UMFan83

The halftime score: Michigan 22, Nebraska 15. And you thought Illinois - MSU was bad. Nebraska is shooting 5-23 and 0-9 from 3. Michigan is shooting 8-24 and 5-17 from 3. So combined they are 13-47 (27.6%) and 5-26 from 3 (19.2%) Awful

Michigan and Nebraska combine for a 6-27 shooting start with 3-17 coming from 3.

Gotcha. Thanks

I don't remember WGN ever broadcasting a game when the game is also on FOX. I thought FOX has exclusive rights during the time period that they broadcast games.

I didn't catch the game but the trib write up suggested that the Emery definitely should have saved the 3rd and 4th goals. Who knows if they even know what they are talking about. This was what Brian Hamilton said:

The Cubs should take him to Cafe 28 if he visits the city. Great Cuban food just blocks from Wrigley. But if he asks them to show him a Cuban person were screwed.

I wouldn't go that far. There were ways to make this team a fringe contender in 2012 without handing out bad contracts. Go on. Which free agent contracts did you wish the Cubs had handed out this offseason? Of the biggies, CJ Wilson's deal is the easiest to defend, but that price almost certainly wasn't available to the Cubs. Reyes? Fielder? Pujols? How did you get from what I said to "Rob wants to sign 'biggies'?" I was talking about spreading the money around on marginal upgrades and making a handful of smart, low-cost trades. Targeting Edwin Jackson and one of Kuroda / Oswalt would likely be better in the short term than Wood/Volstad/Wells. Trading for Alberto Callaspo would be better than Ian Stewart, and only cost marginally more. This wasn't a 71 win team last season. There was enough room in the payroll to add players to take us to a mid 80's win team. That doesn't always put you in the playoffs, but it gives you a shot. I get why the front office decided to target a future window instead of opting to make slower yearly gains. And I don't necessarily disagree. But let's not pretend it was the only option. I agree with this. If you sign Edwin Jackson and the Cubs suck and you don't want to keep him long term, there's likely to be plenty of suiters for him come July. So you trade him and get assets. Isn't that what the club is trying to do (accumulate assets)? I have no problem with what the Cubs are doing, though it does make me wonder why they won't use the excess payroll lost from last year to do stuff like sign Edwin Jackson with the thought of trading him for prospects in July. Does Theo not deem that a cost efficient way to build the club, or was it the Cubs plan to keep payroll around $100 million until we had the pieces in place for a run?

Because in the current system you don't get a chance to slip up. Even one loss in the middle of the year can blow your chance at winning your conference division, at which point you can just write off your chance at playing for the championship. That's fine but having a 4 team playoff makes more regular season games important. To me that places a higher value on the regular season. Maybe I'm approaching it the wrong way because I get what you are saying too. Regardless, the margin of error is still going to be razor thin for contending teams so the regular season is not going to be any less compelling and the individual games aren't going to be any less important.

Can I have the honors of overreacting and suggesting the playoffs are not a lock for this team? What a spectacular free fall for this team.

Apparently, "Duncan Keith" is the number 5 trending topic in the US on Twitter right now. He must have done something laughably bad.

Lemme guess....defensive zone giveaway directly leading to a goal?

I keep looking at the projected lineup and wonder where the heck the power is going to come from. We finished 15th in baseball in SLG and 20th in HRs last year, and lost our 2 best power hitters and replaced them with Ian Stewart and Brian LaHair. SLG% and HRs last year DeJesus - .376, 10 Byrd - .395, 9 Soriano - .469, 26 Stewart - .221, 0 (ok .441, 18 his last full season) Castro - .432, 10 Barney - .353, 2 Soto - .411, 17 Then you have LaHair. Probably not as bad as the Astros or Padres but not exactly a dangerous offense. I do like the pitching depth so that will keep us in games more often than not, and the defense has to be better than last year. I'd guess a win total around 70-75, more because of improvements in run prevention than improvements in offense.

The clippers curse hit late this year.

Just came here to post this. That's good stuff. [expletive] awesome!

I figured the 'hey guys look, we tried' mantra would have fit in better with the previous regime

It would annoy me a lot. I like Vitters, but I doubt he's in Theo/Jed's long term plans. However, he is a toolsy, still young guy who a scout-heavy organization could still overvalue. Even if you think his likelihood of becoming a successful major leaguer is near 0, his potential trade value makes him far too valuable to simply give away. Yeah you make a good point about having value. That said, if Theo thought there was legit value there, I'd think he would refuse to give him up as compensation.

My rankings, given all teams are completely equal in talent and salary is not an issue: 1. LA Lakers 2. Miami 3. New York 4. LA Clippers 5. Dallas 6. Brooklyn 7. Chicago 8. Orlando 9. Boston 10. I dunno...Atlanta maybe

In terms of the ranking of prospect that Vitters is, I think that's too much, but all rankings aside, I really don't care if Vitters is the compensation. I probably should care more but I don't.

I hate how opponents of a playoff are always talking about how a playoff devalues the regular season. That is such a load of crap. If anything, a playoff puts more importance on the regular season. As it is now, probably only 15 teams in D1 go into a season with any thoughts of competing for a title. When they lose a game, in most years that's a death blow. Eventually 2/3rds of the way into the season there are only 3-4 teams with a NC hope. The other 100+ teams are playing out the string of meaningless games for pride (and recruiting favor). In a 4 team playoff you can lose a game and still be right in the discussion. Going into the end of the regular season there might be 10-12 teams still alive for an playoff berth. That gives the last few regular season games a crapload of meaning for many teams. So yeah, it's an incredibly stupid argument. I cannot believe that there is this much traction for a playoff system as as recently as 2 years ago, it seemed hopeless.

I didn't watch the game but judging by the box score he had a terrific game. 10-17 shooting 28 points 8 assists. Good stuff, but I doubt he can keep it up.

No but they would have gotten the hard part done. Role players will come flocking to NYC's newest team to play with D12 and Deron. I don't think their crazy Russian owner cares if he has to go way over the luxury tax to win unless of course he becomes the Russian president and drops the Nyets like a bad habit. The Nets are really interesting right now. Can you imagine Deron bolting right before their big triumphant move to Brooklyn. "Hey Brooklyn, ignore your longstanding ties with the Knicks and come watch Brook Lopez and the Nets lose 60 games!"

No complaint, just an observation that Michigan has the most losses of any Top 25 team, but they've had very few "bad" losses, so it's understandable why they are in the top 25.

Ugh, Michigan has the most losses of Top 25 teams. Of course their 4 of their 7 losses are road games against the #3, 4, 6 and 18 RPI teams and only 1 loss outside the top 60. Oh and their RPI is currently 15.

There's a thread on RealGM about this pointing out that Noah once complained publically about LeBron dancing during a Cavs blowout of the Bulls. Not exactly the same thing but similar. I don't care though. Love it Noah!

Hell they could have continued doing it on that drive and had it make sense. Put 14 guys out there and give them the 5 yard penalty while the clock runs. The play on that last Giants 12 men on the field penalty took 8 seconds. I suppose if they thought it was deliberate with like 15 guys they could maybe call a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct. Interesting strategy. I know you were saying half in jest but the problems are that eventually they would realize what was going on and start noticing the 12 men before the snap. Even if they didn't the other team could start spiking the ball immediately after the snap to save time. Obviously they wouldn't lose any downs so it's pretty easy to manipulate.