Last 3 Games

Hello all,

It has been 3 whole games since I bothered to update the blog so I will have to compress everything together!

Oh where to begin? I guess the first game would be a good place! The season opener came against James Madison about a week ago. Jamar Samuels had been sitting out with an "eye injury" and Had just made it back in! It was very exciting. However, Curtis Kelly was now on the bench for an unexplained reason. Because of this our big guys were not as good. We didn't rebound very well. If I remember right, Freddy and Jordan had a combined 2 points and 5 rebounds. This was also the game our guards shinned in. McGruder, Russell, Pullen, Spradling, and Irving all played and all hit 3's. This is a big deal because people were talking about how our guards would step up with the loss of Denny Clemente who was our emotional leader and point guard last year. Our front court was suppose to be the best thing to hit college basketball since Beasley, but since all of our bigs guys have not been able to play, it has been lacking of late. Oh, this game also saw the sitting out of Nino Williams. He is a great small forward, but is still a little raw. He has not yet played a game this year and it is my hope that he will get red shirted. That means that he will have 4 more years to play. Jamar did this and he is one of our best players as a Junior! Nick Russell also played very well which is a relief. He has always been a great offensive player, but has not been great on defense so he didn't play much. Between him and McGruder, I think Denny's spot will be well covered.

Ok, for those of you that made it this far, thanks for reading! Now onto the second game. This game was quite a big deal. It was against Virginia Tech who was #24 or #23 in the nation. It was also part of 24 hours of basketball on ESPN. A big game where our opponent actually expected they would win the game! Needless to say, the place was rocking as far as the crowd went. VT threw a new style of zone against us that the team wasn't used to seeing. It threw off the big guys and we played ok in the first half. We were up by one going into half time. Well after a surge brought by 2 dunks by McGruder, we ended up winning by a comfortable amount. Frank said he was proud of his team for powering through the new zone type. Oh, Jacob Pullen was out for most of the game in foul trouble and Curtis wasn't playing and Jamar wasn't doing a lot. This meant that this game was won by Freshmen and Sophomores. By March, we should have a pretty awesome team!

The last game we played was against Presbyterian. Oh, you haven't heard of them? Well that's because they aren't very good. Or at least weren't suppose to be. At the half KSU had like a 10 point lead. Well All of our players decided at half that the game was over and started looking forward to the next game. Well that gave the Blue Hose (yes, that is the team mascot!) enough time to widdle away the lead to like 3 with 7 minutes left. Our team played terrible. Frank was quoted to say about our team, "I hope they have a good social life, because I am going to take it away from them!" It didn't help that Curtis still was not playing.

Well to be fair.... our next few games are a big deal. We are playing in a tournament on Monday and Tuesday. On monday we play Gonzaga to see if we can play DUKE! Duke is #1 and won the tournament last year so if we beat them, we might jump to #1 in the Nation! KU fans would have a fit! It will be awesome. (As a fan, I am obligated to say that we will win every game, but as a rational person, we might struggle on monday and tuesday...)

From the past 3 games we have learned a good bit about our players. MgGruder is going to be a stud in two years and will go in the first round of the Draft if not a lottery pick. Spradling is a pleasant surprise. He is only a freshman, but he is running the point like a pro. He may not have as much of an upside as the others, but he will be a solid player. We have learned that Asprilla has been over hyped. He is definitely better than our previous center in Luis Colon, but is not the all around dominating machine that we were lead to believe. Oh well. Once Kelly and Samuels get on the court at the same time, we will have a pretty awesome team. I am going to throw out there that KSU is the team to beat for the big 12 title.