Month: March 2021

Austin Reaves game winning shot vs TCU – YouTube

It’s not OU Senior Night…so I can write this now.

When OU was at 14-5 and winners of eight of nine the formula was simple….play dogged defense for forty minutes and put the ball in Austin Reaves’ hands the last six minutes of the game.

Since 14-5 the Sooners have lost four straight close games and the defense hasn’t been what it needs to be for the Sooners to win some post season games in the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments.

Defense is a team deal. Lon Kruger’s team as a team has to get their collective energy back on the defensive end of the floor. They have to get better defensive rebounding as well and start winning the fifty-fifty loose balls again. EJ Harkless has to be an elite defender.

Devion Harmon…step up. You’re a helluva player. Start playing like it again.

Moj Gibson…shoot the damn ball.

In a word OU needs to start playing with a chip on their shoulder again with something to prove. They need to get something from the center position as well whether it be Kuath Kur or Brady Manek.

It wouldn’t hurt for Jalen Hill, Olandis Williams and Victor Iwuakor to give the Sooners quality bench minutes like they were doing at 14-5 either. It’s a team deal, guys.

But most of all Lon Kruger needs Austin Reaves to once again be clutch in the game’s final six minutes and make free throws and make every offensive possession count.

Austin Reaves isn’t Cade Cunningham, but he’s a damn good basketball player who made First Team All-Big 12 and in my estimation at 6’5″ could be somewhat like what Ty Jerome from Virginia is showing for the Oklahoma City Thunder as of late. Ty Jerome btw was a key piece in that Virginia national championship team of two seasons ago when we last had a basketball national champion.

OU should be rested…they’re still in the Top 25 because of their brutal strength of schedule and they still have a shot at being a No. 4 seed in March Madness if they can get their game sharp again in Kansas City and play well.

Nothing is easy in the Big 12. OU better be ready to play Iowa State tonight at 8:30pm because this is Iowa State’s season tonight at the Sprint Center in a play-in game on Night One of the Big 12 Tournament.

I’m excited to see all of the Big 12 teams in this year’s tourney. It should be a great tournament.

Coach Kruger…hope you don’t mind.

(3) Jake Owen – Made For You (Official Music Video) – YouTube

This isn’t part of the Lindsey Graham-Donald Trump Love Song Collection.

Instead…it’s dedicated to my son Chris, my awesome daughter-in-law Elaine, and their two wonderful children Little Robert and Aubrey.

I always think of them when I hear this song…because they were literally made for one another and that’s pretty cool.

Cade Cunningham won both the Big 12 Player of the Year and Freshman Year of the Year on Monday. Jared Butler from Baylor who will be an NBA first round pick came in a respectable second place in the voting.

OU’s Austin Reeves made the Big 12’s First team.

I would expect Cade to later on become the National Player of the Year as well.

Cade could join an elite club in winning Big 12 Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year in the same year if he wins NPOTY. That club is one currently… as in Kevin Durant from his lone collegiate season at Texas in 2007-08. The year I went and watched Kevin play at both Norman and Stillwater.

I actually think Cade is more ready to play in the NBA as a rookie than Kevin Durant was because of three factors… 1 his body is NBA ready, 2 he’s much more emotionally mature than Kevin, and 3 he has a more complete game from a defensive standpoint and is a player who can help you win on a night when he doesn’t go off scoring the ball.

Look at the highlights above and forget the 40 points. Cade made every key defensive play his teammmates needed from him at clutch moments in a game which turned his team’s season around at the goal acheiving portion of the season.

There are games when he’s not highlight reel spectacular, but his game is what I would describe as portable in that he can morph his game as to what his teammates are giving Mike Boynton in that particular game. He can fit multiple needs depending on the game.

Hopefully, the NCAA gets it’s act together and gives O State clearance to play in March Madness.

Cade Cunningham, it’s been a pleasure to cover you on my little blog this Big 12 basketball season especially since we didn’t have relevant NBA hoops in Oklahoma City. Hope you guys make a Danny Manning & The Miracles type of run. Go see if you can grab that One Shining Moment, know what I mean.

Good luck, buddy.

(3) Andrew Cuomo, Donald Trump & Dave Chappelle REACT to Meghan & Harry Interview – YouTube

I had no interest in watching the NBA All-Star Game. None. Instead –I watched the Megan Markle — Oprah interview. I can’t believe it took two full hours to show this interview, but it did. Too much hype.

It was very depressing in that it appears even in some corners of the Royal Family there are people even more racist than Trump and the Quanon idiots who follow him.

It was just very sad to watch, but at the same time more interesting than the NBA All-Star Game. So…I watched the show and then followed it by watching the Stanley Tucci Discovering Italy series.

Stanley T inspired me so much I cooked my first ever Chicken Parmesan meal totally on my own tonight.

My wife was completely impressed. This is what not being able to go inside an Italian restaurant in over a year will do to you.

Earlier in the day– Jim Traber just out of the blue on his radio show made some ridiculous out of the blue claim Wayne Gretzky is the greatest hockey player ever….which is total bullshit. Wayne Gretzky is the greatest scorer in the history of hockey who couldn’t fight or check. Wayne Gretzky was a three skill hockey player, not a five skill hockey player like Bobby Orr or Gordie Howe.

I wonder if Traber is reading my blog? He should be if he isn’t —it would broaden his knowledge base.

Anyway…it’s my hope here on the blog this week I don’t write anything about the Oklahoma City Thunder until either Friday or Saturday.

Have a nice warm, sunny Tuesday.

(3) awesome & amazing Bobby Orr highlights – YouTube

(1) Mike Conley “Man of the Year” Mix – YouTube

I’m happy to see Mike Conley finally get a chance to play in an All-Star Game as he was named as replacement player for the upcoming game.

He’s had a nice season so far and is one of the primary reasons the Utah Jazz at the break have the best overall record in the NBA. I’m not picking the Jazz to beat the Lakers when it matters…but from what we’ve seen so far it’s conceivable they could get to the Western Conference Finals given the fact both the Clippers and the Nuggets aren’t as good as they were a year ago.

There’s a great deal of history with Mike Conley and the Oklahoma City Thunder over the years.

Conley was the Grizz point guard on those Memphis teams which had epic battles with Kevin Durant’s Thunder teams when OKC made it to four Western Conference championhips and to that one NBA Finals in 2012.

There was Tony Allen from Eddie Sutton’s last great O State team who went toe to toe with Durant in all of those meetings.

There was the fact that Mike Conley from Ohio State was the fourth player taken in the same 2007 NBA draft in which the Portland Trailblazers selected another Buckeye…Greg Oden over Kevin Durant as the first player taken in that draft class. Another Buckeye from that team Dacquan Cook would later become a bench piece for the 2012 Thunder team which made the Finals.

Even more interesting than that was the fact Mike Conley Sr. became the agent for all three of these Ohio State players.

I know some Thunder fans are bummed SGA didn’t get this spot on the All-Star team, but in reality they shouldn’t be mad at all. Because for over the duration of his NBA career there were times when Conley was on teams which pushed Durant’s teams to the limit every time they played each other… and now in his later NBA years he’s part of making the Utah Jazz the most relevant team in the West so far this season minus LeBron James.

If ever a guy deserved an All-Star game appearance it’s Mike Conley.

(1) Mike Conley “XO TOUR LIFE” Mix ᴴᴰ – YouTube

This video above is one I’ve been saving for about a year to use at the appropriate time. I think this is that time.

Mike Boynton was hired as the O State head coach four years ago in the midst of O State’s program possibly headed towards dark deep waters in the aftermath of the LaMont Evans situation.

This was not an ideal setting for a young coach to become the head coach of Power Five progam which had been lost for a decade in the aftermath of legendary Eddie Sutton’s exit from the O State head coaching job.

One of my friends who was a basketball beat writer covering O State for that decade told me about Mike Boynton just after Brad Underwood left to take the Illinois job.

I asked him, “Who do you think Holder will hire?”

He said without the slightest hestitation…” Mike Boynton. He’ll knock it out of the ball park in his interview. You’ll see.”

So when I watched this presser four years ago as Mike Boynton accepted the head coaching job…I must admit I wondered where he’d have the O State program four years down the road.

Where he has them is in the NCAA Tournament with the presumptive National Player of the Year with a chance to be a No. 3 seed depending on how O State plays in the Big 12 Tournament this week in Kansas City.

On Saturday without both Cade Cunningham and Issac Likekele… Mike Boynton’s Cowboys rode sophmores Avery Anderson and Kaleb Boone to an improbable 85-80 road win over ranked West Virginia.

Avery Anderson led all scorers with 31 points and is in my estimation the most improved player in the Big 12 this basketball season. Second on that list might very well be his teammate Kaleb Boone from Tulsa.

Back when Billy Donovan left the Thunder this summer…I wrote a piece somewhere here on my blog on how Sam Presti should interview Mike Boynton for the head coaching job. I didn’t just come out and say he should be the next Thunder coach, but at the least I thought Presti should just interview Mike Boynton if at nothing else as a future possibile candidate down the road.

Boynton is an old school former point guard who played four seasons at South Carolina on a Gamecocks’ team which made the NCAA Tournament his senior year.

Before landing the O State head coaching job.. he was an assistant at six different stops. Mike Boynton earned the opportunity to get this job and will now start to become a national name in the college coaching ranks.

It’s the 2nd Rule of Coaching with Mike Boynton all the way: ‘You coach thru your unique personality, character, and passion.’ Be who you are.

His teams never quit and they grind no matter what the situation. You’ll never see a Mike Boynton team lay down and quit.

And that is exactly what we saw in Morgantown today as with only nine players dressed to play and on a brutal stretch of three games in seven days all against ranked teams…Mike Boynton’s team without Cade Cunningham collectively said– ” No big deal,” and won a game in one of the toughest venues in college basketball.

Congrats to Coach Boynton and his team from fighting back from a 1-3 start in Big 12 play to become one of the teams every basketball scribe in America is going to be following heading into March Madness.

Sam Presti— you should have interviewed Mike Boynton.

I can’t wait to watch.

March Madness, the NHL heating up, the Masters, MLB to start on March 29th, the OKC AAA Dodgers to start a month later, fishing….I’ll be okay. I have multiple strategies in play.

You know…you look at these Poku prospect highlights and you know what you don’t see much of… talented black players. Evidently not many talented black players in the Greek B League.

This is how I looked as the starting two guard on my 9th grade Herbert Hoover basketball team because they were no talented black players to beat out for a starting spot.

We went and played Capitol Hills’ 9th grade team over there and they had this 6′ 6″ black guard named Winfred Boynes who blocked three of my shots in that game. Winfred would later in life become the Oklahoma City High School Player of the Year and earn a scholarship at a West coast school. I think he even got drafted.

But right then and there even though I played a season of JV basketball at fully integrated John Marshall—I knew that me being a combo third baseman-left fielder who could hit was going to be my basketball future at John Marshall.

So as I ponder the Presti Poku experiment in the more than fully integrated NBA…I wonder how this Poku experiment will turn out for Sam Presti two to three years from now.

The Thunder announced of course as the G League is about over that The Poku has to come back and play for the Thunder the second half of the season. He has to come back—that’s a team policy. His stats in 13 G League games were …25.2 mpg, 7.9 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 4 apg, and 1.1 blkpg. You can’t in the G League trade Poku for Jalen Green. They won’t let you do that even though my buddy OKC Jim on the Daily Thunder messageboard is hoping that’s something Presti could do.

BTW…OKC Jim > Justin My Red-Haired Stepchild. Just saying. That was somewhat escoteric so don’t try and figure it out.

This probably means since Poku got 17 minutes a game before he was exiled to the G League that one of my favorite Thunder players Mikey Muscala or Kenrich Willaims is about to be benched or traded.

But here’s what I would say again in regards to Poku…there is something adorable in watching him play basketball even with that low trajectory shot of his which Winfred Boynes would hve blocked five times a game.

The thing is you can’t take your eyes off him even when he’s playing like a complete trainwreck. There is something about him which makes you want to adopt him.

If I were Sam Presti I would at this point try and turn Poku into the Serbian version of Ben Simmons and not Tony Kukoc. His skill set minus shooting a basketball isn’t horrible and there’s that reach which is going set some sort of metric record for defensive pass deflections if he stays in the fully integrated NBA.

I wish Poku well and let’s get March Madness rolling.

Mike Holder will forever be known as the athletic director who connected T Boone Pickens’ money into upgrading athletic facilities across the spectrum on the Oklahoma State University campus.

He never would have become athletic director at that time to replace the very capable Harry Birdwell if Boone hadn’t made it a stipulation in his original donation to the university that the money wouldn’t come unless Mike Holder was his man.

I will write this about Mike Holder first—during his sixteen year tenure as O State’s AD his job rating in overhauling facilities is an A+++. In fact– I would say I wish we had a governor in our state as adept at overhauling state infrastructure as Mike Holder has been as the AD in Stillwater.

During Holder’s tenure the university not only built T Boone Pickens Stadium, but built the Sherman Smith Indoor Facilty. Then there was the Karsten Creek golf course which became the facility for the golf team. Then the new tennis and soccer facilities. And now as Holder is stepping down…the completion of O State’s state of the art baseball facility.

It was MAPS Stillwater. Smart guy.

While MAPS was and is still going on in downtown Oklahoma City…what Mike Holder has been a part in rebuilding and modernizing O State athletic facilities has been nothing less of phenomenal.

Walk the campus sometime if you doubt me.

He brought on Mike Gundy…which in the beginning was a good thing. In fact..Holder, Boone, and Mullet King won a Big 12 championship in 2011 with a team in which to this day is easily the best O State football team I’ve ever seen from the prism of being an OU fan. That wouldn’t have happened without Mike Holder.

Holder brought on Josh Holliday to restore the baseball program. I actually met Josh Holliday on one of my flights back from Denver. Nice guy. I meet a lot of interesting people on those flights back from Denver…just saying.

Holder had to fire Sean Sutton…which had to be done. He had to work around the Eddie Sutton situation at the end. I didn’t even mention the expansion of Gallagher Iba because in reality I wish they hadn’t done it. They ruined a historic basketball gym. I never would have expanded GI Arena beyond 8,500 seats…. but that’s just me. I love history.

As an OU fan that was my favorite basketball venue until they did the expansion.

The O State basketball program under Holder has not been smooth or successful. Since the time Eddie Sutton stepped down…which was around sixteen years ago… O State before this season made the NCAA Tournament field a total of two times and won ONE March Madness game….as in one.

Holder was responsible for the Travis Ford ten year contract which was a fiasco. Ford’s teams made the NCAA Tournament field one time with the Byron Eaton group and never made the field with Marcus Smart’s teams.

To Holder’s credit he did hire Brad Underwood, but then didn’t keep him because he was too cheap to pay the going rate for mens basketball coaches. Of course… Underwood now coaches a top ten Fighting Illini team at Illinois.

But I do give Holder credit for hiring Mike Boynton…which I think will prove to be a solid hire. Not a home run hire, but a solid hire. Bill Self would have been the home run hire.

My major criticism of Holder would be he didn’t keep the Mullet King in check in the years which followed the 2011 football team. The football program became somewhat of a joke with all the theatrics of Mike Gundy playing Boone with the job offers at Tennessee and Arkansas.

You never ever once saw this with Bob Stoops and Joe C. Joe C would have fired Bob Stoops if that had been the case. Mike Holder’s enabling and mishandling of the Mullet King is the one big red mark I give Mike Holder on his final report card….and I think Mike Holder knows he should have handled Gundy differently in retrospect. I’m sure he and the recently departed Burns Hargis both have regrets on that one.

Otherwise—I give Mike Holder A’s across the board as a visionary who helped his alma mater step forward into the future of overall athletic excellence in Stillwater.

School of Rock Students Perform “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen – YouTube

O State losing at Baylor was not a shock. Nor was OU losing its fourth straight—this time to Texas in another close loss. Then—of course the Thunder…the team which should be losing won at San Antonio.

Typical… Oklahoma bullshit.

As far as OU’s swoon…I have my thoughts on how the Sooners went from one of the hottest teams in the country to a team now headed to the Big 12 Tournament as the 7th seed. This means the Sooners in a ten day period played themselves out of a Regional No. 2 seed and in all probability depending on how they play in Kansas City… will be either a sixth or seventh seed in March Madness.

I have my thoughts on this. But this isn’t the appropriate time to vent on Senior Night. Coach Kruger is too nice…I’ll just leave it there for the moment. He’s an extremely nice man.

I have no idea what the Thunder are doing at this point. Maybe Poku has a younger brother playing in the Greek B League and Presti’s headed that way again. Who knows?

I love these kids at the School of Rock.

It’s storming out in Deer Creek.

Have a nice Friday.

(1) Ferris Bueller Ending Credits – YouTube

Alex Ovechkin Highlights 2018 Stanley Cup MVP – YouTube

All-time my favorite hockey player of all-time is the one from Parry Sound, Ontario…one Bobby Orr. His greatness cannot be debated—he changed the change of hockey and ruled it until his knees betrayed him.

Second…would the other immortal Boston Bruin defenseman…Raymond Bourque– who won his Cup with the Colorado Avalanche at the end of his career.

Third for me would either be Super Mario or Mark Messier. I like players who are tough and are five skill team players…that’s why Gretzky doesn’t make my list until maybe No. 7.

Five team hockey skills are…skating, checking, fighting, passing, and then shooting the puck.

I have to admit I’ve loved Ovechkin, but I really shot him to the top of my current list when he was big enough as a player to change his game in 2018 and become a total team hockey player. A hockey player who led by example to everyone on his team.

So when I watch the Bruins play the Caps nowadays…I’m actually kinda rooting for Alex if that makes any sense.

Caps at the Bruins on Friday night. It should be great.