This has been, without a doubt, the best I have handled a KU tournament loss in my lifetime. I had my little half hour "cool down" period, where I flushed all calls and texties, and then spent a little bit of time bitching and moaning about the missed opportunities down the stretch. And then I moved on. It was definitely a tough loss to finish the season, giving away a 5 point lead with three minutes left, but there are plenty of reasons why I should stay positive:
- KU won the title last year. That should be a good enough reason by itself, but if there's one thing I'm good at, it's writing about college basketball for 10,000 words, when 3,000 would suffice. If there's two things I'm good at, it's that- and hitting on moms. So I'll continue.
- KU had no business even making it to the Sweet 16. Looking at KU's roster at the beginning of the year, my only hope was that they didn't pull a Florida and miss the tourney. When they survived the NDSU game, the season was a success as far as I'm concerned. Bill Self deserves every coach of the year award he wins this year.
- If your team has a fatal flaw, and their season eventually hinges on that fatal flaw, you gotta accept that the season probably isn't going to end well. For KU, that would be a lack of support besides Aldrich and Collins. Going into halftime I was concerned, because Tom Izzo is too good of a coach not to make adjustments to make those two less of a factor. Michigan St. was totally keying on them towards the end of the game, and no one else was willing to go and make a big play. The one negative thing I can say about this team was that the young guys really regressed in the tournament. They seemed like they were out there just trying not to screw up, instead of being aggressive. However....
- This is a very young team, and everyone's coming back a year older, better, and hungrier. I think Tyshawn Taylor is gonna be a special player by the time he's done....the jury is still out on the Morris twins. And how about my boy Brady Morningstar throwing down TWO dunks in one half? Those were, in all likelihood, the first two dunks of his career. He tried throwing one down against Missouri earlier this year and missed horribly, so during the first breakaway last night, I was understandably nervous. My running commentary got laughs from everyone watching the game with me: "Lay it in Brady, lay it in Brady, just lay- AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH throw it down!!!!!" They were laughing at me, not with me.
- There is a decent recruiting class coming in next year. I don't expect much from Elijah Johnson, mostly since he's a point guard and we already have Tyshawn, but Thomas Robinson is supposed to be a rebounding beast who'll hopefully rub off on the Morris twins, who react to physical contact about as favorably as the random girl I sat next to on a flight to Vegas, when she woke up to find me gazing into her eyes, gently stroking her cheek and whispering "You're beautiful when you're sleeping."
Plus Self picked up Jeff Withey, a seven-foot transfer from Arizona, and the word on the street is that Lance Stephenson, the #9 rated recruit in the country, is announcing on Wednesday that he's coming to KU. Normally I would be worried about him cutting into Brady's minutes next year, but it seems that the only guy who has a bigger boner for Brady than me is Bill Self. You know Brady's gonna get his, son.
- And finally, IF Aldrich and Collins come back: look out. KU then wouldn't lose anybody except two walk-on scrubs- although there would be a noticeable lack of a goofy redhead at the end of the bench, an underappreciated roster spot if there ever was one, and a KU staple ever since the days of Ol' Roy. Reading between the lines of all of Collins' and Aldrich's quotes (which I spend an embarrassing amount of time doing- I pick apart their interviews like a prosecuting attorney looking for holes in a murder trial) I would guess that Aldrich is staying, and Collins is leaving. This makes little sense, since Aldrich is a guaranteed top 10 pick, while Collins would be a 2nd rounder, if he gets drafted at all. But Aldrich is one of those Hansbrough types who loves being in college, while Collins has a two-year-old son and some baby mama drama to worry about, so he's itching to get paid in the shade. However, both have said that they will put their decisions in Self's hands, so I'm holding out hope that they both stick around and make KU a preseason top 5 team next year. It's tough; for the first seventeen years of my KU fandom, exactly two players left school early for the NBA (Pierce and Gooden.) Now there have been four in the last two years (Julian, Rush, Chalmers, and Arthur.)
Other tourney thoughts:
- Poor Dick Enberg is absolutely losing it. Normally I hate it when announcers who have been announcing game since I started watching sports retire (I still miss Pat Summerall, especially in the Madden video games) but it's time for Dick to hang it up. He messes up names, numbers, scores, fouls, etc. around 25-30 times a game, and that is probably a low estimate. If you are paying attention to the game, he literally cannot go three possessions in a row without mixing someone up. I'm waiting for the day where Jay Bilas snaps on air and starts doing both the play-by-play and the color by himself (similar to when Dunph, already playing shorthanded, kicked Stenejehm off the court during a 3-on-3 game, telling him he'd rather play by himself than on the same team as him.)
- Happiest guy on the planet today: Reggie Redding from Villanova, who apparently had a brain aneurysm during the inbounds play and unnecessarily launched the ball the length of the court with 10 seconds left. What the hell was he thinking? You know that play was dumb when it gets second-guessed by Alex, the same girl who calls DeJuan Blair "Mr. Arm-Band Man" as in "You are not very good at free throws, Mr. Arm-Band Man! You're ruining my bracket!"
But Scottie Reynolds hits the buzzer beater, and now nobody will remember his mistake. Except for his buddies, who 10 years from now will hopefully be sitting around watching the tourney and drinking some beers with him and saying things like "Hey, remember that one time when you were 10 seconds away from making the Final Four and you decided to recreate the Grant Hill/Christian Laettner play? That was awesome."
- I've always loved Bill Raftery as an announcer, but since I found out that Jud loves him as much as I do, we've taken the joke to another level this year. We spent most of Stoutsapaloozafestathon speaking in a Raftery voice "Ohhh! Bring on another round of goldschlager forthebigfella!"....."Wing paying his $140 tab in cash? Onions!" And now Jud and I have taken to calling our home base bar "Raftery's" or "Raffy's" because we're convinced that he'd love to get sauced there. We spent a solid 15 minutes last night debating how we could persuade him to start doing Big 12 games on ESPN, so we could take him out boozing after a Big Monday game.
{Side story: Jud's buddy Ryan has done some PR work for ESPN in the past, and one time got to sit down for dinner with a couple other scrubs, some producers, and Raftery, Jay Bilas, and Sean McDonough. After dinner, Ryan and the others were going to leave, thinking they were "intruding" on the bigwigs' social time, but Raftery instructed them to sit down, and proceeded to get everyone at the table shitfaced. As the evening wore on, Raftery started busting McDonough's balls and telling him to pick up the tab, to the point where a producer told Raftery to ease off, which caused Bilas to join in, and McDonough eventually left the table to go to his hotel room. So then Raftery and Bilas continue to talk shit about McDonough, revealing that they're not just breaking balls, they honestly don't like him. They also made accusations that he was not a real basketball fan, and gay to boot. So keep that in mind next time you're watching Louisville vs. Georgetown on Big Monday and those three are announcing together. Personally, I can't wait.}
- I said it before the tourney started (and for 4 months before that) but I'll reiterate: tomorrow's North Carolina/Oklahoma game is the national championship in my mind. It's too bad that injuries derailed Oklahoma into a 2 seed in Carolina's bracket, because this would've made one hell of a championship game.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go watch last year's national championship game for the 26th time. Maybe the semifinal game against Carolina too. I don't know, I don't know if I'll have enough time.
