A Great Match

So it looks like John Calipari is taking the money (surprise!) and going to Kentucky. This should be interesting folks. Will he take his recruits? It looks like Memphis's top two recruits, wait actually the country's top two recruits, John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, will follow Calipari out the door. And there's a good chance they follow him to Kentucky. What a great job by Kentucky. Or at least it will be a great job until they are under NCAA investigations for recruiting violations within three years.

One thing we can say for sure about Calipari is that he is a tremendous recruiter.. CDR talks about it with the NY Times to share a little insight to why he likes the greasy haired yeller.

This all works for me as I already dislike Calipari and Kentucky basketball. So why not put them all together?

Elite Hate?

I am a huge college basketball fan. I understand that it really isn't for everyone. Even people who love sports, and love basketball, for some reason may not have the patience to watch a college game because in their mind it isn't as high quality as the pro game. Two main factors - a longer shot clock and a game more controlled by coaches rather than stars - are probably why the college game is a more strategic and perhaps "slow" game of basketball. For myself, these are reasons why I probably like it better. We see more than just isolation plays for superstars out of your typical college hoops team.

Regardless of everything above, mostly every sports fan loves the NCAA tournament. The lure of filling out a bracket as well as the appealing format of the tournament to crown a champion really appeals to just about everyone. So although the regular season doesn't get a lot of love from the sports media, the spotlight does turn to college hoops come March Madness time.

This year, I have already heard and read a lot of complaining about the games being boring. This is fucking bullshit. Sure, there have been more blowouts than usual, and not as many big upsets. But do people realize this isn't a scripted show? It's totally fine to complain when an episode of Lost is disappointing or this week's Three and a Half Men sucked, but fuck you for expecting every basketball game to be down to the wire. This is sports. We don't know who is going to win and we can't control if the games are close so either accept that and enjoy the dominating team's brilliant performance or shut the fuck up and change the channel.

Sorry about that. Lets quickly preview this weekend's games:

Missouri vs. UConn: Out of the four games this weekend, this is the one I am most certain about the outcome (not that this means much). A.J. Price has averaged 20 points, 5 boards and 6 assists in this tournament thus far and if not for how great Blake Griffin has been he would be the favorite for tourney MVP. I think he figures out Missouri's pressure. Prediction: UConn

Villanova vs. Pitt: Pitt is just of one of those teams in the past that has struggled in early games when we expect them to dominate but then will surprise us by crushing someone good. Like today, when they make Scottie Reynolds turn the ball over. Prediction: Pitt

Louisville vs. Michigan St.: The Spartans really BigTenified that game last night vs. Kansas. Nobody wanted to hit shots until the end of the game. Louisville has looked unstoppable, but really who have they played? They have had a really lucky draw in the tournament thus far, and in the Big East tournament as well. Prediction: Michigan St.

UNC vs. Oklahoma: Oh boy it's Griffin vs. Psycho T. Something tells me we will hear a lot about that matchup. Unfortunately for Oklahoma, the rest of their team is nowhere near as good as the rest of UNC and Ty Lawson is obviously on a mission. What has really been helpful for the Tar Heels has been Danny Green's play of late. Prediction: UNC

I look forward to seeing how wrong I was.

Who Is Mike Taylor?

So I was at the Knicks vs. Clippers game here at the Garden on Wednesday night. It was everything you would expect - tons of scoring, absolutely no defense, stupid decisions, Al Harrington hanging on the rim (I swear he was doing it to avoid landing on someone, really), Mike Dunleavy calling time outs at inappropriate points, and of course a Knick collapse which ultimately cost them the game (Clips won 140-135 in OT). The game did contain one thing I did not expect, and that was a player named Mike Taylor.

Image courtesy Getty Images

Since I'm starting a new blog here, let me just back up for a minute. I, being a lifelong New Yorker, am I lifelong Knick fan. I have a friend who went to school out west and he is a Clippers fan, so we have gone to this Knicks/Clippers game the last couple years. In recent years these teams have been pretty dreadful, the exception being 2006 when the Clippers, led by Elton Brand, made it all the way to the West Semis.

Back to Mike Taylor, this dude totally appeared out of nowhere to drop 35 on the Knicks. It was really one of the most dominating performances I had ever seen in person. In fact, it was the most points scored by a rookie at the Garden since AI did it in '96. Of course take into account that the Knicks play virtually no defense and Chris Duhon is quite slow, but nonetheless Taylor was hitting shots from all over the floor and seemed to be taking it to the hole at will. It appeared that he was literally running circles around the Knicks, which you can see here at about 1:57 in.

It seems that Taylor was actually the first player drafted directly from the NBDL into the NBA. SLAM online had a great profile on Taylor yesterday which gives us an idea of where he's been in recent years. Basically he had three run ins with the law while at Iowa State, including stealing a bottle of cold medicine from a convenience store. Hope that cold was worth it Mike, you could have been great in college. I do hope to see him play again, although that could be tough since the Clippers (luckily) are not on TV too much.

Day One

So I'm going to try this blog thing I guess. Look here for my thoughts on sports, comics, music, and whatever other thing pops into my brain.