I don’t see anything in that article that should have you this down on next year. If you are talking about on paper, Barttorvik preseason rankings has Arizona slightly higher than KU and TT significantly lower. I do agree Houston is likely to be better, but they still have to replace some major contributors in Cryer and Roberts. These are also all preseason rankings and don’t mean that much at the end of the day. It is wild to already be punting on the season before even seeing this team play a game together. IDK if you are just down on the NIL era in general or trying to neg the season so you don’t get hurt again, but you can let yourself hope a little man.

@benshawks08 100% agree and see what you are saying but doesn’t mean that them leaving can still be a positive for KU. Those are 2 programs that we would have a hard time beating out for B12 champions, so we now have a much better change of winning the B12 and making college playoffs which would have been otherwise unlikely.

I think people are getting a little too caught up in valuing how much money your program is making vs how much you are winning. I know more money means better player but I firmly believe the fan experience is better with a slightly worse quality team that competes for B12 titles than a better overall team playing to be middle of the pack/bottom feeders in the SEC.

Now if in 5-10 years down the line and KU is king of the B12 and then getting walloped in the playoffs every time we make it there (gonzaga type situation in basketball) I may change my mind, but this team has a long way to go before getting there and I doubt anyone is seriously complaining if that is were the program is at.

I will never really fault coach for not giving a player a guarantee they will start. Sell in a role for them, yes. Say we have a spot that is theirs for the taking, sure. But if a someone thinks that they don’t need to perform day in and out to get minutes, than they are going to cause problems for the program eventually.

To go one further, KU was also the better team in the OSU game. This team was a few plays away from being 11-1 and sitting one game away from playoff football. That hurts a bit but also goes to show this is one of the greatest program turnarounds in football history.

You raise a good point with UT/OU leaving there is going to be a power vacuum in football. If Lance hangs around long enough, we have as good of a chance as any to fill that void.

@rockchalkjayhawk Griffen was already a better defender last year than Furph under an offensive minded coach, so would be a surprise if he ends up worse.

McCullar is a big loss on defense no doubt and that probably makes us worse, but I feel like the defense we all remember from last year was when he was injured. Slotting timbies in for the SG comparison and I find it hard to believe Storr will be a downgrade. Add that to hopefully the rest of the bench giving better defensive contributions and I think a top 10 defensive even isn’t a pipe dream.

I’ll back up my optimistic thinking by sharing that barttorvik 2025 prediction has us as the #4 defense (not that I put too much stock into that).

https://barttorvik.com/trankpre.php?sort=AdjDE&conlimit=

An update to @Texas-Hawk-10 old post on the history of the matchup:

Kansas and Duke have played 14 times all time. Duke leads the all time series with Kansas 8-6 with 12 of the 14 games being played on a neutral and each time only visiting the other once apiece. Kansas and Duke are tied 3-3 against each other in the NCAA Tournament and Kansas leads Duke 3-1 in the Champions Classic. Self is 4-2 vs Duke while at Kansas.

Dec. 1, 1985- Preseason NIT in New York: (3)Duke 92, (5)Kansas 86 (1-0 Duke)

Mar. 29, 1986- Final Four in Dallas: (1) Duke 71, (2) Kansas 67 (2-0 Duke)

Feb. 20, 1988- Allen Fieldhouse: (6) Duke 74, Kansas 70 OT (3-0 Duke)

Apr. 2, 1988- Final Four in Kansas City: Kansas 66, (5) Duke 59 (3-1 Duke)

Feb. 18, 1989- Cameron Indoor: (11) Duke 102, Kansas 77 (4-1 Duke)

Apr. 1, 1991- National Championship in Indianapolis: (6) Duke 72, (12) Kansas 65 (5-1 Duke)

Mar. 19, 2000- NCAA Tournament 2nd Round in Winston-Salem: (1) Duke 69, Kansas 64 (6-1 Duke)

Mar. 27, 2003- NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in Anaheim: (6) Kansas 69, (7)Duke 65 (6-2 Duke)

Nov. 23, 2011- Maui Invitational Finals: (6)Duke 68, (14) Kansas 61 (7-2 Duke)

Nov. 12, 2013- Champions Classic in Chicago: (5)Kansas 94, (4)Duke 83 (7-3 Duke)

Nov. 15, 2016- Champions Classic in New York: (7)Kansas 77, (1) Duke 75 (7-4 Duke)

Mar. 25, 2018- NCAA Tournament Elite 8 in Omaha: (4)Kansas 85, (9)Duke 81 OT (7-5 Duke)

Nov. 6, 2019- Champions Classic in New York: (4)Duke 68, (3) Kansas 66 (8-5 Duke)

Nov. 15, 2022- Champions Classic in Indianapolis: (6) Kansas 69, (7) Duke 64 (8-6 Duke)

Based on predictive sites, the line for the game should be around Duke -2/-3. Will be KU’s first game of the season where they aren’t favored, so excited to see how the team reacts.

@BShark too many regular season NBA games to be a good product is the main problem. Players take off games since playoff seeding can be a crap shoot, so really just playing for home court advantage which isn’t as important as players being healthy.

I generally agree with your sentiment but we have to check our biases with this. A neutral observer could watch a random NBA game vs a random college basketball game and I bet most would say the NBA game is more entertaining. College ball just has better intangibles and better tourney format which puts it over the top for me, but we are also usually watching a top 10 team play. I don’t know that I would say the same thing if I grew up in Boston a Celtics fan who went to a non basketball power college.

Kind of a leap to get that from what I said, we already dropped a home game and Houston doesn’t have to play at ISU, so winning the regular season B12 is not likely no. But I also don’t think it would be a massive upset if they did (~10% chance based on betting odds does seem about right).

I didn’t even say they will for sure be good enough to compete for a F4, just that is won’t take miracle for this team to improve to that level. They have shown they can hit that level of play in spurts, but do need some improvements in execution/consistency.

Honestly the main thing I worry about with this team is facing a team that can exploit Hunter on defense, because that is always going to be there.

@dylans man Greene definitely on my top 5 what could have been KU players list. Had the stroke and height to be one of the greatest spot up 3pt shooters of all time but couldn’t do anything else even to an average level to stay on the court.

Feel like with a Jaun/Shak/KJ/FB/HD lineup no one scores on either end

@kjayhawks said in Not paying for ESPN this year:

You guys find an honest politician let me know, sounds more like a unicorn… not real.

I can emphasis with this feeling age get why you say it, but these kind of statements aren’t helpful. There are definitely some politicians out there who want to help people, but to do so they have to make deals that go against their campaign promises in order to make actual progress. Then there are people who lie constantly and are just looking to line their own pocketbook. Both have lied, but there is an ocean of difference between them.

@kjayhawks said in Not paying for ESPN this year:

@approxinfinity my issue isn’t necessarily that he said it. It’s the fact that it is completely false and I think that is dangerous when you have people assassinating people on false pretenses that everyone that sees the world differently is a Nazi or evil. The funny thing is about Kimmel is he was plenty racist and sexist when he got his start on TV with the man show, even did black face.

“The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

You keep saying Kimmel said something false, but what about this is untrue? He doesn’t claim the killer is MAGA just that trump is desperate to believe he is not. You could say he is inferring that the kid is MAGA, but that is a far cry from him making a completely false statement. We also don’t know enough about the killer to say for sure what his reasonings for the murder was. You say you are pretty sure he wasn’t MAGA, but you aren’t certain because you are inferring from circumstantial evidence. Your post here has more false information than the Kimmel segment.

@dylans said in Not paying for ESPN this year:

kimmels rating sucked. It was just an excuse. No one likes the overly political late night “comedians”. This way woke Disney can blame it on the right. psy-ops and it appears to be working.

FCC chair is on podcasts and national TV threatening to revoke ABC’s license cause of Kimmel.

@kjayhawks No I didn’t care about random people being fired for spreading hate online and getting fired. I’m also not upset if that happens to people promoting violence today lose their job. Seems pretty consistent to me, why do you think I am being hypocritical? Do you have any examples where Biden’s administration was directly threatening a company to fire someone over something they said? I sincerely would like to know if you have this as I would also be against that.

In your own postings, you lament the right wing getting censored and are OK with the left media getting censored. How is that not the exact hypocrisy you claim to hate?

@Kcmatt7 Agreed, but it is important to highlight that the FCC censoring people is a significantly bigger deal than private citizens being shitty people online.

“The issue is with Kimmel was it was completely false.” I’ll take the bait and get a little off topic if you want, Kimmel never claims to know who the killer is or what his party affiliations are. He is making fun of the fact that Trump is taking whatever crumb of information he can to turn this in to immediately start attacking people. He is not showing any actual remorse for what happened. This doesn’t matter though because even if what he says is false, how is it not a 1st amendment violation for the government to push him to be fired?

“The guy had a trans girl friend I’m quite positive he wasn’t right wing.” Again who the killer was should have no bearing on the government’s ability to violate the 1st amendment.

You are getting quite off topic here. Why are you bringing up reporting? Kimmel is a comedian/late night host not a reporter.

I am saying the government influencing someone getting fired is against the 1st amendment and is a clear violation.

Where did Kimmel celebrate his death? He was making fun of Trumps response to the whole thing.

You are making this about the MSNBC guy when I don’t think that is out of line and maybe I’m not online enough but I haven’t see anyone rational saying that either.

There are always going to be some people that can’t understand that, but I don’t see anyone confused here. Disney/ABC are allowed to fire Kimmel on their own. The issue here is that the FCC pressured them to pull Kimmel. Are you ok with that?

@Kcmatt7 Fair and agree boycotting likely doesn’t make a dent in anything. But the FCC pressuring disney to pull kimmel as a 1A violation seems like a much bigger deal than players just kneeling during the national anthem to me, so not going to fault someone from wanting to do what they can to oppose it.

Also, boycotting disney/espn doesn’t mean you can’t follow the team. You can watch at bars or watch replays/highlights and can always sail the high seas and find a stream if you don’t mind a bit of lost quality/convenience.

Heavy Marcus slander here. T-Rob goes above him but they are both in a tier on their own above the rest of the group.