- 08:07 PM
- 04/17/24
Everybody knows Gillespie is a good coach. His teams at A&M played good basketball. He's a GREAT recruiter. That's the big concern with Tubby Smith. He is a great game coach, a guy who is great at getting the best out of his players, but he's not much of a recruiter. He had fallen into a routine of getting decent players, having them play good basketball, and losing in or before the Sweet Sixteen to teams that were just far more talented than they were. That may not be grounds for feeling heat at most places, but Kentucky is one of those places where it IS. Tubby's teams just never had a high ceiling. They usually reached their potential, but that just wasn't enough for a program with Kentucky's history and with the expectations of their fans. Billy Gillespie, if nothing else, will raise that ceiling with the talent level he can bring in (for instance, Patrick Patterson). That's the Kentucky Athletic Department logic, at least, and I think its pretty defensible, in theory. Gillespie's clear disconnect with his team, though, has to be worrying for everyone in the bluegrass state (except Rick Pitino).
posted by fatfryar at 10:25 AM on January 10, 2008
Indeed, we are now participating with other countries for supremacy, not the phony "Wold Series" of baseball, where only two teams from the United States are allowed to participate. The world championship of baseball that took place in the United States in the spring of 2006 and in which teams from all over the world participated was the real thing. And guess what? We didn't win it. Japan did. And we had some of the best professionals playing for us!! Please, please, please, PLEASE, don't bring up this dumb argument again. Besides, anyone who watched us in the World Cup knows that to put the US among the "world soccer powers" is insane. I would LOVE to see us beat Portugal right now in a game that actually mattered. I don't know what the hell this comment was trying to say, but since everything it DID say was stupid, I'm going to guess that its nonexistant message was stupid as well.
posted by fatfryar at 12:58 PM on June 16, 2007
Normally I think talk about stuff like reseeding the playoffs is ridiculous. But the fact that it seems that the Cavs would have not made it out of the first round in the West makes me wonder if a full playoff reseeding wouldn't be a good idea. Anyone who tells you that they would rather have seen the Cavs playing the Spurs in the Finals as opposed to a team like the Suns is crazy. We've heard David Stern say that the East-West talent disparity will even itself out eventually for a long time now, and apart from the Pistons of the last few years, there has not really been a Eastern team that can consistently challenge the best teams from the West. More importantly, the East's side of the playoff bracket is an absolute joke. The Cavs reached the Finals after playing one good team in the playoffs. That's pathetic. Part of the trouble was due to injuries suffered by some of the playoff teams in the East, and maybe the Heat can be a perennial elite team if Wade can stay healthy, but the fact that the Eastern Conference playoffs can be ruined by injuries to Wade and Gilbert Arenas shows how poor the talent is in the East. I'm not sure if something needs to be done or if Stern is right and things will just work themselves out. Right now, though, with ratings down and the Spurs actually looking somewhat bored at times in this series, some solution needs to be discussed, at least. It's pretty much generally thought right now that the real Finals was in the SECOND ROUND of the playoffs. This is atrocious for the NBA. David Stern needs to think seriously about the product he provides in the playoffs after this year.
posted by fatfryar at 01:59 PM on June 15, 2007
The thought that Duke's resume would have resulted in an NIT birth and NCAA snub if it had belonged to another team is so stupid that it's laughable.
posted by fatfryar at 03:37 PM on March 21, 2007
Are you serious, brainofdtrain? Are you really saying that Billy Packer loves Duke? Anyone who has ever heard Packer (a Wake Forest grad, for god's sake) announce a game or do his awful Selection Sunday coverage knows that he HATES the Blue Devils. As for the hit itself, its just as countless people have pointed out, that Henderson was going for the block, or maybe a hard foul, only Johnson committed one first, taking the ball out of Henderson's reach and Hansbrough's arms out of the line of his attempted swat. How many time this year have we seen Henderson leap and rip balls out of the air in traffic? For a guy with his athleticism, this kind of athletic block has the same effect on the teams and crowd as a monster dunk on the offensive end does. Henderson was just trying to put his mark on the end of game that clearly had not gone the way that he wished it had. Unfortunately for everyone involved, he made contact with Hansbroughs face instead of the ball or an arm. At least Hansbrough had the class to keep from starting a brawl, keeping a bad situation from turning into an awful one.
posted by fatfryar at 10:32 PM on March 05, 2007
For anyone that thinks that Coach K had his starters in, Gerald does not start. Unless you didn't notice as well, the original foul on the play, the reason Henderson didn't get a chance to block the shot, was committed by Steve Johnson, a freshman walkon. Jordan Davidson was in the game. So were Marty Pocius and Lance Thomas. No starters.
posted by fatfryar at 08:42 AM on March 05, 2007
One more thing that mid-majors do really really well, especially in comparison to the big league schools, is recruiting to their system. Whereas a lot of the top flight programs simply go after the biggest and best recruits available, the mid-majors are usually more selective in choosing guys who work in their defensive and offensive schemes. This is a big part of why really cohesive units from well-coached mid-major schools are able to succeed against teams with far more talent but with players who maybe are being forced into a system they perhaps aren't perfectly suited for.
posted by fatfryar at 05:34 PM on December 04, 2006
The thing about Kansas is that they will actually be a worse team by the end of the year than they are now because Bill Self is an absolutely terrible coach. Don't get me wrong, he's a heck of a recruiter and Kansas has some amazing athletes, but Self has been destroying quality teams his entire career. My favorite moments of this particular game came after Self called a timeout with about 45 seconds left. You would think he would tell his team not to foul or something similar, but no, they fouled EVERY POSSESSION from then until the end of regulation even though they were AHEAD THE WHOLE TIME. That last foul with 10 seconds left on a wide open layup was particularly hilarious. I can't wait for Kansas to earn a 1 seed and then become the first 1 seed ever to lose in the first round. They have the talent to win it all, but Bill Self will drive them into the ground.
posted by fatfryar at 06:37 PM on November 26, 2006
On a note that has gotten slightly repetitive over the last few years, the Twins are the most loveable team in the playoffs. One third young rising stars, one third old yet big-hearted veterans, and one third kids who could be legitimately in AAA right now, 100% good people. Gotta love 'em. Twins all the way!
posted by fatfryar at 12:00 AM on October 03, 2006
Yeah, maybe questionable judgement here, but let's not condemn the guy who put together the freaking defending champs before they even have a chance to lose a game.
posted by fatfryar at 04:25 PM on September 29, 2006
daddisam is 100% right. Kirby's homer is (or should be) the high water mark in this discussion.
posted by fatfryar at 03:26 PM on September 29, 2006
1 game? What a joke. Both calls were easy to make based on a first, live action viewing over TV. I don't understand how either call could have failed to be overturned. The replay official should never be allowed to work a football game in that capacity again. Absolutely appalling. I think someone needs at least to look into whether there was some exterior motive behind the failure to overturn the first call in particular. Are officials encouraged to do small things to keep games close by the NCAA? Does stuff like this happen regularly, just on a smaller scale? Was this just an out of hand example of a norm? Its a scary thought.
posted by fatfryar at 08:55 PM on September 18, 2006
The OU game was a joke. How do you review bad calls that those of us watching were able to get right on the first viewing and get it wrong AGAIN?! It was an embarrassment to football. I hate OU, but they were absolutely cheated.
posted by fatfryar at 02:53 PM on September 17, 2006
Lots of people haven't seen my Canes, but they are a really legitimate team. I think that overall, they are far better this year than during their Cup Finals run. It all comes down to goaltending, though. Go Canes!
posted by fatfryar at 11:08 PM on May 06, 2006
Phaneuf and Lundqvist have been great this year. So has Crosby. The trophy has to go to Ovechkin, though. He is the Caps. They have scored a total of 226 goals this year, and Ovechkin has 52 of them. He's accounted for 23% of their goals! That's an absolutely obscene number for a rookie. (Just for comparison, Cheechoo has 21%, Jagr has 22%, and Crosby has 16% of their respective team's goals.) He's the only guy on that entire team that can create at all, so the opposition will regularly trap him and always design their defense for pretty much the sole purpose of stopping him. As bad as the Penguins are, Recchi, LeClair, and Gonchar are all solid players, particularly when you compare them to Dainius Zubrus, Brent Willsie, and Chris Clark, the best of Ovechkin's help. What really does it for me, though, is that Ovechkin is a much more all around player than Crosby. He gets back and plays better defense, is far tougher and loves to deliver the big hit. I can't wait to see the Caps put some talent around him. I can see him getting 120-130 points a year with someone to play with.
posted by fatfryar at 10:20 AM on April 18, 2006
It's not only the players, but the university as a whole that has suffered at the hands of the media. This has gone from a limited crime blown out of proportion to a ridiculous and groundless libel of faultless administrators and students not even connected to the noncrime. Thanks to the media, Duke students are viewed as the villains in this whole affair for absolutely no reason.
posted by fatfryar at 07:33 PM on April 10, 2006
If you seriously think soccer is in any way more physical than football, then you are an idiot. If you think soccer players do less whining than football players, then you have never watched a game of either sport, and are an idiot as well. 12 year olds run non-stop no matter what, and vaguely purposeful jogging constitutes most of the "running" in soccer. Don't get me wrong, soccer is by far the more demanding sport endurance-wise, but to suggest that football players are less physical is completely dumb.
posted by fatfryar at 11:48 PM on April 02, 2006
Duke vs. LSU Gonzaga vs. UCLA George Mason vs. Wichita State Villanova vs. BC Which one doesn't belong? It's always great to see the committee smooth the way for UConn to get to the title with the easiest bracket.
posted by fatfryar at 11:03 PM on March 19, 2006
Whoever wants Stern's injury caused home run to be the highlight of the WBC clearly didnt watch the DR-Venezuela game... That was a game and a half. It had everything the US-Canada game didnt, and featured a show of why the Red Sox will have a better chance than the Yankees of winning a World Series in the near future. Just look at who is hitting third in each lineup and compare what they did when the chips were down this week: Papi goes yard in the ninth with his team up by one and fading, while Arod hit a blooper that should have been caught with his team down by one in the ninth.
posted by fatfryar at 09:23 AM on March 09, 2006
Stern was more lucky than impressive: his inside-the-parker was a result of Holliday's injury and Griffey's fear of one, his "leaping" catch was one he could have made standing up 4 feet from the wall (he had time to get there too), and he nearly gave the game away on his bobble on a very catchable ball in the 9th. What did strike me was the fact that none of the US players really care. Thats the impression you get when the only way a team scores runs is on homers: they dont want it enough to manufacture any. If US pitching isnt phenomenal (which it should be pretty consistently), they wont win. On a similar note, has ARod ever done anything worthwhile in a significant game? At least Joe Nathan's curveball and Peavy's location will make the next game worth watching for a couple innings at least.
posted by fatfryar at 12:15 AM on March 09, 2006
I was at the game, and even I will admit that he is pretty amazing. That three he hit with the shot clock running down won that game. He misses and Duke wins. I'm hoping that he will realize his best chance to be a top pick will come this year, since there's no way hes going to be picked over Greg Oden and after that, NBA scouts will pick highly athletic freshmen over proven upperclassmen. If only he didnt look like he wanted to cry everytime a call went against him...
posted by fatfryar at 10:35 PM on March 05, 2006
Yeah, I admit it. Duke and UNC are institutions that run far dirtier programs than the University of Miami. If only the Tobacco Road teams had such a great academic track record as "the U." And since of all the 40 foul shots that FSU got in that game, only 15 came off shooting fouls, either budpatient has no clue about basketball at all, or else just didnt watch the game. In either case he is just making himself look like an idiot with expert analysis like that.
posted by fatfryar at 03:25 PM on March 04, 2006
As I will be watching the game in Cameron, I have to admit I'm not too worried about the hype. Even Hansbrough's only good offensive move, hooking, won't help Carolina tomorrow, provided the refs don't give random fouls to any Duke player who happens to be near a play close to the basket like they did against FSU. Check out the stats: around 30 free throws for Johnson and Thornton, with only 7 total shooting fouls for Duke. Thats pretty much bullcrap. Anyways, go Duke.
posted by fatfryar at 04:18 PM on March 03, 2006
Major props to Gerber: 23 saves in the third! Thats stepping up your game. On some even strength occasions it looked almost like Canada was running a powerplay, just gunning away nonstop. But Gerber was a freaking wall. There was just no room at all. When a goalie's on like that, its very hard to win the game, even when your skaters are as obviously superior as Canadas were. Watching the US, though, it just doesnt seem like we have enough firepower to get anywhere. I'm hoping that Mike Modano can regain his old status as the hope of American hockey and take control on offense. He's playing way too passively. Other than that, though, I don't see us beating a good defensive team.
posted by fatfryar at 08:59 PM on February 18, 2006
The American team makes me sad...
posted by fatfryar at 11:40 PM on February 16, 2006
JJ Redick for poet laureate! (Oh, and hes going to kill Maryland today.)
posted by fatfryar at 08:54 AM on February 11, 2006
Gotta love hockey. Such a fun sport to watch and to play. Ovechkin is the ROY, and anyone who says otherwise knows nothing about hockey. Crosby is great, but he's a one-way player who can afford to pass first. Ovechkin is the only good scorer on his team, and yet he still manages to put the puck in the net while playing solid defensive hockey as well. Plus, he can hit. Long live the NHL.
posted by fatfryar at 11:52 AM on January 28, 2006
How about Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, Scooter the talking ass, and the rest of the Fox baseball broadcast squad? The MoundCam may be the most worthless invention in the history of the universe. Not really players, but since we are off subject, I want to rant.
posted by fatfryar at 08:37 PM on January 25, 2006
Manchester United Complete Double
Drogba is an idiot. That was one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. Wow. At least Zidane's headbutt made for awesome Youtube videos.