rawaction

I know all that, it doesn't mean it's a good financial decision right now. He's played 1 year. It's the largest extension given to a player with less than 2 years of service. His OPS was down 100 points after the AS break. No reason to give him that money without seeing if he can do it again.

Nice to see Armon Bassett play well. 5-6 from three point range and finished with 17. I really like Ellis' game. 16-1 (5-0 Big 10). UConn should be an interesting matchup next week. After losing to Providence, they pounded Marquette today. Hard not to like Ellis' game. I was telling a buddy of mine, he would be huge come conference season. The offense is a lot better when he is controlling the tempo. He's the best ballhandler and passer on the team. He can see over the defense at 6'5". He's quick. He creates a matchup problem due to size and the fact he is a lefty. IU should destroy zone teams. When Ellis gets into the lane, he should have either corner for a 3 (as you saw on the play to Bassett) or a dump down to DJ (which you saw on the dunk). Bigger teams will obviously be more trouble.

Rockies would be stupid to do this now. Why not wait 2 years, when he's arbitration eligible? They are giving him a raise and don't need to at this point.

That might have been the best game IU has played all season. Penn St. gave everything they had. They were at one point 8-12 from 3, and over 50% from the field, with most of the shots closely contested. But IU turned a solid defensive effort to a great one at the 11 minute mark, figured out the 2-3 zone, and won going away. Sampson went no nonsense in the 2nd half, and stayed with the same 5 all half. Gordon stayed under control for a change and Jamarcus Ellis and Eric Gordon were great defensively on Cornley and Battle, respectively.

You would think Hendry and MacPhail could work out a deal if Brian Roberts is really what Hendry wants. I'm thinking the Bedard rumors are more "if we can't move him to anyone else...." I think Roberts to the Cubs gets done. It just depends on Bedard. If the Ms give up what the Os want for Bedard, they will make that trade then on to Roberts. If the Ms don't, I think the O's and Cubs would work out something for both players.

My guess is if the Roberts deal doesn't pan out, Hendry will look toward LA to see what the Angels do about 3B. If they can work out a Crede deal (maybe along with Konerko), then I think you will see Hendry move on to Figgins for 2B. The other deal, I'd imagine would be for a pitcher. Burnett is still my hope there, but Blanton is a possibility if he doesn't cost too much.

Positives are if there are 2 from Baltimore worth offering 7 players for, the Cubs are really after both Roberts and Bedard. And if there were 7 players involved, one was likely NOT Rich Hill. It would be really nice if this would get done. At this point, there's probably no turning back as far as Hendry is concerned. This may be a situation where if something doesn't work, Hendry may just stick with what he has and look to make a move at the deadline.

My post on page 66 of this thread. One you (illiniguy) clearly read, because you took exception to it and responded to it by naming about 10 other teams you thought were better (I'd like to point out that of those teams Xavier, Dayton, Butler, and Texas A&M all lost to non-ranked teams). So right there, I named two 1-loss teams that I think are better than IU, and Georgetown was a 1-loss team when I posted that. How convenient of you to forget that. And again, I have repeatedly called UCLA the best team in the nation in this thread. My bad, I mix a lot of you IU fans up. If Minn and Illinois shoot free throws like most girls junior high teams you lose twice this past week. Teams start to lose on the road in conference. And if IU doesn't throw the ball away like middle school girls..... IU played a lot less like they have shown they can than Illinois and Minnesota.

My post on page 66 of this thread. One you (illiniguy) clearly read, because you took exception to it and responded to it by naming about 10 other teams you thought were better (I'd like to point out that of those teams Xavier, Dayton, Butler, and Texas A&M all lost to non-ranked teams). So right there, I named two 1-loss teams that I think are better than IU, and Georgetown was a 1-loss team when I posted that. How convenient of you to forget that. And again, I have repeatedly called UCLA the best team in the nation in this thread.

Let's turn Minnesota's badness into goodness too!! ? I read Raw's post to say IU should have won by more, but didn't, and that is concerning. No? I read it as saying normally IU should win the game by 20 points, but he's not counting Minnesota as having a brutal game as well. Of course you did. Everything I post is clearly uplifting IU and putting down every other team in the nation. Why the hell do I have to explain myself for every post in this thread?

If he can develop a decent splitter he may be able to miss some bats. Here's to hoping it happens. And get some more groundballs.

The big thing that would worry me if I was an IU fan is you have a one year window with this team. Gordon and White are gone after this, plus I think you are going to get some more penalties from Sampson's calls. You have a lot of bad games. You have one of these in the tournament at all and you are done. Illinois and Minnesota shouldn't be allowed in the same gym with you because of your talent, but you are letting those type teams hang around you. It's a one-year window which is disappointing, but that's the zeitgeist now. I doubt Ohio State is terribly unhappy about their one-year window last year. Wish there was at least a two-year window, oh well. I have no idea how the penalties will work, though I don't think they'll be debilitating. IU needs to add a JUCO big man as they're going to struggle inside next year, but their perimeter attack will be very, very good. On Minnesota, any game involving IU and the barn will be tough. Seriously, most IU fans are more than happy to get out of there with any possible win. That place has been a house of horrors. Illinois-Indiana is a strange situation, as well. I wish IU had played better in both, but hope they can continue to improve -- their ceiling is still very high. I'm happy with the win, but IU had turnovers in about 40% of their possessions, and shot 60% for all but a 6 minute stretch. Turn the ball over a season average 14 times, and shoot 50% in those other posessions. That's an 18-20 point win and nearly 80 points scored.

Dopirak is 3 years removed from the only season that resembled huge. He was horrible in 2002 and 2003, as well as 2005 and 2006. In 2007, he was mediocre as a 23 year old repeating high A, and horrible in AA. He stinks. I'd like to see you say that to his face! Naw, just kidding. He is a big boy though.

The big thing that would worry me if I was an IU fan is you have a one year window with this team. Gordon and White are gone after this, plus I think you are going to get some more penalties from Sampson's calls. You have a lot of bad games. You have one of these in the tournament at all and you are done. Illinois and Minnesota shouldn't be allowed in the same gym with you because of your talent, but you are letting those type teams hang around you. I understand at Minnesota, them hanging around. But you're right, we should have opened up a can at home vs. Illinois. The next 2 games can put those two to bed though. I know we may have a 1-year window, but my hope is Gordon keeps playing like last night and we still win and his stock drops and he's forced to stay another year, where he scores about 30 per game. Yeah, that's possible. :pig:

FWIW, I was very encouraged by a lot of things last night. -42-26 rebounding advantage. We continue to dominate on the boards. -46% from the field, and that included a streak of 8 straight misses in the 2nd half. Without that slump, we are 22-39 from the field and 9-18 from 3. - When they did throw passes near their teammates, we scored. 18 assists on 22 baskets is by far the best ratio of the season. - The team was +2 in scoring when Gordon was out of the game, and the team came back from a 4-pt deficit with DJ on the bench with 4 fouls. -Defense was fine for the most part. Didn't let a good shooting team get a bunch of open 3s. Really the only thing they did wrong was throw the ball all over the gym.

I would have thought the game against us was your worst of the year. That is two subpar efforts in a row. Even though Indiana won, it has to be a cause for concern with how horrible they looked last night. Neither team deserved to win that game. How can you possible find anything positive, other than the win, from that game if you are Indiana? 26 turnovers, and wild passes and shots left and right. Yeah, I am worried about the 2 bad games in a row. But this is the time to start putting together some good games. Figured the conference would be tougher, but it seems like only DJ is fired up. Got potential 15-point wins with Penn St. and Iowa coming to Bloomington before the game at Madison. I also like that by the Iowa game, it will be their 3rd in a 7 day span. This current IU team needs more gametime together. What they are doing in practice obviously isn't working, they gotta get used to playing together against tough defense.

I picked Lilly, because he's most likely to be under 150 pitches thru 7.

I was obviously joking. If you're too lazy to look back 1 page, I listed UCLA as one of the teams clearly better than IU. I also called them for national champs at the beginning of this thread. That being said, no way Tennessee or UCLA beats IU easily. Tennessee beat a good Vandy team, but they were at home. IU won on the road, despite 26 turnovers and Gordon playing 9 first half minutes, and 20 crappy 2nd half minutes. Apparantly Bassett re-injured himself in the 2nd half too. Not making excuses, but IU clearly played their worse game of the season and still won a road game against a team that had won all of its home games and 12 of 15 games to that point. IU matches up well enough vs. UCLA. UCLA isn't a team that's gonna blow good opponents away because of their style of play. IU can run and score with UT and rebound much better.

The best 1-loss team played the worst game in its school's history and somehow won.

I'll post mine on Saturday. I gotta take out all the guys I had in that stayed in school. I never had Laurinitas going to the Pats.

mind boggling too.

I beg to differ. I don't see anything in his numbers that would scream best player in the nation. His counting stats are down because he only plays less than 28 minutes per game. His rate stats aren't that impressive either. 1.41 Assist/Turnover ratio, only makes 1.41 points per shot along with only shooting 70 percent from the line. His numbers, especially for a point guard, look very ugly against good competition (most of the games he has poor shooting percentages and low assist/turnover ratio). Rose is like Deron Williams was in college. The numbers don't tell the true story as to how valueable he is. Everyone thought WIlliams wasn't nearly as good as any of the three point guards from the ACC that year, Paul, Felton, and Jack. He was, he just played on a team where he didn't need to put up huge numbers. For my money Rose is the best player in college this year and will have the biggest impact on the tournament. Deron never had a A/TO ratio that low in any of his years, and he played around less talent for the first couple years. The closest thing to Deron in college basketball right now is DJ Augustin, except he scores more than Deron did and is a few inches shorter. Deron also played in a more controlled system than Memphis does. Niether Self nor Weber allowed Deron to do the stuff that Cal lets Rose do. Ok? And apparantly he doesn't do it that well, because he still has a mediocre A/TO ratio.

I beg to differ. I don't see anything in his numbers that would scream best player in the nation. His counting stats are down because he only plays less than 28 minutes per game. His rate stats aren't that impressive either. 1.41 Assist/Turnover ratio, only makes 1.41 points per shot along with only shooting 70 percent from the line. His numbers, especially for a point guard, look very ugly against good competition (most of the games he has poor shooting percentages and low assist/turnover ratio). Rose is like Deron Williams was in college. The numbers don't tell the true story as to how valueable he is. Everyone thought WIlliams wasn't nearly as good as any of the three point guards from the ACC that year, Paul, Felton, and Jack. He was, he just played on a team where he didn't need to put up huge numbers. For my money Rose is the best player in college this year and will have the biggest impact on the tournament. Deron never had a A/TO ratio that low in any of his years, and he played around less talent for the first couple years. The closest thing to Deron in college basketball right now is DJ Augustin, except he scores more than Deron did and is a few inches shorter.

I beg to differ. You shouldn't. He may be the #1 pick this coming year, but that doesn't make him the best player now.

My breakout players (in no order): Delmon Young Ian Kinsler Stephen Drew Alex Gordon Wily Mo Pena Pat Neshek JR Towles Billy Butler Ryan Garko Howie Kendrick My players who will RE-breakout after subpar seasons (in no order): Dontrelle Willis Ryan Zimmerman Rafael Furcal Felipe Lopez Hank Blalock (on here for health) Felix Hernandez Jeremy Bonderman Julio Lugo Jermaine Dye Francisco Liriano (again, injury)