Category Archives: Basketball

Gator Hater

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As much as I despise Florida and its All-Ugly Forward Joakim Noah, I’m more disappointed in KU getting bounced from the tournament last weekend than in Florida’s repeat (and subsequent discussion of it being one of the best college teams ever).

I can’t figure out how a dude as ugly as Noah is being considered a first-round NBA pick…that guy is NO GOOD. He will stink in the NBA. Mark my words.

Not only that, I can’t figure out why scouts have Brandon Rush and Julian Wright both bouncing from KU to the NBA this off-season. In my opinion, Rush is the only one that could even consider it, but he stands to make a lot more money if he sticks around for a year. His stock could rise significantly (see: Corey Brewer, Florida) if he were to stay and lead the Jayhawks to their first championship in almost 20 years next year.

If both Rush and Wright return, we should be the pre-season #1. If we aren’t, I’ll be convinced that there are people voting that just don’t watch college basketball. For the first 2 rounds of the tournament, no one acted more like a #1 seed than my beloved Jayhawks. After a gritty performance against a tough Southern Illinois team, it was really a let down to see them self-destruct in a way to UCLA. And then, seeing UCLA get dominated by Florida was all the more frustrating, considering that we matched up much better against the Gators.

I think that Sherron Collins knee injury likely had a lot more to do with the loss than we thought, and I am anxious to see how he performs as a seasoned sophomore. Here’s hoping he keeps his weight down because when he lost that 20 pounds, he was KU’s X-factor.

Even if Rush and Wright both go to the NBA, Bill Self will just reload with a bunch more studs. I would just really like to see us play more together as a team than we seemed to in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8. The coming weeks will be interesting and here’s hoping that everyone sticks around to make a run at greatness.

And here’s hoping that I never have to watch Joakim Noah dance ever again. Seriously. That dude got hit by the #1 Ugly Bus when he was crossing Main Street in Uglytown.

Jayhawks

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Another basketball season, another first-round exit by the Kansas Jayhawks in the NCAA Tournament.

To be totally honest, I never felt really good about this game. In my pool, I almost picked Bradley (almost doesn’t count does it), instead of taking KU to the Elite Eight. Fortunately, I don’t have them out any further than that.

I’m still in decent shape as long as I don’t miss very many more games. Right now, I’m sitting at unlucky number 13, but if today goes well (and I need some help from Georgetown for that to happen), I shouldn’t be sitting too poorly going into the next weekend of the tournament.

I am hoping that with KU out of it, I can look at the tournament a little more rationally. Not that it matters much…I just wouldn’t mind taking home that 65%.

Seventh

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Right now in my NCAA bracket, I’m 7th. I only missed 3 games yesterday and none of them were of major importance (Indiana, LSU, Alabama). I haven’t lost a Sweet 16 team yet, which is a first for me. I almost lost 2 Final Four teams (BC and Gonzaga), but they both escaped.

I’m not counting on winning, but it sure would be nice. There are 117 people in our pool at $10 each…winner gets 65%.

You do the math.

Two Hundie

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“Baby, we’re gonna be up five HUNDIE by midnight!”

Trent, Swingers

Greatest movie about Vegas.

EVER.

OK, so there’s a lot to talk about. First, I want to congratulate myself on making it to 200 posts. This is my official 200th post (according to WordPress), so I’m going to do a little mental macarena for myself. 200 posts since October 1st of 2004. 200 posts in 529 days; that’s approximately 1 post every 2.645 days. Not too bad…but I’m going to try to get to 400 by the end of the year. Think I can do it?

Friday night, we tried to do some staging at my parents’ old house. It’s been for sale for quite a while now and we (and by we, I mean Alli’s mom…) tried to make it more appealing by putting some furniture in it. It looks A LOT better now.
Played this weekend in the Big G Volleyball tournament, a tournament that was hosted by my alma mater, Graceland University. It was disappointing. First, I was disappointed in the turnout of teams. Originally, they were expecting as many as 16. When we got the schedule last week, it was down to 11. When we showed up on Saturday, there were only 6. While I still had fun playing in the old gym, I was disappointed that more teams didn’t show up. Plus, we played HORRIBLY. I had to pass all day and I did decent for most of it, but then started passing really poorly and the problem was that it was more when it counted that I passed badly. I made up for it as much as I could with some good defense and my hitting was really pretty good for most of the day…I just chose to stop passing at the worst possible time. Plus, with only 6 teams, there was no rest built into the schedule. We were either playing or reffing the whole time. Not fun. By the time the tournament rolled around, we were all pretty beat. So we lost in the quarterfinals to a team we had beat easily in pool play.

Boo.

Best part about it though was that, since we were in Lamoni, we got to partake in the best pizza ever from Hampton’s Pizza Shack. I was able to keep some leftovers for lunch today and man, were they tasty!

Sunday, we got up and went to Bob Evans for some tasty breakfast and then basically slept the rest of the day away. I tried to watch the Big 12 Tournament Finals, but I couldn’t stay awake, only waking up to see that my Jayhawks had pulled it out in impressive fashion. I thought that their win over Texas could get them as high as a 3 seed, but I guess not. We’ll have to settle for a #4 in a pretty tough bracket. This year, I’m not going to let my homer attitude take the best of me and I’ll probably have KU losing to Pittsburgh and I’ll just be happy if they don’t, even if it does break up my bracket a little.

Finished off the weekend by watching Pride & Prejudice last night. It was an interesting flick, but we both couldn’t figure out why Keira Knightley was nominated for Best Actress. Gwyneth Paltrow or Claire Danes would have been much more deserving candidates in my opinion.

So that was it. Long, tiring weekend. Another on the docket for this weekend when we go to St. Louis to visit our friends there. Should be fun. Plus, the tournament starts. Good times.

College Basketball Rankings

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Figure this one out:

KU beats Oklahoma on Sunday. Oklahoma was ranked #18, I think. They beat Colorado who is ranked #25. KU is ahead of both of them in the Big 12 standings (behind only Texas), but for some reason, KU isn’t ranked.

Methinks the pollsters are not watching the Big 12 closely.

At least Andy Katz has them in Bracketology, listed as a #6 seed. That sounds about right (Oklahoma is a #6 as well and Colorado is a #10). Inconspicuously absent? Missouri. Quin is done after this year.

UPDATE: Is it any wonder why Missouri isn’t ranked? Losing by 26 to BAYLOR. Pathetic.

Now This

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First it was the Chiefs.

Now, for some reason unbeknownst to me, my Jayhawks are struggling to find wins, losing their third straight game last night (something that had not happened since 1994). I’m not worried so much about the streak…it’s just a streak. What I’m worried about is the utter lack of urgency with this team. Well, that and the lack of a true scorer.

Langford could be considered a scorer, but when you are more of a slasher and you go to the line a lot and then MISS YOUR FREE THROWS, that doesn’t really help. Simien was shut down by Kevin Bookout and Oklahoma couldn’t miss in the first half.

15+ turnovers doesn’t help much either.

So what’s wrong with the Jayhawks. Self thinks it’s the seniors’ faults, but I think that the issue is that we still don’t have a SOLID lineup that can be put on the floor and not screw up. While it was nice to see Giddens get out of his shooting funk a little bit last night and for Galindo to see some minutes again, both those players are absolute disasters on the defensive end of the floor.

I blame the NBA. No one cares about defense anymore. Except Kelvin Sampson and his Sooners who put the clamps down on the Jayhawks in the first half, thus eliminating their ability to score and destroying their confidence. They couldn’t recover and now KU is 0-3 in its last three games.

NOT GOOD.