brinoch

I think you're too ready to punt away next year and maybe even the year after. A line-up with Headley, Castro, Rizzo, DeJesus, Soriano and Barney would be pretty good. If Soto can rebound and with an upgrade in CF, that's a team that can compete offensively. Now, of course, we don't know what it would take to get Headley. Two excellent prospects or 3 good prospects? I would do it, most likely. A guy like Headley doesn't come around all that often and Vitters and Lake are quite unlikely to match his production.

He's not a 2-way player and never will be. He doesn't play defense at all and of course his scoring has dropped for 2 years. Not saying they should dump him, but see if someone will overvalue him and we could get some players. Kane's scoring dropped this year because he was asked to play center rather than wing. That was a huge adjustment for him, and naturally affected his scoring. But his defense was much improved -- when Kane started in the defensive zone, 54% of the time, play ended in the offensive zone. That's 37th among forwards in the NHL. For comparison, Toews was 13th with 56.2% and Sharp was 14th with 56.1%. For a guy you say isn't a two-way player, that's really damn good.

Looks like Raisin needs to make a small update. =D>

Thanks Tree (and sneaky).

Does anyone have Rizzo's PCL to major league equivalents handy?

This is utter BS. Pathetic.

He shouldn't be. That's a two-minute minor for Shaw -- a definite penalty. But Smith embellished the hit, there was no injury, it was unintentional, and Shaw was already severely punished. Moreover, the Hawks have legitimate reffing gripes. The missed Too Many Men on the Ice call led to a goal, as did the terrible Goalie Interference call on Toews (Smith *hit* Toews outside of the crease and Toews did nothing). Adding a suspension to this would be fuel for the fire. Keep in mind, Weber just got a fine for bashing Zetterberg's head into the boards. That was clearly, clearly, clearly worse in every way than this hit.

You mean that guy who basically changed positions from Wing to Center?

You didn't. You lost. And it was glorious. Burn baby burn. I've moderated your post. Hating IU is your business, but mocking an injured player isn't cool. http://media.247sports.com/Uploads/Player/679/7_388473.jpg Mocking an ... interesting pic is fine. :good:

You didn't. You lost. And it was glorious. Burn baby burn. I've moderated your post. Hating IU is your business, but mocking an injured player isn't cool.

5 games is fair. I think Sedin should have been fined for his hit on Keith, but that's totally unrelated to the suspension for Keith. LIkewise, I think Doan got off lightly for his hit on Benn.

The Chicago Public League is its own world. It really is.

Hoo Hoo Hoosiers! :stickman: Working with a hangover, it sucks. #-o I was at the game. Having too much fun to comment. :)

Terrible. Just terrible.

The officials rightly getting called out -- they are really keeping Syracuse in the game.

It's fine withe me.

That's got to be the case. I didn't think they really deserved to go with a win. I think they needed two wins. But, whatever, it's academic now.

So now your narrative changes to Indiana underperformed these last couple of years. Riiiiight. If you want to make an actual case about something other than your own irrationality, please start at any time.

Self-imposed punishment meaning what exactly? Not re-admitting players who had failed out of school? Not forcing recruits/players who were weirded out by Tom Crean to stay at Indiana? 1. 3 years probation 2. 2 Years of restrictions on recruiting calls tighter than is permitted by the NCAA. 3. Reduced off-campus recruiting opportunities and took away a basketball scholarship for 2008-09. The off-campus recruiting penalties were extended to Tom Crean after he took the job in April, but IU opted to allow Crean 10 days to recruit off-campus. 4. The basketball staff also had one less coach available for recruiting during the 2007-08 recruiting year. 5. Sampson also voluntarily agreed to forego a $500,000 compensation increase for the 2007-2008 season.

It seems different arenas have different types of games -- I always expect the games in Mackey or Breslin to be extremely physical without a lot of calls, for example. Perhaps the character of the teams is reflected in how the games are called. I do think B1G refs are terrible, and have been consistently so for a very long time.

We have all pointed out the facts before. IU was clearly the more aggressive team. Layup attempts clearly don't tell the story, especially when most of the FTs were due to players driving to the hoop. The daggers in the game were Hulls getting to the baseline, finding Zeller for a dunk and 1. And then him getting in the lane and hitting Watford for the 3. IU made a legit effort to get to the rim on almost every drive in the 2nd half. That should be pretty clear from anyone watching the game. It also should be common sense that that's how most basketball games are officiated. The aggressive team gets the calls. If you guys want to complain about the ticky-tack calls that got IU in the bonus in the 2nd, I also think IU was called for several of those in the 2nd half, albeit later in the half. To be fair, watching the game, I noticed that at the beginning of the second half, IU was extremely aggressive in getting to the basket and there were a lot of fouls called. It was a more tightly called game than in the first half, and it seemed the refs made a conscious effort to tighten up the game. And in a tightly called game, that strongly favors the more aggressive team. If the Illini fans in general weren't so crappy towards IU and hadn't been so disrespectful the last couple of years, I might be able to be more objective. Oh, a thousand pardons sire. How awful of us to pick at IU for no reason. Much better.

We have all pointed out the facts before. IU was clearly the more aggressive team. Layup attempts clearly don't tell the story, especially when most of the FTs were due to players driving to the hoop. The daggers in the game were Hulls getting to the baseline, finding Zeller for a dunk and 1. And then him getting in the lane and hitting Watford for the 3. IU made a legit effort to get to the rim on almost every drive in the 2nd half. That should be pretty clear from anyone watching the game. It also should be common sense that that's how most basketball games are officiated. The aggressive team gets the calls. If you guys want to complain about the ticky-tack calls that got IU in the bonus in the 2nd, I also think IU was called for several of those in the 2nd half, albeit later in the half. To be fair, watching the game, I noticed that at the beginning of the second half, IU was extremely aggressive in getting to the basket and there were a lot of fouls called. It was a more tightly called game than in the first half, and it seemed the refs made a conscious effort to tighten up the game. And in a tightly called game, that strongly favors the more aggressive team. If the Illini fans in general weren't so crappy towards IU and hadn't been so disrespectful the last couple of years, I might be able to be more objective.

Also, Bruce Weber is a pretty big whiner and a mediocre coach at best. The Illini played a good first half and shot well to start the second half. But they never answered IU's drives and took too many jumpers when Leonard was in the post or when cuts were open. I felt they were rushing their shots a bit as well. Leonard and Zeller are both really talented and watching them was pretty fun.

I generally think B1G officiating is crappy. I thought the officials got pretty foul-happy at the beginning of the second half, and then tried to correct it, but couldn't. Part of that was Illinois playing very physically on IU's drives, and part to my eyes was the fact that the Illini were hitting most of their shots to start the half.

Call me crazy, but I have to think the 27 shot FT difference was caused, in large part, by 1 team going to the hoop aggressively and 1 team not at all. Illinois made 12 layups, Indiana 14. Both made the same amount of threes. Illinois made 5 extra 2 point jumpers, and took 8 additional shots (9 threes, IU had one additional 2-point attempt than Illinois). And how many possessions were there when IU was fouled driving to the lane and didn't score the layup?