Not Going On A Rant, But Since You're Here...
Three-Dot Monday 3.24
I didn’t write a column on Friday after my Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team lost to the Arkansas Razorbacks in the first round of the NCAA Tournament because it would have been too mean…
Actually, that’s not quite true. I did write it. I just didn’t publish it.
Even today, I’m still simmering. Six turnovers in the final three and a half minutes???
Anyway, it would have been a particularly ranting sort of thing, and nobody needs more of that in their life nowadays…
Besides, then Saturday happened…
And what happened Saturday? Well, those same Razorbacks dominated St. John’s and made the Sweet 16. In a matchup where nearly everybody though Rick Pitino and the Johnnies would roll, the Razorbacks and John Calipari showed they might be playing their best ball of the season. The Hogs also won that game in Providence, the place where Pitino first rose to the big-time as a head coach, and the only team in an allegedly neutral site that might have had a bigger home-court advantage this weekend was Duke playing in Raleigh.
So, I felt better about losing to a team that made the next round. This is how I deal with Kansas losing in the tournament. The team that beats us had better go on a run.
I actually made a list once. For something close to a 15-year stretch, nearly every team we lost to made at least the Elite Eight, and quite a number of them made the Final Four.
In my brain, that logically means that for 15 straight years, we therefore lost to the only team in the tournament that could possibly have prevented us from also making the Elite Eight or Final Four…
The Chicago White Sox released Joey Gallo, who is known as a slugger (and was occasionally an adequate fill-in on my fantasy baseball team). And he promptly announced he was going to try and make a comeback… as a pitcher…
Frankly, in any other baseball era- that is, any era except the “three true outcomes” era of an at-bat ending in a home run, a strikeout, or a walk- Gallo would have been forced to try pitching a long time ago. He currently holds the Major League record with the most home runs (208) with a career batting average under 200 (.194). When you have more home runs than your batting average, something has gone askew…
The Washington Wizards are the worst team in the NBA this season. Yet it still took them until Friday night, their 69th game of the season, just 13 away from the end of the season, to be eliminated from the playoff race. Friday’s loss to Orlando dropped them to 15-54. Yes, a 15-win team was somehow still mathematically alive for the playoffs with fewer than 15 games to play. I think that says more about the Eastern Conference than it does the Wizards…
Did you see what happened Sunday night in Sacramento? The San Francisco Giants played a game in the A’s new home ballpark before the A’s did. Yep. The Giants played their Triple-A affiliate, the Sacramento Rivercats, at that team’s home ballpark in… fine, West Sacramento.
But still, this is how dumb the A’s move is. The Giants got to be the first major league team to play in the refurbished ballpark, not the team that’s actually going to be playing there.
It just keeps getting dumber…
You probably don’t make a habit of predicting candidates for men’s college basketball job openings. Well, that’s ok, because I’ve got you covered. Along with a regular reader of this column we are currently batting a thousand for this off-season. We saw the moves of Drake’s Ben McCollum to Iowa and Colorado State’s Niko Medved, a Minnesota alum, to the Golden Gophers a week ago or more, and both were announced today. We also saw VCU’s Ben Odom taking the Virginia job a while ago, and West Virginia’s Darian Devries going to Indiana.
The next certainty, at least by our metrics, is Maryland head coach Kevin Willard taking the Villanova job, something that can’t come to fruition until the Terps lose in the NCAA tournament (they play Florida Thursday afternoon in the Sweet 16 in San Francisco).
So, who goes to Maryland? This is where we are currently stumped. The leader in the clubhouse sure seems to be Richard Pitino, who is currently at New Mexico and is the son of legendary coach Rick (who lost to Arkansas earlier in this column). I think Oklahoma’s Porter Moser ought to be getting a look as well. The issue at Maryland is that their Athletic Director just left for SMU, which means the Terrapins are swimming at sea for the moment as far as a decision-maker goes, and so they might get left in the cold.
Since West Virginia also needs a new head coach and seems to be a bit more stable in the AD spot, either of those two might end up there as well. We shall see…
Okay, fine, here’s a sample:
“We were up 67-64 with 3 minutes to go when Hunter Dickinson threw the laziest cross court pass you ever saw. Arkansas’ Boogie Fland saw it as obviously as I did, jumped the lane and ran uncontested to the basket and it was 67-66.
‘Oh my God, Hunter Dickinson just lost us the effing game.’
Because I knew right at that moment it was over. even though we still had the lead, even though there were still 3 minutes to play. Mentally it was done, and we all knew it at once.”
Aren’t you glad I didn’t publish that whole thing? Because I am…
Glad you did not publish the column late last week...
Rich that rhe Giants played an MLB game in WEST Sacramento before the Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland, Lost in Paradise Athletics.
Rationalization can be a warm blanket.LOL..