Can't pick a movie that kills Apollo Creed way too early.
Ketch's 10 Thoughts From the Weekend (On this team, redemption is spelled B-O-Y-D...)
- Thread starter Ketchum
- Start date
I was another who was always a huge fan of Cedric's going back to 2003. Very under-appreciated player. I'm not sure we have had a cornerback as good as him since he graduated, including Aaron Ross and Aaron Williams. There's a reason Aaron Ross didn't get a starting job until Griffin graduated.
Yes, you did:
"With no banners to raise, Aston has built a solid women's program, but it's pretty far from elite. Forget about UConn, Aston's Longhorns don't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with Kim Mulkey's Baylor Bears."
By saying "Forget about UConn" you made a comparison to UConn and that Texas is not in their league. I actually completely agreed with you on this point (and still do).
My point is that if you are saying that Texas Women's Basketball isn't respectable until we can compete with UConn, or that we need to keep changing coaches until we hire a coach that beats UConn, then IMHO you are being unreasonable. Until Geno dies, rides into the sunset or get's caught with his pants down, no team is going to challenge UConn. That is not a yardstick to measure success.
There is a contingent that thinks that the dominance is not good for Women's Basketball, and to some degree I agree. He simply picks his draft each year, then dominates the sport completely. When you beat teams routinely by 60 points in the tournament, it just shows that there is really no reason for UConn to play in the tournament. It would be more fun to just give them the trophy after the regular season, then let the rest of the field play for 2nd and 3rd. Having UConn in the tournament just eliminates teams that probably should be 2nd, if they get an early UConn draw.
@Ketchum Has Bill Self really done an amazing job this year? People said this was their worst team in a while. This could not be further from the truth. Lets go over their starting 5. Which includes 2 senior guards a junior guard a redshirt sophomore guard and a sophomore 7 ft big man.
Devonte' Graham .403% from 3. Senior Point Guard
Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk .447% from 3. Senior Guard
Malik Newman .415% from 3. red soph guard/forw
Udoka Azubuike 7 foot soph big man with a good offensive game
Lagerald Vick .378 % from 3 ultra athletic junior guard
Pretty sure every coach in the nation would take that
Im not saying he hasn't done a great job but the praise has gotten a little ridiculous when he has a stacked roster.
Devonte' Graham .403% from 3. Senior Point Guard
Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk .447% from 3. Senior Guard
Malik Newman .415% from 3. red soph guard/forw
Udoka Azubuike 7 foot soph big man with a good offensive game
Lagerald Vick .378 % from 3 ultra athletic junior guard
Pretty sure every coach in the nation would take that
Im not saying he hasn't done a great job but the praise has gotten a little ridiculous when he has a stacked roster.
One of my all-time favorite Longhorns is 2005 National Championship team starter Cedric Griffin.
Back in the spring of 2000, I first spotted Griffin on film while scanning through film of another player in the living room of Bobby Burton, who hired me to cover Texas High School football recruiting for Rivals.com the previous spring.
Griffin wasn't just an unknown kid, but he was an unknown kid playing at a high school (San Antonio Holmes) that few people in the college football recruiting industry (this includes college football coaches) spent much time worrying about at the turn of the century
Like I said, I didn't even mean to stumble across Griffin, but as soon as I did, I felt like I had discovered gold. He was as beautiful of an athlete playing cornerback as you're ever going to see, but he was every bit as raw as he was ultra-athletic.
Although I was told that I was going overboard with my rating at the time, I immediately ranked him as a top-10 kid in the state of Texas and declared him as the state's top DB prospect.
In a phone conversation about a month later, Griffin asked me how he should go about go about getting scholarship offers because at the time, his profile wasn't very large and outside of Texas A&M, he had few offers. I told him that he just needed to visit any school from which he wanted an offer with his game film and he'd get a scholarship offer.
You have to remember that the spring of 2000 wasn't nearly like the spring of 2018 from a technology standpoint. There was no social media. Coaches weren't emailing kids. Hudl wasn't a thing. For a kid like Griffin, often times it meant seeking out a school more than a school seeking him out, but with his natural talent, he just needed for schools to know who he was and everything else would take care of itself.
So, he took my advice. About a week later, Griffin joined his mother and sister on a drive to the Texas football offices, armed with nothing more than some film from his junior season. The Texas staff at the time was not exactly beating down his door before he arrived, but they welcomed him when he arrived.
Less than two hours later, Griffin was a Texas commitment and I ended up joining his family for lunch afterwards for an in-person interview at the Mr. Gatti's on MLK, just a rock's throw from the 40 Acres.
I've always been very open about my personal feelings about Griffin ... I love the dude. I've never been around someone with a softer soul, who overcame so much to become the person he became.
Few people know this, but Griffin's family left Texas pretty soon after he arrived at Texas and he basically had nothing as a very young person living in a very large fish bowl. He had no family to lean on for guidance and he really didn't have a pot to piss in from a financial standpoint. While at the same time as trying to keep his younger brother out of trouble, Griffin at times scrambled for a place to live and once called me because he needed some help finding a place where he could keep his TV until he could find a steady place to hang his hat.
I was always super protective of Griffin when he was at Texas, especially after the events in the Cotton Bowl back in 2003. For those that have blocked that moment in time out, the Longhorns lost to the Sooners by about 200 points and it probably could have been 300 if Bob Stoops had wanted to push his foot on the gas.
Inside the belly of the beast of that debacle was a play (go to the 1:12 mark) involving the sophomore Griffin and Oklahoma wide receiver Mark Clayton that became a fan rallying cry for everything that went wrong in that game from a Texas perspective. Clayton caught a ball against Griffin, who only touched him on the back instead of trying to tackle him on the play, which allowed Clayton to gain a ton of extra yardage.
It was a bad play. Period. He was labeled a heartless quitter by the fans and no amount of good play could convince those fans that he wasn't symbolic of the poison that kept the program from getting over the Bob Stoops hurdle.
For a long time, it was the play that defined Griffin - who many fans just wouldn't forgive after the play occurred - and I spent a lot of time in the early days of Orangebloods.com telling people they were crazy for not appreciating Griffin, who literally gave up everything he ever had to become a Texas football player.
Eventually, Griffin redefined himself as a player in the eyes of Texas fans, mostly because of the play he made against Ohio State in 2005 that proved to be a game/season-saver. Yet, you'd have been hard-pressed to convince Texas fans that he would ever become the player he became after that moment against Oklahoma.
Most Texas fans would have left him at the Cotton Bowl that day in 2003 to walk home if they'd had a vote on the matter.
Just like they probably would have done with Kris Boyd when he was a freshman re-tweeting a suggestion that he should transfer inside the locker room at halftime in Fort Worth when the Longhorns were trailing ... ahem ... 37-0. Just like Griffin a dozen years earlier, Boyd became the poster-child for a humiliating defeat and found a Texas fan base that would have voted to leave his butt behind if they'd had a vote on that matter, too.
What's really ironic about the situation with Boyd is that even though he was a bit of an 18-year-old knucklehead like a lot of us were at that age, he found support inside the Texas locker room that was every bit as defiant in its support of him in that moment as I was with Griffin after the 2003 Oklahoma game.
In one conversation between a Texas coach in the week following the TCU game, a member of Charlie Strong's staff told Orangebloods that Boyd was a bit unrefined, but that if the Longhorns had 85 Boyds on the roster, they'd win a national title and sure as hell not be losing by 37 points to TCU at the half.
In that coach's estimation, Boyd had the junkyard dog mentality of fighting for his that every guy Texas recruits needed to have, silly Twitter habits be damned.
And here we are ...
Three seasons later, Boyd is a multi-year starter, a future NFL player and the posterboy for the type of leader on the field that Tom Herman needs if this program is going to climb out of mediocrity.
"The kid loves football, man," Herman said on Thursday. "Absolutely loves football. When you win his heart, he’s as loyal as they come. I have no doubt Kris Boyd would take a bullet for Jason Washington, Todd Orlando, myself. He has bought in. Jumped in with both feet. He loves football. Now, there are times like hyper dog, you’ve got to yank on the leash every now and again, but, again, you’d much rather yank on leashes than kick butts to get them in gear.”
Who would have thunk it?
The truth is that I don't know that Boyd and Griffin have a ton of similarities in terms of the things they've dealt with behind the scenes as young men growing up on the fly inside of a fishbowl, outside of that whole thing about playing the same position as a young man while growing up on the fly inside of a fishbowl and the fact that they eventually emerged as something much larger than the lowest moments that once defined them.
As this season approaches, my favorite storyline on this team is the redemption story involving Boyd, who might just be the best defensive back in the Big 12 this season. Once viewed as a cancer in the locker room, he's now an undisputed leader in this program.
Tweeting habits, be damned.
No. 2 – The elephant in the room ...
A week ago, I wrote that if the Longhorns had a quarterback that was definitely going to be the starter in September and the coaching staff knew that fact in March, they should name him as the starter in an effort to jump-start some added leadership from that player throughout the rest of the off-season.
Yeah ... that's not going to happen.
After a few days of practice, that quarterback just doesn't yet exist on this roster and he's likely not going to be found in less than a month.
Never mind.
Onward we go into the coming months without that tiny little detail ironed out ...
No. 3 - Five really positive things that might make you crave Kool-aid ...
First, Collin Johnson has had a pretty terrific first three days of camp. It's easy to forget that he's still a young guy with two years of football ahead of him. Oh, and I haven't seen this from a Longhorn player since Roy Williams was trying to catch balls in practice behind his back.
Second, Marquez Bimage has stood out as a playmaker in three straight workouts. Perhaps he's a year away from a major impact on this defense, but if Todd Orlando is here when Bimage is a third- or fourth-year player, he's going to have a baller on his hands.
Third, given the importance of the tight end position in Tom Herman's offense, it's more than noteworthy to hear that Reese Leitao is emerging as a player who will be hard to keep off the field in the fall. It's early and you don't want to get carried away with hyperbole, but this position is getting away from the lost cause section of town it has lived in for the last decade.
Fourth, I thought that Tope Imade was pretty much done as a player once the coaches started moving him back and forth on both sides of the ball. I thought it might have been be a case of "You take him ... no, YOU take him" between the coaches, but he's showing enough flashes at guard that he's suddenly someone we must all pay attention to.
Fifth, there's a reason I wrote about Boyd in the top section. He's not yet touching his ceiling as a player, but he's within a hand's reach of it. In Jason Washington, you should trust.
No. 4 - In case you didn't know ...
Here's a look at the starting cornerbacks that Texas coach Jason Washington has worked with in his last four seasons as a coach:
2014 (Texas State) Craig Mager - Emerged as a second-team All-Sun Belt selection and was drafted in the third round of the NFL Draft
2014 (Texas State) Germond Williams - Led the Sun Belt in interceptions as a sophomore. Transferred after Washington left the program.
2015 (UH) William Jackson III - Second-team All-AAC as a senior and was drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals. Led the league in lowest completed percentage in 2017.
2015-16 (UH) Howard Wilson - Earned first-team All-AAC honors as a senior after missing most of his junior season to injury. Was drafted in the fourth round of the NFL Draft by the Cleveland Browns.
2016 (UH) Brandon Wilson - Earned second-team All-AAC honors in his only season as a starter under Washington. Was drafted in the sixth round of the NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals.
2017 (UT) Holton Hill - Was on his way to All-Big 12 honors last season through the first nine games before missing the rest of the season because of suspension. Expected to be drafted in the upcoming NFL Draft.
2017 (UT) Kris Boyd - Earned second-team All-Big 12 honors as a junior and is expected to compete for All-America honors in 2018.
2017 (UT) Davante Davis - Still a work in progress, but showed a lot of upside in his five starts last season, most of which occurred after Hill was suspended.
* Five of the last eight full-time starters that have started for Washington won all-conference honors.
* Four of the five draft-eligible players have been drafted by NFL teams and Hill will likely make that five out of six.
* The worst season that any starter under Washington has under his watch is Williams' sophomore season in 2014 (which watched him rank among the top players in the country in interceptions) and Hill last season.
Basically, you should have a lot of confidence with the level of play we'll see from the players that start at Texas this season. Creating all-conference/drafted players is kind of what he does.
No. 5 - A solid season with nothing gained ...
Before anyone brings up Shaka Smart, just stop. This is a completely different topic of discussion and if you need me to say that Shaka Smart isn't within a 100-foot pole of the success that Karen Aston has enjoyed in Austin, I'll just get it out of the way ...
Smart hasn’t come within a 100-foot pole of the success that Karen Aston has enjoyed in Austin.
Better?
Ok, now let's talk about Aston's program, which saw its season end on Friday night against a very athletic UCLA team. Frankly, there's not any shame in losing to a better team and I came away thinking that Jordin Canada and Co. were just better than the Longhorns.
For the second year in a row, the Texas program stalled in the round of 16 and suddenly only one of Aston's teams has crossed that bridge in six seasons. The Elite 8 appearance in 2016 was believed to be a springboard at the time, but has proven to be an anomaly at this juncture.
I'm not really sure how to judge her work at this point because the goal of taking the program past Baylor in the Big 12 and emerging as a legit national championship contender isn't happening. Not yet, anyway.
With no banners to raise, Aston has built a solid women's program, but it's pretty far from elite. Forget about UConn, Aston's Longhorns don't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with Kim Mulkey's Baylor Bears.
Eventually, Aston has to win something worthy of a banner ... right?
No. 6 – Speaking of banners ...
Ho hum, Eddie Reese and the Texas swimming/diving team won yet another national title.
That's four straight and the 14th overall national title in the program's history.
I don't know what else to say about Reese's absurd level of championship production other than to say he's the role model for every coach on this campus - men and women.
Oh, and maybe name a street or put a statue up of Reese right now. There's no reason to wait. Or does he need to win five straight national titles before something like that happens?
No. 7 - Getting the job done ...
The Longhorns had one job to do on the diamond this weekend - take the series against Oklahoma State by any means needed and go into next weekend with a crackerjack 5-1 record in conference play to build on.
After taking a kick to the backside on Friday night, the Longhorns clawed their way back to the series win it needed, which included a come-from-behind win in the series-clincher on Sunday.
Slowly, but surely, this team is starting to make something out of this season.
No. 8 – Buy or Sell …
BUY or SELL: Texas finishes with top 5 recruiting class?
(Sell) I've got Texas recording a top-10 class in ink, but I'm not sure the landscape in-state will support a top-five class. It'll be close.
BUY or SELL: This season, at long last, we see competent offensive line play and no longer view that unit as a liability?
(Sell) I'll believe it when I see it. I'd advise everyone to do the same.
BUY or SELL: Chris Beard would be a top target for CDC if Shaka doesn't work out here?
(Buy) Pretty obvious candidate at this point.
BUY or SELL: Our strength and conditioning coach has given this team a different feel of swag and confidence, something that has been missing from past teams?
(Sell) No offense to Yancy McKnight, who might have my favorite name in all of college athletics, but every time a school hires a new strength coach, the hype from that area of the program is out of control. I'm going to wait until this team is better than 7-6 before drinking any Kool-Aid.
BUY or SELL: Considering the importance of guard play in college basketball and despite losing Bamba, Texas basketball will have a better record next year with an experienced Coleman and a senior Roach (and a maturing Sims)?
(Buy) Experienced guards are worth their weight in gold. Personally, I like the potential of the roster, especially if Andrew Jones can come back and reach his previous levels.
BUY or SELL: If Texas football, men's basketball and baseball don't hurry up and start winning big on a consistent basis, the Texas brand is going to take a noticeable hit?
(Sell) Is going to?
BUY or SELL: You believe I'm a 58 yr old MAN with insecurity issues that stalks high school boys twitter accounts?
(Sell) Are you?
BUY or SELL: @Suchomel can out drink the other mods but @Ketchum can win a hot wing eating contest?
(Sell) I'm such a punk when it comes to eating wings. I ordered 10 the last time I was there and only finished seven. Besides, Suchomel is a cheap, easy drunk. My money is on McComas in both.
BUY or SELL: There has been a lot of discussion on the board this week. So once and for all, which movie is the greatest of all time?:
- Over The Top
- Commando
- Predator
Sports can wait.
This isn't technically a Buy or Sell question, but it's too important of a topic to skip. As a kid that never really knew his dad, I've always been a mark for Over the Top. In fact, one of my early Orangebloods alias handles in the early days of the site was "Harry Bosco." When you combine Stallone's hat turn with the killer 80s soundtrack with the feel-good father-son reuniting story, this becomes an easy call. Predator ranks second among this group.
No. 9 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …
... Sister Jean is the middle of the best 15 minutes of fame that any nun has ever had. I love the Loyola story.
... In his final game as a college player, Duke’s Grayson Allen had a chance for the Jimmy Chitwood moment, a jump shot in the final seconds to send his team to the Final Four ... and the ball hit every part of the rim but the bottom of it. Man, he's going to dream about that shot for the rest of his life.
... Bill Self has done an awesome job this year.
... Tweet of the Weekend
... This is the third weekend in a row that I've said this, but now is the time to get the Warriors if you're the Rockets. The championship is there for the taking.
... I like the addition of Allen Hurns for the Cowboys, but it's not the kind of thing that changes any real dynamics on the team.
... I missed my Premier League this weekend.
No. 10 – And Finally …
Because it deserves one more special mention...
Is it safe to say that Geno Auriemma is the Eddie Reese of women's college basketball?
By saying forget about U.Conn, I was saying you cant compare them. Is there a reason you didn't highlight the rest of the sentence and chose to take the remark out of context...
a.I'm not bashing her. Far from it.
b. I'm asking questions about accountability.
b. Is the Sweet 16 the bar?
Are you really trying to critique Karen with your defense of Shaka? I am not a "fire Shaka" person.But to be critical of her efforts while defending Shaka is mind bottling.
One of my all-time favorite Longhorns is 2005 National Championship team starter Cedric Griffin.
Back in the spring of 2000, I first spotted Griffin on film while scanning through film of another player in the living room of Bobby Burton, who hired me to cover Texas High School football recruiting for Rivals.com the previous spring.
Griffin wasn't just an unknown kid, but he was an unknown kid playing at a high school (San Antonio Holmes) that few people in the college football recruiting industry (this includes college football coaches) spent much time worrying about at the turn of the century
Like I said, I didn't even mean to stumble across Griffin, but as soon as I did, I felt like I had discovered gold. He was as beautiful of an athlete playing cornerback as you're ever going to see, but he was every bit as raw as he was ultra-athletic.
Although I was told that I was going overboard with my rating at the time, I immediately ranked him as a top-10 kid in the state of Texas and declared him as the state's top DB prospect.
In a phone conversation about a month later, Griffin asked me how he should go about go about getting scholarship offers because at the time, his profile wasn't very large and outside of Texas A&M, he had few offers. I told him that he just needed to visit any school from which he wanted an offer with his game film and he'd get a scholarship offer.
You have to remember that the spring of 2000 wasn't nearly like the spring of 2018 from a technology standpoint. There was no social media. Coaches weren't emailing kids. Hudl wasn't a thing. For a kid like Griffin, often times it meant seeking out a school more than a school seeking him out, but with his natural talent, he just needed for schools to know who he was and everything else would take care of itself.
So, he took my advice. About a week later, Griffin joined his mother and sister on a drive to the Texas football offices, armed with nothing more than some film from his junior season. The Texas staff at the time was not exactly beating down his door before he arrived, but they welcomed him when he arrived.
Less than two hours later, Griffin was a Texas commitment and I ended up joining his family for lunch afterwards for an in-person interview at the Mr. Gatti's on MLK, just a rock's throw from the 40 Acres.
I've always been very open about my personal feelings about Griffin ... I love the dude. I've never been around someone with a softer soul, who overcame so much to become the person he became.
Few people know this, but Griffin's family left Texas pretty soon after he arrived at Texas and he basically had nothing as a very young person living in a very large fish bowl. He had no family to lean on for guidance and he really didn't have a pot to piss in from a financial standpoint. While at the same time as trying to keep his younger brother out of trouble, Griffin at times scrambled for a place to live and once called me because he needed some help finding a place where he could keep his TV until he could find a steady place to hang his hat.
I was always super protective of Griffin when he was at Texas, especially after the events in the Cotton Bowl back in 2003. For those that have blocked that moment in time out, the Longhorns lost to the Sooners by about 200 points and it probably could have been 300 if Bob Stoops had wanted to push his foot on the gas.
Inside the belly of the beast of that debacle was a play (go to the 1:12 mark) involving the sophomore Griffin and Oklahoma wide receiver Mark Clayton that became a fan rallying cry for everything that went wrong in that game from a Texas perspective. Clayton caught a ball against Griffin, who only touched him on the back instead of trying to tackle him on the play, which allowed Clayton to gain a ton of extra yardage.
It was a bad play. Period. He was labeled a heartless quitter by the fans and no amount of good play could convince those fans that he wasn't symbolic of the poison that kept the program from getting over the Bob Stoops hurdle.
For a long time, it was the play that defined Griffin - who many fans just wouldn't forgive after the play occurred - and I spent a lot of time in the early days of Orangebloods.com telling people they were crazy for not appreciating Griffin, who literally gave up everything he ever had to become a Texas football player.
Eventually, Griffin redefined himself as a player in the eyes of Texas fans, mostly because of the play he made against Ohio State in 2005 that proved to be a game/season-saver. Yet, you'd have been hard-pressed to convince Texas fans that he would ever become the player he became after that moment against Oklahoma.
Most Texas fans would have left him at the Cotton Bowl that day in 2003 to walk home if they'd had a vote on the matter.
Just like they probably would have done with Kris Boyd when he was a freshman re-tweeting a suggestion that he should transfer inside the locker room at halftime in Fort Worth when the Longhorns were trailing ... ahem ... 37-0. Just like Griffin a dozen years earlier, Boyd became the poster-child for a humiliating defeat and found a Texas fan base that would have voted to leave his butt behind if they'd had a vote on that matter, too.
What's really ironic about the situation with Boyd is that even though he was a bit of an 18-year-old knucklehead like a lot of us were at that age, he found support inside the Texas locker room that was every bit as defiant in its support of him in that moment as I was with Griffin after the 2003 Oklahoma game.
In one conversation between a Texas coach in the week following the TCU game, a member of Charlie Strong's staff told Orangebloods that Boyd was a bit unrefined, but that if the Longhorns had 85 Boyds on the roster, they'd win a national title and sure as hell not be losing by 37 points to TCU at the half.
In that coach's estimation, Boyd had the junkyard dog mentality of fighting for his that every guy Texas recruits needed to have, silly Twitter habits be damned.
And here we are ...
Three seasons later, Boyd is a multi-year starter, a future NFL player and the posterboy for the type of leader on the field that Tom Herman needs if this program is going to climb out of mediocrity.
"The kid loves football, man," Herman said on Thursday. "Absolutely loves football. When you win his heart, he’s as loyal as they come. I have no doubt Kris Boyd would take a bullet for Jason Washington, Todd Orlando, myself. He has bought in. Jumped in with both feet. He loves football. Now, there are times like hyper dog, you’ve got to yank on the leash every now and again, but, again, you’d much rather yank on leashes than kick butts to get them in gear.”
Who would have thunk it?
The truth is that I don't know that Boyd and Griffin have a ton of similarities in terms of the things they've dealt with behind the scenes as young men growing up on the fly inside of a fishbowl, outside of that whole thing about playing the same position as a young man while growing up on the fly inside of a fishbowl and the fact that they eventually emerged as something much larger than the lowest moments that once defined them.
As this season approaches, my favorite storyline on this team is the redemption story involving Boyd, who might just be the best defensive back in the Big 12 this season. Once viewed as a cancer in the locker room, he's now an undisputed leader in this program.
Tweeting habits, be damned.
No. 2 – The elephant in the room ...
A week ago, I wrote that if the Longhorns had a quarterback that was definitely going to be the starter in September and the coaching staff knew that fact in March, they should name him as the starter in an effort to jump-start some added leadership from that player throughout the rest of the off-season.
Yeah ... that's not going to happen.
After a few days of practice, that quarterback just doesn't yet exist on this roster and he's likely not going to be found in less than a month.
Never mind.
Onward we go into the coming months without that tiny little detail ironed out ...
No. 3 - Five really positive things that might make you crave Kool-aid ...
First, Collin Johnson has had a pretty terrific first three days of camp. It's easy to forget that he's still a young guy with two years of football ahead of him. Oh, and I haven't seen this from a Longhorn player since Roy Williams was trying to catch balls in practice behind his back.
Second, Marquez Bimage has stood out as a playmaker in three straight workouts. Perhaps he's a year away from a major impact on this defense, but if Todd Orlando is here when Bimage is a third- or fourth-year player, he's going to have a baller on his hands.
Third, given the importance of the tight end position in Tom Herman's offense, it's more than noteworthy to hear that Reese Leitao is emerging as a player who will be hard to keep off the field in the fall. It's early and you don't want to get carried away with hyperbole, but this position is getting away from the lost cause section of town it has lived in for the last decade.
Fourth, I thought that Tope Imade was pretty much done as a player once the coaches started moving him back and forth on both sides of the ball. I thought it might have been be a case of "You take him ... no, YOU take him" between the coaches, but he's showing enough flashes at guard that he's suddenly someone we must all pay attention to.
Fifth, there's a reason I wrote about Boyd in the top section. He's not yet touching his ceiling as a player, but he's within a hand's reach of it. In Jason Washington, you should trust.
No. 4 - In case you didn't know ...
Here's a look at the starting cornerbacks that Texas coach Jason Washington has worked with in his last four seasons as a coach:
2014 (Texas State) Craig Mager - Emerged as a second-team All-Sun Belt selection and was drafted in the third round of the NFL Draft
2014 (Texas State) Germond Williams - Led the Sun Belt in interceptions as a sophomore. Transferred after Washington left the program.
2015 (UH) William Jackson III - Second-team All-AAC as a senior and was drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals. Led the league in lowest completed percentage in 2017.
2015-16 (UH) Howard Wilson - Earned first-team All-AAC honors as a senior after missing most of his junior season to injury. Was drafted in the fourth round of the NFL Draft by the Cleveland Browns.
2016 (UH) Brandon Wilson - Earned second-team All-AAC honors in his only season as a starter under Washington. Was drafted in the sixth round of the NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals.
2017 (UT) Holton Hill - Was on his way to All-Big 12 honors last season through the first nine games before missing the rest of the season because of suspension. Expected to be drafted in the upcoming NFL Draft.
2017 (UT) Kris Boyd - Earned second-team All-Big 12 honors as a junior and is expected to compete for All-America honors in 2018.
2017 (UT) Davante Davis - Still a work in progress, but showed a lot of upside in his five starts last season, most of which occurred after Hill was suspended.
* Five of the last eight full-time starters that have started for Washington won all-conference honors.
* Four of the five draft-eligible players have been drafted by NFL teams and Hill will likely make that five out of six.
* The worst season that any starter under Washington has under his watch is Williams' sophomore season in 2014 (which watched him rank among the top players in the country in interceptions) and Hill last season.
Basically, you should have a lot of confidence with the level of play we'll see from the players that start at Texas this season. Creating all-conference/drafted players is kind of what he does.
No. 5 - A solid season with nothing gained ...
Before anyone brings up Shaka Smart, just stop. This is a completely different topic of discussion and if you need me to say that Shaka Smart isn't within a 100-foot pole of the success that Karen Aston has enjoyed in Austin, I'll just get it out of the way ...
Smart hasn’t come within a 100-foot pole of the success that Karen Aston has enjoyed in Austin.
Better?
Ok, now let's talk about Aston's program, which saw its season end on Friday night against a very athletic UCLA team. Frankly, there's not any shame in losing to a better team and I came away thinking that Jordin Canada and Co. were just better than the Longhorns.
For the second year in a row, the Texas program stalled in the round of 16 and suddenly only one of Aston's teams has crossed that bridge in six seasons. The Elite 8 appearance in 2016 was believed to be a springboard at the time, but has proven to be an anomaly at this juncture.
I'm not really sure how to judge her work at this point because the goal of taking the program past Baylor in the Big 12 and emerging as a legit national championship contender isn't happening. Not yet, anyway.
With no banners to raise, Aston has built a solid women's program, but it's pretty far from elite. Forget about UConn, Aston's Longhorns don't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with Kim Mulkey's Baylor Bears.
Eventually, Aston has to win something worthy of a banner ... right?
No. 6 – Speaking of banners ...
Ho hum, Eddie Reese and the Texas swimming/diving team won yet another national title.
That's four straight and the 14th overall national title in the program's history.
I don't know what else to say about Reese's absurd level of championship production other than to say he's the role model for every coach on this campus - men and women.
Oh, and maybe name a street or put a statue up of Reese right now. There's no reason to wait. Or does he need to win five straight national titles before something like that happens?
No. 7 - Getting the job done ...
The Longhorns had one job to do on the diamond this weekend - take the series against Oklahoma State by any means needed and go into next weekend with a crackerjack 5-1 record in conference play to build on.
After taking a kick to the backside on Friday night, the Longhorns clawed their way back to the series win it needed, which included a come-from-behind win in the series-clincher on Sunday.
Slowly, but surely, this team is starting to make something out of this season.
No. 8 – Buy or Sell …
BUY or SELL: Texas finishes with top 5 recruiting class?
(Sell) I've got Texas recording a top-10 class in ink, but I'm not sure the landscape in-state will support a top-five class. It'll be close.
BUY or SELL: This season, at long last, we see competent offensive line play and no longer view that unit as a liability?
(Sell) I'll believe it when I see it. I'd advise everyone to do the same.
BUY or SELL: Chris Beard would be a top target for CDC if Shaka doesn't work out here?
(Buy) Pretty obvious candidate at this point.
BUY or SELL: Our strength and conditioning coach has given this team a different feel of swag and confidence, something that has been missing from past teams?
(Sell) No offense to Yancy McKnight, who might have my favorite name in all of college athletics, but every time a school hires a new strength coach, the hype from that area of the program is out of control. I'm going to wait until this team is better than 7-6 before drinking any Kool-Aid.
BUY or SELL: Considering the importance of guard play in college basketball and despite losing Bamba, Texas basketball will have a better record next year with an experienced Coleman and a senior Roach (and a maturing Sims)?
(Buy) Experienced guards are worth their weight in gold. Personally, I like the potential of the roster, especially if Andrew Jones can come back and reach his previous levels.
BUY or SELL: If Texas football, men's basketball and baseball don't hurry up and start winning big on a consistent basis, the Texas brand is going to take a noticeable hit?
(Sell) Is going to?
BUY or SELL: You believe I'm a 58 yr old MAN with insecurity issues that stalks high school boys twitter accounts?
(Sell) Are you?
BUY or SELL: @Suchomel can out drink the other mods but @Ketchum can win a hot wing eating contest?
(Sell) I'm such a punk when it comes to eating wings. I ordered 10 the last time I was there and only finished seven. Besides, Suchomel is a cheap, easy drunk. My money is on McComas in both.
BUY or SELL: There has been a lot of discussion on the board this week. So once and for all, which movie is the greatest of all time?:
- Over The Top
- Commando
- Predator
Sports can wait.
This isn't technically a Buy or Sell question, but it's too important of a topic to skip. As a kid that never really knew his dad, I've always been a mark for Over the Top. In fact, one of my early Orangebloods alias handles in the early days of the site was "Harry Bosco." When you combine Stallone's hat turn with the killer 80s soundtrack with the feel-good father-son reuniting story, this becomes an easy call. Predator ranks second among this group.
No. 9 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …
... Sister Jean is the middle of the best 15 minutes of fame that any nun has ever had. I love the Loyola story.
... In his final game as a college player, Duke’s Grayson Allen had a chance for the Jimmy Chitwood moment, a jump shot in the final seconds to send his team to the Final Four ... and the ball hit every part of the rim but the bottom of it. Man, he's going to dream about that shot for the rest of his life.
... Bill Self has done an awesome job this year.
... Tweet of the Weekend
... This is the third weekend in a row that I've said this, but now is the time to get the Warriors if you're the Rockets. The championship is there for the taking.
... I like the addition of Allen Hurns for the Cowboys, but it's not the kind of thing that changes any real dynamics on the team.
... I missed my Premier League this weekend.
No. 10 – And Finally …
Because it deserves one more special mention...
Really enjoyed reading the behind the scenes story about Griffin. More stories like this in the future please.
I've called Shaka a three-year failure.
There's some nuance in this discussion and I'm not sure you've grasped it. You're directly comparing apples to oranges and misunderstanding that the apple is actually a pear.
I wasn’t even upset with Boyd after he retweeted that stuff. I thought it was stupid but I also thought the coaches should be keeping players from getting to their phones at halftime, too.
I also did way worse in college than he did so who am I to judge.
I also did way worse in college than he did so who am I to judge.
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"every time a school hires a new strength coach, the hype from that area of the program is out of control."
Aside from the fact that this statement just is NOT factually accurate, those programs don't all begin to have dozens of guys get big as F and much stronger in a short period of time. And that's measurable and visible at Texas.
The record may not have changed that much yet, but even in Missouri Texas football players look bigger and stronger.
Aside from the fact that this statement just is NOT factually accurate, those programs don't all begin to have dozens of guys get big as F and much stronger in a short period of time. And that's measurable and visible at Texas.
The record may not have changed that much yet, but even in Missouri Texas football players look bigger and stronger.
When Texas starts going better than 6-6 going into the bowl game, there will be plenty of credit to go around.
You once sidetracked us into talking about why, in the movie Se7en, the detective didn't think that it was possible that he needed to protect his wife. The guy who intentionally injured Colt gets indicted and it doesn't get mentioned at all in your thoughts for the week?
This board cannot have a rational Michael Bennett conversation. There's way too much history there.
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2:06 mark. Believe that's #415 on top of our QB who seems to squat it with relative ease.
6-6 is so last year.
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I've know Cedric Griffin since 6th grade, even then he was a super talented athlete. Like Ketch said he went through a lot in HS, including living with a teammate. I remember when he told us he was going to Texas, it was a pretty surreal moment. I may be biased but I think he is one of the most underrated players to ever play at Texas. I think he's as good as Huff or A. Ross he just didnt have the interceptions. But I thought he was the toughest player on the 05 defense.
I can see no need for hyperbole, but I thought we were talking about the impact of a new S&C coach. I think he has made a noticeable and very positive impact. No need to overstate it, but no need to understate it either. They look and perform physically like a different team because of Yancy.
His first day at practice at Texas, he jammed Roy Williams up like a grown man. Fearless player.
So it isn't that it isn't important enough to deal with like you originally suggested, instead it is so controversial you don't want to touch the topic? Okay.
