Monday, March 06, 2006

Purple is not a flattering color Paco

Is there a game less enjoyable than the KU at K-State game? I know KU always wins, but I never really like this game. It's just full of tension from being overwhelming favorites, and I'm always aggravated by the lunacy that is present in the KSU fan base at this game. Maybe it just reminds of KU-Nebraska football games too much (damn, why did I go to the OU game this year and not the NU game?).

The important thing is that KU, with the complete choke of Texas losing at Texas A&M, clinched a share of the Big 12 title with its win over KSU. This is KU's 6th title in 10 years of Big 12 basketball, which is nice. I remember sitting in Allen as an undergraduate and looking at the Big 12 title banner (at KU you don't put up a banner for each title, you just add the year to the title banner to save room) and being depressed at all how empty it was. They had to put up a new banner for conference titles after the name change from Big 8 to Big 12, and we were stuck on 1997 and 1998 for a long time. Finally in 2002 we won again, celebrating like crazy after we beat Iowa State at home to clinch the title. Now we've added 2003, 2005, and 2006, so it's filling up nicely. And there's no asterisk to indicate the last two are quasi-legit, since co-champs OU last year and Texas this year beat us head-to-head. But I think that's fair, since those teams didn't have to play us in Allen due to the unbalanced scheduling, another reason I hate the Big 12...

Did anyone see the UNC-Duke game on Saturday? How absurd it is that the Duke fans get better coverage than the KU game? For those of you who missed the ESPN insanity, the Duke-UNC game was on ESPN, ESPN2 (with an overhead cam), and ESPNU (just the Duke fans). Yuck. All this while on ESPN FullCourt, they scheduled the Indiana at Michigan game only an hour and a half ahead of KU/KSU game. While two of the FullCourt channels had nothing on. That makes sense. Assholes.

If Doug Gottlieb ends up dead after this weekend, don't be surprised. He's questioned the Duke-centric approach twice. After the game he called out the "floorslappers" (his words) for being underachieving wusses. Then Sunday night he railed against the other talking heads on the college hoops tonight show (whatever it's called) that Duke with an ACC tourney loss should not be a number 1 seed. The other guys were visibly nervous and kept looking around for the armed men that were coming to take Doug away.

It's championship week so I have to go get ready (need cheeseballs and sprite!) Here's more on the Royals from Chris, and a blog about KU that's really good, probably even better than mine (in the sense it has new stuff everyday) - unbelievable I know.