LucasCoug here with some ramblings on this NIT Tuesday! Many of you are probably wondering why the guy who has said he doesn’t give a rip about the NIT, not once but twice, back to write about it for a third time? Well the answer is simple, there is still basketball to write about. While I still hold true to my original statement that I would rather lose an NCAA Tournament Play-In Game than win the NIT, the past two weeks have been fun! I will never argue with the addiitional exposure and practice this allows our team to have. If you want more of my thoughts on the NIT and other things, Read More!
The Cougs left Pullman bright and early Saturday morning and landed in Newark around 4:00 PM EST. I was able to grab the above image off Coach Bone’s Twitter page, as the official athletics website of the school has been bogarting their images for the last three or four years. You can view them just fine, but can no longer save them to your computer, which to me is quite a bummer. I amassed quite the collection of WSU Football pictures from the main site back in the day. But I regress.
The Cougs held practices Sunday and Monday at Columbia University and will have a one hour practice this morning at Madison Square Garden. Tipoff for tonight’s semi-final action with Wichita State is set for 4:00 PST on ESPN 2, and the winner will face either Colorado or Alabama, who go at it after the completion of our game.
Coach Bone and Klay Thompson attended the NIT presser yesterday and here is some video footage of that courtesy of the website I bashed above.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTbvWkCzP5U&w=425&h=350] Wichita State is being installed as a 2.5 favorite for the game. I am not going to pretend like I know a whole lot about Wichita State, so I won’t comment on that, but here is what I can tell you without doing any form of research:- They’re 27-8
- Their mascot is the Shocker
- Wichita, hey that’s in Kansas, right?
- Their two most prominent alumni are Eric Wedge and Xavier McDaniel
- They play in the Missouri Valley Conference
Like I said above, I hardly know a thing about this year’s Shockers. Just like I didn’t read up on Long Beach State, Oklahoma State or Northwestern. But from what I do know about our Cougars is enough to make a prediction on tonight’s game. Klay has shined brightly on the big stage this season (Gonzaga, Diamond Head Classic, at UW, at Arizona, at UCLA, at the Pac 10 Tournament) and his run will continue this week on the grandest basketball court in the World. The Cougs are an impressive 16-2 when scoring more than 75 points, Cougs 79 – Shockers 72
I don’t have a clue how we would match-up with either Colorado or Alabama.
Moving on.
Yesterday, Bob Condotta linked to an article from Broadcast & Cable regarding a new partnership between the Pac 12 Conference and the FX Network. FX hasn’t aired a sporting event since 2006, but the new partnership is also with the Big XII and Conference USA, but will air 13 games in 13 weeks this year. While this isn’t the new Pac 12 TV Deal we’ve all been waiting on, you can never argue with an additional layer of exposure!
Our good friend Ted Miller over at ESPN (sorry about your Spiders, Ted) has been previewing the upcoming Pac 12 season and is taking a look at the talent teams have returning. Yesterday he took a look at which teams are secure at the Backup QB spot. On Sunday he also previewed Defensive Three Headed Monsters, and guess who isn’t near the bottom of that list? Last Friday he previewed Offensive Three Headed Monsters.
Honestly, it’s been years since I can remember anything about us not in the cellar. It’s good to see the talent we are accumulating and beginning to develop isn’t going unnoticed on the national landscape.
In other interesting news, UW has announced back-up Center Mykenna Ikehara and DE Kalani Aldrich have retired due to knee “injuries”. They will remain at Washington on full-academic scholarship. Considering I never heard of either of these players until today, and knowing the Sark has oversigned his last two classes by a total of three, a red flag definitely popped up. So I began browsing over at www.collegeinjuryreport.com (which is the site Miller uses when compiling his blog’s weekly injury report) and found it interesting neither of the recently retired were listed as injured for a single game last season.
While oversigning isn’t currently “illegal” per the NCAA, it is wildly slimy. While the UW has had players get kicked of the team, transfer, or be grade casualties, this is an easy way for Sark to trim the fat on his 85 scholarship limit. The last time Bob Condotta looked at the “scholarship math” for the Dawgs a little over a month ago, guess how many players they had listed?
Yep, 87!
“How Convenient…”
Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of breaking it down and giving certain instances whereoversigning has drastically altered young men’s lives. ESPN’s Outside the Lines also did a nice feature on this deceiving tactic.
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That is all I have for you. Have a Cougtastic Day!
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