Sunday, March 21, 2010



5 comments:

  1. Joe Posnanski

    This team — well it just looked harder. Make no mistake, this team was in many ways BETTER during the season than that championship team. That championship team lost at Texas. That team was beat pretty soundly at Kansas State. That team never looked quite as good away from the comfort of home. That championship team seemed to feed off emotion — they NEEDED emotion. This Jayhawks team did not seem as needy. They won at Texas and Kansas State, and also at Texas A&M and Temple. They played about the same everywhere. They looked at their best when challenged.

    Still, Self seemed baffled by them.

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  2. In one sense this is the worst KU tourney loss ever. The only other time we've gone in as the #1 overall team was 1997, and at least that time we made the Sweet 16.

    But this doesn't feel as devastating to me as '97,'98 or '05. In those years, you had a group of great departing players who had failed to win a title, and a title-less KU drought was prolonged. This time, at least Sherron and Cole leave with a ring, and fans still have fresh '08 memories.

    Plus, this one just didn't shock me that much. Almost everything that went wrong in this game had gone wrong all season: Bad decisions by Sherron; Cole not as dominant offensively as he could be; Xavier solid but not the superstar we'd hoped; our usual poor start; shaky 3-point defense; occasional lapses on the boards.

    Also, a mistake by Self: we should have pressed the whole game. UNLV proved that the press was UNI's Achilles heel.

    And the refs? Not one single charge call went KU's way in this game. Not a single fucking one. In one early play, Tyrel was whistled for charging even though (a) the contact was minimal, (b) the contact came long after Tyrel had passed the ball, (c) the defender was under the basket, and (d) the defender was moving.

    OK, whatever. Just can someone please f*ing beat Duke? Please?

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  3. One positive thing I noticed was that next year's players seemed to play very well - the ball moved better in the halfcourt when Sherron was on the bench.

    Thinking about Tyrel, the twins, Brady, Tyshawn, the redshirts, the new recruits makes me fairly optimistic about next year.

    I will follow the Bill Simmons rule of not bitching about your team within 5 yrs of winning a championship.

    Kudos to Sherron, Cole, and X for an impressive, if odd season. I feel bad for them, not myself, that they couldn't go deeper into the Spring.

    There's always next year.

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  4. And honestly, I'll take yesterday's health care victory over a Jayhawks win. We just won the championship two years ago. We've been waiting for health care for half a century.

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  5. Good comments, CR. I concur in toto.

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