last drive, the Jayhawks seemed to convert a third down. The announcers talked about what a big play it was, the cameras showed the crowd celebrating, they showed a replay and broke it down, etc. And then right before the next play you saw KU was snapping the ball from five yards behind<\/strong> where the previous play had begun. Only then did the announcers realize that there had been a penalty on KU that wiped out the conversion. Seems like something they or their spotters should have picked up on, right?<\/p>\n ESPN2 didn\u2019t seem to put crowd microphones anywhere in the stadium, either. They would show shots of the band and you couldn\u2019t hear them. When ISU missed the field goal, I assume the crowd was going nuts. That\u2019s what the cameras showed. But you heard the slightest of buzzes on TV. This seems to happen a lot in games that aren\u2019t the marquee matchup of the time slot. For being the World Wide Leader, ESPN sure has a lot of issues getting the basics of showing a game right. For as much as they charge cable companies to carry them, you\u2019d think they could buy enough crowd mics so you get some sense of the environment inside the stadium. Maybe pay some of the blowhards who scream at each other a little less and up the sound hardware budget.<\/p>\n Since this is Kansas football, the Football Gods can\u2019t completely be in our favor. Daniel Hishaw Jr. suffered an awful injury late in the game, rumored to be dislocated his hip late in the game. That sounds insanely painful and is a brutal injury for a guy who missed all of last year.<\/p>\n And then Sunday night Wisconsin fired Paul Chryst. Most folks feel like interim coach Jim Leonhard will get the full-time gig when the season ends. But if the Badgers look like shit the rest of the year, that\u2019s another big job that Lance Leipold has connections to that may target him in December.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to sweat that or the Nebraska job. I\u2019m just going to enjoy the seven (or eight?!?! NINE?!?!) games KU has left and hope they can find a couple more wins. I\u2019ll save the angst for once the season is over.<\/p>\n And now we get a whole week to enjoy the lead-up to a very big game against TCU that will get a lot of national attention.<\/p>\n (There\u2019s a TCU guy who goes to my gym. Monday he walked by me and said, \u201cSo I guess you\u2019re a football school now?\u201d)<\/p>\n I find it damn near impossible to follow Twitter during a football game. EVERYONE thinks they are smarter than the coaches. Doesn\u2019t matter what team\/game you\u2019re following. I\u2019ve seen this during KU games, Colts games, and plenty of random games people in my stream are following. The negativity is overwhelming. Where in basketball games Twitter feels like a good way to add context to what is going on in the game, or discuss the action, in football it is an endless stream of people who have been playing Madden for 30 years and think they are smarter than guys who are paid to make decisions.<\/p>\n Granted, a lot of coaches make curious decisions. But not every borderline call deserves a meltdown.<\/p>\n I was reminded Saturday that I often mute a specific KU-related account during games. The dude that runs it shares interesting and useful stuff throughout the week. But during games, even basketball ones, he is SOOOOO negative, that I began muting him on game days last winter. He questions every coaching decision. He rips the refs at every opportunity. He is hateful about opposing fans. Late in the fourth quarter Saturday, Cobee Bryant appeared to have picked off an Iowa State pass that would have ended their final drive. However, replay showed that when he hit the ground, the ball came loose and he never recovered it while still inbounds. It was clearly not a catch and the officials correctly overturned the original call. This guy went off, though, saying how corrupt the Big 12 refs were.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fine to be an irrational fan and always see calls through the prism of your team. But if you\u2019re running an account that represents a website rather than just yourself, you need to calm down and view the games rationally. Don\u2019t embarrass yourself over a play like this, where there is zero doubt the correct call was made.<\/p>\n Saturday L had a travel game. They played solid in the first half and had a three-point lead at halftime. Then they played like absolute garbage in the second half and lost by six. L was 1\u201310 from the field. I think the entire team only shot slightly better than her 10%. Giving them credit for 20% might be too high, though. If Dick Vitale had called the game he would have said it was Brick City with a capital B, baby.<\/p>\n One interesting thing about the game was a girl on the other team may be joining our squad for the next travel season in March. She would be our tallest player, is a terrific athlete, and is a really good defender, but she doesn\u2019t have much of an offensive game. Since we can\u2019t get a rebound to save our lives, that alone makes her a decent addition. Then again, maybe after playing against us she\u2019ll decide she wants to play for a different program. I would argue our poor shooting will give her lots of chances to grab offensive boards!<\/p>\n Sunday L had a CYO game. It was against a team we figured we should beat easily as L\u2019s class has never lost to them in any sport. We jumped out to a 9\u20130 lead but then ran into issues and only led 14\u20138 at halftime. L got three fouls in the first quarter and had to sit most of the half, which didn\u2019t help. One was legit, one was marginal, and the third was a crap moving screen call.<\/p>\n We came out smoking in the second half, or at least it seemed like we did. We were much better on defense and ran good offense, just couldn\u2019t get the shots to drop. We got the lead up to 10 and held steady around there before winning 26\u201313.<\/p>\n I sat on the bench and kept stats. We had 14 steals, which was great. However, six of them were in the first quarter and then we didn\u2019t have another until after halftime. We really should have had 20+ but our girls are soft going after loose balls. They would knock the ball loose then just stand there and watch the other team go after it. Drove me nuts. We got out-rebounded by 2. I think L is destined to never play on a team that can rebound.<\/p>\n There was a call in the fourth quarter than nearly made me lose it. L was defending the ball and ran into a screen. From my vantage point the screen looked solid and legal. Neither L nor the girl setting the screen went flying. But the ref blew his whistle and looked to the scorer\u2019s table. \u201cFoul is on eleven\u2026\u201d and I let out a sarcastic \u201cWHAT?!?!\u201d And just about chucked my clipboard. Our head coach jumped off the bench to argue. L looked totally shocked. Then our mom who was keeping the book turned to us and said \u201cEleven white, not eleven purple.\u201d The coaches and I looked at each other and laughed. I decided it was a makeup call since L had been called for the illegal screen in the first half, and they didn\u2019t make that call again the entire game. Oh, and both times the screens were legal. Refs\u2026<\/p>\n She had six points.<\/p>\n Wednesday we play a team we\u2019ve never beaten. L has a bunch of friends on that squad, several of which she\u2019s played with outside CYO. She\u2019s pretty excited about it. If we grab those loose balls and can get some rebounds, I think we have a chance.<\/p>\n Monday was L\u2019s birthday. After her game Saturday she had four friends over. They swam, hung out, and spent the night. It seemed like a good time.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a seventh grade boy who lives nearby who they invited over to play basketball and hang out with them. I couldn\u2019t get a sense of whether one\/some\/all of the girls like him, as in like-like, or if he\u2019s just a nice kid who lives close. We know his parents a little – his dad actually coached L in soccer way back in first or second grade – but we don\u2019t hang out in the same circles. I give him props for coming over to a house he\u2019s never been to before and hanging out with five older girls for a few hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A belated rundown of this past weekend. FNL Cathedral finally had their first home game of the year. Since they only have one after this, and it has already been tagged as homecoming, Friday became senior night. Which was a little weird. I stayed home and listened to an easy 37\u20136 win over Cincinnati LaSalle. LaSalle has won four Ohio state titles in the past eight years, but this year\u2019s team was kind of dog crap. Or so it sounded on the radio. Until the scrubs gave up a late TD the Irish had gone 11 straight quarters without allowing a score. Granted those were mostly against bad teams, but the defense does seem to be getting better as the season goes on. KU After a gritty, gutty, ugly-ass 14\u201311 win over Iowa State, THE JAYHAWKS ARE RANKED!!!!! AND GAMEDAY IS COMING TO LAWRENCE!!!!! WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!!!! I missed 85% of the game between basketball, prepping for L\u2019s birthday party, and picking up dinner for the kids. I was able to watch the closing minutes of the fourth quarter, which was not a great experience. KU couldn\u2019t move the ball, the defense was in full bend-but-don\u2019t-break mode, and it seemed inevitable that Iowa State would win, either in regulation or overtime. Which should have been what happened. But the Football Gods smiled on KU one more time as Iowa State missed a relatively easy field goal that would have forced OT, and the Jayhawks went to 5\u20130. I felt terrible after the game, more like KU had lost than won. I think some of that was just the stress of the afternoon and then diving into the game in the worst possible moment. Later in the night I realized KU fans shouldn\u2019t feel bad about any football win. I should be enjoying the W, the record, and the change of tone in the program. Sweating \u201cbad\u201d or \u201cugly\u201d wins is something the coaching staff and players should be doing, not us fans. The bubble is going to burst at some point and it will be dumb for me to have not enjoyed the success that I\u2019ve been craving for years. From what I heard on Sirius while driving and read\/listened to afterward, it seems like the defense actually played really well. Some of that is surely thanks to an Iowa State offense that isn\u2019t the most efficient in the world. But, even if you give the \u2018Clones credit for the three field goals they missed, surrendering only 20 points to a conference opponent would normally be a pretty big deal for the KU defense. It still is a big deal, and it saved the team on a day the offense sputtered, it just got lost a bit in the overall ugliness of the contest. In the few minutes I did watch I got super annoyed with the ESPN2 broadcast. On KU\u2019s next-to-last drive, the Jayhawks seemed to convert a third down. The announcers talked about what a big play it was, the cameras showed the crowd celebrating, they showed a replay and broke it down, etc. And then right before the next play you saw KU was snapping the ball from five yards behind where the previous play had begun. Only then did the announcers realize that there had been a penalty on KU that wiped out the conversion. Seems like something they or their spotters should have picked up on, right? ESPN2 didn\u2019t seem to put crowd microphones anywhere in the stadium, either. They would show shots of the band and you couldn\u2019t hear them. When ISU missed the field goal, I assume the crowd was going nuts. That\u2019s what the cameras showed. But you heard the slightest of buzzes on TV. This seems to happen a lot in games that aren\u2019t the marquee matchup of the time slot. For being the World Wide Leader, ESPN sure has a lot of issues getting the basics of showing a game right. For as much as they charge cable companies to carry them, you\u2019d think they could buy enough crowd mics so you get some sense of the environment inside the stadium. Maybe pay some of the blowhards who scream at each other a little less and up the sound hardware budget. Since this is Kansas football, the Football Gods can\u2019t completely be in our favor. Daniel Hishaw Jr. suffered an awful injury late in the game, rumored to be dislocated his hip late in the game. That sounds insanely painful and is a brutal injury for a guy who missed all of last year. And then Sunday night Wisconsin fired Paul Chryst. Most folks feel like interim coach Jim Leonhard will get the full-time gig when the season ends. But if the Badgers look like shit the rest of the year, that\u2019s another big job that Lance Leipold has connections to that may target him in December. I\u2019m not going to sweat that or the Nebraska job. I\u2019m just going to enjoy the seven (or eight?!?! NINE?!?!) games KU has left and hope they can find a couple more wins. I\u2019ll save the angst for once the season is over. And now we get a whole week to enjoy the lead-up to a very big game against TCU that will get a lot of national attention. (There\u2019s a TCU guy who goes to my gym. Monday he walked by me and said, \u201cSo I guess you\u2019re a football school now?\u201d) Twitter I find it damn near impossible to follow Twitter during a football game. EVERYONE thinks they are smarter than the coaches. Doesn\u2019t matter what team\/game you\u2019re following. I\u2019ve seen this during KU games, Colts games, and plenty of random games people in my stream are following. The negativity is overwhelming. Where in basketball games Twitter feels like a good way to add context to what is going on in the game, or discuss the action, in football it is an endless stream of people who have been playing Madden for 30 years and think they are smarter than guys who are paid to make decisions. Granted, a lot of coaches make curious decisions. But not every borderline call deserves a meltdown. I was reminded Saturday that I often mute a specific KU-related account during games. The dude that runs it shares interesting and useful stuff throughout the week. But during games, even basketball ones, he is SOOOOO negative, that I began muting him on game days last winter. He questions every coaching decision. He rips the refs at every opportunity. He is hateful about opposing fans. Late in the fourth quarter Saturday, Cobee Bryant appeared to have picked off an Iowa State pass that would have ended their final drive. However, replay showed that when he hit the ground, the ball came loose and he never recovered it while still inbounds. It was clearly not a catch and the officials correctly overturned the original call. This guy went off, though, saying how corrupt the Big 12 refs were. It\u2019s fine to be an irrational fan and always see calls through the prism of your team. But if you\u2019re running an account that represents a website rather than just yourself, you need to calm down and view the games rationally. Don\u2019t embarrass yourself over a play like this, where there is zero doubt the correct call was made. Kid Hoops Saturday L had a travel game. They played solid in the first half and had a three-point lead at halftime. Then they played like absolute garbage in the second half and lost by six. L was 1\u201310 from the field. I think the entire team only shot slightly better than her 10%. Giving them credit for 20% might be too high, though. If Dick Vitale had called the game he would have said it was Brick City with a capital B, baby. One interesting thing about the game was a girl on the other team may be joining our squad for the next travel season in March. She would be our tallest player, is a terrific athlete, and is a really good defender, but she doesn\u2019t have much of an offensive game. Since we can\u2019t get a rebound to save our lives, that alone makes her a decent addition. Then again, maybe after playing against us she\u2019ll decide she wants to play for a different program. I would argue our poor shooting will give her lots of chances to grab offensive boards! Sunday L had a CYO game. It was against a team we figured we should beat easily as L\u2019s class has never lost to them in any sport. We jumped out to a 9\u20130 lead but then ran into issues and only led 14\u20138 at halftime. L got three fouls in the first quarter and had to sit most of the half, which didn\u2019t help. One was legit, one was marginal, and the third was a crap moving screen call. We came out smoking in the second half, or at least it seemed like we did. We were much better on defense and ran good offense, just couldn\u2019t get the shots to drop. We got the lead up to 10 and held steady around there before winning 26\u201313. I sat on the bench and kept stats. We had 14 steals, which was great. However, six of them were in the first quarter and then we didn\u2019t have another until after halftime. We really should have had 20+ but our girls are soft going after loose balls. They would knock the ball loose then just stand there and watch the other team go after it. Drove me nuts. We got out-rebounded by 2. I think L is destined to never play on a team that can rebound. There was a call in the fourth quarter than nearly made me lose it. L was defending the ball and ran into a screen. From my vantage point the screen looked solid and legal. Neither L nor the girl setting the screen went flying. But the ref blew his whistle and looked to the scorer\u2019s table. \u201cFoul is on eleven\u2026\u201d and I let out a sarcastic \u201cWHAT?!?!\u201d And just about chucked my clipboard. Our head coach jumped off the bench to argue. L looked totally shocked. Then our mom who was keeping the book turned to us and said \u201cEleven white, not eleven purple.\u201d The coaches and I looked at each other and laughed. I decided it was a makeup call since L had been called for the illegal screen in the first half, and they didn\u2019t make that call again the entire game. Oh, and both times the screens were legal. Refs\u2026 She had six points. Wednesday we play a team we\u2019ve never beaten. L has a bunch of friends on that squad, several of which she\u2019s played with outside CYO. She\u2019s pretty excited about it. If we grab those loose balls and can get some rebounds, I think we have a chance. L Turns 14 Monday was L\u2019s birthday. After her game Saturday she had four friends over. They swam, hung out, and spent the night. It seemed like a good time. There\u2019s a seventh grade boy who lives nearby who they invited over to play basketball and hang out with them. I couldn\u2019t get a sense of whether one\/some\/all of the girls like him, as in like-like, or if he\u2019s just a nice kid who lives close. We know his parents a little – his dad actually coached L in soccer way back in first or second grade – but we don\u2019t hang out in the same circles. I give him props for coming over to a house he\u2019s never been to before and hanging out with five older girls for a few hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,52,26,67,13,58,14,82,30],"class_list":["post-11447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-family","tag-football","tag-high-school-sports","tag-kansas-jayhawks","tag-parenting","tag-tech","tag-youth-sports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11447"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11449,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11447\/revisions\/11449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTwitter<\/h3>\n
\nKid Hoops<\/h3>\n
\nL Turns 14<\/h3>\n