Catching up on CU recruiting

Well it's been a while. But that's what happens when former teammates come to visit. And when it's someone of Charlie Melvin's stature and notoriety, all you can do is take a few days off work, let your family know that you love them, tell your liver to suck it up, and let loose. We probably could have greatly helped out the Commish over at Slushy Gutter with his summer drinking quest. But we don't know him, and stayed on the south side of Denver the whole time. Sorry Commish. So I was out of contact with the sports world for several days and here's what I missed: - The final Finals game was boring. A french dude won MVP. What has happened to the NBA when a foreigner wins MVP of the regular season, and a different foreigner wins Finals MVP? What is going on with American hoops? (I'm looking at you HS basketball coaches.) Is it too much to ask to teach the kids how to shoot a jump shot, correctly feed the post with a hook pass, or to get into triple threat position? Oh well. At least our guys can dunk better than theirs. - The Rockies had another 4 game winning streak and even took the series on the road against the Red Sox. I'm telling you, we are going to be good enough to barely almost get in the playoffs this year! (I'm going to be the last one back on the Rockies bandwagon this season. I've just been let down too many times to completely believe. I love them, but sometimes I hate that I love them.) - A dude from Argentina won the US Open. This seems physically impossible to me as I had always believed the contact between club and ball would automatically cause all Argentinians to flop. Okay, so here's the main reason for my post. After perusing through the last few days of the CU recruiting message boards, it seems that recruit interest in CU is nearing an all-time low. In fact, one of our WR verbal commits (Chance Blackmon) de-committed last week, only to be begged back into a soft verbal. The problem was that after committing to us some bigger schools like Tennessee and Texas A&M developed interest and were able to talk him out of CU. How could they do that you ask? It's simple. They tell him that CU sucks. This is the problem we are going to have with recruits until next season starts. The damage done by last year's 2-10 debacle of a season goes beyond our embarrassment as fans. Coach Hawk can do an amazing job of selling recruits on the fact that we are building towards something special, that these kids can be a part of bringing CU back to national prominence, that they will play early and often and be a big factor in the process. It's all true. But then the next team can simply say "Why would you go to CU? They're terrible. Did you know that they were 2-10 last year and lost to a 1AA school?" And it works. How do you counter this? Hawk needs to land one huge recruit this off-season and that tactic will topple. Landing someone like Jon Major (who has CU in his top 10 list now, he is in the process of narrowing down his top 20) would help. Or even better would be Darrell Scott (#2 overall player in the nation according to Rivals, #1 RB) or Julio Jones (#3 overall player and #1 WR). Both are considering CU along with the top programs in the nation. By landing one of these three, other top players will look at CU with a more open mind. They would start thinking "If someone like Darrell Scott chose CU over Florida, USC and Texas than maybe I should consider them." It will only take one. If Hawk can't pull that off in the off-season, than the start of next season will be absolutely crucial. We can't afford another down season. We HAVE to beat CSU. Beating ASU on the road would be huge. Pulling off the home win against Florida State on national TV would be absolutely enormous. Win 2 out of those 3, and being competitive in all of them, will be a lot of ammo to use against opposing recruiters who will tell kids to look at last year's record. Personally, I'm a believer. We have interest from 10 players on Rivals top 100. We have a good '07 recruiting class and a year in Hawk's system. (By the way, have you heard how big Ryan Miller is now? He's up to 320 lbs and is about to grow out of his size 18 shoes! That man is going to be an animal for us for the next few years, so enjoy him!) Hawk is determined to rebuild our program. And as hard as it is for me to say this following last year's 2-10 disaster season, I'm extremely excited for football season to start. September 1st against CSU is going to tell us a lot about where our program is going. Now if I could just find something to do for the next 6 weeks to keep me entertained. **Update - Chance Blackmon has officially de-committed from the Buffs, citing distance from home as his reason. Whatever. Good riddance kid.

Quick Hits - The Sequel

Forty Deuce is back up in this piece, and he's lookin' to waste a little of your time w/ some quick hitting links and some random grumbling and rumbling. So please turn up your volume and lets start off strong w/ one of my favorite links to get you prepared. I'm really glad they finally started the NBA Finals. When did Marc Jackson start talking funny all the time? I noticed alot more accent, kinda like they voiced over him w/ Kenny Smith or something. Watched quite a bit of the game, and after reading JT's column yesterday, I came to realize that I like the Spurs and dislike the Cavs! I used to think I hated Tony Parker because he was a Frenchy (born in Belgium). But now I really respect his uncanny ability to score in the paint at his size. And although the Big Fundamental's whining bugs me on occasion, I really do find myself pulling for him. And I've come to realize and accept why he was selected #1 in the 1997 NBA draft, and I somehow failed to be contacted by any teams. I will maintain that I'd have been a way better investment than Olivier Saint-Jean (aka the original Frenchy, aka Tariq Abdul-Wahad). Isn't that guy still getting paid by the Mavs? Or are the Nuggets still payin' him? Bet he could bench 185 back in 97', and that's what sold him to the Sacramento Kings. FYI- Jacque Vaughn will always be a spazz. Scott Pollard, Drew Gooden, and Daniel Gibson are just way too annoying to be placed on the same team. It has to be the Kansas and Texas thing? I listen to a little sports radio in the afternoons. Normally I'll listen to Dan Patrick, Scott and All - Off the Hook, and then toggle between Doug Gotlieb's - The Pulse, and Irv & Joe...now w/ Jim 'Okaaay' Armstrong too. Anyhow, I was listening to a FOD and heard him say that Kevin Durant couldn't bench 185 lbs. once. Did I hear that right? How's a skinny dude like that gonna survive in the Association for 82 games (and w/ the Sonics, I'm not even gonna worry about the playoffs). I know he's got long arms or whatever, but come on, 2 plates and a couple quarters, and you can't bounce that off your chest once? To be fair, Greg Oden didn't even attempt to bench due to his previously injured wrist. So it does say something that Durant attempted it at all. My honest opinion on this is that I think it's a little suspect. Yes, we're talking about a 19 year old kid who's 6-9 and 215 lbs. w/ a crazy condor-like wingspan of 7-4. And it sounds like Kevin Durant has a tremendous work ethic and is genuinely a good person from articles and comments I've come across. There's no question that he's the 2nd pick in the draft. The individual numbers he put up over the course of his only season in the Big XII were nothing short of amazing. It must be noted that the Big XII wasn't really that tough last year, but Durant did put up really good numbers against T. A&M, KU, and OSU. He played 35 games last year, and suffered some minor injuries over the course of the season. Now he's gonna be playing every night against guys just as long/quick/tall and he'll be giving up 20-40 lbs. to them. They still allow moving screens and some physical contact in the NBA, so I think he's gonna have a hard time rebounding and getting shots around the paint. With 10's of millions of $'s in his bank account after being the second pick, and having endorsements, I'm supposed to expect him to become more motivated? Right now I'm predicting season 1 for Durant to be a more Morrison-like (sans the mustache) 12-14 ppg. 4-5 reb. & under 37% FG% in a more Camby-like 63 games played. But damn, he goes to Texas, and he doesn't know that he's gotta work out for teams, and that the weight room is kind of important? Several sources mentioned that this happened to TJ Ford as well? Isn't that more reason for Texas to correct that issue w/ a little bench press training? I mean really? He would probably be pressing 225 a few times if he spent any time on the weight bench at all. And the Sonics (as they did w/ Robert Swift), will prepare Durant for the wear and tear of an NBA season as well as they know how. Maybe the bench press isn't totally relevant to the evaluation of a basketball player. And it certainly doesn't have anything to do w/ basketball knowledge and skills. It's frankly a measure of strength and conditioning. It raises a red flag that Durant wasn't willing to invest that time to improve in that area. And wise coaches and GM's will take note of this miniscule detail because we're talking about a possible make or break move for an entire franchise. I mostly blame Rick Barnes for everything related to this because it appears that he's not a very good coach (X's and O's, as well as in preparation for the NBA). Any recruits reading this please take note! Jeff Bzdelik worked 17 seasons in the NBA and he is the most qualified person in the college game today to prepare you for a basketball career after college. Consider Colorado, please, just come for a visit and see for yourself. Label me a 'hater' or whatever, but I question whether Durant can play 82 games next season, I predict that he'll hit the wall and be susceptible to injury. This probably works out fine for the Sonics because they're used to having lots of injuries over the course of a season. Do you think they'll resign Rashard Lewis? Cause I see Durant being the same sort of player, or maybe like Marvin Williams w/ a better perimeter game. Todd Jones is 39 friggin' years old, and Treavor Hoffman is older than that! Throw in Mariano Rivera and Bob Wickman, and you've got a quartet of old-ass closers. Add the oldest Japanese closer known to man in Takashi Saito (37) and I don't know what that says? Add up all those saves 15 + 17 + 6 + 10 + 16 and you've got 66 saves on 6/6/07. Figure in Al Reyes, Tom Gordon and Alan Embree 14 + 5 + 5, and you've got 90 saves and 20% of the 448 saves in mlb to date were made by guys 37 or older. I don't even know what to say about that? This is a bad sign for any player, see if you can recognize what's wrong w/ this picture. Check out the player page for former Nugget, current Sun, and all-world practice player Nikolotz Tskitishvili. What happened to the Skitish? JT made some amazing points with his last few observations on the basketball scholarships that have not been renewed by coach Bzdelik up at Colorado. This could really be its own column so I won't say much else on the subject right now. Otherwise, Quick Hits would move past 15,000 words and classify as printable bathroom reading material. And you can't really do that w/ links now can you? Still searching for that Pyramid Curveball Seasonal Brew at Colorado liquor stores. You may or may not remember my link to it in the first edition of Quick Hits. Since then I've learned that my peeps in Iowa are drinkin' it regularly. Now, I thought Colorado had a little more beer variety than Iowa, but I must be sorely mistaken. I've checked Santa Fe Spirits, Wine Sellers, and a couple places online, and so far, NADA. But that won't deter me, I'll let you know when I hunt it down, or else break down and order some online. Speaking of beers, I really liked the idea set forth on the Slushy Gutter site. The article is titled: There's No 'I' in Team (or Beer) If they are coming up a little short of the 5,280 beers, I'd be happy to help out! Well, as long as this is turning into a beer drinkin' post I might as well give a shout out to the Bent River Brewing Co. in Moline, Illinois. Had a couple of their beers at some Midwest League minor league baseball games, and I must say, "That's some good stuff." And kudos to the Quad City Swing for having it flowin' at the ballpark, and for mixin' it up nightly w/ a different 'Get Bent' brew. Well, I've surpassed my word limit on this entry and this can no longer be defined as 'Quick' so I'll sign off and begin accumulating more random thoughts. Please check back for more Homer wisdom.