The Longhorn Network Song

Sung to the Eyes of Texas...

The Longhorn Network is on cable,
All the -------- day.
The Longhorn Network is broadcasting,
Your recruits won't stay.
Do not think you can stop them,
At night, or early in the morn'.
Their eyes are on the Longhorn Network
Unless they're watching porn!

Ten Things I think you think I think - Lon Kruger edition

1. When I first heard this, my reaction was, "Seriously, is this the best we can do?"
2. Then, I thought about the OU basketball program...a) crappy arena? check; b) pro sport represented in area? check; c) poor fan support? check; d) NCAA sanctions looming? check. 
3. Let's face it, OU is not considered a basketball school, in spite of Mookie, Wayman, Blake, Alvan Adams, Raymond Whitley, David Little and Ebe Ere.
4. Then, I took a sip of the Lon Kruger Kool-Aid on the Soonersports.com website.
5. In 21 seasons at Kansas State, Florida, Illinois and UNLV, his teams have made the tourney 17 times. He's got a Final Four appearance, Elite Eight appearance and Sweet16 appearance.
6. He graduates his players. He got players to graduate at UNLV, for heaven's sake.
7. He's a published author, writing a book relating sports leadership to corporate leadership, something I find interesting.
8. He's involved in several charitable initiatives.
9. His one career mistake appears to have been leaving Illinois to jump to the NBA. Coaching the Hawks was an abysmal failure, and Kruger re-entered NCAA coaching a couple years later.
10. I can get more excited about this guy than I thought previously. Let's see how it goes.

Kelvin Sampson Dies watching National Championship BB game

Kelvin Sampson died of erotic asphyxiation while watching the national championship game this evening. A spokesman for the family, who asked to remain anonymous, indicated Sampson became aroused while watching Butler score 22 points in a half and have a three point lead. After becoming aroused, Sampson apparently called a high school basketball player several times, hyperventilated, passed out and never regained consciousness.



Sources close to the family indicate Dick Vitale will officiate a private memorial service and Bob Knight will fire a hunting rifle into Sampson's chest to make sure he's dead.

UConn does not validate the Big East

Dickie V told us this morning that UConn's trip to the Final Four validated the Big East about how tough it was, since they were 9-9 in the Big East.

On that same logic, how tough must the Colonial Athletic Association be, as VCU was 12-6 in league play (4th in the league) with losses to Northeastern, Old Dominion, George Mason, Drexel and Georgia State? The Hofstra Pride finished ahead of VCU in conference play, and were rewarded with an invitation to play at Evansville in the first round of the College Basketball Insider tournament. While Hofstra lost that game, ODU and GMU represented the CAA well in the NCAA tourney.

Or the Horizon League, where Butler was in a three way tie for the regular season title with Cleveland State and Milwaukee. The Bulldogs went 13-5 with losses to Milwaukee (twice), Valpo, Yougstown State and Wright State.

Of course, Cleveland State's 26-8 regular season record and Horizon League shared title, with a record of 1-1 against the vaunted Big East teams, got them a bid to the NIT. They would have helped my argument further had they not lost to the College of Charleston in the 2nd round of the NIT.

Milwaukee was hampered by a 6-9 non-conference record and lost in the first round of the NIT at Northwestern.

I guess it would have helped them if they had a) more Italian coaches in their leagues, or b) had ESPN based closer to their leagues.

Conference Performance

Just how bad did the mightly Big East do this weekend?

Well...if you go by the NCAA seedings, they should have won 14 games this last weekend. This math assumes a team seeded 5-8 would win one game, and a team seeded 1-4 would win two games. The 11 Big East teams should have won 14 games. Instead, they won 8.

A breakdown by conference of those expected to win or wining a game (I've ignored the first four games, it's difficult to apply this math to those games):

Conf / Exp Wins / Act Wins / Diff
ACC / 4 / 6 / 2
A-10 / 2 / 3/ 1
B12 / 6 / 4 / -2
BigEast / 14 / 8 / -6
Colonial / 1 / 4 / 3
Horizon / 1 / 2 / 1
MtW / 5 / 4 / 1
Ohio / 0 / 1 /  1
Pac10 / 3 / 4 / 1
SEC / 5 / 4 / -1
WCC / 0 / 1 / 1

There are three conferences that under-performed: SEC, Big 12 and Big East. Everyone else met or exceeded expectations.

Teams that made the posteason last two years

While watching some exciting NCAA action this weekend, and watching teams like VCU and Richmond make the sweet 16, it made me wonder, how many teams have made the NCAA tourney at least one of the past two years (a period which the Sooners have watched on TV). The answer? 95 different teams have made the NCAA tourney. Now some of those are conference champions that would never make it, like the SWAC champion.

So, let's take a look at the teams that were invited to the NIT or the CIT (College Insider Tourney). These teams generally don't earn their way, they're invited in. Here's the list of teams:

Air Force
Alabama
Appalachain State
Arizona State
Bethune-Cookman
Bostone College
Buffalo
California
Cincinnati
Cleveland State
Coastal Carolina
College of Charleston
Colorado
Colorado State
Connecticut
Creighton
Dayton
East Carolina
East Tennessee State
Fairfield
Florida Atlantic
Furman
George Mason
Harvard
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Illinois State
Iona
Jackson State
Jacksonville
Kent State
Long Beach State
Louisiana Tech
Loyola Marymount
Marshall
McNeese State
Memphis
Miami Florida
Middle Tennessee
Mississippi State
Missouri State
Murray State
NC State
Nebraska
Nevada
New Mexico
North Carolina
North Dakota
Northeastern
Northern Arizona
Northern Colorado
Northern Iowa
Northwestern
Ohio
Oklahoma State
Ole Miss
Oral Roberts
Pacific
Portland
Quinnipac
Rhode Island
Rider
San Francisco
Santa Clara
Seton Hall
SMU
South Dakota
South Florida
Southern Miss
St. Mary's
Stony Brook
Tennessee Tech
Texas Southern
Texas Tech
Troy
Tulsa
UAB
UTEP
UW-Milwaukee
Valparaiso
Vermont
Virginia Tech
Washington State
Weber State
Western Carolina
Western Michigan
Wichita State
William and Mary
St. John's


When it's all said and done, there are 166 teams that have managed to get a post-season invite to something in the last two years. OU is not one of them. That probably has more to do with Capel being fired than anything else.

ESPN Challenge Game

Group is Friends of LandThieves.
No password to join.
You can't win if you don't enter.*
Link is here.
* you can't win anything anyway.