I walked into the Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball watch party on Saturday as the game was about to start against Gonzaga and said, “We are gonna get crushed” to the chairperson, which went over about as well as you would expect. A light smattering of good-natured boos from some who overheard and then of course the Mr. Know-it-All who said “Gonzaga? What league are they in? Are they any good?” However dismissive that sounded in your head, multiply it. My response there was “They are really good. Really good,” with emphasis…
The first half was close, and Gonzaga began the second half by running up and down the floor, a great strategy for them but bad for us, a team with just five really playable players who were already tired from an intense first half. So after doing that and building a double-digit lead, Gonzaga then began using an offense where they would be active and force us to run around defending them for 20 seconds, and then take a shot. This exhausted an already tired, short-handed team. Kansas head coach Bill Self used his last time-out around the 10-minute mark and the game was effectively over at that moment…
After losing by 21 and being down by 30 (the definition of “being crushed”), in his post-game presser Self admitted everything that we had suspected for a month- that they basically pulled the plug on this season a while ago. As soon as leading scorer Kevin McCullar got injured the first time and they dropped to just eight scholarship players, and even fewer capable of big minutes in the postseason, the staff started trying to figure out how to avoid this next year, knowing this year was going to end poorly…
Some Kansas fans are shocked Self would start looking ahead to next season while the current season was still going on. I would counter by saying this is what every team does every season in every sport. The head coach usually doesn’t openly admit it in the press conference following the season-ending loss, but instead says “there are things we don’t want to repeat” and other veiled but blatant similar things. In addition, I learned today that the men’s basketball portal, that new bane of existence, opened on Thursday, which is the day the NCAA Tournament started. And if you’re a top program and you’re not digging into the portal on day one, you are already behind for next season…
A reminder that most teams would consider a 4-seed and a second round an exit a pretty decent season. For us it’s a total failure. That’s what making 34 consecutive NCAA Tournaments will do to a fan base. We Jayhawks are incredibly spoiled to still have this kind of success, even as the portal and NIL continue to change daily. We have adapted pretty well so far. Just look at Kentucky if you want an example of a team who isn’t…
VISION QUEST DEPARTMENT: During Stanford’s Pac-12 tournament loss, which we all knew was head coach (and former Kansas and Cal player) Jerod Haase’s last game, the discussion of who Stanford would go after came up. I had been on the Herb Sendek bandwagon for a while, as he has probably peaked at what he can do at Santa Clara- 20+ wins a year and a solid NBA prospect every year, and they didn’t even get a sniff at the big dance. And he has ACC head coaching experience at North Carolina State, which will matter starting next year, as dumb as that still seems. That suggestion was met with resistance from the peanut gallery…
So I had a moment of clarity and realized that Stanford should go after the very guy they were losing to that particular game. A guy who was head coach at San Francisco for three seasons, a former Columbia head coach so he has experience in Stanford’s Ivy League-like admission standards, a former Saint Mary’s assistant, and his favorite musical artist is Bay Area legends Digital Underground. And at the time he was the head coach for the team that finished second in the very last Pac-12 season, made the NCAA Tournament easily, and that particular school is being left out in the cold as the conference dissolves. So you knew he was going to want to find a new job. It made too much sense. And the peanut gallery agreed. Stanford lost to Washington State and fired Haase as he was walking off the floor. And today, when the news came that Stanford is hiring Kyle Smith, I merely nodded…
The best team at Stanford by far is the Tara Vanderveer’s women’s basketball squad, who won a tense instant classic in overtime against Iowa State Sunday night to advance to the Sweet 16. Good women’s basketball is good basketball, period, and the Bay Area will be better off with a WNBA team next year. Too bad that Stanford star Cameron Brink chose to go to the WNBA this year instead of using her final year of college eligibility and guaranteeing she would be a star for that new Bay Area team, but she probably saw the dumb new ACC schedule and decided she wanted nothing to do with it, and I don’t blame her a bit…
Wanted to see what Shohei Ohtani said in his press conference today. As you probably know by now, his former interpreter and friend owed $4.5 million to a bookie, paid that money from Ohtani’s accounts, and initially said that Ohtani agreed to pay the debts, which made Ohtani look like he was in deep with gambling. Well, probably not good to have a problem gambler try to explain things like that. That story was soon reversed, and Ohtani apparently had no idea about gambling or the debts or the bookie.
Well, Ohtani’s “presser” was just him reading a 12-minute prepared statement with a new interpreter and taking no questions. There are a few big ones that still remain: why did the interpreter have full access to Ohtani’s accounts and how did nobody else connected with Ohtani- assuming more than two people have access to his money- notice the extra $4.5 million disappearing? Apparently, the payments were in $500,000 increments. Does Ohtani have so much money that missing $500k is not noticeable? I know he has a lot, but you’d think someone would notice going from, say, $22.7 million to $22.2 million to $21.7 and so on in a short amount of time. At least, one would hope so. Theoretically he could have timed the withdrawals to when Ohtani was getting a big payment from the Angels or something so that the $500k got overlooked…
I still think someone would have noticed the red “-$500,000” and inquired about it to somebody. If not, he better be firing his business managers as and getting a whole new financial crew…
Because Mr. Know-it-All, be it an interpreter or an alleged basketball fan who doesn’t pay attention to any other teams, is going to look pretty dumb when everything is said and done…
Yeah, Otani's explanation is pretty hard to buy. It will be interesting to see if MLB actually investigates. I was in Kansas once, no twice, on a flight from Detroit to the real Kansas City, in Missouri. The airport was fine. Pretty flat out there. The Zags are good, but I don't think they can beat Purdue. Love to see the Oregon State women's team beat that other Catholic school.
One of my responsibilities working for a credit union years ago included wire transfers. In addition to federal regulations, most financial institutions feature internal controls to minimize the possibility of fraud or laundering.
Unusually high amounts on single transactions are flagged. Amounts greater than a threshold (usually, $10,000) are flagged for potential laundering. Patterns of money movement--such as 9 transactions of $500K--are usually flagged , reviewed and or reported.
Ohtani's explanation does not seem plausible. Maybe, he is telling the truth. Maybe. If so, yes, might invest in new financial advisors, friends, and consider a financial institution switch.
Winning championships is hard when 67 teams lose their last game...