Basketball bounces
It was exactly a week ago on a ‘Which Way Wednesday’ when we asked which SEC hoops troop is the best.
On this ‘Which Way Wednesday’ there is no debate to be forged.
Alabama blitzed LSU with a barrage of 3s unforeseen since two Sundays a year at Talladega at the height of Dale Sr.’s powers.
How about these stat lines: Bama led 60-32 at the half; the 105-75 win is the second-straight 30-point win for the Tide; their 23 made-3s set an NCAA record; there players – John Petty, Jahvon Quinerly, Joshua Primo, talk about three nice Js – made at least six 3s and the trio combined to go 20-of-25 from distance.
Did we mention that LSU was actually favored by a point in that rout?
Now head to Gainesville, and find the listless corpse of the No. 6-ranked Vols, who were pummeled by a short-handed collection of Gators who dominated the glass, out-worked and surprisingly out-guarded Rick Barnes’ boys.
It was easily the worst performance I have seen from a Barnes-coached UT team, and it’s tough to recall one close considering the how listless and disinterested the Vols were looked.
Do I think UT is a good basketball bunch? No, I think they are better than that and would use ‘very good’ or even ‘special’ to describe them and their potential.
But the knowledge that this kind of effort – or better said, this kind of lack of effort – was even possible from these Vols is stunning. Even more so than the magic Nate Oats is working in Tuscaloosa. (Side note: While we’re here, isn’t it nice that Alabama can find some success in sports? I know they have been down. Wow, did you know that Bama’s two major men’s sports has won 18 straight SEC games – 11 in football counting the SEC title game; now seven straight in hoops?)
Old man Rivers
News Wednesday morning informed us that Philip Rivers is retiring.
The praise has been overflowing for the man with a throwing motion that looked akin to unfolding a rusty lawn chair that’s missing a bolt or three.
He short-armed more passes than George Costanza’s dad and Kramer combined.
But he did it very effectively and with amazing consistency.
He started the last 240 games in a row of his NFL career. He’s fifth all-time in passing yards (63,440, more than 2,000 yards ahead of Dan Marino), fifth in passing TDs (421, one more than Dan Marino) and 12th all-time in passer rating (95.2, which is between Peyton Manning’s 96.5 and Matt Ryan’s 94.5, and yes, I thought Peyton would be much higher than 11th in career passing rating).
(Side questions: While we are here, did you know that the only four QBs with a career rating north of 100 are, in order, Patty Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, Aaron Rodgers and Russell Willson? And. did you know that all of the top 8 are currently active? Side question on the side question: Is this the greatest age of QB play in the history of the league? Discuss.)
(Side detail on the side question on the side questions: It is past time to change the parameters of the QB rating system, and all the evidence I need to present for this claim is this sentence: Matt Schaub, Nick Foles and Mitchell Trubisky are among those with better career ratings than Dan Marino and Brett Favre. Need one more: OK, David Garrad has a better rating – 85.8 – than Roger Staubach’s 83.4, and Fitzmagic and Jason Campbell are higher rated than Troy Aikman’s 81.6.)
Anywell, on Rivers, I have two musings: Should he be a first-ballot Hall of Famer? if you say yes, then it bodes very well for the Matt Staffords of the world and makes Matt Ryan a slam dunk, since Ryan will reel Rivers in all the stats categories and already has more MVPs and Super Bowl appearances.
Second, if we make wins and Super Bowls a QB stat more than any other sport, then not winning and not even getting to a Super Bowl should matter too, don’t you think?
Baseball musings
We have overlooked a few MLB happenings with all the football and such. That’s on me.
First, the Blue Jays made a nice addition by adding George Springer for a club-record, $150 million deal over six years.