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It's a great story, but I really doubt KU s gonna start playing games against other name programs unless it's part of a tournament, odds are that will turn into another cupcake game at home. Great entertainment. And that's the issue. Kansas already has a certain number of slots for their name schools on their schedule. They play in many tournaments, so there is already limited room. Scheduling Missouri would take one slot away from that limited room. They aren't going to give up a cupcake to schedule Missouri every year because the home revenue is just too much to pass up. Is the rivalry so good that it takes them away from playing teams like Ohio State this year? Apparently for Kansas it isn't. I support Kansas in this even though I've been on the other side of the fence this year. The Kentucky-Indiana series is in jeopardy because Kentucky has too many non-conference rivalries to get the correct number of home games per year, and if they have to get rid of one the Indiana one might be the one that is axed. It's been speculated that Indiana's win this year might have saved the series for now.

Singler can shoot, but doesn't have the build, speed, or agility that Butler does. You are cherry-picking on the basis of a flawed argument. Teams regularly draft and trade for players based on potential. That's the whole point of picks like Jan Vesely (6th pick in 2011 draft), for example. The point is that if the Lakers put a high value on Butler, they easily could have traded into the back of the first round and gotten him. They chose not to. What's changed since then? Late first round picks are almost worthless in trades. It's not rare for them to simply be sold so teams don't have to pay that rookie a guaranteed deal. Butler would add a tiny amount of value into that deal, but he's basically a throw in. And Chicago's picks over the next few years are pretty worthless as well in trade talks since they're likely going to continue picking near the bottom. The Charlotte pick is the only one of real value. It's not like the trade would be built around Butler and I am not saying he is going to even be a regular starter. I am talking about a guy who gives you 15-20 quality minutes. That has value, albeit not a lot...which is why Noah or Deng would be the centerpiece along with a no. 1 pick. You are correct about the Charlotte pick, and it is the one I was referring to. It has a very good shot at being the first pick in the draft. It might, but it won't get that much value because it is at least top 8 protected until 2016. And who knows what Charlotte's roster will look like by then? It could just as easily be a pick somewhere between 10 and 20. It's valuable because the pick has a chance to be really good, but that's only a chance and even if it is that's really far off. The problem for the Bulls is they don't fit the Lakers biggest needs. If they're willing to give up Noah and Deng, the Lakers might listen. If not, the Lakers can find a package that probably fits their needs better.

Singler can shoot, but doesn't have the build, speed, or agility that Butler does. You are cherry-picking on the basis of a flawed argument. Teams regularly draft and trade for players based on potential. That's the whole point of picks like Jan Vesely (6th pick in 2011 draft), for example. The point is that if the Lakers put a high value on Butler, they easily could have traded into the back of the first round and gotten him. They chose not to. What's changed since then? Late first round picks are almost worthless in trades. It's not rare for them to simply be sold so teams don't have to pay that rookie a guaranteed deal. Butler would add a tiny amount of value into that deal, but he's basically a throw in. And Chicago's picks over the next few years are pretty worthless as well in trade talks since they're likely going to continue picking near the bottom. The Charlotte pick is the only one of real value.

Back on topic.

I'd guess Carpenter. I would too. My best 5 guesses would be. 1. Carpenter 2. Beliveau 3. Dolis 4. Maine 5. Gaub All 5 are replaceable. The Cubs probably would have fought hard to keep their starting pitching options on the 40 man so I doubt it's somebody like Wells or Volstad.

Giving Lake would be awful. I'd be fine with somebody like Logan Watkins, but that's about as high up the prospect list as I'd go. I think you'll be disappointed then. It might not be on a Lake/McNutt level, but the prospect will end up being a lot better than Watkins IMO. There's too much here that will up the precedent just a little bit. Theo's success, the "significant" compensation line, and the fact that the Red Sox have fought this as hard as they have. I'm hoping it's somebody like Carpenter or Dolis, but I'm fearing it's somebody the Cubs would miss more.

OT. Not impressed. only two other times has it ever happened before, both 3OT games that were like 180-170 That must just be regular season. Reggie Miller and Jalen Rose both had 40 points in a playoff game that ended in regulation.

I don't see too many scenarios where Iowa finishes 5th. Purdue's easy schedule and IU-Purdue still playing each other hurts that considerably. Plus Iowa loses the tiebreaker to Purdue and depending on how the top of the conference shakes out maybe to IU as well. As for the strength of the conference, part of that is Iowa playing better now, and part of that is they've probably had the easiest conference schedule in the Big 10. Playing Michigan State, Ohio State, and Michigan only one time each (and avoiding road trips with 2 of those) has helped keep the losses down. Of course it hasn't helped them build much of a tournament resume either.

The explanation I heard was that since Indiana's Big 10 schedule was so frontloaded, they wanted to put another game in just so they wouldn't get rusty. Without the NC Central game IU would have only had 2 games in a 17 day period.

Indiana didn't play well enough and they could have made it closer if they played better, but I don't think too many teams would have won against Iowa tonight. They were really impressive.

Can't believe the kid is a freshman. You can have your pasty white Cody Zeller for FOTY, but I'll take Burke thank you very much. The interesting thing is that this might happen again next year just in reverse. McGary is a lot like Zeller, and Ferrell and Burke are similar as well. Zeller has most of the edges statistically. Burke plays more minutes and gets more assists. Zeller shoots a much better percentage, scores more points, shoots better from the free throw line, blocks more shots, gets more steals, and turns it over less. Burke is asked to do more for his team, but Zeller is the much more efficient player.

Is that the only game they've lost with the starting lineup all playing at the same time? I know it's a really small sample size, just curious. Yes. The Bulls are 4-1 with their original starting lineup. All 5 games were on the road against the Lakers, Warriors, Kings, Clippers, and Pistons.

That's part of it. The other part of it is that the Bulls have had the 2nd easiest strength of schedule in the league (4th easiest when factoring in home/road like Sagarin does). A team like Oklahoma City is 14-5 against teams over .500 and 8-2 against teams under. The Bulls are 8-6 against teams over .500 and 17-1 against teams below .500. BTW SSR you don't have to count them up. If you go the ESPN NBA standings and go to expanded standings, it shows each team's record against over .500 and sub .500 teams. And now please tell me how many of those games were back-to-backs with their best and/or second or third best player injured...how many of them were played as part of a long (4-plus games) road trip.... That was rhetorical. My point is that those stats strike me as fitting under the well-known Andrew Lang quote about drunks and lamposts. They look meaningful on their face but in reality are pretty shallow. I wasn't trying to attribute any meaning to the statistics other than to say that it's not quite a zero sum game. Oklahoma City for example is doing much better than the Bulls against teams over .500 while only being barely worse against teams under .500, and yet still have a worse record than the Bulls. But as you pointed out, that statistic is highly flawed and shouldn't have much predictive power at all. For the reasons you mentioned and also for things like there are five Western Conference teams just a little over .500 (above .500 and below .600) while the Eastern Conference has 1 team in that range. So to cut it off at .500 is very helpful to those Western Conference teams.

Thunder: 11-5 Spurs: 13-5. That's all I care to count up right now. These are all the teams(including the Bulls) over .700 + the Celtics. Some of those teams must not be doing as well as the Bulls against the bottom half of the league... That's part of it. The other part of it is that the Bulls have had the 2nd easiest strength of schedule in the league (4th easiest when factoring in home/road like Sagarin does). A team like Oklahoma City is 14-5 against teams over .500 and 8-2 against teams under. The Bulls are 8-6 against teams over .500 and 17-1 against teams below .500. BTW SSR you don't have to count them up. If you go the ESPN NBA standings and go to expanded standings, it shows each team's record against over .500 and sub .500 teams.

I would say the team is pretty balanced between lack of power and lack of OBP. The Cubs have 4 power threats (Soriano, LaHair, Stewart, Soto). All of them struggle with high strikeout rates that can lead to low BA/low OBP (and for Soriano it's doubly bad since he has a bad walk rate). Then you have Barney, DeJesus, and Byrd who have better BA without much power (and Byrd and Barney don't have a good walk rate either). Castro has both BA and developing power (without much of a walk rate). If I had to guess, I'd guess that the teams OBP rank will be a little worse than their slugging/HR rank. But it will be pretty close. Neither should be dead last in the NL, but both will easily be in the bottom half.

The Cubs were only able to have the Indians send 775,000 for 2 months of Fukudome. And then he was worse in Cleveland and will now turn 35 near the start of the year. He might have received an offer for 2 or 3 million, but he almost certainly didn't get anything substantial. He might be close to done.

Only if that provision is put into the contract. It was in Cespedes, but I'd be shocked if it was in Soler's. Mainly due to the fact we'll be paying Soler millions to play in the minors. I'm not totally sure how it works, but let's say he makes the majors to start the 2014 season, for instance, and sticks. He'd play under his current contract for 2013 and 2014(assuming it's 4 years}. In 2015, we could give him a 20% reduction in salary, as it's still a pre arb year. Then, 2016 thru 2018 would be his arb seasons. I could be slightly off here, but I think I'm right. You're just one year off on your dates. If he came up at the start of 2014, he's play 2 years under his current contract, then knock 20% off in 2016, then be arb eligible from 2017-2019.

Exactly. This is the main problem I've had with this offseason. This is free talent. They don't have to trade players for him, or waste a draft pick, or use up international signing allotment. If the Cubs are serious about upgrading the talent/assets in the organization, moves like this should be a no brainer if you have money to spend. That's what causes me to wonder if the Cubs have all that much money to spend. Obviously they have some since they offered him 6/40, but overall I don't get the feeling that the Cubs are giving Theo all that much to spend this offseason, and that sucks. As Davell pointed out, Theo probably has a pretty good budget. It's just that the Cubs have a lot of line items that most clubs don't. From deferred money (Pena and Dempster) to fired executives/managers (Hendry/Quade), to one-time facility upgrades (the 8 million dollar Dominican facility), to greatly increasing front office/minor league staff, the Cubs have a lot of expenses they didn't have just last year. Theo seems to just be choosing to allocate his budget a little differently than Henry did who stuck most all of it in the major league payroll. The 40 man payroll is starting to tick up though especially if the signing of Soler is confirmed. And the good news is that most of that list will go away. The budget money that is being spent on upgrading facilities will be able to be spent elsewhere once that is done. The deferred money is out of the way after the year, and so are the fired salaries.

Unless there is a clause in the contract that says he will (like the one Cespedes and Fukudome got) than no. It will be like what is happening to Samardzija now. If he doesn't have enough service time for arbitration (which seems likely), then the Cubs will be able to cut his last years salary by the full 20% if they want to, or they can choose to non-tender him at that point. Unless there is that clause though, he'd be under Cubs control for the 6 years of major league service time just like every prospect.

I would be really surprised if Purdue made it in with 18 wins, that would mean a losing record in conference. Why are you worried about Purdue anyway? ISU has a much better resume at this point. Your worst loss (Drake) is pretty much a wash with our worst loss (Butler), but you've got wins against Kansas, Texas, and Kansas St. which are all better than our best win to this point (Temple?). Losing @ Penn St. really hurts Purdue too. If Purdue had those two games back and had beaten bad Butler and PSU teams they would only be worrying about seeding right now. The bracketologies I have seen have Iowa State and Purdue in the same range (usually Iowa State is a little ahead, but they're both in the 9-11 seed range). I'm not completely sure why, but it's pretty consistent. That's probably why he's concerned about a school like Purdue.

Michigan shoots the least number of free throws in the conference so probably not terribly many.

the talent on the current roster is enough to win the big ten, this year and next year. if we replace the coach, next year could happen. I would agree, although to be fair there are probably 5 schools that could make that claim based on talent (Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois). The key for Illinois will be keeping Leonard. With him, they have just as much talent as the other four. Without him and they're clearly behind (the same is true to a lesser extent with Ohio State) The Big 10 is going to be so loaded next year. Most of the top schools have very few seniors, and a few of them have great recruiting classes coming in to add to the talent.

Interesting. Taking a quick look at it compared to the newest bracketology, BPI seems to really like Wichita State and loves St. Louis. It doesn't like teams like Michigan or Florida State. And it really doesn't like Murray State. I'm sure there are others I missed that have wide disparities.

Oh, tons of patsies for sure. As many as IU? Or equal enough across twelve teams to draw a reliable conclusion? I'm not sure that would be the case. IU's shot 35 or more free throws 6 times this season (Savannah State, Butler, Howard, UMBC, Purdue, Illinois). 5 of those were at home. 3 of those were against teams they shouldn't have been playing. Illinois wasn't the highest either-IU shot 47 free throws in a game earlier in the season. I would have been a lot more interested if the author had restricted his sample to top 150 teams. The patsies IMO don't give you a very clear picture. In those games, IU was just using its athleticism to overwhelm them. It's certainly possible that IU would still have the biggest distinction, but I'm guessing it would be a lot closer.

I can't find anywhere close to 10 trips in a row that a foul was called. The closest I can find is a stretch where Illinois got called for 6 fouls on 4 trips down the floor for Indiana (there was also a turnover by Indiana in the backcourt during that stretch and an offensive rebound so it wasn't exactly 4 possessions). As for the rest, that's prone to interpretation. But I would point out that Hulls wasn't the player getting to the line all that often (6 FT total and 2 of those were because of an over the back call on the other end). It was Zeller and Oladipo, and neither of them like to shoot jump shots for 2's (Oladipo tends to either shoots 3's or go all the way to the rim and Zeller always shoots close to the rim. They actually both need more of a midrange game). So the type of fouls you describe wouldn't be real typical for those two. That of course could only be ascertained for sure by looking at the game tape, and even if I wanted to go back I don't have it anymore.