TheTastyGreek

Joke's on the Chinese. By the time they finish executing their master plan and financially conquer This Once Great Nation... All they'll "own" is a bunch of freeloading illegal immigrants and the responsibility to pay for their Obamacare. Suck it, China. POISON PILL FTW!!

Not to hijack, but coming tomorrow morning, after a one week hiatus (assuming my voice holds up)...

I haven't seen this sort of misinterpretation of a message board post since the Mexia City Council and Chamber of Commerce contacted me to discuss North Texas-related development plans.

If we don't get a bid to move up in the conference world, then we need to do whatever keeps us in a league with Western Kentucky. They are the only program with legitimate expectations of success and the support to see it through. They strive for excellence, not presence and adequacy, and having them as a stalking horse is invaluable. Either we match their program's commitment and improve, or at least we'll be losing to a school that actually does athletics right. If WKU is in the Belt, we should stay in the Belt. If they go elsewhere, we should try to stick with them. Unless we get to move up, we need to align ourselves with schools that actually give a damn and put forth the effort and resources to succeed. Geography is less important to me (assuming we're not flying to Alaska or Hawaii to play water polo) than administrative competence and alumni support/expectations. 1) MWC 2) C-USA 3) Stick with WKU and challenge each other to new heights

I wish you posted more.

Are you saying you want people to quit talking about this? Sounds like quitter talk to me, sir.

As far as Who have we beat? Who have we lost to? Baylor has Kansas at home in front of a sellout crowd. They're losing by 21 points at halftime. Two potential 1st round NBA draft picks, including a possible #1 overall... Sellout crowd, etc. And they were 12 points worse at the half than we were playing Kansas at Kansas. I don't know if Baylor ends up losing by 33, but 21 down at the half for an Elite 8 team that has more talent than last year... Wow.

Ideally, in double or triple overtime.

ASU plays this one tonight, @ Denver on Thursday, then @ us on Saturday. 3 in a week with a trip to Denver in the middle and us having home court advantage? I'll be very disappointed if we don't handle our business in that game.

Troy of 2010-11 is just like Troy of 2007-08. A hot night makes them competitive and dangerous, a cold shooting night makes them an absolute pushover. Denver is 5-0 and on their way to 9-7. Save the quote, sig it, do whatever... If Denver finishes Sun Belt play with double digit wins, even given the head start they have... I'll be very surprised. As for our potential seed if we advance to the NCAAs... I still believe we would have been a 14 seed last year if the OKC bracket hadn't included a 15 seed line. If we match last year's record, we'll get the 14 we should have had last season. We're ahead of where we were last year, both in conference and overall. Until we fall off that pace, I'm not going to start inspecting the sky for cracks.

For reals. For really reals.

I wonder what Rob Base would have to say about which is better?

Especially considering that ESPN has a WAC contract and airs one game a week, and this would presumably be part of that contract. There are what, 7 football teams in the WAC at the moment? That means ESPN has 3 games to choose from in any given week, at least until the contract is up and they don't have to air any WAC games if they don't want to. Move over, San Jose State vs. Utah State! The RIVALRY has ARRIV-ALRY'd!

Very literal, no hidden joke. The only basketball jerseys they sell at the moment are the black alternate road uniforms. I bought my brother a green one back in 2007, and I know they carried white ones back then, too. I was supposed to get a jersey this year, but all they have is black and I don't want a black one. I wouldn't mind them wearing the black jerseys next game or any other, I think they look fine. I just want to buy a green one, and they aren't for sale right now (and haven't been for a couple of months).

Agree 100%. JJ does discipline right. Nobody gets a pass... Not Sturns, not Colin Dennis, not the leading scorer in the conference. I think Keith Wooden even spent some time on the bench after his parking tickets arrest, and that didn't even have anything to do with basketball. He doesn't throw guys under the bus, he doesn't handle it stupid and splatter private business across the New York Times... But he runs a good, clean program and he obviously doesn't make exceptions even for stars. JJ knows what Tristan means to this team. If JJ decides Tristan needs to sit, then I totally support him even if I have no real idea what offense was committed.

I think I'm dealing with this better than a lot of people, because I had a lot of pie-in-they-sky hopes (not expectations, just hopes) extinguished after the MTSU loss. SUMG put it best when he said that this loss means we're not going to get the magical season we were crossing our fingers for. We can still have a great record, we can still win the conference, we can still go to the NCAA tournament, we're still in position to potentially earn a 14 seed... But the once every 50 or 100 years season isn't going to be this year. That's not necessarily a shock... I was realistically expecting before the season started that we'd finish something like 22-7 in the regular season, maybe 23-6 if we had a very very good year. It was nice to start fantasizing about continuing the OOC run and winding up with 28 or more wins after the SBC tournament... But even with the 11-2 head start, that was little more than a very unlikely fantasy. On the other hand... We're still sitting at 14-4. If we go 12-4 (11.5 Sun Belt wins would equal last year's all time best SBC win percentage), we'll finish at that 23-6 regular season record that many of us thought (before the season started) would be very, very good. And we'll probably at least tie for the regular season championship. If we go 11-5, we'll finish 22-7, we'll still have a Sun Belt bye (I will bet that 11 wins gets a bye on either side, and at least one bye team has a 10 win record). Even in the worst possible case, I can't fathom us finishing worse than 9-7, even if someone gets hurt. That would mean going 6-5 through the rest of the conference slate. That's terrible. And it still gets us to a 5th straight 20 win season. I know it would be a brutal let down after our start this year, but remember that we're at a point now where we'd be looking at another 20 win season as our nightmare scenario. The list of non-BCS teams with longer 20 win streaks is tiny (either 8 or 9, I don't remember off the top of my head) and stacked with perennial powers. And it's probably going to get shorter by at least one when this year is over. Don't get me wrong, I'm very bummed that this won't be a once in a lifetime season. I was hoping for top 25 votes, an undefeated conference season... A lot of that miracle stuff was dancing around in my imagination two or three weeks ago. But we're still in a position where a conference performance just slightly below what we did last year will give us a very good season, by any preseason measure. I'm not saying lets just try to stumble our way to another 20 win season and call it a year... But it is pretty amazing, when you stop to think about it, that finishing with only 20 wins would be such a brutal letdown. It says a lot about where we are as a program and how far we've come from the turn of the last decade. Other bright spots to ease the pain- Finishing with 6 or 7 losses instead of 4 or 5 makes it likelier by almost an order of magnitude that JJ will be back to coach the incoming class of recruits. He's shown in the past that he's savvy about picking the right opportunity to grow his career and continue to be successful, and he won't just jump at a higher dollar offer. He probably won't get offered a cushy seat, and he may just figure on staying another year to wait for LSU to potentially open up. And, for anyone who measures program success by postseason wins (even though it's a terrible measure and you really, really shouldn't...), we've still got the 2 main things that history shows to be critical in getting those kinds of victories: exceptional guards and a lot of tenured veterans.

I'd be content if I could at least buy a replica in green right now.

I wouldn't want to speculate as to the circumstances of hypothetical people in this situation... But it may go beyond hen-pecked and into the realm of potential murder. If said individual's fiancee had already been kind enough to schedule the wedding around the Sun Belt basketball tournament... Which she was going to attend in a house full of 15-16 other people, most of whom she doesn't really know... AND she had to deal with one night every week being stolen away by basketball for podcast stuff... AND she spent 5 months every year getting annoyed with constant requests to check Sun Belt scores on her phone... AND she attended 20+ games per year, all with a smile on her face and sincere enthusiasm... If this hypothetical guy were to turn to his future wife, after 6 months of basketball neglect was finally assumed to be over, and just a week or two before their wedding (which he's spent about 5% as much time thinking about and working on as he has their Hot Springs trip) tell her that he's skipping out on the weekend for something related to North Texas and basketball... Well, this hypothetical guy likely wouldn't just not be getting married- he may not survive to see next basketball season. Don't worry about him being whipped... Worry about him getting shot.

70 guys from Texas were nominated. It'll be interesting to see how many make it through the first elimination and get considered one of the top 125-150 in the country. Jordan ought to earn it... Not sure about anyone else.

I'm sorry for you guys that this year has turned into such a death spiral. I'm guessing we can go ahead and assume we won't be seeing you in Hot Springs? As for killing the RPI... You guys aren't hurting anything unless you lose to Florida Gulf Coast. I wish every team in the SBC 'killed the RPI' by going about .500 in OOC with wins against schools like St. Johns and Southern Illinois, then tanking for conference season. Instead, we get jackholes like Joe Scott who don't bother to try in OOC or Isiah who doesn't even have his full team eligible until conference season. Even when WKU has a bad year, they help the conference. I wish we had 10 other conference mates just like them.

People who might respect it are getting the information. Our MM-T25 information was printed on the game notes/program that everyone gets for free.

DOUBLE Overtime now. Didn't realize Jack Sikma's kid was playing college ball, but he's in this game.

I think about these things so you don't have to, my friend. Now you know without really having to know. Also, if anyone is awake and wants to see what turned into a phenomenal basketball game... Check out Loyola Marymount and Portland, going to OT on ESPN2. Was a 7 or 9 point game at the 2 minute mark, LMU rallied mightily and now it's going to OT thanks to clutch free throws with 2 seconds left from Portland. Good basketball.