Week 8 here we go. The game I’ve been wanting to see for two weeks is here…O State on the road vs. Iowa State. The spread is Iowa State favored by 7.5 which seems odd to me. I don’t pick either O State or Texas A&M games….so no way would I make a pick on that point spread.
But as far as watching the game …I’m very excited about this game because the winner takes a step towards playing in the Big 12 Championship Game at Jerry’s World.
On my preseason Big 12 Poll…I went 1 OU, 2 Iowa State, 3 O State, and 4 Texas. So far those picks of mine are still somewhat in play depending on what happens today in Ames and next week with Texas vs. Baylor.
O State and Iowa State seem like mirrors of each other to me. Inconsistent QB play from both both Spencer Sanders and Brock Purdy, both have stellar running backs in Jaylen Warren and Bryce Hall, and both have defenses which can confuse the other team’s schemes.
For me this is the national game of the week…and besides the things I just listed you have to think once OU and Texas leave for the SEC that these two programs plus Cincy will be the three best football programs in Bob Bowlsby’s new Big 12.
As far as Bob Bowlsby…he needs to tap the brakes and stop commenting on OU and Texas leaving the Big 12. If he’d done his job as commish this wouldn’t have happened in the first place or maybe it would given the overall college football landscape. I do agree with Bowlsby on one thing though, that being, Texas is delusional about what their football program has been the past decade.
The second best program in the Big 12 the past decade has been O State. My main criticism of O State the past decade is that they didn’t beat OU more often and they didn’t schedule marquee national nonconference games to enhance their football brand.
If O State wins this game today in Ames…I’ll put Mike Gundy on my list for National Coach of the Year candidates. That would give O State road wins at Boise, at Texas, and at Iowa State. Quite frankly…that would give O State a better body of work resume than what OU has done so far this college football season.
At the end of the day you should always remember two things about me..1 I’m a Libra, and 2 Libras are always fair at the end of the day.
So what I’m saying there is Mike Gundy has nothing to worry about as far as my book…’Mullet King: The Boone Pickens-Mike Gundy Saga.’
Hell…if he beats Iowa State and OU this season he would be perceived like a cult hero of sorts in my story….kind of like a Mike Leach with a mullet. BTW…you’ll notice that mullet went adios when Kayse Shrum took over the school.
Almost forgot…on my picks today–I’m taking Penn State at home vs. Illinois and giving the points and I think I’ll take Cincy and give the points versus Navy. I’m taking a break from a very pedestrian Week #8 SEC schedule.
If you read my blog you know how I feel about Eddie Sutton. Even though I’m an OU fan…Eddie Sutton connected with me as someone who loves seeing basketball played the right way.
I’m not on here saying Mike Boynton at this juncture is going to be the next Eddie Sutton, but what I’m saying is he made an immediate connection with me when I started following his pressers. Much like Chris Beard did when he took the Texas Tech job.
Add to that fact…I have two friends who are close to everything O State athletic related and one of them told me after Brad Underwood left O State to take the Illinois job… the search process for a new coach did not go beyond Mike Boynton’s interview for one simple reason.
The reason being Mike Boynton knocked it out of the ballpark with his interview. Search over.
I thought to myself maybe that was hyperbole of some sort, but after taking the time to observe and follow Mike Boynton…I pretty much agree.
In case you haven’t noticed…I’m not into tanking. I think what Sam Presti is doing to his own basketball players right now is demeaning and a complete put down to them and an insult to the game of basketball on every imagineable level of what sport and competition are supposed to represent.
But to be objective… Presti did the same exact same thing in Seattle before the Thunder came to Oklahoma and he did it for a year in Oklahoma in that inaugural 23-59 season. That 23-59 season was the season in fact is when I sat next to Coach Sutton and his wife and grandchildren during the Detroit Piston game. We were sitting right behind the Piston bench in fact.
That was when I told him what Abe Lemons once told me about Coach Sutton as a coach. As in…”If had a son and wanted him to learn to play basketball the right way…I’d send him to that son of a bitch Eddie Sutton.”
Mike Boynton is an old school players coach. A guy who played point guard at South Carolina and expects his players to show him the same degree of respect he shows to them.
O State may not be as good as they were last season with Cade Cunningham, but with the way Coach Boynton coaches..I expect O State to be one of those teams just after Kansas, Texas, and maybe Baylor to be in the top half of the Big 12 this season.
As far as OU with Porter Moser..who could really know because they’ve never played together as a team. But I know they’ll play hard on the defensive end of the floor. I know that much.
In closing…if I were a father who had a son who was an elite basketball player right now…I’d very much be comfortable with sending my son to either Coach Boynton or Coach Moser.
I feel confident with these two guys at the helm at OU and O State they will continue playing Bedlam basketball even after OU leaves to join the SEC. Which I think will be the adult way to handle it.
Good luck with your basketball season, Coach Boynton.
With the Thunder in full tank mode… I find myself like a little kid in a candy store picking other games from the rest of the league to satiate my NBA fix.
The late game last night with Golden State hosting the LA Clippers was excellent and had the intensity and finish of a second round playoff game.
I love the manner in which Terrance Mann is evolving on the NBA scene. He brings instant electricty to the court for the Clippers. Plus…Steph and Paul George were both excellent last night. I’m happy Reggie has found his place with the Clippers.
Kind of like Tyler Herro for Miami who had an excellent game last night as the Heat routed Milwaukee. In 24 minutes…Tyler scored 27 points, grabbed 6 boards, and dished out 5 assists. This was a nice way for Tyler to start bouncing back from last year’s disappointing finish. Giannis didn’t play, but still a nice night for Tyler. Tyler is too good of a player to not learn from last season.
The league should be absolutely lit this season with no real favorite to win the West or the East. The parity party which was last year’s NBA Playoffs has left us with a slew of entertaining teams to watch this season.
In the East… I’d probably go Milwaukee, Brooklyn, Miami, and Atlanta as my top four picks. In the West…I’d probably go one team deeper with Utah, Denver, Lakers, Golden State, and Phoenix in no real specific order.
If Klay Thompson comes back in January and can be 80% of what he was previously … I think Golden State would be my pick considering what a good job they did this off season in upgrading their roster.
If Jamal Murray comes back for Denver… I’d have the Nugetts second on my list heading into the playoffs.
As far as the current Lakers with four players on their roster who just made the NBA’s 75 Greatest Players of All-Time List…color me nervous with the Lakers having Russell and Rondo on the same team, let alone on the floor together. If LeBron can pull this off and win another ring then I’d move him in front of Michael as the greatest of all-time.
Congrats to Kevin, James, and Russell for making the 75 Greatest List. Looking back with a bit of sadness from an NBA historical perspective…one certainly would have liked to have seen one more season wth Harden in Oklahoma City.
It almost makes this notion that OKC would tank for three seasons again like they did previously somewhat comical when you think about it. OKC back starting in Seattle when they began tanking drafted Durant and Jeff Green in Tank Year 1. Then drafted Westbrook and Serge in Tank Year 2. Then in Year 3 of the master plan Presti drafted Harden.
So explain to me as a fan/blogger/ or whatever what good does it do to follow this path again when after it went almost perfectly the first time the Thunder then went cheap and basically traded away a player who just made the NBA’s list of the 75 Greatest Players of All-Time.
I sit here thinking of the Sam Anderson’s book specificlly remembering the part where OKC voluntarily became the guinea pig city for the effect of sonic booms back in the 60’s with Operation Bongo.
What good does it do to tank and line up three stars if you’re not going to pay the money to keep them?
Maybe you try a slightly different model. Maybe it’s a two star model. Maybe you already have your two stars in Shai and Josh Giddy.
Bottomline is Darius Bazely and Poku need to turn themselves into some form of functional rotation players. You should never go whiff in back to back years wherever you’re picking in the draft.
You know, actually…I’m starting to feel as if this year’s draft wasn’t bad given what we’ve seen so far from Josh, Tre, JRE, and Aaron. A possible star in Giddy and three nice role players filling three different roles which won’t overlap skill set wise. Aaron Wiggins is a real sleeper is my feel right now. A possible two way Sixth Man who embraced this role at Maryland. But of course…he didn’t have an agent when he was a Terp.
Thunder at Houston tonight to play a team in the Rockets who are almost as bad as the Thunder. Vegas has the Rockets at -4 as a home favorite.
This is where the Thunder could actually win a game if they’re not careful.
We’ll see if Coach D learned anything from the Boston and Clipper games last spring.
First year OU basketball coach Porter Moser held his first Big 12 Media Day presser earlier this week. As always the Big 12 will be uber tough with Kansas at No. 3, Texas with Chris Beard at No. 5, and defending national champion Baylor coming in at No. 8 in the pre-season poll.
OU lost leading scorer Austin Reaves to the LA Lakers, lost second leading scorer Devion Harmon in the transfer portal to Oregon, and lost Brady Manek to the North Carlina Tar Heels in the transfer portal. That’s the top three scorers from last season’s team which lost to Gonzaga in the second round. Losing Devion was clearly a loss while in the case of Brady Manek… I think he needed a change of scenery following last season. I’m happy for both of them.
Two other Sooners left via the transfer portal as well with Kur Kuath heading to Marquette and Alondis Williams leaving for Wake Forest. I’ll miss these two guys as well…especially Kur since he’s from South Sudan and now that I’ve read ‘Sooley’ I’d be thinking of the book every time he took the court. I loved Kur’s work ethic and joy for the game. He improved quite a bit duing his stay at OU. He turned himself into a solid rotational player.
But on the positive side of the portal the Sooners added Jordan Goldwire from Duke and Tanner Grove from Eastern Washington to help give the roster some immediate veteran help on both ends of the court. Plus a nice guard in Marvin Johnson from Eastern Illinois and a nice forward in Ethan Chargois from SMU joined the Sooners in the portal as well as the younger Grove brother a small forward from Eastern Washington.
The Sooners return their best all around two way guard in my estimation in EJ Harkless, their smartest and most versatile player in Jalen Hill, and three point bomber Moj Gibson.
Defensively..I think the team will morph into a high energy group which is the trademark for Coach Moser’s teams. Transition defense will help the Sooners find their offensive identity. Offensively.. I would think probable leading scorer Tanner Grove and the rest of the team will have to evolve as a team offensively finding their way as they go since they’ve never played together as a group.
Defense comes first, then the offense evolves around what these guys are capable of doing night in and night out.
Defensively, with Goldwire and EJ Harkless…the Sooners could have one of the best defensive backcourts in the league. Which means OU could have one of the best defensive backcourts in the country. I can’t wait to watch the defensive transition at Lloyd Noble.
It was defensive transition on Billy Tubbs’ 1988 national runnerup team which took the team to the final game at Kemper Arena.
Mookie Blaylock, Harvey Grant, and Dave Seiger’s defense was the collective engine for that ball club. It always starts with defense if you have lofty team goals come March and April. That will never change in basketball or hockey for that matter.
Possession, transition, finish.
Obviously…it’s always a tough 18 game regular season assignment in the Big 12 as I would think O State will be a good team, plus I would expect West Virginia to be tough as well. There are no off nights in the Big 12.
I’m pleasantly surprised at the non-conference slate in that OU has Butler, UCF, Sweet 16 Arkansas, Florida, and Auburn on the schedule.
Arkansas had one of the best young teams in the country last season. That’s three SEC teams on the slate and should give OU hoops fans a look into their basketball future conference wise.
Coach Moser has already signed three new players for next season. So here we go with the Porter Moser Era for Oklahoma Sooner basketball.
I was glad to hear Coach Moser say he has such good relationships with both Mike Boynton and Chris Beard in that I have featured both on my blog and plan to feature both of them along with Coach Moser on my blog this basketball season.
Lon Kruger will be missed in that he was one of the classiest basketball coaches I’ve ever observed, but I hope he’s enjoying his retirement playing golf, being a grandfather, and watching his son coach UNLV.
This is perfect for me in that OU is starting a new era while the Thunder are trying to figure out their future in this market.
The Thunder lost like they were supposed to in Utah on Wednesday night. The alleged four best players on the team…. Shai, Lu Dort, Josh Giddy, and I guess Darius Bazely all had a tough night.
The Thunder not only lost, but they lost by 21 points which covered the Vegas spread of the Jazz winning by 13.5 at home against one of the worst teams in the league.
The other gem in Sam Presti’s master plan… the skinny kid named Poku didn’t even score a point as he looked terrified to attempt a shot.
Coach D with his ears probably still stinging from the ass chewing he got from Sam Presti for winning those two late season games against Boston and the LA Clippers was in mid-season tanking form as he kept two of his better three point shooters, Mike Muscala and Ty Jerome, on the bench.
Granted…Utah is picked by some to win the West and their rim is protected by Rudy Gobert, it was still a stellar clinic on how to tank on Day 1.
I could only watch bits and pieces of the game. It was pathetic. But again…Utah is a good regular season team and the Thunder by plan have been built to be terrible.
I wonder if Sam Anderson’s book Boom Town needs a counter balance of sorts with a story of how the ‘It Team in America’ for a decade has turned itself into a franchise taking this route to attempt to stay relevant.
I was also wondering what Shai Gilgeous Alexander’s agent was thinking to himself as he tried to watch more than five minutes of this game.
I wonder if there were any questions in the post game presser from any of the OKC media as to why Mike Muscala and Ty Jerome didn’t get into the game to shoot threes with Rudy Gobert packing the lane as he always does.
This is what I mean by these games not being legitimate competition. They’re staged events design for the Thunder to lose.
I thought the three rookies… Josh Giddy, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, and Tre Mann and my favorite vet Kenrich Williams were the four best players on the floor for the Thunder. They actually looked like they belonged in an NBA game.
Glass half-full take there’s only 81 games left in the season.
On a more positive note…a friend gave me a copy of John Grisham’s basketball novel ‘Sooley’ this past week and I finished it yesterday morning.
This was the first basketball novel I’ve ever read and I loved it. It made me laugh and it made me cry. The ending caught me off guard and has left me still thinking of the main character Sooley and his legacy to readers.
John Grisham usually writes legal thriller novels, but this is the fourth sports novel he’s written.
He’s written two football novels ‘Playing for Pizza’ and ‘Bleachers’. Plus one baseball novel titled ‘Calico Joe’.
If you need to take a break from the tanking…I’d highly recommend ‘Sooley’. Although the character Sooley is from South Sudan..I couldn’t help but keep thinking of Serge Ibaka and that infectious smile of his as I read the book.
As time has passed from the Thunder’s better days… Nick, Serge, and Steven have cemented themselves with me as my three favorite players.
Hang in there with the tank and do some leisure reading during the Thunder games this season. You won’t be missing much by taking your eyes off the court. Maybe it will even put all of this into some sort of cosmic karma balance.
TNT got the NBA season going last night and it was an impressive doubleheader with two games of interest.
In the first game the defending champ Milwaukee Bucks easily took care of the Brooklyn Nets. Again you can build a championship team without tanking if your GM has a vision of how to build a team.
Milwaukee did it. The champion before them, the Tornoro Raptors did it when they took a chance on Kawhi and won a ‘ship in a narrow window. The Golden State Warriors did it three times in five Final appearances without tanking. Granted…they took Sam Presti’s lunch money on July 4th, 2016, but they didn’t tank. Instead, they used a loophole of sorts with the salary cap to fit in Kevin Durant on their team.
So it’s very hard for me to sit out here in Deer Creek, Oklahoma and have a ton of patience with Sam Presti given what he has in his war chest to build a competitive NBA team.
Every team in every sport goes thru the cycles of up and down…but it’s how you navigate those cycles which determines the fate of those franchises.
It’s how you navigate the cycles which give your franchise a window here and there.
Oklahoma City basically had a decade window previously for one reason…the reason’s name is Kevin Durant.
Utah and Indiana are both small NBA markets…who made it to an NBA Finals. Portland with the Bill Walton team won an NBA championship. There is precedent that Oklahoma City can right the ship and start to be somewhat relevant next season. Kind of like the current Memphis Grizzles with Ja Morant.
From Presti’s standpoint I would think he would want to start solidifying his team building nucleous this season with these five young guys as his template core moving forward–those being Shai, Giddy, Poku, Bazely, and Dort. Four first round picks and the overacheiving Lu Dort. You need some blue collar guys who are willing to get bloody here and there. Metrics will never change that fact. Ask Nick Collison if you doubt me.
The next sequential core I see are Maledon, Roby, and Jerome. One first round pick and two second round picks. I see the Thunder’s guard group as fairly interesting given what the Thunder are going to expect from Shai and Giddy moving into the future. The team is almost guard heavy if that’s possible. The Thunder need some rim protection and physicality is my take.
The next sequential core are the three vets… Mike Muscala, Kenrich Williams, and Derrick Favors. You need smart seasoned vets to contend for relevancy at some point. You would think Presti has enough in his war chest to make a couple of Thabo or Perk-like trades at some point to start bringing all this youth together as a coherent team with a goal besides losing games intentionally.
Then there’s the other three rookies…DRE, Tre Mann, and Aaron Wiggins. An agile offensive big from Jay Wright and Villanova, a scoring guard from Florida, and the Sixth Man of the Year from the Big 10 Maryland Terps. Interesting selections from a team building standpoint. Wiggins’ intrigues me somewhat. I’m totally okay with what Presti did with his second round picks.
Vegas has the Thunder at around 24-25 wins this season. So call it tanking or whatever you like. Patience. The future. Whatever.
Here’s what I know–I’ll watch the Thunder some, but if I start seeing SGA being sat like he was last season–then my interest will drain pretty quick. The Thunder were actually 16-19 in games in which Shai played last season. They were 6-31 without Shai in the lineup… so we’ll see how this is handled as far as providing a legitimate NBA game experience in Oklahoma City this basketball season.
I would think at some point…Shai and his agent would tire of him playing on a team which isn’t relevant while other young guards in the Western Conference are getting the air time for their brand and their standing in the league.
Remember…the agent gets 10% on all endorsments last time I checked.
Guys like Devin Booker, Donovan Mitchell, Jamal Murray, Ja Morant, and even the Sacramento guards possibly are all ascending in stature while in essence Shai plays on a team which is going to lose games in bunches on purpose for a second straight season.
I wouldn’t vote for Shai to be an NBA All-Star until he proves to me he can be the guy on a team which is at the least relevant enough to at least be contending for a bottom rung playoff spot. I’m not sure I’d buy a sports drink from a guy who loses fifty games a year either…let alone consider his tennis shoe. Truth hurts.
I think he’s a good player, but c’mon at some point he needs to show this dynamic in his game heading towards the playoffs.
On my next NBA Journal entry I’m going to do my entire Top 25 Player Pyramid to show where I have Shai in relation to the other young stars in the league.
My Top Five currently goes… 1 Giannis, 2 Lebron, 3 Kevin Durant, 4 Steph, and 5 Luka.
Hopefully…Sam Presti will give Oklahoma City fans something at least entertaining to watch this NBA season.
Glass half full take–take a deep breath the world isn’t coming to an end. One of America’s two best college basketball conferences is in our own backyard. Learn the college game and embrace the fact you have that option when for the second straight year Sam Presti’s prism for sustainability means losing games by design.
In closing, Pop and the Spurs won their last NBA title in 2014 with this former San Diego State player being the Spurs MVP Finals when they beat LeBron and the Heat in five games. I’ll give you three clues….It wasn’t Timmy, Tony Parker, or Manu.
It was the 15th player taken in his draft class…a guy by the name of Kawhi Leonard. Go figure.
Sam Presti, dude…you need some guys in your basketball orbit with a little less passivity and more aggressive optimism. Surely you tire of the rainbows and buttterflies you get from the writers in this market 24/7. Surely you find that less than stimulating.
At this point it seems pretty clear this is Caleb Williams’ team barring injury or concusssion protocol or a COVID issue.
It’s hard not to fall in love with this kid. You can understand why his teammates love playing with him.
A very articulate kid with a very firm belief in himself which translates into the team playing better. Maybe he should start getting in some of the defensive huddles just to see if that would transpose itself into better play on that side of the ball.
But I’m not going to be snarky with the defense. I think they’ll look better when they get Turner-Yell, Woodi Washington, Jeremiah Criddell, and Isiah Poe back into the rotations. The next three weeks with Kansas, Texas Tech, and the bye week couldn’t have come at a better time.
Which brings me to this thought…what if both the Kansas and Texas Tech games become blowouts by halftime?
What does Spencer Rattler want to do? I mean…does he want to go out there and compete at full bore or does he want to go out there and have to play with a watered down play list to ground down the clock?
I think it will be interesting to observe. This dynamic in particular. Or does Lincoln Riley go with the walk-on to get him some snaps just in case. If you’re the backup you need snaps. You need to stay sharp.
We should be to the point now where the OU Daily doesn’t feel the need to spy on any more OU football practices.
I hope the Sooner fan base can tap on the brakes just a bit as far as Spencer Rattler is concerned and show some humanity his way. This can’t be easy for him.
The booing is just so classless. Let it go and imagine that could be your son or grandson or nephew out there and wish the best for him in his journey just as you will for Caleb Williams.
But again…you never know in football when an injury could happen or a player could be concussed or come back with a positive Covid result.
We should all just take that collective step back and hope both of these guys the best paths forward to fulfilling their dreams.
It should be a good ending for both of them.
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With the NBA getting started this week I’ll start posting on my NBA/Thunder Journal. This will include other teams which are trying to win…instead of just tanking. But when there’s something Thunder related which should be noted…it will be on my blog.
I mean, ostensibly that’s why I started this blog..to in essence give my objective takes so as someone who stumbles upon my blog can read something from someone who isn’t on Sam Presti’s payroll or like Berry Tramel or Jenni Carlson very much operating on the basis of what’s said off the record never gets written on the record. That’s bullshit to a certain degree.
That’s why the Thunder are so overly guarded as to their coverage in this market. They want an inherent quid pro quo attached to everything Thunder related.
I love Berry Tramel’s coverage of OU football and basketball, but my question to Berry Tramel would be…”Why don’t you hold the Thunder to the same standards you hold to Lincoln Riley, Mike Gundy, Porter Moser and Mike Boynton? Or Russell Westbrook?”
Tough, but fair all across the board should be the mantra.
I mean, in a courtroom under oath…when a question is posed in a reasonable manner… an advocate can plead with Your Honor to have the witness answer the question in a forthright manner. Right?
That seems to fair to me.
As a writer/blogger/whatever…at some juncture your inner soul has to be more than just a quid pro quo arrangement. It has to be or why else would we have newspapers and blogs in the first place.
Since Cade Cunningham is now with the Pistons…I think I’ll follow Porter Moser’s first year at the OU helm as my primary basketball beat this season.
If someone just asked me…”Mike, what beat would you like to follow this season in Oklahoma if you could pick just one?” It would be the OU basketball beat. Don’t get me wrong…I love OU football… where this team could be going, but I’ve always been an outlier of sorts in that OU hoops has always been a big thing with me. Part of it is the fans aren’t insane like with the football program. It’s not an insatiable Monster.
From Johnny Mac to Dave Bliss to Joe Ramsey to Les Lane to Billy Tubbs to Kelvin Sampson to Jeff Capel to Lon Kruger to now Porter Moser….. OU hoops have consumed part of my winters.
Basketball season is basically here with fans in the arenas.
Finally…music and fans. and hoops all altogether for the college game.
This is a mixed bag on here today. I’m still numb from watching Caleb Williams’ debut as the OU starting QB. I think I’ll write about that performance tonight or tomorrow morning.
I think we all now know why Spencer Rattler played like he’d seen a ghost the first six games. Can you imagine being the Heisman favorite and you see this guy Caleb in practice and you know he’s better than you are as a true freshman?
My heart goes out to Spencer Rattler, but we all now know what Caleb can do. This isn’t a Chris Leak-Tim Tebow deal…this is more of a Trevor Lawrence-Kelly Bryant type of situation.
My two team helmet stickers this week go to the Oklahoma St. Cowboys and the Auburn Tigers for both showing some real grit on the road with wins against Texas and Arkansas respectively.
These teams would be a good matchup in a bowl game. Both teams have a quarterback situation where Spencer Sanders and Bo Nix have fought through some sketchy play at time, but their teams keep finding a way.
Kudos to O State and Auburn for their collective team resilence thru Week 7
O State at Iowa State this coming Saturday is a big, big… Big 12 game.
My Poll
1 Georgia
2 Oklahoma ( Alex Grinch needs Delarrin Turner-Yell back in a bad way in that secondary)
3 Cincy
4 Michigan
5 Alabama
6 Ohio St.
7 Penn St.
8 Oklahoma St.
9 Michigan St.
10 Iowa
11 Oregon
12 Auburn
On my bubble……
13 Notre Dame
14 Kentucky
Ki Ke Hernandez—Boston Red Sox….Let’s Go, Boys!
I played this for Caleb on Saturday and it worked. I’m playing it now for Ki Ke to see if he can hit three homers tonight at Fenway. Two extremely hot dudes who are ON FIRE. Dodgers could use Ki Ke right now. Trea Turner’s bat in a word has been abysmal. Just saying.
This song stuff won’t work for Sam Presti and the Thunder though because Sam Presti ‘made’ them to lose at least 55 games or so. No songs for the Sam Presti tank-a-fest death march. I don’t play music for non-legit sporting events.
You want that kind of rainbows and butterflies cupcake bullshit….this won’t be that place. But I will be fair and honest at the end of the day.
Two helmet stickers, two dudes, two songs…it only seems right. Stevie Miller Monday on okcthunderground.com. Just seems right.
Should Caleb Williams start today in Norman vs. TCU?
Of course he should given how he performed in the Red River Rivalry. But by the same token the OU fans shouldn’t trash Spencer Rattler in that they may need him again down the road this season. Plus, being human isn’t a bad thing.
Lest we forget the Paul Thompson to Rhett Bomar back to Paul Thompson quarterback journey back in the 2006 season.
Lincoln Riley not only owes Caleb Williams the chance to start, but he owes this to every one of his players and coaches. The fans not as much.
With Caleb in the game the opposing safties have to respect his ability to run the ball. This should give guys like Marvin Mims and others the chance to create some separation on deep patterns. If for no other reason..that reason should be why Caleb is given the start tonight.
The head coach is the guy who brings it all together and makes his team the best they can be. This decison is easy. The one Lincoln Riley made at halftime in Dallas wasn’t as easy.
Spencer Rattler was yanked with OU trailing 35-17 after the bad fumble. From that point forward—OU outscored the Horns 38-13.
Duh.
I don’t need Woodward and Bertstein from the OU Daily counting snaps for me especially since Lincoln Riley gave Spencer Rattler off on Monday.
I’m still exhausetd from last week’s game. I hope OU’s players aren’t feeling a Texas hangover because I am. That second half half took ssomething out of me.
On my picks today…I’m taking Georgia over Kentucky and and giving the points and then taking Arkansas at home versus Auburn. Talk about two teams who shoud be exhausted and on the ropes…it’s these two teaams in a great SEC battle on the beautiful campus in Fayetville. Walk that campus sometime in autumn and you’ll fall in love with the place.
As far as O State vs. Texas…I like Texas outright, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving the 5.5. This is a huge game for Mike Gundy…probably the biggest game for O State since the passing of Boone Pickens. You would think the winner of this game would be the frontrunner to make the Big 12 Championship Game along with OU.
It’s a huge game for Sark as well since Tom Herman won this game last season in Stillwater…. 41-34.
I think Iowa State at K State and BYU at Baylor are interesting Big 12 games as well. A good Saturday to watch Big 12 football.
The Thunder evidently played an exhibition game in Tulsa last night in which NBA players sat on the bench while a G League game was played to help both the Thunder and Nuggets makes some roster decisions.
Pre season NBA is to evaluate talent and somewhat get in game shape. I was actually more interested to see how OU’s Austin Reaves would fare in his game with the Lakers in his quest to become an NBA guard. I would guess Austin will be back and forth between the G League and the Lakers. He had a tough shooting night, but did have 7 assists in just under thirty miutes of play.
BTW…Davion Mitchell and his Kings beat the Lakers in this game. I hope for Russell’s sake he can figure it out playing with LeBron. That’s all I’m going to say.
The Dodgers prevailed 2-1 in what was a great post season game with everything a baseball fan wants attached to a post season game.
A pitching duel which featured the Giants’ Logan Webb versus the entire Dodgers staff in essence, but with Bulldog Max Scherzer of Washington Nationals fame closing out the last inning.
Two former OKC Dodgers accounted for both of the Dodgers’ two RBIs with Cory Seager driving in Mookie Betz with the first run, then with Cody Bellinger driving in Justin Turner with the game winner.
I don’t think the Dodgers messed up their pitching rotation too much last night for their upcoming series with the Atlanta Braves. But we’ll see. Goggle Boy is key in the Dodger’s rotation. I love the goggles…almost as menacing as a Tyler Herro snarl or Max’s glare from the mound.
Mookie Betz went 4-4 and Max closed the deal. That’s the thing with the Dodgers… they have a great developmental system, yet open the war chest to acquire players like Mookie, Max, and Trea Turner.
Sam Presti still searching for a shooting guard to put alongside Kevin Durant. How ironic… someone like Shai could have been the perfect hybrid guard to be the championship bridge between Durant and Westbrook in historical retrospect.
In the American League..it’s the streaking Boston Red Sox vs. the Houston Astros. I like Boston. Another former OKC Dodger from 2015…one KiKe Hernandez is tearing it up at the plate for the Bosox along with the entire team.
KiKe’s real name is Enrique…just so you know. No wonder he prefers going by KiKe.
I like Alex Cora as a manager. The previously cheating Astros can hit the ball as well, but this time around it will be without George Springer and along with Altuve…I thought it was Springer who made the Astros special in post season play more than the fact they were stealing signs.
So.. I’m hoping it’s the Dodgers versus the Red Sox in the World Series.