I got to watch three-quarters of the first night of the tournament last night. A few quick thoughts.<\/p>\n
The Mt. St. Mary\u2019s – New Orleans game was fun. A couple teams flat going at each other for 40 minutes. New Orleans got some local run because their head coach and one assistant coach are from Bloomington. I thought head coach Mark Slessinger blew it by playing the last defensive possession of the game straight-up. That was a classic \u201cgo for the steal for the first 10–15 seconds then foul\u201d situation. When you trail you have to give your team a chance to have a decent possession to close the game. He didn\u2019t give his team that opportunity. But I\u2019ve won a grand total of five youth league games in my basketball coaching career; perhaps I shouldn\u2019t criticize a guy coaching in the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n
That little fracas between New Orleans players was something else, though. wasn\u2019t it? Props to Slessinger for benching Travan Thibodeaux after he tried to choke his teammate. I guess. I mean, that\u2019s terrible, you have to keep control of your team, build a certain culture within the program, etc. But you also just lost a tournament game by one point and left a kid who had been balling pretty well on the bench for the last stretch of the game. Not sure all his players or folks around the program are going to be good with Slessinger\u2019s decision this morning.<\/p>\n
The nightcap, Kansas State vs. Wake Forest, had all my attention. A Big 12 team vs one of the two best players to ever play for KU. I thoroughly approved of all the Danny & The Miracles references throughout the game.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, my man D. Manning got thoroughly out-coached by Bruce Weber. The Wake Forest kids didn\u2019t show any interest at all on the defensive end of the court. Meanwhile K-State was usually locked in and made a number of terrific plays at the rim to keep Wake from scoring. I guess the only real surprise of the night was that the game was even close. K-State shot something like 93% from the field.[1]<\/a> They weren\u2019t able to really pull away until the final 2:00 or so.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the thing about K-State: I really like they way they play when they are clicking. They have some really nice parts. They have a handful of guys who are getting everything out of their ability. They often look really well coached.<\/p>\n That last one is the rub. Bruce Weber is a whiny, petty martyr who is probably my second least favorite coach in the Big 12.[2]<\/a> He needs to get over the fact that he\u2019s not Bill Self or Lon Kruger or whoever he\u2019s complaining about getting more love than him this week. He needs to realize he\u2019s coaching in a power 5 conference, does a pretty good job of it, and stop worrying about whether he\u2019s liked or appreciated as much as his contemporaries. That garbage over the weekend from one of the K-State players about the Wildcats being \u201cthe most hated team in college basketball\u201d is classic Weber paranoia. I\u2019m pretty sure there are at least 50 schools more hated that K-State. I\u2019m not saying I would like Weber and K-State if he could shut the fuck up for awhile, but I would respect them a lot more than I do now.<\/p>\n A quick aside, I have a friend here who knows Weber a little from when they were both at Purdue. Recently, without any prompting on my part, he asked, \u201cIsn\u2019t Weber just the worst?\u201d<\/p>\n I learned yesterday that one of C\u2019s classmates has an older brother who is a starting guard for Princeton. Her class recorded a good luck video yesterday that they\u2019re sending his way before their game with Notre Dame. After school she told me the older brother was a \u201cthrower\u201d and one of the \u201c25 best ones in the whole country.\u201d Not really sure what a thrower is in basketball, and while he\u2019s a nice player, I doubt he\u2019s one of the 25 best in the tournament. But I liked that she\u2019s interested and even asked me to record the game for her. And I realized comments like hers are exactly what happens when I don\u2019t let the girls watch basketball with me.<\/p>\n KU feelings this morning: we\u2019re either going to make it to Glendale or lose on Sunday. No in-between right now.<\/p>\n I got to watch three-quarters of the first night of the tournament last night. A few quick thoughts. The Mt. St. Mary\u2019s – New Orleans game was fun. A couple teams flat going at each other for 40 minutes. New Orleans got some local run because their head coach and one assistant coach are from Bloomington. I thought head coach Mark Slessinger blew it by playing the last defensive possession of the game straight-up. That was a classic \u201cgo for the steal for the first 10–15 seconds then foul\u201d situation. When you trail you have to give your team a chance to have a decent possession to close the game. He didn\u2019t give his team that opportunity. But I\u2019ve won a grand total of five youth league games in my basketball coaching career; perhaps I shouldn\u2019t criticize a guy coaching in the NCAA tournament. That little fracas between New Orleans players was something else, though. wasn\u2019t it? Props to Slessinger for benching Travan Thibodeaux after he tried to choke his teammate. I guess. I mean, that\u2019s terrible, you have to keep control of your team, build a certain culture within the program, etc. But you also just lost a tournament game by one point and left a kid who had been balling pretty well on the bench for the last stretch of the game. Not sure all his players or folks around the program are going to be good with Slessinger\u2019s decision this morning. The nightcap, Kansas State vs. Wake Forest, had all my attention. A Big 12 team vs one of the two best players to ever play for KU. I thoroughly approved of all the Danny & The Miracles references throughout the game. Unfortunately, my man D. Manning got thoroughly out-coached by Bruce Weber. The Wake Forest kids didn\u2019t show any interest at all on the defensive end of the court. Meanwhile K-State was usually locked in and made a number of terrific plays at the rim to keep Wake from scoring. I guess the only real surprise of the night was that the game was even close. K-State shot something like 93% from the field.[1] They weren\u2019t able to really pull away until the final 2:00 or so. Here\u2019s the thing about K-State: I really like they way they play when they are clicking. They have some really nice parts. They have a handful of guys who are getting everything out of their ability. They often look really well coached. That last one is the rub. Bruce Weber is a whiny, petty martyr who is probably my second least favorite coach in the Big 12.[2] He needs to get over the fact that he\u2019s not Bill Self or Lon Kruger or whoever he\u2019s complaining about getting more love than him this week. He needs to realize he\u2019s coaching in a power 5 conference, does a pretty good job of it, and stop worrying about whether he\u2019s liked or appreciated as much as his contemporaries. That garbage over the weekend from one of the K-State players about the Wildcats being \u201cthe most hated team in college basketball\u201d is classic Weber paranoia. I\u2019m pretty sure there are at least 50 schools more hated that K-State. I\u2019m not saying I would like Weber and K-State if he could shut the fuck up for awhile, but I would respect them a lot more than I do now. A quick aside, I have a friend here who knows Weber a little from when they were both at Purdue. Recently, without any prompting on my part, he asked, \u201cIsn\u2019t Weber just the worst?\u201d I learned yesterday that one of C\u2019s classmates has an older brother who is a starting guard for Princeton. Her class recorded a good luck video yesterday that they\u2019re sending his way before their game with Notre Dame. After school she told me the older brother was a \u201cthrower\u201d and one of the \u201c25 best ones in the whole country.\u201d Not really sure what a thrower is in basketball, and while he\u2019s a nice player, I doubt he\u2019s one of the 25 best in the tournament. But I liked that she\u2019s interested and even asked me to record the game for her. And I realized comments like hers are exactly what happens when I don\u2019t let the girls watch basketball with me. KU feelings this morning: we\u2019re either going to make it to Glendale or lose on Sunday. No in-between right now. Actually 66%. But still! ↩ OK, maybe he and Scott Drew are tied for #1. ↩<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,52],"class_list":["post-6274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-basketball","tag-college-sports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274","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=6274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13669,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274\/revisions\/13669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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