I found out via cell phone. Everyone already knows about it, but I suppose I must post away to keep the man happy. We will be losing nearly all of our scoring from last year and all starters except for Moody. It will be an eventful year, I think. We at the Phog Blog certainly do wish the best for JR and his family, and wish him a speedy recovery. I have no doubt that he will have learned some rather hard lessons in the past month and half or so, and a fresh start will likely give him a chance to apply those lessons to his life without the jeers of our Big 12 competitors, and outside of the unclosing eye of the Jayhawk fan folk.

It is a rather sad way to see it end, if indeed this is the end.

I wonder if Alex Galindo is second-guessing himself now…

Good luck JR.

I should add a special note that any comments with flaming intent will be summarily deleted. You can send me angry emails if you like about how I think I’m God or the President or something and how I have this huge power trip, but the bottom line is that you should listen to what your mom said when you were a kid - if you can’t say something nice, don’t say it.

Bill Self has a noon press conference today to announce some information about the JR situation. Schools have to give their students scholarships for next year by tomorrow, so it has created a sort of deadline for Bill Self on the JR situation.

He could continue to hedge, I suppose, by offering JR a scholarship right now irrespective of whether he plays, but that might have other deleterious consequences of which I am not aware. In any case, T-minus 50 minutes until we get more definitive word than we’ve had in weeks.

UPDATE:

It looks as if KU can decline to renew JR’s scholarship today, only to renew it upon further investigation. From page 187 of the NCAA bylaws:

15.3.5 Renewals and Nonrenewals

15.3.5.1 Institutional Obligation. The renewal of institutional financial aid based in any degree on
athletics ability shall be made on or before July 1 prior to the academic year in which it is to be effective. The institution shall promptly notify in writing each student-athlete who received an award the previous academic year and who has eligibility remaining in the sport in which financial aid was awarded the previous academic year (under Bylaw 14.2) whether the grant has been renewed or not renewed for the ensuing academic year. Notification of financial aid renewals and nonrenewals must come from the institution’s regular financial aid authority and not from the institution’s athletics d e p a r t m e n t . (Revised: 1/10/95)

15.3.5.1.1 Hearing Opportunity Required. If the institution decides not to renew or decides to
reduce financial aid for the ensuing academic year, the institution shall inform the student-athlete in writing that he or she, upon request, shall be provided a hearing before the institutional agency making the award. The institution shall have established reasonable procedures for promptly hearing such a request and shall not delegate the responsibility for conducting a nonrenewal hearing to the university’s athletics department or its faculty athletics committee. The decision to renew or not renew the financial aid is left to the discretion of the institution, to be determined in
accordance with its normal practices for students generally.

15.3.5.2 Reconsideration of Nonrenewal. It is permissible for an institution that has notified a student-athlete that he or she will not be provided institutional financial aid for the next academic year subsequently to award financial aid to that student-athlete.

From the Palm Beach Post, just up the coast from Miami. Its author, Chris Rickins, seems to think that Simien is a good fit with Miami, and that he’ll do well playing opposite Shaq. I tend to agree.

Regular Phog Blog readers know that I normally cover things related specifically to KU. Long time Phog Blog readers may have noticed that I make a special exception for the Giant Baby stories which appear from time to time in the national news. I’m not talking your average ten or twelve pound brats that have to be cut from their mothers’ wombs, I’m talking toddler sized infants appearing from the womb looking ready to don a pair of Hush Puppies and trot off to Kindergarten to steal other kids’ food.

The latest of these giants is Delaney Jessica Buzzell, aka “The Big Enchilada”. Hopefully for her sake, she is not like her namesake, filled with greasy cheese and beancurd. At least not yet!

You know you have a big baby when the nurse says something like this:

“It was ready for a steak, it had quite an appetite.”

You’d think that the nurse would realize that when talking about enchiladas, as when talking about ships, one uses the feminine, i.e. “She was a very nice enchilada, dripping with cheesy goodnes, gentle but firm as she tickled her way down my esophagus into the open arms of my greedy belly.”

I know this is going to upset some people and will of course bring about the inevitable “KU bought a player” recriminations, but the bottom line is that the Chalmers family was going to move to Lawrence anyway, and he’s qualified for the job. When the Chalmers thought they’d be moving to North Carolina, they purchased a home in Charlotte which is still on the market.

For this scenario to play out as the conspiracists among you would have you believe, KU would have had to furtively helped Ronnie Chalmers buy a home in Charlotte before Mario ever visited KU, then kept the home on the market by hiring incompetent realtors, all after they arranged to keep a job open for 18 months specifically for him, only to get Mario’s commitment and then, 11 months later, offer the job to Ronnie publicly.

I’m gonna have to pull out Occam’s razor here today. The simplest explanation - that it was a good fit - is the best.

Miami got Wayne. I’ve had had Will “Bienvenido a Miami” Smith pumping in my head now for what seems like hours. I wonder what San Antonio was thinking when they made the pass. I wonder what Portland was smoking, correction, I confirmed that the Portland management also smokes the fat buddha in the off-season when they selected Linas Kleiza ahead of Wayne.

But I’m happy that Wayne will be joining a good team and will have a chance to start from day one.

Congrats Wayne, on earning some guaranteed money. Please don’t use it to buy a hunned thousand dolla car, even though everybody’s got’em.

UPDATE: Stephen Duncan Jr., who isn’t, I gather related to Tim Duncan, but who is a big Spurs and Jayhawks fans offers some reasons why San Antonio passed on Wayne here and here. RD Baker notes that with the departure of Udonis Haslem (and the gentrification of Christian Laettner), Wayne could be looking at a starting roll playing forward opposite Shaquille O’Neal. If he could only shoot freethrows on Shaq’s behalf, the Heat would be unbeatablee.

This may be old news, but I noticed it a while ago and am just getting around to posting it. This has to be the worst off season in KU history.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/11239891.htm

ryno

Bucknellians rejoice. You have been nominated for an ESPY. Your moment in the sun, which I thought to be waining, now appears to be waxing again.

Yes, dear Jayhawks, you must now avoid the ESPY ceremony for fear of enduring shame. Now, after purchasing the decorations and everything, you must cancel your ESPY party. You must try to find a way to make the word ESPY, which you carved into your hair, appear more natural, or spell some other word, like SESPY.

For there is no joy in Lawrence today as the folks at Disney/ABC/ESPN have decided that the Bucknell Bison over KU was one of the biggest upsets of the year.

I could say that it is an honor that to be beaten by a quality team such as the Bucknell is considered a great upset, but I would be disingenuosly lacing my sour grapes with an artificial sweetner such as Nutrasweet or perhaps Splenda.

Click here to vote. Please vote your conscience.

The NCAA put down the smack all over Baylor this week, banning said Waco school from a year of non-conference games and putting them on probation for five years. Gene Marsh, the chairman of the NCAA infractions committee, said, choosing words he may later regret given the event that triggered the investigation, that “as a repeat violator, they were subject to the death penalty…their penalties and their approach saved their basketball season.”

Baylor is now on probation until the year 2010, when we’ll all be too busy serving our deranged but powerful robot overlords to really care too much about what some school in Waco, TX is doing. Like all punishments of this type, it’s incredibly unsatisfying. Those responsible for the malfeasance - Dave Bliss, Tom Stanton and a couple of overly enthusiastic, underly ethical boosters - are gone, and they’ve left the cleanup to folks like Scott Drew, who had the courage to step into a program that he knew needed cleaning up, and Bill Underwood, who has the integrity to take the punishment that has nothing to do with him, like a man.

The problem with all of these major sanctions is that those responsible for them pay by getting ousted, while those who had nothing to do with it get to actually receive the pronouncement from the powers that be. Should Baylor’s current players and coaches, who are trying to rebuild, now stare down the prospect of a five year drought?

I suppose it would be hard to craft a just answer to this problem, but like I said, it’s always very unsatisfying.

From Phog Blog reader and former Rockchalk.com contributor Brian Wenner, aka BandJawhwk comes this wonderful summary of the recent pickup game. I enjoyed it, and I hope you do too.

Well, the kids and the adults put on a show, that much is certain. A truly awesome shooting display from Kirk, Billy and Steve about made it a blowout but strong inside play from Kaun Giles and Wright combined with the shooting of Case and Chalmers made the final respectable. Considering that the kids were playing the equivalent of a low level NBA team I was very impressed with them

A few thoughts on each player.

Case: Have to start here, the kid is stronger, faster and was shooting off the dribble and off some tough passes to handle, it’s so hard to tell from a glorified pick up game but don’t be surprised if this kid bails us out a time or two this year, just flat stroking the ball.

Chalmers: Our starting PG, no ifs ands or buts about it. Silky smooth jumper, great handle and absolutely fearless. Took the ball down the lane and nearly dunked on the entire alumni team before he got mauled. Best part of the game was watching him and Hinrich go at it. Kirk got the best of him but the kid really played some great d and you could see his competitive fire on every possession.

Kaun: After last week’s pickup game I was pretty down on Sasha, he just looked slow and plodding. What a difference a week makes. Besides absolutely posterizing Ostertag he scored on Greg, Nick and Manning on turn around moves in the lane. He played solid defense on all the big men, even Drew who is a nightmare for a big guy to guard. (I can’t get over how much Drew has filled out)

Wright: Didn’t play as much as I had hoped he would but what a talent this kid is. Enjoy him guys cause he won’t be here long. His ability to break down a defender and find the open man is sensational. He scraps for board and has that Greg Gurley ability to be in the right place a lot. Made a three, maybe two but his game is clearly inside the stripe. This kid is going to be SCARY good.

Giles: Was great to see this kid finally healthy. Didn’t shoot much but rebounded like an animal and had some nice passes. Giles starts ahead of Moody and with Kaun next year in my opinion. He got pushed around by the alumni bigs a lot, but there are no players like Gooden and Collison on our schedule next year.

Robinson: Love his game, needs to play under control more. Really opens things up for his teammates and I can see that his penetration and dish to Chalmers for a three will be a common theme this year. If RR ever finds his outside shot, look out. I project him as the starter with Chalmers (Case as the dark horse)at least until Stewart is available.

Stewart: Wow. Tenacious defender, great body, the kid looks like a grown man. His jump shot looks great to me, hopefully it transfers into real games. Tremendous athlete, strong rebounder, team player. We’re gonna look back at getting this kid as a steal in a year or two.

Downs: Looked like a kid that just got here this week.:-) Butter shooting stroke but not a true jump shot, wonder if his size will counter this because if not he may have trouble getting his shots off. Good handle, shot well early, got tired IMHO. Saw no evidence of any prima donna syndrome, seemed to go out of his way to congratulate teammates and he and Julian worked very well together when they were on the floor at the same time.

Hawkins: Hope he enjoyed his PT last year.

Matt K: A big body, not much more but could be useful against big, bulky teams.

Vinson: Solid game, has been shooting very well in both games I saw. If we weren’t so stacked at guard I would think he could get some time.

My 9 year old Daniel loved the game and is hard at work creating the freshmen in his March Madness game…anybody know what numbers they are going to wear? Self had a nice speech about how great it was that we had millionaire alumni that flew in from Portland, Seattle, Cali, Arkansas, New Jersey and other far flung places on their own dime to play today. I guess I had always assumed that KU paid to get them there but I think it’s great seeing them all come back. I wish Paul and Raef would follow suit, in a couple years the alum may need them to win.

My other observation from this game is that the players we have will dictate a much faster tempo this year if we rebound well. Bill built this team to do two things, shoot from every position and move the ball quickly. I’m more stoked than ever for next year. We may have a rough time of it in Maui, but by the end of the season no one will want to see us in their bracket.

We’ll be adding a number of improvements this off season, but some features that none many of you use are already in place. One is RSS. RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is a protocol that essentially portabalizes content. By adding the Phog Blog RSS feed to any RSS reader, the content will come to you, so you won’t have to browse to it. Plus, you automatically know when the latest story hits.

A lot of people use http://my.yahoo.com as their homepage. What’s nice about this is that you can customize exactly what you want to see when you open up your browser. What’s even better is that Phog Blog stories can be a part of your Yahoo page. If you have a Yahoo account, just click on the image below to add Phog Blog to your Yahoo start page. You’ll see the latest headlines, complete with a description, as soon as you hit that page. If something is of interest, you can go directly to the story. You can also follow a comment thread using RSS.

I’ll also be incorporating a new message board system in the next few months which will also use RSS. You’ll be able to follow conversations without having to actually go back and refresh the page - the content will go right to you.

Here’s the button to add Phog Blog to your Yahoo:

To the teeming throng of you waxing Platonic about the NBA’s power to corrupt the youth, you can all put the hemlock down, because, well, it looks as if an age limit could be in effect. The powers that be have tentatively agreed on a deal which will go into effect the end of next week that will certainly affect the recruiting landscape.

On the age limitation, American players will have to wait one year after their high school class graduates before they can become draft eligible. International players will have to turn 19 by the end of the calendar year in which they become draft eligible.

The terms must still be ratifed by both the owners and the players union, but most of the heavy lifting has been done. It’s a little too late to drop a playa’s name in for the draft this year, but many players out of a strong class of 2006, most notably Greg Oden, whom some have dubbed the next Lebron and KU possibles Arthur and Wright, now look like one year college players.

One hitch in the getalong is the fact that 18 year olds will be eligible for the NBDL, the NBA’s minor league. These prep-to-pro kids might opt for a year in the DL rather than a year in college. I honestly don’t know how it will play out.