🏀 KuBuckets Archive

I despise the Yankees. I used to not despise them, but ESPN has made me despise them. They're the only reason ESPN talks about baseball is the yanks and red sux. ESPN has an article recently "Why a great yankee team is good for baseball". Give me a break. The only thing good for baseball for me or for fans of the other 29 teams is for their team to win it all. How stupid. So I'm supposed to cheer for the Yankees because it's good for baseball? What a joke.

This doesn't mean you can't love the Yanks Jayballer! Doesn't matter to me, I just am disgusted of the trajectory of my favorite sport being ruined by MLB, ESPN, and Fox.

That picture accompanying the story is very ironic.

When will kids learn?

Probably when the drinking culture is changed. How much of this crap comes as a result of excessive drinking? IDK, but I wouldn't be surprised there's a link.

@BeddieKU23 She's probably not a Kanye fan.

They'll win the Big12 and get to around the sweet 16 is my prediction, my very early prediction.

I also predict someone on the roster will accept a free ice cream cone from shoe dude and the NCAA will investigate for 2 months despite the fact that the kid at Duke and Kentucky got 12 free ice cream cones.

I also predict that there will be more handwringing conversations about "this whole NCAA mess". And nothing will happen.

Expect to see a MCDA game where the players just wear Duke or Kentucky uni's according to the school they're going to.

I can foresee 1 announcer per day gushing about K and how great a recruiter he is.

I can foresee 1 announcer per day gushing about Cal and how great a recruiter he is.

Bring back Mangino and get rid of Zenger. Two big fixes right there.

Ya'll hit the cellars! Be safe.

I'd rather see them build their own team with Joel and Simmons as the leaders.

@BShark Doke's probably back, right? Is DeSousa gone given the payments? I've been busy and haven't been able to keep up.

@BShark Average for KU is conference champs and #1 seed and playing to the elite 8.

It's gonna happen some year. I think. Well, maybe not.

The Sox have been involved in several unwritten rules kerfuffles recently including this weekend in KC.

The unwritten rules of sports are always interesting and add spice and variety, and usually entertaining spats on the court or field of play.

Football seems bereft of them except running up the score at the end.

Basketball has a few, mainly related to running up the score, dunking at the end instead of running out the look, see Brannen Greene. There's the superstar rules such as what MJ and Lebron get, but that's just accepted, begrudgingly by most.

But in baseball, wow! Don't steal if winning by x if it's in y inning or later, or some variation of that.

Don't take extra bases in similar.

Don't stand around and admire your home run.

Don't stand around and admire or celebrate your homerun if you haven't won the world series which was Salvador Perez' beef with Tim Anderson Saturday.

You may/must plunk batter following home run hitter.

You must retaliate against hitter after one of your hitters got plunked.

Don't bunt to break up a no hitter.

Don't steal a base and clap when losing by 5 or more runs against a future HOF pitcher like Justin Verlander.

You must run in all the way from the bullpen to dance with the pitchers from the opposing bullpens if someone says yo mama to someone from the other team.

Etc. Etc. It's all very complicated and new unwritten rules are being unwritten every day.

@kjayhawks You're wrong! Sorry, I love baseball, can't get enough of it. 162 game schedule suits me just fine. It's the greatest sport in the history of mankind! It's got some flaws for sure, but obviously I love it. But please, if you want to watch boring NBA, be my guest!

@dylans He's a guy who's going to finish his career with a lot of homers and strikeouts. He's kind of a new day Steve Balboni.

Update, now he has 7 homers in KC.

Matt Davidson has now hit 5 home runs in Royals stadium this year. I think he likes that park.

@Kcmatt The market is already paying them to go to college.

I don't know what you mean by your first question.

I agree that there is a competitive imbalance. But KU is a part of that too. I wish it weren't there. Coaches should be able to recruit a kid like Blakeny and not have him back out because Louisville isn't a Nike school. And I say that even as i loathe Louisville for their corruption.

As for the Olympic model, you might receive some pushback from the college golfer or rower who says I'm an NCAA athlete too and I practice just as much as the football player. Where's my share of the pie?

When we read the stories of some of our own, Jamari and BMac come to mind right now, we can understand privilege better. Most of us, I'd suspect, didn't have to go to practice in HS hungry as BMac did, leaving behind a freezing cold apartment. We didn't spend a winter in Chicago living in a car as Jamari did.

I know some people get carried away and yell privilege to the point of making us feel guilty for being middle class, but when you think of what people who grew up in underserved communities have to overcome to make it, well, it's just a lot tougher.

I tend to agree with @HighEliteMajor when he says the kids going to college and participating in NCAA sports are receiving a lot already including a stipend, so they are paid some. I scraped by in college paying for a dollars worth of gasoline at a time when that's all I could buy. I also believe that even if we start paying these athletes in college that corruption will still happen because Nike will still want their kids to go to whatever school it is at the time. Agents will still want to influence players to sign on with them. Boosters will still try to find an inside position with their favorite teenagers. Corruption won't end with a system of playing players.

So if all things are equal, KU gets slammed by the NCAA and east coast schools don't? East coast bias or not if this happened our school reps, ie lawyers would have a hayday pointing out the illegality of that.

We fans really like to smell out the conspiracies!

@HighEliteMajor I always miss the good ones.

@BeddieKU23 At the end of the season they were playing well enough to play MSU to the wire twice and beat Purdue. They get a freshmen back who was hurt who was playing well before his early season injury. Trice will be back too, but I'm not super high on him. They've had some major recruiting misses so I think this is a big season for Gard.

If Ethan Happ comes back, the Badgers will find themselves back in the top 25 I'm confident. They were playing pretty well by the end of the year.

My interest has been more at the local level through coaching my kids and some school teams. I have so many sports to watch I've never gotten into it a whole bunch. But it is a great sport.

Looks like Mellinger had the same take as Forde. http://kuhoops.com/ku-basketball-news/209330689/ ↗

Do you have a link to Forde's article so we can read it ourselves? I get it most of us don't like him, but some of the inflammatory language here makes me cringe a bit. Some of us here have questioned the repeated problems with the guys over the years too. I'd just like to read it for myself if you could find it. Thanks!

DanR said:

I figured he was gone when he turned to run back up the court and let a Villanova player shoot an uncontested layup with about 5 minutes left in the F4 game.

That was a heady play. If he'd guarded him the dude would have stopped at the 3 point line and made another 3. He actually saved us a point!

This is by far my favorite highlight from any sport maybe of the entire decade!

@bskeet I aint no lawyer but that almost sounds like a monopoly because they would get some shoe company to provide those shoes.

Apparently Tripper isn't Dukes only dirty player (newsflash!) Joel's mask got knocked off and Winslow of the Heat tried to step on it or walk off with it or something like that. It was a little unclear from the video I saw.

Kcmatt7 said:

https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/zach-johnson-2.html ↗

WOULD TAKE FO SHO.

Zach Johnson would be great for our golf team.

@approxinfinity I was actually a Cub and Sox fan until 1985. The 84 Cubs made them popular and suddenly going to a game at wrigley was out of reach for me. Before that great season, you could go to cubs games for a few bucks. But then the yuppies showed up and I devoted myself to the Sox only.

Well there's several factors at play. Over 10,000 tickets were sold which for an early season game is not unheard of. The game was scheduled as a night game, but moved up to 1 oclock because of the crappy weather we've been having. Now you can presume that a lot of people were having to work that bought tickets for a night game. Furthermore, that morning we woke up to several inches of snow on the ground. The weather was bad enough that the Cubs cancelled their home game just 8 miles away. The temp at game time was in the low 30's. It was windy. The Sox got swept over the weekend by the Tigers losing three winnable games. Yesterday the Sox had an afternoon game and had a much better crowd, not spectacular, but better.

When the Sox get their 2nd rated farm system in baseball up to the league you'll see attendance rise dramatically. They're following in the footsteps of the last two WS champions who rebuilt. They also have a load of cash to join in the Manny Machado sweepstakes, the Bryce Harper sweepstakes and whomever else will be free agents next year. The Sox are going to be contending for championships in about 2 seasons.

But yeah, despite all that it's a little embarrassing to see the place that empty.

@approxinfinity I went on opening day and paid 7 bucks for my ticket. Prices are not the issue.

Kcmatt7 said:

@wissox THE SCHOOLS DO NOT PAY THE PLAYERS. THE PLAYERS FETCH ENDORSEMENTS ON AN OPEN MARKET.

If a rower can get someone to pay them for rowing, by God, let them get paid.

Why you yelling at me bro?

Playing players is a huge mountain of an issue. We view it from the comfy couch of a blue blood. But take a school like Southern University of the SWAC where we used to live in Baton Rouge. Watch the highlights and see 500 people in the stands. Drive around the crumbling decaying campus and it's hard to imagine them coming up with the money to pay players. And I would guess that the majority of DI schools play in front of nearly empty arenas too, meaning they have to find a way to pay players.

Where does it end? Do we pay rowers too? Gymnasts? Swimmers? Soccer players? They put in vast amounts of time for practice, travel and whatever else goes with it. If the football player down the hall in their dorm is getting pay for play, they would feel entitled to it as well.

Anyone who thinks playing players for their services probably will end corruption in NCAA sports probably doesn't understand human nature very well. The shoe dudes, agents, boosters, random overzealous fans are still going to want to be influencers in where whomever goes to college.

We'll find out that some kids are getting paid more than other kids, some schools will figure out how to pay more than other schools and athletes will still have to make decisions to walk with integrity.

Coaching a bunch of OAD's as K or Cal has done compared to coaching 3 or 4 year guys like Self has done reveals that both are great coaches. To get 18 and 19 year olds to win championships, however tainted, means your coaching chops are right up there. But getting juniors and seniors with enough talent to also get drafted means Self ranks right there with them too.

@BShark The article I read says it doesn't name specific players.

@BShark How do you know Billy's mom took money?

@BShark I hate to say it, but that statement proves nothing I think. I mean a communication from the KU athletic department saying we're victims just doesn't sound real convincing. That's not to say we really are victims in this, but it just sounds funny. I wish the statement was from whoever named KU in this accusation.

My Wisconsin take, at least in the Bo Ryan years was to find bigs who could shoot. Two are in the pros, one was a college player of the year. Jon Leuer and Frank Kaminsky could stretch defenses way out. Frank then had the athleticism to get inside on them too. Leuer not so much, but other than injuries this year he's had a decent pro career.

That's why I don't watch any All Star games except the MLB game. It's still baseball. NBA is the worst. NFL doesn't have players from the two best teams, NHL, I don't care that much about to start with.

@BShark Some people believe that the Jayhawk garage roof is Kirk Heinrich's house. I tried to find it on google earth. Scanned many blocks around Wrigley but came up empty.

I just want to say this somewhere. Romeo, O Romeo, Wherefore art thou?

@nuleafjhawk You're hiring? How much? When can I start? I need off during all Jayhawk games and season tickets as a perk. I also need time for a daily nap, golf on Fridays, and being a teacher for 25 years I'll also need a week at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and June July and most of August.

What strikes me about that, um, graphic, is that only two of those guys are recognizable names to the sporting world. Casual fans would probably only know Joel and Wigs. Not sure where the list of players came from, but I'd say Selden, or BMac might be better players than Tyshawn was, especially the pre 2012 Tyshawn and/or probably Svi too.

When I saw him play as a senior in Chicago, I knew nothing of his reputation, but just my eye test, I was like wow, this kid stands out on the floor.

Gonna need a roster next season to know who's who.

While I don't begrudge any kid for going early for the money, I still get miffed at kids throwing away the potential to win the big one in college. I loved it when Frank Kaminsky wrote an article saying he could get drafted and play for some team like Charlotte and 10,000 bored fans, or come back for his senior year and play in front of 16,000 crazy college fans. It was a no brainer.

I actually read on a similar thread that some fans were somewhat relieved because now KU will have a better chance of landing Romeo. They'd be glad I guess to have a freshman ranked 5th in the country, over a 4th year junior, who incidentally was ranked 3rd in the country? Pretty crazy.

@nuleafjhawk I'm still pissed at Drew Gooden. 2003 National champs, might have gone undefeated.

Ethan Happ declares but won't hire agent which probably means he's back (fingers crossed) for his senior Badger season.

Tony Carr leaving Penn State.