After watching Connecticut beat USF the other day, I thought about the sea change that Lew Perkins brought to two basketball powers, and it looks like others had the same thought.

Says Sportsline’s Dennis Dodd:

It was Perkins, 62, who built the football infrastructure around the programs at both No. 8 Kansas and No. 16 Connecticut. Kansas (8-0) is off to its best start in a century. Perkins’ former school, UConn (7-1), is in first place in the Big East, seven years after moving up to I-A and in the AP poll for the first time.

It was Perkins’ decision that UConn should have a I-A football program that someday might rival basketball, where both the men and women have national programs. After 13 years at UConn, Perkins came to Kansas in 2003 with many of the same visions for football.

The Morris twins out of New Jersey committed to KU tonight.  Marcus is a 3/4 and Markieff is a 4/5.  Both are very highly rated.  Out of high school, they were both top 50 players on Scout.com, with Marcus #31 I believe.  They committed to Memphis but decided to go to prep school (they were young seniors).  Out of prep school, they are ranked the #3 and #4 post-graduate prospects in the nation by Scout.

These commitments fill the glaring hole anticipated in the 08-09 lineup.  With DJ and Kaun gone to graduation and Arthur likely to leave to play for pay, Aldrich was our only scholarship big man.  Now we have Q Thomas and both Morris twins to step in and contribute early, a role that I’m certain the twins savor.

Rock Chalk!!!

One of the good things about the internets is that there are people with more time and more brains and more will than I have to do little things that I would do if I were blessed with generous enough helping of some combination of the above. Among such little things is a thorough breakdown of what will happen if teams keep winning in the top 10 to see what would happen to LSU. Actually I don’t care much about LSU, but when the breakdown vis a vis LSU also includes my beloved Jayhawks, I pay attention.

If you are not exhausted by the palaverous meanderings of the above paragraph, then you will be able to survive the thickish exploration of LSU’s chances. The good news is that KU stands to end up ahead of LSU. The bad news is that they stand to end up in the unfortunate position of being an undefeated team in third place in the BCS. We can only hope for such bad luck, I think. I must. stop. typing. The below hermeneutics come from a rant over at TigerDroppings.com

I have mentioned before that I am able to reproduce The Colley Matrix poll used in the BCS…with one catch. Until this year, 1AA teams were ignored altogether and my poll still ignores them. It wouldn’t be a big deal, except Michigan’s loss sort of screws things up (it affects a bunch of teams in the Big 10 as well as Oregon)…I am working on fixing it.

But I can also run some simulations of what the final rankings MIGHT look like at the end of the season if some teams keep winning. I ran that on the assumption that the favorite always won (team currently higher in the Colley Matrix wins). I did that for every DI game for the rest of the year including Championship games. I was surprised to see that LSU would finish (barely) above undefeated ASU. They could finish above Kansas, and Ohio State too (you will see how close it is). Maybe even more surprising is that Boston College would be way above everyone else. In fact, a one-loss BC could finish above ASU (I ran a sim where Va Tech beat BC in the ACCCG)…which would actually help LSU.

Here is why this is so important. Sure this only one poll, sure I am ignoring 1AA games, sure the computers are only 1/3, and sure they will be upsets. But,

1. The computers tend to converge at the end, so they may all be similar at year’s end

2. Ignoring 1AA games HURTS LSU (because the SEC is a Nation’s best 7-0), we should only be better if I included it

3. The upsets may come out in a wash to some extent.

4. The computers are only 1/3 BUT (and this is a big but), what if just a 1/4 of the voters have us above ASU for example. More importantly, what if we are TWO spots of ASU and ONE spot behind in the human polls…we could jump them.

Anyway this is all very surprising and I am going to be double checking to be sure something isn’t wrong…but nothing sticks out as being really weird.

FINAL PROJECTED COLLEY MATRIX POLL:

1 Boston College 0.993249
2 Ohio State 0.940117
3 Kansas 0.933546
4 LSU 0.924218
5 Arizona St 0.922846
6 West Virginia 0.847383
7 Oregon 0.845090
8 Georgia 0.843785
9 Michigan 0.829752
10 Virginia Tech 0.816011
11 Missouri 0.808873
12 Florida 0.807957
13 Oklahoma 0.806072
14 South Florida 0.800385
15 Purdue 0.791512
16 Connecticut 0.776394
17 Tennessee 0.775897
18 Alabama 0.767199
19 Texas 0.765260
20 California 0.748664

Thought you might be interested in TeamRankings.com’s take on KU’s future opponents. KU is currently #2 in their rankings, behind only Boston College. You’d think that was a fluke, except they’re 2-8 in pretty much every power ranking right now. The one odd variable here is that the KU-MU game is listed as a home game, when clearly it isn’t. Home advantage is typically around 3-4 points, so subtract that from that margin. Not sure I’m buying +9 at OSU, but the other numbers don’t look to far off.

FUTURE GAMES
Date Site Win Probability Margin Opponent
Week 10 Home 94.1% +24.0 #65 Nebraska
Week 11 Away 73.9% +8.7 #33 Oklahoma State
Week 12 Home 98.8% +33.5 #104 Iowa State
Week 13 Home 70.6% +7.1 #10 Missouri

After something of a stand-off with the hosting company and a few name server issues, the Phog Blog is back. Judging by the performance of our football team in our absence, perhaps we’re better off shutting up and letting life happen. I’ll be upgrading Wordpress later this evening but you’ll be getting a lot more of what you used to get starting very soon.

A few topics for discussion:

Is it silly that KU can win out and watch two one loss teams play for the national title?

Is Brandon Rush going to be the same?

Does anyone else think that the concerns over recruiting in basketball this year are greatly exaggerated?

Sorry again for the absence.