Happy Thursday Coug fans, as we wake up and get rolling after that heartbreaker of a loss last night to the hated Zags. Coming from a guy who had watched, oh, about 1 minute and 30 seconds or so of college hoops thus far in 2012, even I tuned in late to watch the Cougs come up just short against a quality opponent. It was great that they kept fighting back when it looked like the Zags were putting this thing away, and with a furious final few minutes they actually tied it up! But it wasn't to be.
I'll leave the breakdowns and such to those who watch and know college hoops to a much higher degree than myself (Sutra, Huddy and Longball are your guys for all that stuff), but I do tip the hat towards Ken Bone's crew for scrapping and clawing in this one. And now, on to the morning links…..
CougCenter has a recap of the wild final few minutes of the game, courtesy of Craig Powers. Check it out here. Some pretty good comments in the article as well, including some questioning the offensive foul called on DeVonte Lacy off the screen that was a big one.
Christian Caple has a bunch of hoop links, including post-game quotes here and links to pretty much everything else here.
And that's enough of hoops for me for one morning (phew!).
Moving on, I don't know if many of you listen to Colin Cowherd at all? I know the guy is polarizing, and he isn't exactly a Coug "lover". I once heard him call WSU basically a "rest stop with a college", so you know he doesn't exactly think a whole lot of Pullman, WA! But personally I do like Cowherd's take on some things, in that he's pretty good at providing the view from 10,000 feet on a lot of issues. So often we are far too close to see things for what they are as fans, but I like his perspective here and there.
Anyway, yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to hear Drew Bledsoe join his show, which you can listen to here via Cowherd's podcast. It's a good 8-minute listen, and I encourage you to give it a go. Bledsoe shed some really good light on the rookie QB's and the how-and-why they are so successful right away these days compared to the "good 'ol days". Not only is it that the film study is so much more advanced today with the sophistication of the technology, but Bledsoe also makes a great point on how kids are "wired" today vs. the way things used to be back in the day.
Chad Eaton, Drew Bledsoe and Lew Bush (courtesy Bledsoe's Twitter account)
Everyone jokes we are an "ADHD" society, where we want tons of information at our fingertips, we want it condensed in easy-to-digest chunks of data, and we want it NOW! But Bledsoe makes a great point on how the hardest part of playing QB is processing a lot of information, quickly. You think about everything a QB has to do each and every play, starting from calling the play and setting up the protections at the line of scrimmage to reading the defense and deciding quickly on what to do. But you think about all the information we see today, all the options with TV, smart phones, laptops/tablets, it just goes on and on with how much we all see and process in a typical day. Maybe young QB's are making more of an impact more than ever today because their brains are just born and raised to handle so much, so fast, and be able to function in those situations??
And this crop of young QB's in the NFL today, it's just remarkable. Andrew Luck, RGIII, Ryan Tannehill, and Brandon Weeden are all making an impact in the league. And of course, our own Russell Wilson is just playing at another level in the last 5 games or so, and despite the hype on the #1 and #2 draft picks, on the season Wilson has more TD passes than Luck or RGIII.
But it's not just the 2012 draft class that has the NFL abuzz. Mike Sando at ESPN broke down all the starting QB's drafted since 2010, and it's an impressive list to say the least. Well, OK, maybe not so impressive towards the bottom of the list (Ryan Lindley and John Skelton, eh?). But basically half the NFL has started a QB drafted since 2010, and it's just amazing to see how the top half of these QB's are doing.
That's about it for this morning. All for now, and of course, GO COUGS!
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