Frickin' ESPN
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Anybody besides me hear the ESPN bimbo this morning analyzing KU SOS from 2004-2014? Never mind our SOS the past 2 years. Her final comment was “KU plays a bottom tier slate of opponents”. She said our opponents SOS is 10.3 which is well below the average of 11.3 for power six (ACC, SEC, Big 10, Pac 12, Big East and Big 12) conference teams. How is 10.3 well below 11.3? And finally she says KU ranks 59th out of 76 Power 6 schools in SOS from 2004-2014. I guess ESPN will do anything to mininmize our 11 straight conference titles. Nothing said about Kensucky in the SEC basketball powerhouse (?) conference.
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@drgnslayr Da same.
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When someone from whatever conference SHE covets wins 11 in a row, I’ll listen to her drivel.
And if I were a sexist pig, I’d tell her " Good story. Now run along and get me a cup of coffee. "
But I’m not.
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@nuleafjhawk whew!! you know where that coffee would end up?!!!
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@nuleafjhawk I doubt the bimbo is even capable of getting coffee without spilling it.
@Crimsonorblue22 I’m not sexist. Just this bimbo sounded out of her league.
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@brooksmd I know!
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I’m telling you guys, national championships are what shuts peoples’ mouths. That is the only thing that is always the trump card. Anything south of that is always ripe for debate.
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We have no friends from here on out, Brooksie. None.
We were never supposed to get past the apparent Nike stack in Austin.
The apparent Nike stackers are getting scared. The apparent Nike stacks are apparently supposed to take 3 of 4 final four spots and a lightweight Cinderella was supposed to be a lame fourth for BiG Shoe Bridge. The last thing they apparently want is Self and the Fighting Jayhawks upsetting the gilded Apple cart. It’s KU against the World of the Wrong Way types. The gloves are off. We don’t really know exactly who they are yet, but they are leaving tracks everywhere now.
Rock Chalk!
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Folks: Think of Robert Duvall’s character in The Natural. That’s who the Bimbo is.
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@HighEliteMajor True, NC’s do shut people up. But, it will become increasingly hard to argue with KU’s run of dominance in conference and one of these years KU will add another NC to it. It will happen, its just when.
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@brooksmd Slow down old friend, too early for da Crown yet !!
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ESPN is famous for their top ten. Here’s mine.
Not top 10 0f ESPN
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Scheduling of college games that run into the time slot of the next.
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ESPN3 not letting us watch certain games. We subscribe to the channel through our cable/dish packages so we should receive these games.
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East coast bias.
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They now cover football 12 months of the year. It’s spring training and for a week all they’d talk about was how fast someone ran or how heavy a weight they lifted.
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They really don’t like baseball except in New York and Boston.
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They schedule us for road games on big Monday increasing our chances of being upset and the court being stormed.
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Freaking Doug Gottlieb said the other day that Stein on Kentucky is the player of the year. He’s averaging 9 and 6. He said Kaminsky doesn’t deserve it. (the more astute bucket reader will make not that several weeks ago I didn’t care what he said, just enjoy the game. I APOLOGIZE. I HATE GOTTLIEBS BACKWARD PANTS GUTS.
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I’m a chauvinist and I admit it and the woman that announces their football games annoys me.
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They own the SEC network. Now how is ESPN supposed to be objective if they own the rights for a major conference sports network? They run top 25 polls. Might they favor SEC teams in those polls?
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What that lady said about KU’s schedule strength.
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Where did the money go in 2008 and where has it gone when Nike teams win. How much is it costing and who is it costing when a non Nike team from lower populous makes it to the dance. Maybe it’s time to start chasing rabbits down holes.
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@wissoxfan83 regarding #8, I’ve been sticking up for you!!
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@Crimsonorblue22 oops!
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Let’s be honest about the strength of schedule debate.
I recall back on the old site, there was a lot of complaining about KU’s relative lack of top flight non-con opponents a lot of years. It hasn’t been until the last couple of years that the SOS has really gone up.
I remember many years where KU would have 1 or 2 truly marquee opponents and a lot of really soft games in between. Coach Self deserves credit for turning the corner the last 2-3 years and putting together a very strong slate.
Look back at some of the schedules, particularly from 2004-05 through 2009-10. We would have 2-3 name opponents and then a bunch of really soft opponents. I was actually surprised when I looked back at some of those schedules to see how weak they were outside of the games against a Florida or a Georgia Tech or a Michigan State. Some of those years the criticism is warranted.
I don’t think the criticism is valid based on the last couple of years, and I think by taking such a long snapshot, it distorts the reality because our schedule has been remarkably difficult the last couple of seasons. We played weak schedules at times in the past, but the last 2-3 years, the schedule has been very tough.
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The numbers are what they are. If that’s what they say our SOS was, then thats what is was. Bill probably recognized this and did something about it this year. Good on Bill for trying to better prepare his team for the Tournament.
There’s no denying that our conference was subpar in those years, based on Final Four appearances and the simple fact that one team was able to dominate the conference. Does our conference streak look more like Gonzaga’s or UCLA’s? Does anyone think our conference prepared us well for the Tournament? Apparently Bill didn’t and felt like he had to toughen up his non-con schedule.
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@HighEliteMajor I want to agree with you sir, BUT - Kansas is actually being talked about outside the state of Kansas right now! It’s a big, fat, hairy deal.
I’m sure that you know this, but I don’t remember and I don’t think many people remember - who won the National Championship in 2013? (2014 is recent enough that even I remember!!). Without Googling it - very few people could tell you who won 3, 4, 5 years ago.
Everyone in the country can tell you who was the Big 12 champs 11 years ago…
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@KUinLA tough last year too!
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@brooksmd I’ll be quite honest wicha, rarely can I stand to have the network on. Even when we’re on there I can barely stand it. Lotsa times on game chats I’m in the shop listening to Davis & Gurley. Would turn it on with the big screen & turn that vol down but there is at least a min delay on the dish. Only about one or two of their announcers is all I can stomach anymore. Most all ABC affiliates make me want to Earp & reopen the damn door to put em up. Remember what the Diceman said…
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@nuleafjhawk Yeah but not many people outside of Kansas or Missouri care.
Louisville won in 2013. For their 3rd NCAA Championship, tying Kansas in that regard. In a game that we should have been in, they beat Michigan, who beat Kansas in probably the biggest end-of-game choke in Tournament history.
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@KUinLA I beg to differ, iowa, Texas, ok, w Virginia.
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@Crimsonorblue22 True that. But if any of them advance further in the NCAA, who will have the bragging rights?
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@KUinLA I guess we’ll have to wait. Meanwhile, let’s party!
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@Crimsonorblue22 Sounds good–I’ll toast with my friends during the game tonight!
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@justanotherfan You’re right. I remember we weren’t thrilled with our nonconference schedule for some of those years.
This years even hasn’t been that tough imho. (hear me out!!) Our schedule has been made tough by the Big12 being strong top to bottom.
Obviously Kentucky was tough. But who else in the top 25 out of conference did we play? Utah is it I think. We went on the road to Temple and Georgetown. Florida normally would have been a tough match, but they can’t even win games in the SEC this year. Same with Michigan St.
On paper this year is tough looking but in reality, while there hasn’t been a whole lot of easy outs, there hasn’t been one non-conf game besides Kentucky that scared any of us. Now I don’t know how that compares to other schools, but it’s not a killer schedule, just a tough schedule
Our schedule has been good for us fans. We have not had games which we know we’re going to win by 40 or 50.
Now for a tough schedule look at 0ur 85-86 schedule. That was a tough schedule.
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@brooksmd , @nuleafjhawk I have ZERO interest in listening to WOMEN analyzing MEN’s SPORTS! I wrote ESPN when a woman analyst was analyzing football! Are you kidding me? What the hell does she know about playing men’s sports? Has she played football? With men? My only hope is that ESPN will die out, drift away, or blow up itself.
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@KUinLA Maybe Memphis had the biggester end of game choke. Houston had quite the choke against NCS
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@HawksWin They’re getting closer every day. (To dying out, drifting away or blowing themselves up) Once in a while they will actually televise something sports related…
They’ll be joining MTV soon. Remember when they played music videos?
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@wissoxfan83 Disagree–the Houston game was tight the whole way. After’s Sherron’s heroics, Memphis was only up 4 with 2 minutes left.
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@KUinLA We were losing by 9 with a little over 2 minutes left against Memphis. That’s a big collapse.
The Houston game, I don’t remember specifics, but Houston tried to stall and let NCS back into a game that they had wrapped up. It too was a collapse.
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Bottom line guys and gals? Is when you are knocking on the door of breaking historically records everybody and I mean everybody is dissecting your accomplishment.
Think about it? KU’s consecutive conference championships streak is an amazing feat especially since it’s been done in the modern day of basketball, and in a power conference. Hell it’s most likely a bigger deal than UK maybe running the table this year.
Unfortunately with greatness comes those that want to pick it apart. It’s just human nature.
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@DoubleDD I’d rather run the table this year
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@wissoxfan83
Me TOOOOOOOOO ')
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@wissoxfan83 Who wouldn’t rather run the table? But how can anyone compare Kensucky’s waltz through the SEC to our fight in the psuedo-Big 12?
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@justanotherfan HCBS arrived in 2003. How many of those non-conf games were already set by Roy before he left? Can’t blame HCBS for that. Yeah, there was alot of complaining in between on that other site about a weak non-conf schedule, which to HCBS’s credit, has been turned around. But the more I think about what that bimbo said this morning, the more po’d I get. Maybe the non-conf schedule was light some years, but (1) we still won a conf championship in a bb power conf and (2) we made it to the dance every year, some years to FF, two final games and one NC. Dang, the more I think about that bimbo the more I’d like to get my hands around her neck.
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@KUinLA Actually KU has 5 NC’s. If you don’t want to count the ones before the dance started, then lets do away with all the football championships for all the schools before the football playoffs started. See how well that’s received.
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Good Point !!! I never thought about that. How many of those nonconference games were in fact HCRW. It’s not uncommon to plan games 3 to 5 years in advance, and we all now HCRW never really planed a strong noncon like HCBS has done.
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Personally. I dont care what the noncon sos was for those years. Cause it had little to zero impact on winning the conference 11 straight years. For anyone to agrue that the streak is diminished due to scheduling is just absurd. We were not in charge of how good the rest of the teams in the conference were anymore than we are now. How ridiculous
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@brooksmd Was she referencing the conference SOS only? Or the entire schedule? If they’re talking about the whole schedule… what effect does KU playing Southeast North Dakota State have on our conference championship streak?? The only games that mattered during this streak are those against 13 teams: Baylor, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Christian, Texas Tech, and West Virgina. Any game outside of those teams didn’t change one thing about the Streak.
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So let’s look at the teams that surround us in conference streaks:
UNLV - 10 regular season conference titles in the Big West Conference.
UCLA - 13 regular season conference titles in the Pac 12.
Now Kansas - 11 regular season conference titles in the Big 12
I’d put up our 11 titles in the Big 12 over the 13 UCLA had in the Pac 12 any day of the week. And miles ahead of UNLVs streak in the Big West.
Period. End of story.
If we can match or exceed UCLA’s 13 it will truly be a monumental achievement above everyone, by far. UCLA was a dominant force in everything including the NCAA tournament. But I’d put up the strength of the Big 12 to the Pac 12 back in the '60s and 70’s any day of the week.
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@Kip_McSmithers The entire schedule.
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@brooksmd It’s a deliberate smear, designed to prop up the ACC, and run down the Big 12.
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I don’t even know how to reply to this. It is just stupid. Our SOS this year is #1. Last year our SOS was supposedly the toughest in the history of NCAA basketball.
How is this for a tough schedule. The only time 4 #1 seeds went to the Final 4 KU won the National Championship. Suck on that.
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@Kip_McSmithers said:
Was she referencing the conference SOS only? Or the entire schedule?
Excellent point.
The fact is the non-conference schedule is, to some extent, about money. KU schedules mostly home games, and top teams will only do home and away or tournaments. Every year we have several sacrificial lambs who come to get beat for the money while we fill Allen and shore up our budget.
Our non-conf schedule has been tougher recently for several reasons: the Champions Classic; a few more home and away deals with significant teams; and non-conference “tournaments” that let us play a few more games. What helps is playing better teams and playing away from Allen.
As you say, all of that is beside the point! The streak is exclusively about the conference season. The rebuttal would be to look at the SOS of the Big 12, not KU’s SOS.
We won despite Durant, Griffin and Beasley playing for rival teams in our conference.
Who were the best players against UCLA during their streak? Who were the best players against Gonzaga?
I’m going to go cool off now…
