Cool Hand Lucroy

Alright, so I'm in western Illinois and without TV access probably forever (if anyone has any hints or tips on how to get that--Bally Sports Plus only gives me access to the Cards for some inane reason--fire away) and following on Gameday. There's this new feature where you can watch the players name cards move. It's pretty cool. Kind of a neat way to watch the game, even though I'd rather have Levering and streaming video. Apologies if this has been brought up in another game thread. Just watching and feeling nostalgic for the 8-bit graphing calculator baseball game we used to mess around with in calc.

No shooting happening here! I am interested in where this comes from, though. I have read the rule a few times and seen that the count can be "suspended" if the player attempts to leave the lane or begins the shooting motion. I have seen nothing about lifting a foot starting the count over? It's also a little tough for me to believe that officials are consciously watching for that, given all the million other things at play. In other words, if that is the rule, it seems like it essentially just means we shouldn't have three-seconds at all (which would be fine, I guess) since players lift their feet constantly and in small, impossible to notice ways. I know the NCAA has emphasized 3 seconds in the past, though I almost never see it called either. I'd love to know where this info is coming from because I'm interested in it in the same way I'm interested in baseball's "the batter must make an attempt to get out of the way of the incoming pitch" rule. If we're not going to enforce it (even though it's there for a good, philosophical reason, namely preventing players with physical advantages from asserting them constantly and in impossible-to-stop ways), then let's get rid of it.

Rosiak says right shoulder sublaxation for Quero. If I'm reading the Google machine right, that is basically a less severe version of a shoulder dislocation. Might still require surgery if it's bad enough. Sounds like recovery time is around 12 to 16 weeks for a full recovery. Obviously that depends on the severity of the initial injury, which we still don't know. Good news is probably (though not certainly) avoids surgery, Bad news is will still probably miss at least a couple of months best case. I'd expect the Brewers to be very careful, of course.

I still think the way to beat Purdue is to single cover Edey. He might get 50, he might foul out your entire frontline, but you can't let those guards get open threes. Speed them up, and trust your bigs. Both UCONN and Bama would likely do that, at least in terms of trying to speed them up. Tennessee basically played it right, I thought. They just needed Ziegler to get a few more buckets, to shoot better from the line, or to just grab a few more boards. I have seen Purdue lose that game before (to Wisconsin, Northwestern, and even FDU last year). They just didn't lose it today. The matchup with NC State will be fun, but I have a hard time seeing how the Woflpack get past 65, and they'll probably need 70 or 80 to win. I do wish Edey got whistled for more 3-second calls. I get that that rule isn't enforced, but like, it is sometimes a 10-second rule, and that is absurd. Edey is great--but that's one advantage no one should have.

UCONN is the best college basketball team I have ever seen. Maybe that 2021 Baylor team comes closest. Or 2009 North Carolina. 2013 Louisville and 2018 Villanova as sleepers. Started watching closely in the late 90s. Maybe UCONN won't win the title, and I'll have to take them off this list. I think this UCONN team handles the 2015 Kentucky team that Kaminsky and Co sent packing. I am rooting for Tennessee tomorrow, but UCONN-Purdue has to be the matchup everyone wants at this point. In other news, the D2 final was awesome.

So.... McGee, Klesmit, Chuckie, Crowl, Winter, Blackwell, Ilver seem like the core of next year's roster as it stands. That could be okay. Danny Wolfe (7-footer from Yale) entered the portal and might be a fit given UW's pedigree with rangy bigs. Could really use a dynamic 3, as losing Storr will hurt quite a bit. Some talent coming in too. Rosters change so quickly in this sport these days, so who knows? Purdue and Illinois are going to lose a ton. I'd expect Michigan St. to reload, Michigan to make a lot of moves, and the rest of the B1G to be wide open.

UCONN and Purdue clearly look like the class of this bracket. Houston was banged up a little, and losing Shead totally crushed them. Purdue-Tennessee is a gem of a game, as is UCONN-Illinois. The other two will be fun too. Clemson and Alabama trying to play totally different games and a great, underrated rivalry in Duke-NC State.

Enjoyed watching Marquette this year. They missed tons of open shots tonight. Jones and Kolek are really good, but they needed a third scorer. I don't know if Duke or Houston will win, but both those teams would've been very tough matchups. Program's in a good place, though!

Hope we get Ueck on the mic on a lot of weekends, maybe? Or weekday afternoons? I love the Brewers radio crew, so glad we have a lot of talent. Maybe this year we can start to get used to baseball without Bob, while still getting us some Bob.

There's a great 30 for 30 short about the MLB scheduling process (called "the Schedule Makers," I tĥink), and the gist is basically that MLB is really a difficult logistical sport. There are lots of rules about scheduling, and every team is allowed to submit preferences too. Building in the extra day is the solution because it still tends to allow Opening Day to be special without creating logistical issues elsewhere. I am bummed to not get baseball tomorrow. But, in a weird way, I prefer getting three game days in a row, especially with the M and TH off days next week. I always hate playing on OD and then having a whole, baseball-less desert of a day right after.

I really like Perkins as a 4th outfielder. This roster seems decent. I think the Crew are going to surprise people.

Sucks. But also happens. Honestly, I have been surprised that we haven't lost more players to injury this spring. Lots of outfield depth. Speedy recovery, and let's go get hot to start the year.

I think the Badgers have only been "average" relative to themselves this century. Men's CBB has the most competitive postseason in all of sports. Sure, there are are about 150 programs that aren't good. But you've got to be in the top like 13 percent of the other 200 to make the tourney. You should not throw that away without really thinking about it. Gard's probably got what? 5-10 years left in him? And I fel like you're going to be expected to make the tournament in most of those years. Let me be clear, I don't think Gard's a great coach. He seems like he's trying to be "new school" while actually being totally not that. It's a little awkward, and he doesn't have Bo's offensive efficiency genius. Still. His teams play hard. They care. They win a lot. Penn State hired a highly regarded coach last year. Rutgers and Northwestern probably have the best coaches they've ever had. I am in no hurry to trade places with either of them. Edit: or, my Lord, look at Maryland! If I were a MBB coach, no way I'd bolt the BE for the stress and pressure of a B1G job, save for maybe 1 or 2 historically great ones (and UW is not on that list). The truth, for me, is just that UW cares a lot about football. There's a clear plan to succeed in men's hoops, and it basically involves caring about it more than football. This is what UCONN does. Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, and Carolina too. I am all for becoming bad at football to support hoops (and hockey and volleyball and a baseball team), but the university will never make that bargain. You could make the case that it's actually better to just be mediocre at everything than to give up on football, and I get that. It's not how I'd do things, but I understand it. So, given that, yeah. Gard is about the best bet men's basketball can make.

All true enough. I just love the Big East and think it has the right idea, but they do lose coaches to Power Five schools. My thing is I think UW is going to be about the 8th best job in the new B1G. And football's going to take everything it can. I'd rather be getting the biggest piece (by far) of a smaller pie. That's just me, but, man, I hate conference realignment.

Big congrats to the MU fans. FUN team, grab another 4-5 days for Kolek. Rooting for them to come out of the South. I'll take a Big East tourney in the FF just to stick it to all the football schools.

Essegian is an easy transfer guess. He's got A-10 or MVC all-conference written all over him. There's plenty I struggle with with Gard, but I also don't know how great a job Wisconsin is nationally. Madison's great, and you have good facilities and NIL, but it's still a football school, and there are probably at least 4 or 5 better jobs in league. Honestly, I think Marquette's a more attractive option because it's all basketball, and there's a ton of history. Shaka is the perfect fit there. I just don't see a better fit than Gard in Madison. You could have made the case for DeVries, maybe, but he's off to West Virginia. Danny Sprinkle? Maybe, but is that really going to be a big upgrade? Gard's fine. Program's in a decent place. Make the tournament, win a game or two slightly more often. Talk to me in two years if they can't.

Thumbs up to this. You start on the "maybe Gard isn't the right guy" train, you end up as Minnesota pretty quick. Fired Tubby Smith (a good coach who consistently had that team in the running for tourneys, often landing in the bracket) and then went into the wilderness for more than a decade. Gard has adjusted to new style, transfer portal hoops pretty darn well. We'd all love back-to-back Final Fours, but nobody at Wisconsin's level gets that very often. Unless you can get a young superstar coach like Michigan did yesterday, I don't see a lot to complain about.

Dukes were better. More organized, more poised, more fluid. I really think they're more of a 10-seed talent-wise, and the Badgers are more of a 7. Still a game that should have been much closer. Picked a bad time to get awful outings from Wahl, Storr, and Chuckie. That layup from Klesmit into the 3 for a 5-point swing really killed it. Good year on the whole. About where I thought they'd be. Disappointed to be one-and-done again, but I'll enjoy rooting for JMU the rest of the way. That's an impressive team.

I think JMU is the worst matchup the Badgers could have gotten as a 5. I think they're more balanced than Grand Canyon, and they ran away with the league tournament after a bunch of really good teams got dropped in other conferences. They're very balanced, and they give me Florida Atlantic vibes from last year. A talented team that won a bunch of games, beat a good team on the road, and didn't get tested much in league. I think the Badgers win the game, but they're giving up 5.5, and I think there's a great chance JMU takes this to the last possession or so. They play pretty fast, and I think the Badgers may want to let them. Bucky's better in terms of both offensive and defensive efficiency against a tougher schedule. More possessions are good. My big fear is just that they outshoot us early, and we're chasing 7 or 9 late in the first half. These tourney games you've got to be able to knock down shots, even if the game plan should be to get inside. Other than that, I think this is a good region for Wisconsin. Houston is banged up. Duke can be had and may get all it can handle from Vermont. Tough first round matchup, but as good a chance as you'll usually get to make the Sweet 16 as a 5.

Bummer. Here's some "let's not freak out" arguments (though I am also freaking out): 1) Devin was going to pitch about 55-60 innings this year. Now, he'll get like 25-30. Really, all that means is that you have to replace 30 innings. 2) You don't have to find 30 ninth innings. You can create depth guys or bridge guys and hope your starters or middle relievers pitch two extra good innings a week. 3) Devin tended to struggle a little early in the year IIRC. In a perfect world, you're hopefully eliminating some of his less good innings. 4) This team has a lot of pitching depth and has shown itself to be very creative. Rather than locking guys into roles, this theoretically lets us use the "out-getter" strategy that worked so well in 2018. It's entirely possible Devin would have struggled out of the gate, and then you're in the weird territory of having to think about removing him from the ninth anyway. If his back wasn't right at the end of last year, it wasn't going to be right this year. 5) The Brewers are built differently this year. They're going to rely less on winning one-run, low-scoring games, at least in theory. I think the team's ability to outperform their peripherals over the last several seasons is about more than just Williams/Hader in the ninth. We'll see. I do genuinely think the psychological dimension of this is more challenging from a fan perspective. I have grown accustomed to a locked-up ninth inning, and now we'll be in wide-open territory. It's going to test Murphy as a manager. That said, because it's such a small sample of innings, there's a decent chance it costs the Brewers very little. I'll say this: I'm still excited for the youthquake. Bring on all these new faces, and let's see what we got. Hopefully they put together a good 70 games, and then we see where Devin is.

This makes sense to me too. The more I think about it, the more I think maybe it's not worth trying to change what this team is. They're good! But neither as good as they felt in January or as bad as they've felt for the last month.

Yeah, KenPom has Northwestern at 86 in defensive efficiency. They were like 64 before getting torched by Iowa today, and they're also having some injury troubles, like you said. I'm impressed by them, but a lot of it is just that Buie is a killer. Put him on UW's roster, and this team has 4 more wins. So much of the Badgers' struggles are just not having a guy that scores. They're so much more balanced than, say, those Alando Tucker teams, but man did 'Do win them a bunch of games just by getting buckets. After today, I'm firming up in Essegian needing more minutes, especially in these kind of games. You need the jump-shooting threat, and I'm not sure the defensive downgrade is big enough to offset it. This is a year I'd like to see more tactical switching too. I know the program is historical averse to ever running a zone, but, if you're ever going to throw it in on a couple of possessions, it'd be this year. Nobody'd be prepped for it, and your man-to-man has gotten crushed for the last few weeks. Plus, it does allow you some personnel flexibility. You could even play a little match-up and let Chuckie go for lots of steals.

Northwestern and Wisconsin are weird mirrors of each other. Cats have had an easier schedule and are a little worse defensively, but they play a bit more together and create way more easy shot with movement and screening action. They also have Buie, who is a constant scoring threat. Those two things make a lot of difference.

I know it FEELS this way, but even 3 more losses will leave this team well in the field. Their resume is better than they are, but it's an objectively strong resume. If they fall below the 9 line, I will be a little surprised. Still, it's been disappointing lately. Usually, Wisconsin is so solid, they'll avoid streaks like this. Just can't seem to close games.

So, not to ignite the Kohl Center debates all over again, but it really does seem like the place just isn't that intimidating to high-level opponents. Last few years especially, I've seen so many top-15 teams get beat on the road. Doesn't happen as often at the Kohl. When the Badgers lose, it's always a combo of FTs, 3s, and lack of urgency. I think they have to be among the worst teams in the country at being able to vary tempo when things get down to the last five minutes. They think they're in it down 5 or 7 with 3 minutes to go, and that's good in the sense that they don't rattle. But they're slow to start pressure, They were never going to win giving up 80+.