First Loss, Best Case?

Last night I watched ye old Texas Basketball lose their first game of the season against a riled (but amateur-ish) Kansas State team. First half- sucked. They pretty much owned us. Second half- sparked by Clint Chapman (somewhere above Brad Buckner on the Texas tall White Guy scale) they became more competitive. Ultimately, it was fouls that kept Bradley on the bench, our inside game was swarmed, and there was some awful decision-making.

I'm not going to mourn the loss of the #1 ranking for very long. Texas needs a competitive conference season to get into the kind of shape that makes championship teams. After shooting an abysmal 9-22 from the free throw line, do you think the players are gonna shoot some free throws in practice with a renewed intensity today? Do you think that the veterans are going to kick a little ass and bring a renewed intensity? Are these too cliche?

Of course you want your team to live the dream and go undefeated in a historic championship season. Frankly, though, it is time to make the mental transition from football to basketball and realize that the good basketball teams that lose during the regular season benefit from those losses. So, we will see where we stand at UConn on Saturday.

Soccer and more, lots more

ESPN gives soccer the short end of the sports stick a lot of the time, so I'm glad that the did this little feature on US soccer this summer. The pictures are great. The bad thing is that its a features article and not about soccer. Boo on that.

For those not soccer-ly inclined here is an article from my hometown press outlet. Its sort of about human rights but mostly just a human interest thing.

Is THIS why we lost?!?!

Seriously, what. the. frick.

UPDATE: The Prez's picks!

Thoughts: 

1) His handwriting is very neat. 

2) Lots of safe picks.

3) I agree with him that, Tar Heels, you let everyone down. Maybe you shouldn't field a team and risk the chance of hurting our president.

No love for UConn...

In the style of the "They're just like Us" page in Us Weekly, apparently President Obama has made his picks for the tournament and given them to ESPN, fulfilling a promise he made to Andy Katz (of ESPN).

His picks: Louisville, Pitt, UNC, and Memphis. I'm trying not to read anything political into those choices because that's a pretty good Final Four. I am curious, though, to see if he will sneak a Dayton over West Virginia pick in there.

Dickie V and Jay Bilas go at it.

I've been following the seeding pretty closely this college basketball season and so I was interested to find analysis on snubs. I found this video on ESPN.com and... um, well look for yourself. I hate that Dickie V uses Duke against Bilas. Its a weird "insult."

Also, is Dickie V sick?