mul21

I think there's some reasonable expectation that Smyly will implode or get hurt at some point and there's nota lot to lean on right now as backup until Hendricks proves he's healthy/fixed and that's a dubious proposition.

Does Cody Heuer and a fixed Hendricks satisfy those "adds" for you or are you talking about additions beyond that?

This seems like a win/win. I'm a fan.

It's not going to be through there until like 8 EDT and the Reds play at 3 EDT tomorrow in Philly. I'd be surprised if they try to play at all today.

Having actual ML players at all the positions on the field probably has something to do with that. Even Hosmer and Wisdom both had important defensive plays in spite of lackluster days at the plate.

I'm prepared for this to be the end result of the game tomorrow. Prove me wrong jackasses!

Passan estimated 5 and 10 for those years and 20 for the FA year buyout, which seems reasonable to me if not a tad light on the arb years.

I can't see Social and I've been here since 2004 so an add to the old timey group would be appreciated.

27 brackets in 2 groups I'm in and 1 person has 1 team in the Final Four.

That's a dishonest characterization of Mervis. He likely would have been their 6th pick in the shortened Covid draft so he's not some unheard of dude who came out of nowhere. He did get a lot of helium last year because of how he progressed through 3 levels with progressively better numbers. He's not going to be Goldschmidt but he's not LaHair either. I 100% admit I know absolutely nothing about him that I didn't learn in the last five minutes, so maybe he's awesome, but "he would have been a 6th round pick" isn't a ringing endorsement. He was a not super athletic 2 way player at Duke who was destined for 1B, so regardless of skill level (unless he had like 70 hit tool or power) he wasn't going to be a guy who got hype out of college. He was the 1st call the Cubs made after the draft was over. I'm not trying to sell him here, but there's reason to not just poo poo his prospect status. I can't disagree with the rest of your assessment though. The Rickettses are trash top to bottom.

That's a dishonest characterization of Mervis. He likely would have been their 6th pick in the shortened Covid draft so he's not some unheard of dude who came out of nowhere. He did get a lot of helium last year because of how he progressed through 3 levels with progressively better numbers. He's not going to be Goldschmidt but he's not LaHair either.

This is probably about right. It seems like some coaches recruit well enough to have an all superstar team that can succeed without much coaching and perhaps some other coaches are just tactically better and can coach an average team to more wins. It's not like they have much time to prepare for the games though. I think there's also certain things that play up in the tournament too. MSU for example is almost always a great rebounding team and I can't count how many games I've watched where just basic blocking out wins the game because one team is doing it well and the other isn't. I definitely buy into the clutch factor at the end of games too. Some teams are just better prepared for the chaos in the last 2 minutes and protect the ball and hit free throws. The "do what you're good at" factor is important too. A ton of games I've watched turn because teams stopped doing what they were succeeding at or because a guy or two decided it was their turn to shoot (see: Illinois and Indiana chucking 3s when they weren't going in instead of continuing to go to the rim).

Yeah I was surprised to see him as a lock with Madrigal a begrudgingly added final IF. I would have guessed the other way around. I try not to pay much attention to Spring Training for whatever reason so maybe McKinstry is raking Fake edit: Oh, no he's 2-29 with a .275 OPS after having a somewhat extended look last year with a .633 OPS. Versatility is nice but the dude has shown nothing with the bat. If he's a lock we're gonna have some issues with depth this year. I think the main thing here is Madrigal has options and McKinstry doesn't so you might as well see what you have for a month before you cut bait and after what we've seen in the majors from Madrigal since he got to the Cubs, I don't really have an issue with going that route.

I’ll give him a pass on this year. Between all the transfers out and back in this team never jelled and was a mishmash of parts that didn’t fit together. I feel like Goode missing half the season really affected their ability to build a successful offense. Add in Clark leaving and he did a pretty decent job of making chicken salad out of chicken horsefeathers. I’ll be a lot more skeptical if there are a bunch of transfers this offseason.

On script so far. I hate them. They can jettison Mayer to the Moon right now, if I were Underwood I'd bury him on the bench. Yeah, the absolute garbage 3s have been driving me nuts for a month. This is the dumbest Illinois team since the heyday of the John Groce era.

On script so far. I hate them.

For me, it's the certainty with which he speaks on the 180 opposite viewpoints from people who get paid to do this for a living and the follow up dismissiveness when someone questions his thought process. Plus the weird flow of the writing.

I Suzukid my right oblique last week lifting. Can confirm it sucks. A lot.

He's been placed on indefinite suspension for now. I suspect he'll never umpire another college game again.

I was coming to post the same thing. Not sure I’ve ever seen one that intentionally awful.

If the Illini who showed up for 20 minutes vs. Purdue or 20 minutes vs. Northwestern could somehow appear for most of the game vs. Penn State, they'll roll over the Nittany Lions. Of course, that has not happened all season, no real reason to think it'll happen Thursday. It'll be interesting to see how Underwood tries to limit Pickett. I noticed towards the end of the game at Penn State Pickett had trouble shooting over Melendez with his long arms. I'd try going at Pickett with Melendez and Rogers, I'd also try going after him on the offensive end, take him inside, post him, he's only 6'2'', try to get him foul trouble. I'd avoid putting Rogers on him. They got burned on a couple threes against Purdue the other night because he was sagging off his guy too much and got screened out of an opportunity to challenge an open three because he was just sloppy about his positioning. A couple of those early and Pickett gets hot and it'll be the last matchup all over again.

There was some wonky stuff called on both sides, though none more blatant than that goaltend. I'm sure you can point to several " if that didn't happen then..." calls in a double OT game. That is true, but the problem is it wasn't just one goaltend. There was the blatant basket interference not called on Dickinson, and then an incorrect goaltend called on Hawkins. Within a short period, that was a 4 point swing just on missed goaltending calls alone. In general though, college officiating seems really bad. Refs anticipate or hunt for calls at certain times, them completely ignore them at other times. The charge on Shannon at the very beginning of the game was clearly not a charge, but that ref was just waiting to call it. Then later in the game there was a really weak moving screen called on Michigan that might have been a foul by the letter of the rules but isn't called 90% of the time. And don't get me started on the flop rule - That just needs to go entirely because it is nearly impossible to get right. Yeah, they aren't going to get everything right, but they sure do get a lot wrong. I hate that flop rule so much. It has led to soooooo much more contact in the post in particular because defensive guys are afraid to get called for a flop if they go down when a guy like Dickinson jabs an elbow in their chest. He finally got called for it late in the game last night and I thought Juwan Howard was going to cry when it happened, never mind that he had gotten away with a similar move at least a half dozen times before that and not been called. I 100% agree on the poor officiating and I think it's definitely been worse this year than in recent history. I thought Illinois got the worst of it last night but they were certainly beneficiaries of some bad calls too. There were at least 2 pretty obvious out of bounds calls that went against UI when it should have been their ball on top of the 2 bad goal tend issues. I'm not sure what you do to make it better though. These guys are part timers who work across multiple conferences and don't have any real oversight in any organized fashion.

Every board has its running jokes, please explain this one to the new guy. You're probably going to have to provide pillow gifts and a nacho cheese dispenser to get to the bottom of this one. For real, though, I'll leave it to someone with much better writing and summarization skills than I have to tell the tale. He's just another one of us weirdos who was just a little too weird and was sent packing for his transgressions.

The inconsistency is infuriating. See my comment above about freshman guards.

How the hell did that happen in the 80s?? The early to mid 80s were an offensive feast in the NBA. That Nuggets team averaged 123 a game and I remember going to a Bulls game when Jordan was out with his broken ankle and there was some sort of giveaway if they got to 120 pts.