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Post by carllove on Sept 11, 2021 15:00:59 GMT
As a Jayhawk, I’m pretty excited about this! The Big 12 Basketball Tournament is a big deal here, and I’ve been going since the Big 8 days. Great schools and a nice fit with the remaining schools. A bad situation for the Big 12 just turned around big time! Rock Chalk!
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 11, 2021 15:11:59 GMT
As a Jayhawk, I’m pretty excited about this! The Big 12 Basketball Tournament is a big deal here, and I’ve been going since the Big 8 days. Great schools and a nice fit with the remaining schools. A bad situation for the Big 12 just turned around big time! Rock Chalk! I, being 20x the basketball fan than I am a football fan, love the attitude/perspective. The conversation has mostly revolved around football, but I do think the basketball side of it is good for the B12. Both Texas and Oklahoma have been good in basketball, but not consistently good. Cincinnati in particular is, I think, the better program if you look over the past 25 years or so. Houston has really rebuilt itself (it seems) after numerous tries to recapture that early 80s glory. BYU is solid. UCF, well, it's always described as a sleeping giant. Maybe they'll wake up.
Anyway having just noted my love for basketball ... 45 minutes or so until Gophers football. Hopefully it's a win today, as we drop a few levels in competition from last week's Ohio State, hosting Miami (Ohio) today. MAC schools are no joke, but we ought to win. Curious to see the running game minus Mo Ibrahim.
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Post by carllove on Sept 11, 2021 16:23:30 GMT
I will enjoy the last few hours of the Jayhawks sitting on top of the Big 12, then it’s a long wait until Basketball season! 🤣
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 11, 2021 16:42:53 GMT
Unfortunately (for me) while Kansas looks absolutely loaded for the basketball season, the Gophers are going to be awful. New coach (whom I like) with a roster of mostly 5th-year transfers, just to fill the roster. Almost everyone left when Richard Pitino was fired: only two players returned!
But I think this lost season will be worth it. Rather than hurriedly sign a bunch of leftover incoming freshmen and being committed to them, he basically defaults a season for his first "real" class. And with three very talented local signees in that class already, things do look good.
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 14, 2021 14:46:37 GMT
Major local college basketball news here unfolded yesterday evening. Ahjany Lee, a 6-10 C/F from Minnesota who is generally rated right around the 100th best recruit in the nation--you see some lists with him in its lower reaches, some with him just outside of it--committed last night to St. Thomas!
St. Thomas is the small, Catholic, private university in St. Paul that made national headlines for being booted from its Division 3 conference a year or so ago because it dominated. Rather than find a new D3 or even D2 home, they decided to petition the NCAA to leap directly to D1, an unprecedented move. This coming season will be their first at that level, and they will play basketball in the Summit League.
Lee is from tiny Byron, Minn., but has transferred to play his senior season in the metro area at Totino-Grace HS, which is loaded with another four or five D1 prospects. He had offers from Kansas (take that, carllove!), Florida, Stanford, Minnesota, and Iowa, among others. I think this has to be unprecedented, or very nearly so, for a recruit of that caliber to make a choice like that. The closest I can recall is when you occasionally get a highly rated coach's kid signing with a lower school, such as is happening with Pat Baldwin at UW-Milwaukee this season.
It's going to be really exciting watching them transition, especially with some of the talent they're managing to land.
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 25, 2021 19:22:53 GMT
Gophers, favored by 30, lose to Bowling Green at home on Homecoming. Fuck it, it's official: Minnesotans are not allowed to have good teams to cheer for. Simple as that.
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Post by The Cincinnati Kid on Oct 6, 2021 1:38:27 GMT
On Saturday I went to the UC-Notre Dame game at Notre Dame and it might have been the most fun I ever had at any kind of sporting event. Beautiful stadium and campus, a top ten matchup and a sea of UC fans. We absolutely took over the stadium, often drowning out the home cheers with "let's go Bearcats!" It's probably the biggest win in program history and opens the door to the playoffs. The fans were very friendly as well. It's not lost on me that probably a big reason why it was such a great atmosphere is ND's no alcohol policy in the stadium. I wish I could do it all over again as I don't think that experience can be topped, apart from winning a championship or maybe beating Ohio State.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 6, 2021 11:43:10 GMT
On Saturday I went to the UC-Notre Dame game at Notre Dame and it might have been the most fun I ever had at any kind of sporting event. Beautiful stadium and campus, a top ten matchup and a sea of UC fans. We absolutely took over the stadium, often drowning out the home cheers with "let's go Bearcats!" It's probably the biggest win in program history and opens the door to the playoffs. The fans were very friendly as well. It's not lost on me that probably a big reason why it was such a great atmosphere is ND's no alcohol policy in the stadium. I wish I could do it all over again as I don't think that experience can be topped, apart from winning a championship or maybe beating Ohio State. Notre Dame was my childhood favorite team (for unclear reasons, being from southern Minnesota and not Catholic and not having any family or friends who had gone there), so I can't tell you how much I envy you that experience! (Though the outcome wouldn't have been to my liking...)
That sounds like a fantastic time. Good for you.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 16, 2021 16:45:38 GMT
The Gophers are down to their third-string tailback after a season-ending injury to star and legit All-America candidate Mo Ibrahim and a very scary medical situation that seems to have ended the season if not career of Treyson Potts (who wasn't hurt during the Purdue game two weeks ago, but near the end of the game was taken to a hospital and stayed there about a week with an "upper body ailment" that one almost has to suspect was a heart incident).
And so far it's going surprisingly well, though we knew we had a depth of talent at that position. There is a little experience with Bryce Williams, who is a dependable veteran, but also a ton of young talent in Mar'Keise Irving and Ky Thomas, both freshmen.
So far today, QB Tanner Morgan has also stepped up after a relatively disappointing start to the season (and horrible year last season).
As of now, we're moving the ball with ease against Nebraska. Hopefully we can stop their powerful offense, too. 14-3 early in the 2nd.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 17, 2021 13:02:17 GMT
The victory was welcome, but that second half... Thank goodness for a reasonably solid defense and the timely big play of Bryce Williams.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 20, 2021 12:19:26 GMT
The fallout from the Big 12 expansion (itself fallout from the SEC expansion) seems to be hitting the AAC and CUSA. Six--six--schools from CUSA have applied for admission to the AAC: Alabama-Birmingham, Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, and Texas-San Antonio are all set to make the jump.
That cripples CUSA, leaving it with the likes of Louisiana Tech, Marshall, Old Dominion, Western Kentucky, etc.
It's funny for me, almost, seeing CUSA fall, since I remember when it was formed as a kind of new super-conference. It and the WAC were formed and bolstered, respectively, in the mid-late 90s. CUSA was built from the remnants of the Metro and the Great Midwest, a collection of basketball schools in metro areas. It was Marquette, Cincinnati, DePaul, Memphis, St. Louis, Louisville, Tulane ... it was a legit competitor to P5 conferences in basketball.
The WAC, which had already included the likes of BYU, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado State, etc., almost doubled in size as it took in UNLV, TCU, Rice, SMU, Tulsa, and others. It's actually funny seeing how many schools are in common from those realignments 20-25 years ago to now.
Anyway, it's sad seeing some of these conferences not quite vanish, but certainly become shells of themselves.
I should add a note about the Frankenstein's monster that will be the new AAC.
One contingent is primarily in the southeast: Alabama-Birmingham, Charlotte, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Memphis, South Florida, and Tulane.
Another is in the south-central part of the country: North Texas, Rice, SMU, Texas-San Antonio, Tulsa, Wichita St.
Then there is the 13th school, Temple. In Philadelphia. Their closest conference rival would be Charlotte, which is well over 500 miles away.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 6, 2021 18:29:36 GMT
Something about Minnesota sports...
Just as the Gophers football team has seemingly put behind them the humiliating loss to Bowling Green and actually put themselves in contention for the B10 West, they host the 3-6 Illini and coaching and playing like absolute trash. (To be fair, the defense has stepped up somewhat after a terrible start to the game.)
The offense has been an absolute embarrassment. The very week that coach PJ Fleck--he of the idiotic acronyms and rah-rah buzzwords--agreed to a 7-year contract extension and raise, he's coaching with all the cleverness of a rock.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 24, 2021 0:45:39 GMT
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Post by The Cincinnati Kid on Nov 24, 2021 1:08:32 GMT
I'm absolutely loving it! I think at this point we only have to worry about Oklahoma State jumping us should they win out. Assuming we also win out of course. I see Alabama losing to Georgia, which should also lock us in. Can't believe it looks like we're actually going to have a shot at this.
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Post by Kapitan on Dec 1, 2021 1:12:25 GMT
What do you think, will you lose Fickell to Notre Dame? (Frankly, as a Notre Dame fan, I hope so. He seems like a great option.)
And on that subject, crazy coaching changes going on.
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