Month: February 2022

I’m not sure what to write about Porter Moser’s basketball team right now. I want to be fair. Don’t want to knee jerk and overreact to the Sooners’ seventh loss in their last eight games.

But I also don’t run a little fluffy homery blog either. I don’t want this to read like a Thunder post game presser. I’d like to say… for the most part I try to tell it like it is.

From the point OU went to Austin at 2-1 in Big 12 play this team has not been the same, or you could just say they’ve been exposed by the fact the level of competition in the rugged Big 12 is just too much for this roster of players.

I’m a very pragmatic blogger. A Libra. I knew going into conference play the Sooners would be challenged to go 8-11 in conference play. I thought the ceiling for OU in this league would be at best a fourth or fifth best place finish in the league.

As of this writing if I were doing a Big 12 poll I would have the Sooners at No. 9 only ahead of West Virginia.

Correctable errors aren’t being corrected. It’s not one thing. One game it’s turnovers like it was in this Bedlam game in Stillwater. Another game it’s OU getting hammered on their defensive boards like it was in Monday’s loss at home to TCU. In another game like the one in Stillwater it was the lack of any real assertive point guard play.

It’s a multitude of things.

I’m not some newbie watching OU hoops. From the point of Johnny Mac’s teams back in the old fieldhouse through yesterday it’s rare I’ve missed an OU basketball game.

I wouldn’t say OU is lacking heart as much as I would say they’re lacking a point guard who will step up and lead the team. Porter Moser can’t do this from the bench.

Jordan Goldwire is a senior transfer from Duke who struggles on the offensive end of the floor. Bijuan Cortez is a freshman not ready for the rigors of the rugged Big 12. Austin Reaves now plays for the Lakers and Davion Harmon who should have been the Sooners’ point guard this season transferred to play for Lon Kruger’s buddy Dana Altman in Oregon.

It you’re a real sports fans in Norman the real story beyond Caleb Williams going to USC is that Porter Moser doesn’t have a point guard who can handle the challenges this league presents every single possession.

On Saturday at Gallagher-Iba, I only witnessed two OU players who I thought were competitively engaged. That would be Tanner Grove and EJ Harkless.

Tanner scored 23 points and was the lone bright spot in this loss in Bedlam I. EJ Harkless did score 15 points, but he also committed a Westbrookian eight turnovers and appeared to blow up anytime the Sooners needed to hunker down and run an offense of any sort.

The other OU players went a combined 7-32 from the field. Seniors Jalen Hill and Moj Gibson both played two of the softest games I’ve seen from either of them in their OU basketball careers.

Jacob Grove and Ethan Chargois gave the Sooners virtually nothing coming off the bench. As in nothing.

I honestly don’t know what else to say. Your season was on the brink and you’re playing in a rivalry game against an Oklahoma State team which is on probation and has its own plethora of offensive challenges and only Tanner Grove shows up to play.

OU has eight Big 12 games remaining. At home the Sooners get Texas, Texas Tech, O State, and West Virginia. On the road the Sooners play Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and Texas Tech. Tell me where you see four or five wins in those eight basketball games.

OU’s Season on the Brink went the wrong way this week in a draconian way. These were two games the Sooners desperately needed. It was the first time in OU hoops history they lost to TCU in Norman. It was Mike Boynton’s third straight win in Bedlam and Cade Cunningham is now a Detroit Piston.

My advice to first year coach Porter Moser right now would be to not worry about making the Big Dance, but instead to take his team to a level of play where they can execute basketball basics as a team and hopefully find a way as a team to play forty minutes of basketball at a Power 5 level befitting a program which in fact has a storied basketball history.

My wife was friends with the sister of the second wife of Bobby Knight. Back when Season on the Brink was just released and then became a NY Times bestseller…I obviously bought and read the book. I loved it.

So around this time Gina told my wife she was heading to Bloomington to spend a week with her sister and Bob Knight. I asked her if she would take my book and get it autographed by Coach Knight.

True story. When Gina got back she handed my wife my copy of Season on the Brink and another hard copy of a book titled Bob Knight: His Own Man by Joan Mellon.

Evidently…Coach Knight was so outraged by how he was portrayed by John Feinstein in Season on the Brink he then worked with an English Lit professor from Temple named Joan Mellon to write the second book.

So I look in my copy of Season on the Brink and it’s not autographed. Then I open my copy of Joan Mellon’s book and it’s autographed by Coach Knight with a note attached.

The note read:

Mike,

You wasted your time reading the other book. This book better depicts who I really am.

Best wishes, Bob Knight

——————————————-

In closing this post…

Hang in there, Coach Moser and always remember ‘Player makes the coach.’ That never changes…. just ask Greg Popovich.

I tell you what…my whole world view of Little Nick Gallo did a three-sixty in Portland on Friday night as LNG led the Thunder to their straight win with a hard fought 96-93 win over the injury/trade decimated Portland Trailblazers.

I thought he did good. He made me proud. He’s actually better when you give him a sustained run of minutes on the air. I’m not saying he’s Tony Romo or Jeff van Gundy or Al Michael, but he wasn’t bad and I’m giving LNG my first helmet sticker for the win in Portland. I’m thinking the guys looked over there and said to themselves…”If Little Nick Gallo can pull his link on the proverbial chain then the least we can do is handle this horrible Portland team.”

My second helmet sticker goes to Mamadi Diakite for his nice solid play in the paint. I’m very aware of this guy because he played significant minutes on the that 2019 Virginia national championship team. OU played Virginia in the second round of that tournament, and he was a good player. I’m not saying he’s a star, but he could certainly fill the Nerlens Noel role and the Thunder with Diakite, JRE, and Muscala could play the Center by Committee option next season when they start trying to win games again.

My third helmet sticker goes to Ty Jerome because he’s turning himself into a functional NBA hybrid guard who will be a solid piece moving down the road.

My observation of the game is without Shai on the floor the ball doesn’t stick. The ball floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. I see a lot of options moving forward on how to construct a pretty nice team if that’s what Sam Presti wants to do in Oklahoma City.

Next up… the return of Chris Fisher in Sacramento tomorrow night. Postgame song is for Little Nick Gallo for livin’ the dream in Portland. Maybe they need to think of a new role for LNG.

Skies are bright blue at the Deer Creek Weather Station. Ten inches of snow fell in this historic storm. Not a trace of wind today. Pretty good snow removal weather. Some of the other inmates here at the Deer Springs Correctional HOA Facility are arguing amongst themselves as to how several of them parked their fantasy Urban Cowboy trucks prior to the storm in regards to driveway exit trajectories. None of these dudes have made it thru a hard day of labor in their lives. Typical Edmond bullshit. Sigh.

Pauli is exhausted and napping after her lunch and three rewinds of the Walter the Cat commercial.

Think I’m going to hook up the boom box and pipe some music outside while I start shoveling snow.

This is one of those kind of days you could actually get a snow tan from the reflection of the rays. Not a beach, but it’ll have to do today.

Thinking of the city slicker Edmond Urban Cowboys made me remember this song. Great song…can’t believe I paid to see the movie though. Bud & Sissy….sigh.

I would assume or hope the Thunder after the conclusion of this second season of tanking begin the process of finding their next head coach. The kid Presti has put in charge of the tank has done a nice job for I’m sure what is a league low salary, but it’s time to start getting serious again. I’m not dissing the tank coach, but like I’ve written on here before I can’t imagine one team in the Big 12 would hire Mark D as their head coach.

You know, actually hiring a proven successful head coach who might be a fit with all these young players and Nick Collison in the front office might be a logical next step once we see who the Thunder draft this summer.

My first interview was with Bill Self of Kansas. I’ll put Bill Self down again below on this post below. My second interview is with Jay Wright from Villanova. Like Self at Kansas, I like the manner in which he communicates with his players. I like the manner in which he runs his teams.

Both of these guys have been at their current jobs for a long time. Maybe one of them is ready to take the next challenge. Every coach has an ego which needs to be fed. Don’t ever miscalculate that doctrine of coaching.

For Self it makes total since. He graduated from Edmond Memorial. He played for Eddie Sutton at O State. He head coached at Tulsa University and Illinois before taking on the Kansas job which is just like feeding the OU football monster.

So…my short list so far is two as in Bill Self and Jay Wright.

I doubt you’d ever read something like this at the Daily Thunder. You know why? They wouldn’t have Sam Presti’s written permission.

That’s why.

Truth hurts.

This is Bill Self after his top ranked Jayhawks didn’t get a chance to play in the Covid cancelled NCAA Tournament. Great coach. Straight from the Eddie Sutton tree, yet unlike Sutton’s run at Kentucky, Bill Self has carved out a hall of fame coaching career at Kansas. Whereas Coach Sutton’s Hall of Fame resume basically came from his stints at Creighton, Arkansas, and Illinois.

What I’m saying is that under the brightest lights in Lawrence…Bill Self has emerged and survived as an elite coach known for his strong relationships with his players.

I tell you this… after a guy watches over thirteen-hundred minutes of Seinfeld in a thirty-six- hour window he could use a song or two to clear the mind.

I need a couple of songs to do just that.

It has to be seventy-degrees somewhere tomorrow…doesn’t it? But just not in Deer Creek, Oklahoma. Hang on and keep warm. If you’re a Trump faux evangelical or a member of the Oklahoma legislature you prolly shouldn’t click on this one. The video content might be too much for you given your fervent spiritual beliefs.

You gotta remember…I married an Auburn girl even though she told me she would never come back to Oklahoma. Told me not to fall in love with her because she’d never live in Oklahoma…then called me four months later and told me to come on down there and to a have talk about the situation. This kind of became our song that week. True story. Just like Noah and Allie in The Notebook. It’s not a bad fallback position for me for Auburn to be the No. 1 team in the country right now in hoops.

This is right there at the top of my Blake Shelton play list as well. There’s a great video which goes with this song, but it might be too much given this is Oklahoma. You don’t know which books the Proud Boys are going to burn first and which videos could get you thrown in prison fastest. I’ll play it safe and do it this way.

OU finally got the signature they’ve been waiting for on talented defensive back Gentry Williams from Booker T Washington in Tulsa.

In my mind…OU finishing as high as 8th nationally recruiting in this class considering the pathetic exit from Lincoln Riley the day after Bedlam is a testament to Brent Venables’ national reputation as an elite defensive coach who was in essence associate head coach on two Clemson national championship teams.

The Sooners restocked and in some cases in my mind will be better next season on the defensive side of the ball. I’d still like to see the Sooners add one more high-quality interior defensive lineman to mitigate the losses of Isaiah Thomas and Perrion Winfrey. But otherwise, I think OU will be better and deeper across the board defensively. I think the Sooners will have several edge rushers who make us forget the loss of Nik Bonito fairly quickly.

I look for Gentry Williams if he stays injury free to be the first Sooner defensive back freshman to crack the threshold of meaningful rotational minutes. He can play either corner, safety, or nickel. In my mind he has a chance to be as versatile as current Pittsburgh Steeler Tre Norwood. I thought Tre did dome very nice things with the Steelers this season.

Other than Caleb Williams…what did OU really lose to USC?

OU lost Mario Williams who other than making that play against Oregon in the Alamo Bowl probably had the lowest yards after catch numbers I can ever remember from an OU wide receiver on bubble screens. OU also lost defensive back Lawrence McCutcheon, but he like Williams will probably be better suited for the uber soft PAC 12. Neither will be losses OU will miss.

Spencer Rattler was already leaving regardless of what Lincoln Riley did. Jaden Hazlewood is a guy at wide receiver I would have liked to have kept, but with him going to Arkansas that might actually toughen him up as far as winning more fifty-fifty balls. I respect the fact Jaden chose Arkansas and is going to play for the Hogs in the rugged SEC West. I respect the fact he’s moving up rather than down competition-wise.

Losing Austin Stogner to South Carolina hurts, but OU is keeping senior Braden Willis and picked up Daniel Parker from Missouri in the portal. Plus, OU signed two really nice freshmen tight ends.

Considering the exit from Norman by Lincoln Riley….I think it’s fairly amazing the Sooners on paper look to be headed towards a Top Ten 2022-23 season.

Dillion Gabriel in my mind is the favorite to be the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year and possibly more depending on how quickly the offensive line comes together.

It was all good in Norman this week because we already knew Caleb Williams from the point of the Alamo Bowl postgame presser was headed to USC. That kid was more evasive in that presser than Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham two weeks after the Proud Boy-Little Brains Insurrection. I could see Caleb Williams becoming a United States senator at some juncture if the United States is actually still a nation by the time Caleb becomes age eligible.

If you didn’t think Caleb was becoming a Trojan…then you weren’t paying attention or reading my blog.

BOOMER!

Jackie Chiles the Perfect Lawyer Episodes

We’re up to nine inches of snow so far in this historical snowstorm. I’m guessing wind chills out here are around -10 at the Deer Springs Weather Station. There has been no walking in search of Morris the Mountain Lion today…nor will there be. I told Pauli if she wants to see a cat today… we’ll watch the Chevy Walter the Cat commercials this evening. She sulked a little then finally came to terms with severity of this winter storm.

I went out to feed the turkeys, the deer, and the other birds and that’s about it for me today. I’ve held fast on my vegan regime during the storm while my wife is still cheating on the diet she proposed to me. Typical.

I’m starting to take shape again like one of Brent Venables four-star safety recruits. Got the bench press back up to 320 lbs. I wonder if Coach V would be interested in a sixty-four-year-old preferred walk-on? Rudy on Medicare. I’d be a great motivational tool.

I think national signing day went just fine for Coach Venables. The defense is shaping up nicely. This is why I’ve never been all that emotional about Lincoln Riley’s departure. I mean…in reality, it saved Joe C from having to fire Lincoln and Alex Grinch after perhaps the most disappointing OU football season in the past fifty years. I think it was a good divorce for all parties…. especially Dillion Gabriel.

This Seinfeld assignment has worn me out. I’ve now watched sixty episodes consisting of around 1,324 minutes of content. Tell me how sick I am and you won’t get an argument.

I’m taking a break. This much Seinfeld dysfunction even surpasses the dysfunction of this Edmond HOA we live in under house arrest. This HOA might be my next special assignment since I need filler because the Thunder aren’t a legitimate NBA team for the second straight season.

I hope you’re not driving anywhere at least until noon tomorrow would be my take on the weather situation. I think we’ll watch some Jack Nicholson chick flicks tonight after placating Pauli with the Walter the Cat commercials.

Be safe and help any homeless people if come across them in this brutal winter storm. Kindness should in abundance in Oklahoma as we deal with this winter storm.

We love Walter. Pauli wants her own cat now. Good lord.

I love hoops being played the right way. Same thing with hockey and football. A team should be pulling the proverbial chain in unison as one. It should be a tight knit family who in one hate to lose. Literally despise the notion of losing and ever being outworked or out-thought on the court. That’s exactly what men’s coach Porter Moser is still trying to get across to his team currently twenty-one games into the season.

When OU’s legendary Sheri Coale stepped down as the women’s basketball coach it was time. It was like watching a relationship which had grown stale over the last few years of her tenure.

Not horrible, but clearly the years had eroded earlier glory years as to what the expectations should be for OU women’s basketball.

Joe C went out and found his next OU women’s hoop coach in Jennie Baranczyk.

Long story short…OU’s women beat Baylor this week 78-77 for their second win over the Bears this season. These wins mark OU’s first wins over Baylor in women’s basketball since 2014. Think about that.

The nationally ranked Sooners are 18-3 overall, 8-2 in conference and tied for first place in the rugged Big 12.

This is me just thinking out loud…if I were Coach Moser I’d take a page from Coach B’s bench-side demeanor right now…and tone down all the forty-five second shifts I’m seeing being made. Basketball isn’t hockey. There is a point in basketball you can over-coach. Maybe even out-think yourself if you’re not careful.

You identify the soul of your team and that soul in essence helps you coach your team on the practice court and in the locker-room.

I really didn’t like the way Coach Moser humiliated EJ Harkless last week in those two road games. I think there’s way as a coach you do that in private if you feel a message needs to be conveyed.

It’s all about your individual coaching personality and character.

2nd Rule of Coaching…”You coach thru your own individual personality and character.”

So in Norman right now…the men are struggling while the women are soaring under their respective first year basketball coaches.

Both teams have tough road assignments in front of them this weekend. The men at Stillwater in Bedlam I… while the women are at Ames against the very good Cyclones in a battle for first place in the Big 12.

Can’t wait to watch both games.

Newman Calls Kramer to The Stand to Fight Traffic Ticket Episode

This is one of my Top Ten favorite Seinfeld episodes of all-time. I’ve always felt this episode was grossly under-rated. I love Newman and some of the episodes which featured him more than Jerry. I mean, like Marlene maintains, there’s only so much nonsensical fluff you can absorb at some point. At some point there has to be authentic content which is more than just provincial blathering.

I took a break from the Snow Fest and lo and behold the mysterious Oklahoma City Thunder for a reason I cannot decipher decided it would be in their best interest to beat the very boring Dallas Mavericks.

I’m glad they won. I find Luka to be a complete bore. His prima donna antics have already worn thin with me. I hope Aaron Wiggins is okay…I have big plans for him with ‘my’ Thunder remake plan. That injury did not look good. I love that kid. Hope he’s okay.

The guys who played for the Thunder tonight all get helmet stickers. Their efforts were excellent albeit puzzling at this point. Why they won the game I have no idea? Maybe Presti is going to trade Shai at the deadline. Who would know anything with the covert Thunder.

Lots of beautiful pristine snow out here on the ranch in Deer Creek. I may stay up all night binge watching Seinfeld seasons. I may make my special Garlic Mike’s pasta dish from Crested Butte tomorrow for brunch.

Don’t drive unless you absolutely must.

The Mail Fraud Episode

Just reeled off the first season of Seinfeld after taking Pauli out into the frozen tundra in search of Morris. Thank god that’s behind me. No snow or ice yet in Deer Creek.

I’m in the midst of my thirty-seventh day on my vegan regime. It’s going well. I’ve already lost seventeen pounds despite my wife. She’s supposed to be doing this with me but she’s gaining weight because she keeps cheating.

Now she’s sending me out into the elements to go buy her some chicken kievs at the seafood place on May Avenue.

I’ll do it for her, but none for me as I’m still Master of my Domain.

I’m getting my right knee replaced this October so I can be like Tom Brady again. My goal is to lose a total of forty pounds before the surgery in late October.

I’ll get there because I’m determined to show my two-year-old grandson a few things on the slopes next time we visit next snow season in Denver.

He made a couple of disparaging comments in regards to my movement range at the park in Bonnie Brae last time we were there.

What he will see from me on the slopes is my ass as it swooshes past him with relative ease. No mocking…just swooshing.

Back to Seinfeld.

Marlene the Cashier Episode

I love this episode from Season 2. This ending scene is symbolic to me because it reminds me of my departure from the Daily Thunder when I just couldn’t do it anymore because the content was just so incredibly soft and fluffy.

I know exactly what Marlene was trying to project in this scene. Been there. Done that. There comes as a point when as an artist you have to look yourself in the mirror and be proud of your work.

I’m almost through with Season 4. Snow is falling as I write at the Deer Creek ranch.