dahbeed

it's a good place to be. nobody expects jack from us. it's a bad place to be. they're like playing 7 tony mitchells. but i've followed sports too long to say we have ZERO chance. we only had a 1.4% chance of winning 4 games in 4 days according to the ken pom robots and pretty much any other source. i was at dayton. sitting in the midst of all 50 ms. valley state fans. they gave us nosebleeds so i moved at halftime and that's where the open seats were. as the delta devils were dunking on us on alley oops and building up their lead i never got shook. i really didn't expect us to come back from 16 but i knew we'd at least make it respectable by closing time. when we started making our run it got eerily quiet...except for my 2 grown sons that didn't have the good sense to not yell every time we turned them over in the middle of their fan section. i kept mine down to silent tiger woods fist pumps on each steal. our state is ate up with the blue. i'm sure you guys could relate to playing texas in a huge bowl game where nobody is giving you a chance. but these kids have bought into ray harper's kool-aide and you can't convince them they don't have a chance. i couldn't spend the money for tix in louieville today but i'll be calmy watching it on the 52" sharp aquos from the comfort of my living room. go tops.

i actually wanted to do this last night but realize how raw a home message board is following a loss so opted to wait until today. i've felt for years we're the only two programs in the belt that understand hoops much less gives a crap about them. so it was with much happiness that i saw the 2 of us in the championship game....again. i really wanted to drive the 467 miles yesterday morning to be there but work wouldn't permit so i watched it on the tube. both teams had great recruiting classes. the top 2 in the belt. both teams had devastating incidents mid-season. you guys lost 2 absolute studs. we got rid of dead weight by firing the worst coach in western kentucky history. even though ours was addition by subtraction nobody expected ray to turn it around as quick as he did. the guys were out of shape. george fant lost 11 pounds the first 2 weeks ray coached us. you guys bounced back even after losing the 2 freshmen. made it all the way to the finals. tony mitchell is as fine a player as i've seen in the sun belt conference. not freshman...player. part of me wants you guys to keep him one more year but another part wants to see him go to the association. even if you lose him there are bright days ahead for north texas hoops. i certainly feel with ray harper at the helm we have bright days ahead too. i assure you this is no flame post and i sure as hell wouldn't be congratulating the middle folks if they had won it. good luck in the new conference. i'll miss the mean green. we'll be the only team that remotely gives a crap about hoops. dahbeed.

we're humbled to even make it. we had no business even being on the same floor with you guys the first time. send the trophy on ahead to denton....jj's office. proof of how weak our side of the bracket was.

no problem amigo. i'm certainly an ass-______ (fill in the blank) your boy had me thinking i was stuck in a david byrne alternate loop. p.s. your chat haters still have me on lockdown! what up with that?

us? no more than us do.

where is that large automobile? this is not my beautiful house.

no....denver owns 'us' not you.

denver owns us.

great job mean green. woot!

haters.

no problem amigo. i'll just stalk ya'll into the super-duper conference and you'll have to explain that i'm not 'actually' one of yours to your new conference-mates. you can act like i'm that cross-eyed cousin at the family reunion. the one that everyone in the family knows ain't really the father's kid except him. (the women folks whisper what a hussy the mom is too.) that said...i did my recon of ragin pagin and they have a 7 page thread just tearing into each other. it's freakin' deliciosa. i know everybody's been eatin' second helpings of the schaudenfraude we've been serving up over in hilltopper nation for the past 2 year. but god almighty i'm bloated from the second serving i just finished over yonder in swampville.

yikes....that's really a pretty big deal. ima do a covert mission on ragin pagin. all is not well in swampville. first laying down in their last game...at home...against the last team in the world their fans could stomach losing to. now this. 'the beard' bein' in trouble.

nobody can outcoach marlin. i know because all of the ulala fans said so last year on the sun belt board. listening to them i expected the second coming of john wooden wearing a bobby knight strap-on raping opposing teams. yet he almost appeared to be a normal person in diddle arena this year. wonder how that ulm beatdown is sittin' with the cajun faithful? in lafayette? yikes.

thanks to troy's usual roster of 9 jucos, 2 txfers, 1 h.s player, & 1 39 year old man from troy univerity @ saudi arabia we no longer will face middle if we win our first game. them knocking off fau put us opposite. if you can now knock off denver it put you 3 on the same side. you guys have always been pretty kind to us on this board but there hasn't been much nice to say recently. that said...ray harper is the real deal. he'll make us relevant again. a few little things he did yesterday. they had just finished honoring kahlil mcdonald for senior day. the players left the floor. this is with about 3 minutes to game time. everyone is wondering 'what up'. about a minute later you see them emerge in the top of the bowl and they break into 2 lines and come trotting down the stairs in the student section....high fiving the students and the pep band. i loved the cheese factor and if i can turn off my auto-cynicism for a minute it's a great move to bond the team with a really good student section. he had also showed up in a red blazer for the game. the best real estate agent in bowling green can't pull off a red blazer but ray did yesterday. after the win yesterday nobody was leaving the arena. minutes later ray comes back out to cheers and grabs a mic to address diddle. he thanks everyone for coming and then shouts 'we've just begun' cheesy....yes. what we need post-mcdummy...bigger yes. we're still an awful shooting team. still slow as molasses. but ray is doing some smoke and mirrors stuff and we're excited.

please beat denver.

i think we used up all our mtsu luck when they missed about 35 free throws down there. but we're playing better at home now. sr. night. last home game for kahlil mcdonald. god knows i've been waiting to say that since he got here. in all fairness he had a good game tonight but he's the worst 2 guard in our history. should be a good crowd saturday.

scrub had 9 in the first half. derrick gordon locked him down in the second with only 4 points. all from the line. kirkland and griswold killed us down low.. peterson is a punk. they hit 31-38 free throws. we hit 21-24 from the line. our guys are so slow of foot defensively we make anyone look good. god almighty we need to recruit some speed and some shooters. it'll take harper awhile to rebuild this squad. not complaining. i'll take him over the dummy for sure. griswold hit 2 freebies to tie it up with about 15 seconds to go. they pressed and we broke it and hit a 3 with 2.9 left. (freshman tj price)

we're very pleased with ray harper's ascendancy to the wku throne. best 'coach' we've ever hired. in any sport. post 60's era anyhoo.

"its easy to talk about, its easy to sum it up when you just talk about weed. we sittin' in here, i'm supposed to be the franchise poster, and we in here talkin' about weed. i mean listen, we talkin bout weed. not a drug, not a drug, not a drug. we talkin bout weed. not a drug, not a, not a, not a drug that I could go out there and die from, and smoke every bowl like its my last. not the drugs. we talkin' bout weed, man. i mean how silly is that? we talkin' bout weed. i know I'm not supposed to be smokin' weed there, i know i'm supposed to lead by example. i know that, and i'm not shovin' it aside, you know, like it don't mean anything. i know its important, i do. i honestly do. but we talkin' bout weed, man. what are we talkin' bout? weed? we talkin' bout weed man. we talk... we talkin' bout weed. we talkin' bout weed. we ain't talkin' bout the drugs, we talkin' bout weed, man. when you come onto the board, and you see me write, you see me write, don't you? you see me give everything i got, right? but we talkin' bout weed right now. we talkin' bout weed. (crowd laughs) man look, i hear you, its funny to me too. i mean, its strange, its strange to me too. but we talkin' bout weed man. we not even talkin' bout the drugs, the actual drugs when it matters. we talkin' bout weed.

the u-gay stank eliminates him with the simple haters. our fans know hoops. i know it's hard to believe by some of our posters but it's true. most don't think he was very good at south al and his debacle at arkansas makes him too large of a risk. he built his teams at south al the maestri way. everyone else's txfers and jucos. nothing wrong with some. elgrace wilborn (tenn. txfer) and tyrone brazleton (juco) were 2 of my all time favorites but he built south al for one shot to get out of dodge. if you can't win at the land grant university (ark) you can't be a success at a school with a direction in your name. imho. we had fans that didn't like the u-gay stank on ralph willard as a pitino asst. but embraced him when he got here so that is not an elimination factor. failphrey was one of the 'unforgettables'. those guys have a sense of entitlement in the commonwealth. his teammate reechie farmer ran...and won the state ag commissioner. he ran it like a union boss. giving jobs to friends. taking caribbean vacations with friends. he recently ran for lt. governor and thanks to allah (allahu akbar) he lost. i wouldn't vote for him for dogcatcher. not because of his u-gay ties. because he's a hillbilly from coal country that thinks because he's an unforgettable he can do what he wants and our ignernt voters will rubber-stamp it. i know this is tl;dr for most folks that could care less about western but bottom line: i don't like his coaching.

we'll know something when we play middle. i personally think they're legit. to ray's credit he coulda pulled a dennis felton and played grindball, taking the air out of the ball. felton did that his first year. but he's been running them to death in practice. george fant lost 11 pounds in the last two weeks. just much better in all facets. i know ya'll didn't see it but that was his first week. there's a poll on haven that is 93% to 7% for hiring ray. if they bring in failphrey i won't be back.

we really shoulda swept the flarda road trip. we suffered some freshmanitis and swallowed whistles late at boca. 28 point turnaround on fiu. lost by 18 with ken mcdummy in charge. ray harper after 3 weeks wins by 10. don't think this is excitement by me. i'm typing this with a monotone voice in my head (think ben stein in the wonder years). just passing along info.

thanks for the bump cbl....but now i'm confused. is the 2-3 zone used to: 1. pack in to negate size advantage whilst subject to outside shooting? 2. extend through athleticism to negate 3 point shooting? 3. both? thanks in advance...i'll hang up and listen to the answers.

the one that coaches for syracuse. sorry for omitting that fun fact. (kige ramsey does not own the copyright to 'fun fact')

did you know that jim boeheim has successfully employed zone defenses for years?