Jayhawks in Europe!

The sickest video I have ever seen! I was a little worried about how the Jayhawks would look coming off of such an astonishing season!  They look incredible!  Once Jeff Withey hits that 15 foot jumper from the top of the key, I just smiled.  He is finally coming into his own and we are going to see an amazing offensive turnover for him this season.  His offensive rebounding in this video really makes me happy and the fact that he dunks the put-back instead of falls away with some weird finger roll BS, makes me even more a believer.  He will be one of the top centers in the entire country by the end of the season.  Perry Ellis and Ben McLemore, Studs!!  Releford's dunk at the end, awesome.  He will be an interesting player to watch to see how he deals with a larger role and a need for him to score!  Let's hope he actually gets some PT!

Lastly, the pre-game video gives me crazy chills.  Watch it and if you don't need a change of underwear afterwards, you are not a true Jayhawks fan!  Get ready, this is is going to be an exciting basketball season!

Danny Manning is a goofy...what?!

So this week, ESPN.com reported that Danny Manning, Kansas' assistant coach and anchor to the team, will be leaving Lawrence for the University of Tulsa Head Coaching job. I get an email from my sister saying "Huh?" with major exclamation point usage. Here is the thing is that Danny is a genius when it comes to teaching big men and holding a team together whether it be ridiculous egos or just stupid (Tyshawn Taylor and the Morris Twins all around) so he deserves a head coaching job. Now we all expected him to take over when Billy Self left but Manning has only been an assistant for 5 years now and you can't just hand over a head coaching job like Kansas to someone who's top spot has been as an assistant, that doesn't happen. So I believe it to be a great move if Manning were to take this job because it puts him on track to one day take the Kansas job. Now let's go through some funny speculating tools shall we?

Similarities between Self and Manning (Based on Manning taking the Tulsa Job):

Self was an assistant under Larry Brown at Kansas. Larry Brown won a National Championship with Manning, Self was not on the staff at that point but Manning was on the team with Self.

Manning is an assistant on Self's team and won a Nationalal Championship with him. Both Self and Manning have learned under a National Championship winning coach.

From there, self went to Oral Roberts. No similarities but only spent two seasons there and went to University of Tulsa where he coached three seasons and giving them their best season ever with their first ever Elite Eight appearance.

If Manning goes to Tulsa, the sky is the limit and I guarantee he will do wonders with that program.

Those are really the only similarities that are interesting to me! If you have any more, please add them to the comments section. Contrary to popular belief, people other than my friends read this thing.

Also this will be my last post before the Final Four, obviously, so let's go Hawks!! I am jealous of all the people going to Lawrence and NOLA for the weekend, but I will be celebrating a wonderful wedding for a great friend instead!

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

I'm not one to complain but...

So here is this thing, everyone fans and athletes alike, complain about reffing of games. Anyone who has ever played a sport in their entire lives whether it range from basketball to track and field has complained about some sort of officiating problem. I myself have complained so much that in one season of basketball, I was ejected from every game due to the fact that I received two technical fouls in every game! In my defense, it was really only a ten game season. However, recently I see myself complaining a lot about refs in NCAA Men's Basketball. Whether it be a bulls**t offensive charging call on Thomas Robinson or just the fact that last night UNC-Ashville was screwed out of two points because of a no golatending call and then with 34 seconds left in the game, the referees declared that UNC-Ashville touched the ball last before it went out of bounds when it was clearly touched by a Syracuse player. UNC-Ashville was only down three points and the time and one point was taken because of a lane violation and a possession was taken away because the ref missed the tipped out of bounds call. Now I understand that human error is just the nature of the beast when it comes to officiating however, you need to realize that these officials have drastically changed the course of the game. It would be like giving a kid a Popsicle and then right before they are about to eat and enjoy it, you grabbed it from them and tell them they didn't do anything wrong but the kid across the street deserves it more.

The second complaint I have with officiating is that lack of consistency. Last night, my lovely girlfriend and I were watching the Iowa State UCONN game and she even noticed how ridiculous the skewed foul shooting was in favor of UCONN. When she said something, the fouls for ISU were 3 taken compared to UCONN's 15 taken. Now I can understand the argument that UCONN is a better defensive team but the problem I have is they were down 22 points at one point and becoming more aggressive on the defensive end would eventually have the offense, in this case ISU, draw some fouls. Now the refs obviously down the stretch, made sure that the foul distribution was the same but the foul distribution is a number that can be misleading. We need a new foul tracker that shows shooting fouls compared to on the floor fouls. This will inform everyone on how the officiating really is because when a team that is popular like UCONN gets to the line 12 times more than the other team and is down by as much as they were, there is something not right. Shooting fouls are obviously more detrimental to the opposing team than on the floor fouls, and the refs were literally giving UCONN free shots at the basket. Ridiculous!