Sunday, January 27, 2013

No. 1?

YHD and I were texting back and forth about whether we'll take the #1 spot this week -- seems likely we'll be 1 in ESPN and 2 in AP behind Michigan. You can make a case either way: The Wolverines did lose at Columbus, where we won, but the Big 10 is such a gauntlet this year that it's quite an accomplishment for them to have only the one loss.

Next up is our first in-conference visit to W. Virginia -- yet another possible trap road game. This is a down year for them, but it's a good program, an unfamiliar arena for us, and no doubt will be a great crowd. Despite the regional incongruity, it could be beneficial to have them in the conference -- they still have Huggy Bear, and are only a couple of years removed from the Final Four. That makes them the only non-KU Big 12 team to have made the F. Four in about 8 years.

We haven't talked about Saturday's OU game, but I found it quite entertaining. Those of you watching on TV tragically missed out on the greatest/most ridiculous JumboTron video ever.

3 comments:

  1. (As predicted, we're 1 and 2, respectively.)

    We sure didn't look like #1 vs. West Virginia... in that we won the game. Everyone else ranked #1 this year has promptly gone out and lost. (Ha, you didn't see that coming, did you?)

    But we also didn't look like #1 in that we did everything possible to give hope to a bad Mountaineers team. Sometimes a 16-turnover game is OK, if there are a lot of possessions and they're dead-ball TOs. But in this game, we kept just lazily lofting the ball right to the defenders in stride, and they kept teeing off on it -- getting transition scores, which in turn gave them confidence after they had been completely lethargic and deflated to start the game. Once we gave them a reason to hope, their jumpers started falling and the crowd was engaged.

    The worst turnovers this time came from BMac and Releford, uncharacteristically, but EJ once again had his share too.

    I also can't figure out this team's free throw shooting. In some games we've been great at the line, but not in the last few. I think BMac was our only guy to actually convert a pair on any trip all night. This is the one area where Withey has regressed.

    Maybe we can chalk this up to a long trip on a quick turnaround, in an unfamiliar arena. I expect better against OSU Saturday.

    Oh, and I guess I'm obligated to say something about the novelty Adidas unis... but it's hard to judge since we were clearly wearing them inside out.

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  2. Ha! By far the best line I've heard about the "tone-out" jerseys!

    I was more surprised by the Releford five-second call than anything else that happened last night.

    I guess I'm not too surprised that we struggled a little on the road as #1/#2, and thankfully this team seems very solid down the stretch. I could definitely live with a blowout sometime soon though.

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  3. And now? No. 5? Or will it be worse than that?

    I mean, it sucks to lose, but whatever. A guy gets like 9 offensive rebounds while his teammate matches a career high in scoring, basically in the first half: tall order to win on that kind of afternoon.

    I suppose you'll all want to blame a certain guard, and I won't argue that he played well. But let's be serious—even if Kansas didn't do enough to keep from losing, the Cowboys sure worked for that win.

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