february thoughts
welcome to the burner blog. i am just a normal guy that watches a ton of sports. i have a lot of takes and a lot of opinions and just looking for a place to let those takes get out there. i am not going to use capital letters so if you don’t like that i do not care.
it has been a very long time since i’ve written about college hoops. i’ve been paying attention. i just have been busy with the real world as well as busier thinking about football (for good reason).
college hoops is my true love, football is just my mistress. i’ll see her next summer (my super bowl blog will drop soon, i didn’t forget).
it’s great to be back.
for the fans, college hoops is serious from november through april. we like to put too much stock into early season games and results. we put too much stock into preseason polls. we put too much stock into early conference races. why? because we love it. not apologizing.
but now is when it starts to get really serious. february hits, women get stressed about valentine’s day and their boyfriends or husbands get stressed about a pivotal conference matchup on a tuesday night. wouldn’t have it any other way honestly.
today i dropped the updated #burnerrankings in the sleepers discord so i will toss them in here just to update everyone on my (mostly correct) opinion.
#burnerrankings as of 2/3
- duke — i have said they are the best team in the country the whole year.
2. auburn — if they go undefeated in sec play are they that good or is the sec not that good?
3. bama — i am still very in on bama. some people aren’t.
4. iowa state — i don’t wanna talk about it.
5. houston — they sneakily won 13 games in a row and lost in overtime to a very good texas tech team.
6. tennessee — sure, they lost 3 of 5 but beat florida by 20 without ziegler and milicic.
7. texas tech — they are very good. s/o grant mccasland — i am watching you.
8. florida — is the golden situation behind them? will be judging them against auburn saturday.
9. purdue — they’ve won 9 of 10 and braden smith is (still) very good!
10. marquette — i still like them even though dan hurley just beat them. i believe in kam jones.
a personal rule of mine is that the ap poll doesn’t matter until valentine’s day. it actually never matters, but i won’t be even paying attention to the rankings until love is in the air (caleb love is good btw).
ok fine, i will address the elephant in the room.
kansas fucking sucks.
happy? i’m not.
it’s not even just losing the games. it’s HOW you lose the games. kansas has the most experienced team in d1 basketball (according to kenpom, you can look it up). if you are an experienced team, you should not struggle getting the ball inbounds and should maybe be able to hold onto a 21 point lead.
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having experience doesn’t necessarily mean you will be good (look at minnesota). but you should probably be at least competent at certain things (breaking token pressure, valuing the basketball).
kansas has struggled to do those things, especially recently. it’s very concerning.
sure, it could be worse. if you look at the positives, they had a 99% chance to beat houston (a very good team) with 14 seconds left and led baylor (an ncaa tournament team) by 21 points on the road. you have to be pretty good to be in those positions.
that is enough positivity from me.
this team is pretty much dead to me. i’ve seen enough. i can’t talk myself into them anymore. if they make the sweet 16 i would be ecstatic. that is the ceiling i see for this team. yes, march is flukey so could they get hot and get to the final four if they make the sweet 16? i guess? the likelihood of that just doesn’t exist in my brain. i will obviously continue to watch and hope they win, i just cannot convince myself they are capable of winning anything significant.
we could talk about rotations and issues for this entire blog but nobody reading this is a kansas fan so they don’t care, so we won’t (play flory bidunga more than kj adams please).
my prediction for tonight against iowa state:
we lose again. this time, fans leave early and boo on the way out of the most historic venue in college basketball. i hate iowa state in the worst way. this loss tonight could do very bad things to my mental state.
if they win? will i be back in? no. i will just be glad iowa state lost at this point.
(bill self is 37–0 at home on espn big monday)
2024–2025 will be the first time kansas finishes outside of the top 3 in the big 12 in consecutive seasons since 1982–83. just simply astonishing (yeah yeah they could technically still finish in the top 3 but c’mon, have you watched them?).
moving on.
my other thoughts as we head into the stretch run of the season.
- arizona is good again.
to those of you that gave up on my sweet prince tommy lloyd and caleb love after they started 4–5: shame on you. imagine overreacting to november college hoops! couldn’t be me! none of those 5 losses are bad losses as we sit here on february 3rd and look at the arizona wildcats (15–6, winners of 11 of 12). ‘tommy lloyd sucks’ — all he does is win though. can’t wait for you all to jump down his throat again if he doesn’t make the final four! just remember me when he wins his first national title (at kansas?) someday.
2. cooper flagg is already the national player of the year.
yep, i’ve seen enough. he’s the guy. we already knew he was going to be great, i just didn’t know he would be this good. i never saw a world where he scored as well as he does. we knew he could do it all. i just didn’t expect him to average 20 a game and be a serviceable three point shooter. yes, johni broome is great. take each of them off of their team, which team is better? (auburn is 2–0 against pretty good teams without broome)
3. hubert davis is gone.
my good friend riley davis has been saying that he will be back. i just don’t see how it is possible at this point. if they miss the ncaa tournament again they have to fire him. they’re currently 13–10 with ½ a quality win (s/o mick cronin). luckily for hubert and his job security, the acc is terrible so they may be able to salvage some wins and limp into the backdoor of the ncaa tournament. north carolina is a big brand, they’d put them in with 18–19 wins (20–13 in 2023 but missed). we’ve seen them do that for tom izzo and michigan state (smaller brand, not hating) if they don’t necessarily deserve a bid. i just think they will get there. kenpom favors them in 7 of their final 9. they might need all 7 wins. if they can get a guy like nate oats they have to fire him. it isn’t worth hanging on for one more year. north carolina is too good of a program to be this bad.
4. matt painter is a great coach.
this is not new. i just want to remind everyone. full disclosure: i hate purdue. sometimes you just have to give credit where it’s due. zach edey dominated college basketball for the past two years. purdue became edey merchants. everyone (including me, to an extent) would just say ‘wait until edey is gone! back to reality!’ toward purdue fans. here we are, back to reality. they are still winning, just like painter did before edey. i 100% did not think they would be as good as they are. hand up, i was wrong. just here to remind everyone that painter had won a lot of games before edey — and will continue to win a lot of games in the post edey era.
5. nobody should want to play drake in the ncaa tournament.
for the last couple of years i’d been telling people to look out for ben mccollum. all the guy does is win. his success at d2 northwest missouri state seems almost made up. they just didn’t really lose. he finally got a d1 opportunity that made sense for him and what is he doing? winning. drake is currently 20–2 and any power 4 conference team would be shaking in their boots to matchup with them in the ncaa tournament. if they don’t win the mvc tournament i think there would be a decent chance they could get an at-large bid. why would we not want to play them? they make you play their game. they play at a snails pace which would make a ton of teams uncomfortable. they guard, they rebound, they make threes, they just play really disciplined basketball. also, he brought 4 players with him from northwest missouri state — those kids are winners, so their culture reflects that. it’s one thing to play a mid-major that is happy to be there, they’re glad they get to play in the tournament. it’s an entirely different thing to play a mid-major that expects to win. ben mccollum is a winner.
thank you for reading this edition of the #burnerblog
