Geaux Tuscaloosa

Big Changes On the Horizon

2008-05-25T15:27:00.003-05:00

GeauxTuscaloosa is moving on to bigger and better things. Thanks to what I think has been our true commitment to bringing interesting and informative content, I have been invited to take over as site administrator over at And the Valley Shook, which had been perhaps the premier LSU sports blog on the internet until it went dormant recently.

As a result, this will be the last blog post on GeauxTuscaloosa. Some time very soon, I will begin blogging over at And The Valley Shook, which is a part of SBNation, a network of blogs of all sorts of sports fans, with blogs dedicated to each of the Major League Baseball teams, each of the NBA teams, each of the NFL teams, many of the BCS-conference college teams, a few NHL teams, and some for sports such as cycling and auto racing. It's a big network, and it's well-connected.

The new And The Valley Shook will essentially be a continuation of this blog, but we will be sure to take advantage of the extra bells and whistles that comes with being affiliated with SportsBlog Nation. We will also be officially a part of a larger community of college sports writers, fans, etc.

This is a big step up for us, and we (Poseur and I) are very excited about it. Having looked around the network a little, we hope we can live up to the high standards for blogging that are currently in place. The first task we have is to learn how to use all the extras that come with it. It makes no sense to move over to a more advanced platform and continue to settle for text and pictures. But we promise also to not let the better technology overwhelm the content. We take pride in being insightful and informative, and that will not change.

We hope to see you when we get started.

The LSU Baseball Team is No Longer Jailbait

2008-05-23T06:11:00.003-05:00

They've reached 18! The pitching was good. The hitting was timely. The fielding was reportedly outstanding.

I say "reportedly" because, once again, I had no way of keeping up with the game by any traditional means. My cable system does not get CSS, and I do not believe it was broadcast on local radio (I tried to find it). I wanted to listen to it on internet radio, but the only sites I was able to find either required registration (I avoid registering for things) or strictly used Windows Media Player.

I have a Mac. It doesn't have Windows Media Player. Usually something also uses RealPlayer or QuickTime. This didn't.

Instead, I followed the game using the "Live" function at SECSports.com. It was sort of like following a football game using ESPN's graphical interface. Nice, but no substitute for television or radio coverage. I blame the SEC. It appears they licensed their radio rights to XM Satellite Radio, which the vast majority of people do not get. Because they also licensed the television rights of the early games to a station that many people also do not get, a lot of people have been shut out of following the games in the most useful formats. Unless you're willing to take off work and go, you can't take part.

Starting today, Fox Sports starts carrying the games. This will be nice because at least I'll be able to see the Kentucky-Bama game, which will decide our opponent at 1:30pm on Saturday. The Tigers get the day off today by virtue of staying in the Winner's Bracket. If we win that game, we advance to the championship game. If we lose against Bama/Kentucky, we play again later that night, and for some reason, the "if necessary" game will be broadcast on CSS instead of FSN, which means I'd be right back to not getting television access.

At least, if it's Bama we play, it will be on radio and perhaps local TV. Yay channel 23!

But back to last night's game. On the written play-by-play provided by SECSports.com, the game came down to two things: a) we got the big hit when we needed it, and b) we got the big out when we needed that. After doing next to nothing for 4 innings, getting only one runner in scoring position during that time, and not getting a run, we broke through for two big innings in the 5th and 6th by getting big hits with runners on, including a 3-run home run in the 6th. We were also aided by poor defense on Vandy's part, using two throwing errors and a hit-by-pitch in the 5th inning to score 4 runs.

After that, we were on cruise control. Vandy's big threat came in the 7th when they used a walk, a hit, and an error to load the bases with only one out, but couldn't make a big inning out of it. A big inning would have made it a whole new game, but they settled for one run on a sacrifice fly and the rally quietly petered out. They didn't get a runner past 2nd base again for the rest of the night.

We got the big hit when we had the chance. They didn't. We made good defensive plays. They committed 3 errors (to our 1). We won. Bring on the next opponent. I'm into this now.

Who's the MVP?

2008-05-21T20:30:00.004-05:00

Another ho-hum win for the Tigers. Down 4-0 in the 9th inning, the Tigers drew two walks to lead off the inning (a difficult task since you could have driven a Buick through the umpire’s strike zone), setting up Matt Clark’s three-run bomb. Not to be outdone, Ryan Schimpf doubled home the tying run with two outs and two strikes. No pressure or anything. By the time Blake Dean hit a solo shot to win it in the 10th, the whole thing seemed pre-ordained. Here’s the highlights:

Win #17. No biggee. So, let’s answer the unanswered question from yesterday: who is the Tigers MVP? Well, let’s look at the contenders:

It could be this guy. Blake Dean leads the team with a 339 batting average, though I’m not really a batting average kind of guy. Let’s get used to the trilogy stats right now: AVG/OBP/SLG. It gives an idea of how a guy hits, how often he gets on, and with how much power. Dean hit 339/421/610. He had 14 HR and 49 RBI. He even steals the occasional base (4 of 6). He plays decent defense, and his been a rock in the middle of the order all season, batting third in 45 games and never batting lower than 5th. He’s the guy the team relies on, he’s the star player, he’s the obvious choice.

But it could be this guy. On a team that relies so heavily on freshmen and sophomores, Michael Hollander is the senior leader that holds the team together. As the times got harder, Hollander played better. He hit 296/380/466 overall, but 308/379/519 in SEC play. He stole 4 of his 6 bases in SEC play, and only made 4 of his 15 errors in conference play. He’s been a stellar defensive third baseman, and he’s added the sock.

It could be this guy. Jared Bradford was a preseason All-American, but he was moved to the pen not because of poor pitching, but because Mainieri could use him in more games. He pitched in almost half of LSU’s games, and was a valuable swingman to get from the starters to the pen. But come on, he wasn’t as valuable of a pitcher as…

… this guy. Ryan Verdugo’s gonna make a lot of money next year. Mainly because lefties who throw a biting curveball are in high demand. Especially ones who go 8-2 with a 3.61 ERA, averaging almost a strikeout per inning. He’s given LSU the ace they have lacked for so long, and the team is no longer just giving away the Friday game.

It could be this guy. Ryan Schimpf has helped anchor the infield along with freshman DJ LeMahieu. I’m a firm believer that teams are built from the middle of the defensive spectrum out, so middle infielders are dear to my heart. Schimpf is probably the most well-rounded player on the team. He hits 301/407/550. He hit 10 homers, but also stole 13 bases. He also only made 2 errors all season, at one of the most demanding defensive positions. I hate to say he is without flaw, but he is pretty good at everything.

Or it could be this guy. Matt Clark is a force of nature at the plate. He’s actually a pretty good defensive 1st baseman, but he’s not here for his glove. He’s here because he hit 332/428/717. That’s right, he slugged 717. He hit 20 home runs in 52 games, an absurd total which harkens back to Gorilla Ball and aluminum bats. He hit slightly better in SEC play: 344/439/760. They say he can’t lefties, but that just means he doesn’t absolutely humiliate them the way he does righties.

Heck, you decide.

A Letter To the Bandwagon

2008-05-20T21:04:00.001-05:00

Dear Richard,

First off, welcome to the bandwagon. You’re not REALLY a bandwagon fan since you are, first and foremost, an LSU fan. It’s not like you’ve spent the last few years rooting for Rice’s baseball team and are suddenly switching loyalties. You’re not switching teams, you’re just reacquainting yourself with a team you are already inclined to root for.

That said, I’m here to help you get up to speed with the team. I’m always willing to help. Who’s the star? A good question, actually. According to the SEC, no one. Not a single LSU player was named either first or second team All-SEC. Not one. And only Micah Gibbs was named to the All-Freshman team. I’m not asking for the world here. But you would think at least one player from the West Division champions, owners of the 2nd best record, and possible national seed would at least made 2nd team. And you’d think a successful, freshman dominated team like LSU would have someone other than Gibbs make the All-Freshman team.

OK, we’ll get into that. Let’s start with the basics: why is LSU winning? Well, a cynic would point out the winning streak has not exactly come against the powers of the SEC. South Carolina and Kentucky were both ranked when they played LSU, but they finished the season a combined two games above .500 in conference play. USC will be the seventh seed in the SEC tournament. Auburn and Mississippi State battled for the cellar, a combined 20 games below .500 in conference play. But 16 wins in a row is 16 wins in a row (and Tulane and UNO are both hovering around the rankings, so its not all chumps). Winning 12 straight games in a conference schedule that is only 30 games goes beyond a mere streak. That’s almost half a season without a loss.

LSU has the best offense in the SEC. Remember last year when I called the offense historically pitiful? Well, things have turned around. LSU has scored 220 runs, tops in the SEC. And scoring runs is what offenses should be judged on. LSU gets a lot of hits (tied for 1st with Alabama) and hits for a lot of power (tied for 1st in total bases, 2nd in slugging). Bama’s component stats are a little better, but LSU wins the bottom line: they score runs.

LSU’s got good pitching, too. They rank third overall in conference ERA. So they prevent runs. Pittman, you were right. Like any good team, they score runs and don’t let up very many. It’s more the offense than the defense, but the defense is pretty darn good. Relief pitching? How did you know? Bradford’s become sort of a swingman uber-reliever, pitching in relief so he can get in more games. Mainieri’s been comfortable getting saves from Coleman, Bertuccini, Ross, or the nominal closer Bradshaw. Why not? All of them have ERA’s 3.50 or lower.

This is running a bit long, so I’ll try to help you identify the best player tomorrow, which is a tougher task than you might think. Besides, it’ll give you a chance to meet most of the team. Right now, just enjoy the bandwagon.

Signed,
Poseur

In Defense of the Bandwagon

2008-05-20T06:08:00.002-05:00

A lot of people speak or write derisively of the bandwagon. If you pick up a team just as they are starting to have success, you are considered not just less of a fan, but you are considered to be not a fan at all.

There's some truth to this, but I believe the attitude should not be taken too far. I think Poseur has it right in the comments to the last post that the bandwagon jumpers just have to "know their place at the back of the line".

You see, the simple fact is most fans are "bandwagon" fans at least in the mildest sense of the word. Most of us, even if we have affection and admiration for the baseball or basketball teams, will not actually pay much attention if the team is not doing well. Heck, if we were a losing football team like we were back in the '90s, I would still be paying attention, but I doubt I'd be blogging. If the basketball team is losing, I am still rooting for them, but I'm probably not watching the games on television, because I will have more enjoyable things to do. The baseball team is the same way, except that when they aren't doing well, they never appear on television.

So yes, when the baseball team started winning some games, I started paying more attention. Am I claiming expertise on the topic of LSU baseball? Absolutely not. I have nothing intelligent to say in answer to the question, "Why is LSU baseball suddenly so successful?" Knowing what I know about baseball, my guess is that the answer is at least partly "pitching", and knowing what I know about college baseball, I further guess that it could be "relief pitching". However, those are just guesses.

Honestly, I can't name the team's best players, in part because living here in Tuscaloosa, I don't ever actually see them play. Unlike Poseur, I choose not to listen to the games on internet radio. Does that make me less of a fan than Poseur?

Yes, I suppose it does.

Now don't get me wrongly here. Bandwagon fans can be thoroughly obnoxious and irritating. If you were wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey in Baton Rouge in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you were probably insufferable. The same can be said if you were one of the many people wearing Miami Hurricanes material 10-20 years ago.

I can't think of any big bandwagons today, at least in that sense. Maybe USC, though I don't really think their bandwagon extends beyond the West Coast, and from what I understand their fan base is really not that passionate, although I did get into an argument a couple years ago with a USC fan who made me want to tear my hair out because of his ignorance. But I digress.

Yes, if you jump on the bandwagon and then act obnoxious, or act like you know more than you do, or act like you have been there all along, you deserve the enmity of others. If you simply decide that you are not going to pay all that much attention unless the team starts going somewhere, you are not a bad person. You are, like most people, making choices about how you spend your valuable time. Some people choose one thing. Some choose another. I simply do not love baseball or basketball enough to spend my time following a losing team. It does not mean I do not care how they are doing, or that it does not pain me to see the teams struggling these last few years.

All that said, the team will be playing less than an hour from where I live this week. On Thursday, they start in the morning, and I will be working. After that, we will see. If they're still playing on Saturday, I will definitely be going to that. I may even get to see games I do not attend on television.

Handling the Ignorant Naysayers

2008-05-19T06:09:00.004-05:00

Lately, we seem to have been bombarded with bloggers and minor journalists saying inane and critical things about the state of the LSU football program. "Critical" probably isn't the right word, because some may take it to to be used pursuant to its 3rd definition at dictionary.com, "involving skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc."

I won't link to them, because the purpose of this entry is to encourage LSU fans to ignore those guys, but I am sure you can easily find multiple examples of some minor commentator saying terrible things about the state of the football program. Just go on the message boards and look for the LSU fans calling it to your attention. I think 3 were brought up this weekend alone.

If it's a blogger making bizarre statements like LSU's recruiting is sub-par, or that LSU's program is currently on a steady decline, you know they're just trying to generate traffic. Look, I'm a blogger. I know how this works. The easiest way to generate traffic and interest is to find something a lot of people love and then stridently, viciously insult it. I know it gives a blog a big shot in the arm as far as readership goes.

If you write that entry, the fans will link to it at message boards, your traffic will increase 50-fold or more, comments will go through the roof, and you will make a name for yourself. It's the simplest, most direct, most reliable way to generate readership for a blog. Recognize that that is its purpose. So when you go to his blog and try to tell the guy what a fool he is, you're giving him exactly what he wants.

Don't do it. Don't play into his hands. Ignore it. Treat him like you would treat any obnoxious fan at the stadium by obscenities about how much his team is going to beat you. That's exactly what he is. He's one of those obnoxious and difficult fans who has discovered that the internet gives him another outlet AND that his obnoxiousness is actually rewarded here.

I am here to encourage all LSU fans, and fans of other teams for that matter, to just ignore trolls like that. By linking and by commenting, you are just encouraging them to do it more. If they get a lot of comments, then they become known for being able to bother the fans of other teams. Don't let the attention whores win.

Now if it's not a blogger, I think you need to do something a little different. If it's a "respected" journalist, like for example, Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com, who said before the BCSNCG a few months ago:

LSU coach Les Miles is lucky the BCS national championship game isn't a board game between the coaches. If they were playing checkers, Ohio State's Jim Tressel would quadruple-jump Miles into submission. If they were playing chess, Miles would ask to play checkers.

I don't think Les Miles is very smart. Sorry, I don't. He doesn't look smart, for one thing. He could have been the lead character in Sling Blade. His eyes are too close together. I bet I could jam a thumb over the bridge of his nose and poke both pupils.

Looks can be deceiving, of course. Despite looking dumb, Les Miles could actually be smart. Except he doesn't act smart. And this is why he cannot beat Jim Tressel on Monday night in the BCS title game.

We all remember how that turned out. I think, the way to treat these guys is to just take their number. Remember them, and when they say something else, use it against them. "Say, aren't you the guy who said that Les Miles could not possibly beat Jim Tressel? Why should we listen to you?" The last thing in the world these guys want is for you to remember their predictions that went horribly wrong.

Edit: I realized I let Monday pass without one word about our baseball team getting their 14th, 15th, and 16th wins in a row this weekend and winning the SEC West. I will have more on this tomorrow, but don't let it be said that I am ignoring this today. Congratulations on an incredible streak that no one could have seen coming.

Medical Scholarships

2008-05-16T06:11:00.002-05:00

Jordon Corbin, the tight end and defensive end from Lakeland, Florida, profiled here by me a little less than a year ago, has given up football due to a lingering knee injury. He was the most heralded of the 3 tight end recruits from last year. He had moved from tight end to defensive end during the Spring, but decided that his knee, which he injured in high school, just wouldn't let him go at full speed and he would have to give up his dream of playing football.

It's very sad, and you hate to see a kid have to leave a football team before he ever really became a part of it. He got injured in high school, but LSU honored his commitment and gave him a chance to come in and heal. He never played for us despite being a 4-star recruit. He becomes the second player to leave the team from the Class of 2007 after Delvin Breaux decided his neck injury would not let him play either.

Mark Snyder from the Class of 2006 is also on medical scholarship due to multiple knee injuries, and there was some talk in the past that Kirston Pittman would be placed on a medical scholarship, but thankfully that did not happen. Cousin Kirston is awesome.

The good news for Mr. Corbin is that he still gets a free education. He remains on what is called a "medical scholarship." With a medical scholarship, a player is removed from the roster and no longer counts against the 85 player maximum, but retains his scholarship.

I once read the details of how it works, but I cannot find any of the specific information any longer. I know certain safeguards are in place to make sure that the medical scholarship system isn't abused. Otherwise, a coach can simply place any player who isn't cutting it on the field onto the medical scholarship list and get the person off the 85-man list without actually kicking him out of school.

I know that the medical scholarship is reversible, but the process of reversing it is arduous. I believe the player, in order to return from a medical scholarship list to the team proper has to go before a committee of medical experts, and the committee must vote as to whether it is a good idea. As I recall, the vote must be 2/3 in favor of the player returning, or the player does not return. I believe the player may also need clearance to by the committee in order to go ON a medical scholarship, but I'm not sure and I can't find the information.

The upshot is that the medical scholarship program is very good for the athlete and the team. Players who are too injured to play can stay in school and finish their education on scholarship, and the teams are free to seek out a player to replace him on the roster. It also removes one of the incentives a coach has to cut an injured recruit loose, and that's a good thing.

I do think that the system is potentially subject to abuse, in that a creative coach can probably get roster numbers down by making questionable moves to put players into the medical scholarship program who may not really be seriously injured, but haven't developed enough to be contributing players. I hope it's an issue the NCAA is at least looking out for, but so far no one has ever been accused of abusing this particular system. But any system that allows a coach to jimmy up his roster numbers has to be monitored closely for abuse.

Good luck to Jordon. I was looking forward to seeing him play, but now I hope he gets a good education and gets on with his life.

Don't Fret About the Schedule

2008-05-15T05:55:00.004-05:00

There's been consternation lately about LSU's out of conference schedule for the 2008 football season. The fans have been on us. The media has been on us. Case in point:

In case you missed it, one of those guys called us "cowardly" and told us to "grow a spine" in our non-conference scheduling. He specifically compared us to USC, pointing out their "aggressive" non-conference scheduling. We play Appalachian State, Troy University, North Texas, and Tulane out of conference next year, all at home. USC plays Virginia, Ohio State, and Notre Dame, with Virginia on the road.

Granted, I like when we play at least one quality out-of-conference opponent. It makes for a more exciting home slate of games, and it puts us on television one additional time. We also, like last year, get some serious bragging rights if we win. I commend teams who play tougher OOC games, and we aren't this year, but why are we the bad guys here?

But let's look a little closer. The world is not all about out-of-conference scheduling. There is also an in-conference slate. If you look at ESPN's own Revised Top 25 for 2008, you see that LSU plays 3 of the top 10 teams, two of them on the road. USC only plays one of the top 10, and two more in the top 25. It is actually a little easier to schedule tough games out of conference when your conference slate isn't a killer.

And why are we suddenly "cowardly" when we have scheduled a non-conference game against a BCS opponent each of the last 6 years. In 2002, we played Virginia Tech. In 2003, we got Arizona in Arizona. In 2004, it was Oregon State. In 2005, Arizona State allowed us to play on their field at the last minute. In 2006, Arizona came to Baton Rouge. In 2007, we lit up Virginia Tech, one of the best teams in the country. In those years, we sprinkled in games against a Ben Roethlisberger-led Miami of Ohio team and perennial mid-major power Fresno State (who happened to be having a bad year). After 6 consecutive years of scheduling at least one quality OOC game, we take a little break this year. Cut us some slack.

And by the way, we were 5-1 in those out of conference BCS-quality games, with one lucky win (Arizona State 2005) and a few blowouts. Only the 2002 Virginia Tech team, when we were breaking in a new quarterback, was able to beat us.

Thirdly, while our OOC schedule is certainly not as strong as USC's, a couple of those teams are not bad opponents at all. Troy beat Oklahoma State last year, gave Georgia all it could handle, scored 31 points on Florida, and went 6-1 in its conference. Appalachian State famously took Michigan down, and won the FCS championship. OK, North Texas and Tulane were terrible.

Yes, those are guys we would never do a home-and-home with, but Troy and Appy State are teams that have shown they can hang with and even beat quality opponents. They aren't Ohio State, but they might be as good as Notre Dame. They're probably better than Stanford. Would the media be pleased if we took mid-major Troy off and added BCS-level Duke? Or perhaps Northwestern? Would you prefer Baylor? How about Temple? Troy is stronger than all of those teams.

So, to recap, if you're going to criticize our schedule, give us credit for the difficult conference schedule, acknowledge that we have been playing quality OOC games every year for more than half-a-decade, and don't overlook the medium-quality opponents we actually have.

Max Holmes Leaves the Football Team

2008-05-14T06:05:00.002-05:00

Good luck to this fella. This is Max Holmes, and he has decided to leave the LSU football team to transfer to Stephen F. Austin to play out his final year of eligibility.

Max was part of Nick Saban's last recruiting class in 2004, and was one of only 10 players still remaining on the team from that class. Holmes is not leaving out of discontent or anything of the sort. By all accounts he loved his time at LSU and gave his all in his role as a backup offensive lineman.

Max Holmes is leaving LSU because he has graduated, and has decided to enroll in a graduate program at Stephen F. Austin this year rather than next. His future is not in football, and he has decided to move forward with his future now rather than play out another year as a backup lineman. He has one year of eligibility remaining, which he will be able to use at SFA. After that, he'll be just another really big dude with a good education and some nice stories to tell about his time on a championship-calibre college football team.

Because Holmes is a senior, it was expected that he would be leaving his scholarship open for a 2009 recruit anyway, so this defection does not help for the 2009 class. It does, however, open up a scholarship spot for a walk-on who has been with the team for a little while. We have no idea who that is yet, but any time you fall under the 85 scholarship limit, which it appears we will for this year, a walk-on gets a little help.

Good luck, Max. Represent us well in whatever you do.

Ranking the Positions: Defense

2008-05-13T05:47:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, we decided that on offense, the most important positions are quarterback and interior offensive line, while the least important are tight end and fullback. Today, we look at the defense. What are the keys to having a successful defense? While it certainly helps to have good players everywhere, there are certain positions where it is extra-important to have talent and skill. Let's take a look:

1. Defensive Tackle: There is no equivalent to a quarterback on the defensive side of the ball. I know, a lot of people say that the middle linebacker is the "quarterback of the defense", and that may be true in the sense that one particular linebacker may make the calls, but there is no position that is as essential to every play or as specialized as the quarterback. Given that, it is no surprise that I am picking the defensive tackle as the most important position on the defense. After all, I picked "interior offensive line" as the second most important on the offense, saying, "I think the key position-to-position matchup on any football field is the battle between the center/guard combination and the defensive tackles on the other side of the ball. Whoever can win the battle on the interior of the line goes a long way towards having success, both in running the ball and in throwing." These guys don't have to pile up a lot of statistics to be effective, and usually do not. If your tackles are effective, you will see the linebackers and the ends getting a lot of tackles at or near the line of scrimmage, because the tackles are moving the line of scrimmage back into the backfield and keeping the blockers off of the linebackers.

2. Cornerback: From the biggest guys on the defense to the smallest. Great cornerbacks free up your defense to do all sorts of things to wreak havoc on an offense. If your corners can consistently and reliably handle the opponent's wide receivers one-on-one, your linebackers and safeties are free to blitz the quarterback or jam the box for the run. Superior cornerbacks allow the defense to play aggressively and take the initiative away from the offense. Average cornerbacks change the character of the defense dramatically from that scenario. Average corners mean zone defense, which means there is little blitzing and the offense has the initiative on the defense. While this may seem strange considering I ranked the wide receivers as the #5 priority on offense, consider that the matchup here is not just the corners against the receivers. It's also the corners against the quarterback. One-on-one, a cornerback has to refuse to give the quarterback enough room to get the ball to the receiver.

3. Defensive End: No real surprise here if you read yesterday's column. The key battles are in the trenches, and this is where the trenches are. The defensive ends are especially important in the passing game, as they are your key every-down pass rushers, and they also are important against the run.

4. Backup Defensive Tackle: If I have any complaint about how Miles or Pelini or whoever responsible has run the defense these last few years, it is in how they have managed the defensive tackle position. College football games are long. The clock rules call for a lot more stoppages of time than in the NFL, meaning there are more plays per game in college than in the pros. In that environment, I think it is very important to keep your players fresh, and nowhere is that more important than at defensive tackle. These guys run at over 300 pounds, and they play probably the most physically demanding position on the field, often being leaned on and pushed around by two 300-pounders. Unlike a wide receiver, who can come out for a breather and be OK in a play or two, when these guys run out of gas on a Saturday night, they don't come back until Monday or Tuesday. They're just too big . Not only do they get worn out during games, they can wear down over the course of a season. Not to mention there is a particularly heightened risk of injury at this position. For these reasons, I think you absolutely need a rotation of 4 defensive tackle, and you need to carefully regulate how many plays your best tackles play in a game, and get them out in games that have already been decided. The result is, backup defensive tackles should play quite a bit. I think Miles/Pelini haven't played backup defensive tackles enough, and it has worn down our starters, limiting their effectiveness.

4. Outside Linebackers: These guys are absolutely essential to containing outside running, especially if (like LSU) you have defensive ends who are a little big and consequently don't necessarily have the 4.6 speed necessary to get outside. Outside linebackers are also important for providing pass coverage on inside receivers (tight ends or slot receivers) and/or running backs. Also, the occasional blitzing, particularly if your corners are good. Speed and quickness are particularly important here. In LSU's scheme, one of the outside linebackers comes off the field in passing situations, so you can imagine the one that leaves is not as important as the one that stays.

5. Middle Linebacker: Cleans up the garbage left by the defensive line in the inside running game and is also important in covering the tight end or running back coming out of the backfield. Speed is not as important for an inside linebacker, but they need to be quick with the first steps and have enough strength to shed blocks from the fullback or interior linemen.

6. Safeties: In LSU's scheme, the safeties are more-or-less interchangeable with one another, but in many schemes the safeties are split into two different roles, the "strong safety" whose primary job is run support, and the "free safety" whose primary job is to cover receivers and provide double teams in the passing game. In all schemes, both safeties do a little of both, but in LSU's scheme, there seems to be no distinction. Some are saying that with the advent of the "spread" offenses in major college football, safeties may become more important in the future, as safeties provide the "sideline to sideline" run support, but I still think this job will remain with the linebackers, who may become smaller and faster to compensate for the horizontally stretched field.

Ranking the Positions: Offense

2008-05-12T06:08:00.003-05:00

First, congratulations to the LSU baseball team for getting another series sweep this weekend. This time, we beat Mississippi State, and suddenly the LSU baseball team is #1 in the SEC West and leading by 1.5 games with one SEC series left. We get Auburn starting on Thursday. We have clinched a spot in the SEC Tournament, and the NCAA selection committee has to see that this is one of the hottest teams in the country.

I want to give my thoughts on a topic that often seems to come up. What are the most important positions on the football field? My thoughts on this differ from many other people's, so let me share them. On offense, I rank the positions this way:

1. Quarterback: Clearly the most important position on the field, and I don't think many people would argue otherwise. The quarterback handles the ball on every play. A good quarterback can make up for innumerable deficiencies elsewhere in the roster. If you get an outstanding one (like a Vince Young), your offense can be darn near unstoppable no matter what else you have going on. If you have one who doesn't have the arm strength, you cannot pass down the field at all. I'm looking in your direction, Brandon Cox. Even in the running game, the quarterback can be important, particularly if you run any option. No one else on either side of the ball is as important to his team's success as the quarterback.

2. Interior Offensive Line: This is where I part ways with a lot of other commentators. I think the key position-to-position matchup on any football field is the battle between the center/guard combination and the defensive tackles on the other side of the ball. Whoever can win the battle on the interior of the line goes a long way towards having success, both in running the ball and in throwing. If your interior offensive linemen can handle the defensive tackles 1-on-1, you will almost certainly have a lot of success on your offense. If you interior offensive line needs double-teams to keep the tackles out of the backfield, that frees up the rest of the defense to maneuver with several unblocked players. It's also great to have guards who can get to the second or third level and block linebackers or safeties, but I'll settle for linemen who can handle the tackles. I think interior offensive line is often overlooked, or it is believed you can just plug players into the position interchangeably. They certainly aren't paid nearly as well in the NFL at these positions as are the tackles, but I think you absolutely need these guys to have success in order for your offense to have success.

3. Offensive Tackles: Next up is a position a lot of people would have at #2 instead of #3. The tackles often go up against the best pass rushers for the other team. While tackles are important both in the running game and the passing game, they separate themselves with their pass blocking, at least on the left side, where defenses like to put their best pass rusher so he can go after the quarterback's blind side. A tackle who doesn't do his job in the passing game will really hurt his team, but one who can handle the good pass rushers will free up his quarterback to do a lot of things. The whole offensive line vs. defensive line matchup is crucial to the outcome of the game, and the tackles are a big part of that.

4. Running Back: We all know what a great running back can give you, but it is my considered opinion that the skill positions in general are a a highly dependent lot. You need good running backs, but there are a LOT of good running backs out there. Almost every team has good running backs. Few have great ones, but good, quality running backs are fairly easy to find. What separates the better running backs from the dime-a-dozen running back is versatility, in my opinion. A good running back needs to block. A good running back needs to catch passes. A good running back needs to hold on to the football. A good running back needs to be able to run inside or outside. If I'm the coach, and I have a running back who can't run inside, I have no room for him except as a specialty back, and he better be lightning fast. If I have a running back who cannot pass block, I'm not sure I have any role for him to play, unless he's Knowshon Moreno or Darren McFadden.

5. Wide Receiver: None of the headline grabbers on a football field are more dependent on others than the Wide Receiver, and even the really good wide receivers only get the ball in their hands 6-8 times per game. With rare exceptions for certain trick plays, wide receiver is absolutely dependent upon the quarterback to get him the ball. Because the quarterback is dependent on the offensive line, the wide receiver therefore has two different levels of dependence upon other players in order to have success. A great wide receiver with a bad quarterback is just as unproductive as a bad wide receiver with a great quarterback. A great QB or a great running back can elevate a team with otherwise deficient personnel, but a great wide receiver without good personnel around him is wasted. Like with the running backs, I love it when a wide receiver can block. This is how wide receivers really show their toughness, if you ask me. Please watch and admire as Brandon Lafell gets a devastating block on a Mississippi State safety:

6. Tight End: They're not blockers. They're not receivers. They're both. I admire the versatility, and I love Richard Dickson as a player, but I think good tight ends are a luxury. You can have a very good offense without one. A good tight end certainly helps a lot, but I think pre-Dickson we proved for years you can have an explosive offense while getting very little production from this position.

7. Fullback: Someone has to come in last.

Cheese Around the SEC, Part 4

2008-05-09T06:04:00.004-05:00

We have come to the end of our miniseries on Cheese Around the SEC, and we end with a doozy.

You are the cheesiest man currently associated with the SEC. You have a radio show here in Alabama, and one of your favorite topics to talk about is how awesome you are. I have it on good authority that when you start talking about your "glory days", it's not the Tide that rolls. The only rolling that goes on are the eyes of people who were there at the time of your glory.

It's also clear you take a lot of credit for a lot of wins that had a lot more to do with David Palmer and stellar defensive play than anything you did at quarterback. As a quarterback, you were certainly pretty good, but I don't think you were any better, really, than Matt Mauck or Matt Flynn. Like those two guys, however, you had a really good team around you that allowed you to have success. Unlike those guys (so far), you have traded on that success and that image to an extent that is kind of embarrassing.

You parlayed your successful college career and your brief professional career as a backup (I couldn't find any statistics from your days with the Patriots) into a career of doing car dealership commercials, talking about how Godly you are, dating celebrities, and discussing how different today's generation of kids is from when you were a kid with their refusal to say "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" and not bowing their heads or genuflecting at you or their coaches. I am part of your generation, and I can tell you that kids today are no different than we were when we were kids. You just use this as a way of bragging about how humble you are.

Jay Barker, you are a man carved from a block of cheese.

Poseur: End of the Omaha Era

2008-05-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

Alex Box Stadium will host its last weekend series this weekend. LSU’s doing everything right, throwing a big party, naming the All-Alex Box team (broken up into eras like the Omaha Era… nice touch). The baseball team has even gotten into the act by winning some games and making this final series somewhat meaningful.

There’s been some idle speculation that LSU could host a regional. I like that such talk even exists, and that its not wholly delusional, but it’s still not likely. Sure, LSU has won 9 games in a row and now sits #29 in the RPI, but unless the regionals are handed out based on sentiment, it’s at best a longshot. So let’s consider this the last games in the Box.

Alex Box doesn’t pack in the crowds like she used to. Fan support has been good these last three years, but not great. Some blame it on the losing, but except for last year, the team was never that bad. I know it seems like an eternity, but LSU has only been absent from the postseason for two seasons. And we were last in Omaha back in 2004. Not that long ago, really. So it’s not Smoke that drove off the crowds. It’s not the drudgery of losing.

It’s football.

Nothing has hurt LSU baseball more than the rise of LSU football. Let’s step into the Wayback Machine a mere 13 years ago to the springof 1993. LSU football was mired in the depths of the Curly Hallman era. Four losing seasons were behind us, two more lay ahead. The team was coming off of a 2-9 year highlighted by a loss to Colorado St. The basketball team had been to its 15th straight tourney, but little did we know, it was the last one for almost a decade. In 1993, baseball was the only game in town. And they were awesome.

In 1993, the baseball team was in the midst its fifth straight 50 win season. The team would win its second national title, a convincing 8-0 annihilation of Wichita State. Three more were to come. And going to games was a blast. Not just because the team was a true dynasty. Not just because Alex Box was a pretty intimate setting and a fun place to watch a team.

It was because for about five or ten years, baseball was the only winning game in town. While football will always come first in the hearts and minds of the LSU faithful, baseball holds a special place in my heart. During the time I was in school, baseball was about my only taste of winning. And win they did. Now, winning is de rigeur for almost every program. It wasn’t always that way.

The baseball team got us through the darkest days of the LSU athletics program. If nothing else, that’s worth a fireworks show. Thanks, Skip.

Cheese Around the SEC, Part 3

2008-05-08T05:54:00.003-05:00

After discussing the SEC's versions of tiramisu* and cheesy grits, it's time we move on... to this guy:

We've finally gotten to someone whose cheese-factor has clearly hurt him. You may have 4.3 speed, and you may be one of the best athletes in the SEC in my lifetime, but your two paternity suits and your strange family have already cost you millions of dollars by moving you down a couple of spots in the NFL draft. Many people think you are well on your way to an ignominious career as a "troubled but talented" athlete. Think Travis Henry, Natrone Means, or Pac-Man Jones.

OK, the Fred Flintstone Halloween costume was cool. If you made it yourself, we can just add that to your list of many talents. And honestly, I've always liked you. In fact, I wanted my favorite team to trade one of its marquee players so that they could draft you to replace him. That's partly because I don't care how much child support my team's best players have to pay, as long as they pay it, and you will be able to afford it. Unless, of course, your bizarre family gets a hold of your money, in which case it will be gone immediately.

You are a man of many talents, Darren McFadden. I think you're the best running back to come through the SEC since Bo Jackson, plus you can actually throw the ball. You've got your problems, but I think some people give you a bad rap. You are mac & cheese.

Now, go and help Jamarcus Russell make the Raiders good again.

Tomorrow: Velveeta.

*It recently came out that Tim Tebow spent his Spring Break circumcising poor Filipino children. I am not kidding.

Cheese Around the SEC, Part 2

2008-05-07T06:14:00.003-05:00

Part 2 of Cheese Around the SEC is here. I think you had to know this guy would be a part of it.

OK, we all know there's a lot of cheese there, but you've made it work for you and we love you for it. Whether you're wearing a hideous orange suit or painting your chest for women's basketball games, your enthusiasm and complete lack of shame amuses us endlessly, and has drawn fans and good players to a program that had been struggling.

Five years ago, it would have been unthinkable to consider the Tennessee basketball program a power house. The program hadn't had any sustained success... well, not in my lifetime at least.

You came in and everyone thought you were a buffoon. Then you started winning. A lot. No one thought that anymore.

One brief warning, however. Keep winning. As Crash Davis said,"If you win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press'll think you're colorful. Until you win 20 in the show, however, it means you are a slob." If you stop winning, they'll think you're a slob again.

The cheese is obvious, but it's still good for you. You are cheesy grits.

Tomorrow: mac & cheese.

Cheese Around the SEC, Part 1

2008-05-06T06:14:00.003-05:00

This is a new series on this site, to be completed by the end of the week if no big news erupts in that time. It may be periodically updated as more cheese becomes evident.

This feature will profile cheesy people around the SEC, and try to categorize their cheese.

OK, it's really not your fault. It's my fault, because my cynicism can't quite accept your All-American Boy image. I expect my great athletes to have a dark side. If you have one, you have hid it well so far.

Yes, there are the numerous pictures on the internet of you hanging out with curvaceous women. Sure, you are a fantastic college football player that I would love to have on my team. But come on. You have to admit that the pictures of you in Superman costumes are a little cheesy.

I think a lot of people would liken you to Captain America, but I think you're more like Bucky. Where Captain America was idealistic, Bucky was blindly idealistic. Where Captain America generally believed in the goodness of man, it was tinged with a knowledge that evil was a powerful temptation. Bucky was blindly optimistic, just learning that evil existed.

Yes, there is cheese there, but the product is undeniably high quality. You also have to look pretty hard to find the cheese in there, but it's there. You are tiramisu.

Tomorrow: Cheesy Grits

Another Defection From the Team, but This Time It's OK

2008-05-05T06:12:00.002-05:00

Redshirt sophomore guard Matt Allen has decided to transfer to another school. It is not known where he is going, but say it may be Texas A&M.

Matt Allen was the last remaining offensive lineman from the disappointing 2006 offensive line class, no member of which remains on the team. Zhamal Thomas was dismissed for off-field issues. Steven Singleton left the team for reasons unknown. Injuries forced the end of Mark Snyder's career, and now Matt Allen has decided to go in another direction.

As I wrote back in March of 2007, not all attrition is bad. Because of the dreaded 85/25 rule, attrition is a necessary part of big-time college football. As a reminder, the 85/25 rule says that a college football program can add as many as 25 new scholarship players per year, but can only have 85 scholarship players at a time. It means that you can bring in 25 scholarship players per year, but after 3 years you're going to have to worry about that 85-number.

When a player does not develop as hoped and appears to not be able to be a solid contributor, the best thing for the team and that player is that he move on to another program where he will play more. This frees up a scholarship for that year and allows a team to add a new young player who may develop better.

Such is the case with Matt Allen. He has been in the system for two years, redshirting his first year and then not playing a down in his second year. In the Spring, he was passed by players who have not been in the system as long as he has, and apparently has been passed by Will Blackwell, who is coming over from the defensive line. With another big class of offensive linemen reporting in June, Matt saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to move on to another school and another team.

I recall that in the 2007 offseason, a lot of people thought highly of Matt Allen. They saw a mean-streak in him that you appreciate in an offensive lineman. Many compared him to Eric Andolsek, but he apparently simply did not develop the skills necessary to play at this level. He was 3rd string behind Herman Johnson and Will Arnold/Arnold Miller last year. He would likely have been 3rd string again this year, behind Herman Johnson and Will Blackwell. There is nothing left to do but wish him luck.

With the LSU football program currently butting up against the 85-number, the net effect is that LSU can sign one more recruit for the 2009 class, though I am fairly certain that we need still more attrition to be able to reach the consensus target number of 20 recruits.

Day 2 of the Post-Perrilloux Era

2008-05-03T05:48:00.003-05:00

I thank Poseur for covering for me on the Perrilloux situation. I was in court all morning and into the afternoon so I couldn't post the breaking news.

If you click the "Perrilloux" label attached to this post, you will see that I have been a big defender of Ryan Perrilloux in the past. I have defended him on the same basis that Poseur semi-defended him below, which is that while he hasn't followed the rules, he's never done anything so harmful as to merit outright dismissal.

But with news of a positive drug test, allegedly from cocaine, and whispers that this was his problem all along, I am in agreement that the time has come for Ryan Perrilloux to leave the program.

The question is out there of what this will mean on the field. Some are already saying that Ryan leaving is a positive, due to his lack of leadership skills and lack of respect in the locker room. All of that may be true, but he was a studly talent. Losing his production cannot help, unless one of the other quarterbacks is better than expected.

So who is out there? Well, the headliner is Jarrett Lee, a redshirt freshman out of Texas. Here is what I said about Jarrett Lee a year ago when he was just joining the team:

You can tell from his stats that he is tall, slightly built, and not particularly fast. His videos show a solid arm, but he won't be confused with Jamarcus Russell's cannon. He's got good touch, and looks like he's a QB in the Danny Wuerffel mode, which is not a bad thing. He throws with good touch and finds the open man. If you want a more recent comparison, I think he looks a lot like a young Drew Tate. In his last two years of high school, he threw for 71 touchdowns and over 6000 yards, but I doubt you're going to see any of JR's patented 50 yard heaves while leaning on his back foot. Lee is more of a touch passer, but his videos suggest he does that well.

Lee is a solid talent. I don't think he has all-world potential or that he is a "can't miss" prospect, but he's solid. He has a good arm, but he's no Jamarcus Russell. He has nice mobility, probably in the Matt Flynn mold in that respect, but he's not Russell Shepard.

Obviously, because Lee is a redshirt freshman, he has not played a down at the college level. If you believe practice reports, Lee throws a really nice ball, but is not necessarily developing as a quarterback as quickly as one would hope. If he's going to take the reins of the team, he will have to work on reading defenses and making decisions as the offseason progresses. Ideally, he is a guy we would have liked to allow to develop in a backup role for another year or two before giving him a chance to win the job.

The other prime candidate for the starting job is transfer QB Andrew Hatch. His story is pretty well-known by now, but I'll recount it anyway. Hatch is from Nevada and was recruited by Gary Crowton to go to BYU. When Crowton was fired from BYU, Hatch switched his commitment to Harvard. Then, after a year, Hatch went on a Mormon mission, and when he returned he transferred to LSU. He is a junior.

Hatch played a bit last year, in the Middle Tennessee State game last year. He was 1 for 2 passing with 9 yards. He has also rushed 4 times for 27 yards. He is known primarily as a runner. He does not have the arm that Jarrett Lee has, but he is somewhat bigger than Lee. With Hatch, we would not be able to have much of a downfield passing game, which would negate some of the strengths of our receivers. Demetrius Byrd, in particular, would be hurt by Hatch being the regular QB. He would give us the running dimension that Lee doesn't give us, however. He could step right into Perrilloux's role of running the option and not miss a beat.

Don't count out Jordan Jefferson though. He is an incoming freshman out of Destrahan. Watching his videos, it is my opinion that Jefferson has better tools than Jarrett Lee. He has a strong arm and good legs. If you watch his videos, be sure to watch his senior videos. They are light years better than his junior videos. He is not a Jamarcus Russell or a Ryan Perrilloux in terms of talent (few are), nor is he as dynamic as Russell Shepard (though he is a much better passer right now), but he has the tools to be a very successful college QB.

This is a talented kid. He may well be the QB of the future, but it is awfully hard to come in and be the man as a true freshman. Lee has one year of development, maturation, and education on Jefferson. That makes a huge difference at this stage of their careers. You would really like to see Jefferson redshirt rather than play immediately.

Ideally, you would like to give both Lee and Jefferson a chance to understudy for a little while and then compete with each other for the starting job. That would mean that ideally you would want a veteran like Hatch to take the reins for a little while while Lee and Jefferson learn. But Hatch may not have the arm strength to be the man, and we may have to go with Jarrett Lee, and if he fails turn it over to Jefferson.

I suspect we'll see a situational rotation of Hatch and Lee next season, unless and until one or the other of them really emerges, which is likely to be Lee.

Poseur: The Jarrett Lee Era Starts Now

2008-05-02T12:40:00.001-05:00

Ryan Perrilloux’s decent is nearly complete in becoming the biggest waste of talent to go through the LSU program since Cecil Collins. Make no mistake, Perrilloux is a phenomenal player and LSU will be a worse team without him. But there comes a time when you finally have to cut bait. Miles gave Perrilloux chance after second chance, all of which Perrilloux has blown. After a failed drug test, Perrilloux had run out of chances. Miles hand was forced, and he showed his star quarterback the door.

An ESPN poll, while admittedly a non-scientific study, showed that almost 94% of 21,000 voters believe Miles did the right thing. You can’t get 94% of any group of people to agree on anything.

I don’t think Miles was wrong to give Perrilloux so many chances. His sins, though multitude, have always been more in the classification of general stupidity than truly harmful. But there were just so many slip ups that eventually, he had no good grace to fall back on when he tested positive, allegedly, for cocaine.

Perrilloux is looking to transfer to Southern, where he can play right away. And I really do wish him nothing but the best. I genuinely hope he can turn his life around because he is going full-throttle down a pretty awful self-destructive course. I’m not talking about not getting into the NFL, I’m worried he’s not going to stay out of jail. Hopefully, this is the thing he needs to finally straighten out and take control of his life. Because the road he is on right now does not end in a happy place.

Just ask Cecil Collins.

Playoff In the News

2008-05-02T06:30:00.002-05:00

There's been a good bit of chatter lately about the long-range possibility of college football getting a more traditional playoff system in place. It won't happen any time soon, but it could happen eventually.

It has finally occurred to me. Even though I am only a small blogger with a few dozen readers, I am probably the most prominent college football commentator who does not support going to a playoff format. I think going to a playoff format might be good for college football, but it would be a disaster for the individual conferences, especially the SEC. And honestly, I care more about the SEC than about the sport as a whole. Mike Slive should be leading the charge against a playoff system, not advocating for it.

I don't want to see the quest for the national championship beat the conference races into submission. If there had been a 4-team playoff last year, Georgia would have been in it under most scenarios, relegating the conference championship Georgia failed to win to a simple consolation prize for the winner, just like it is in basketball.

Quick, who won the Big East Conference in basketball in 2008? See, you don't know, and it just happened two months ago. In football, it was West Virginia.* Oklahoma won the Big 12; USC won the Pac-10; Ohio State won the Big 10, LSU won the SEC; and Virginia Tech won the ACC. That's right off the top of my head.** Why don't you know who won the Big East in basketball? Because it isn't important. No one cares who wins the conferences in basketball. All that matters is the tournament. I don't want to see college football become like that.

With a playoff, the SEC becomes about as important as the NFC South, the winner of which is important only in that it gets an automatic bid to the playoffs. Do we want our conferences to become just geographically convenient divisions of a much more important whole? Do we want the conferences to be mainly about ease of scheduling? Or do we want our conference to continue to maintain a strong identity? Do we want the SEC to continue to mean something.

I like the bowl system, by which I mean I like all the different bowls that criss-cross the country in a two-or-so week time-period. I like that some teams go to a bowl and are very disappointed about which one, but have to face a team that is excited to be going to any bowl at all.

I like that there is a one game winner-take-all for the national championship, with endless debate about who should be in it. I like that it is flawed as all get-out, and only marginally authoritative.

I think the reason for me liking things more or less the way they are is because, for me, the national championship is secondary to the conference championship. In the conference, you're going against your biggest rivals, and you know exactly what you have to do to win. Beat the other teams in your conference. It's precise. It's mathematical. It's satisfying.

Why does college football need to be just like every other sport? Every sport has a tournament at the end to declare a champion. College football is unique in having a post-season that is entirely unlike a tournament, and darn-it, I like it that way. Making college football like every other sport would, well, make it just like every other sport. It would take away the specialness of college football. Do we want college football to become just another tournament-based sport?

This is not to say everything is perfect in the bowl system. Clearly, the bowls are struggling. The non-BCS bowls are too weak, and "January 1" is losing its luster thanks to a ton of games starting before noon when people aren't yet in the mood for football. Recently adding two new bowls to the mix does not really help, unless the other bowls are strengthened.

The birth of the BCS has relegated the other bowls to side shows, but I think that's simply a matter of how the NCAA has chosen to market its bowls. Change that, and I think the current system is fine. Go to a playoff system, and college football as we know it has ended, and it won't just affect December and January.

* Actually, UConn tied for the conference title, but it was awarded to WVU based on tie-breakers.

** I admit, I confirmed my recollections by looking up the conference champions I wasn't lock-sure about, but my recollections were right every time. I can even remember most of the conference champions from 2006. Ohio State, Florida, USC, Oklahoma, Wake Forest, and I think Louisville. Those I did not look up. The point is, going to a playoff format devalues the conference championships, making them less meaningful. If being able to remember them equates to them being meaningful, I think I've made my point.

Poseur: Finally, To Baseball

2008-04-30T23:04:00.002-05:00

This was supposed to be an obituary.

The season was over. LSU was in 11th place in the SEC, and they were playing the 7th ranked team in the country. They sat five games under .500 in SEC play, and another series loss seemed quite likely, which would put LSU six games under with three series left to play. The season was about to be, for all intents and purposes, over.

And then a funny thing happened. LSU swept South Carolina. LSU had to come from behind in every single one of those games. But the game which may have saved the season was Saturday’s epic comeback. Down 7-0 in the 6th inning, LSU rallied to tie the game 9-9 and force extra innings. Seemingly exhausted from the effort, they fell behind again in the 11th inning, only to have South Carolina’s three errors in the bottom half of the inning key another comeback and a 12-11 win.

It was an astounding win, and one LSU followed up on Sunday with a win in a seemingly interminable game broken up by two one-hour rain delays. No one can accuse LSU of not playing on the level, as they could have… actually should have… called it a game when the rains came and LSU was up by 2 in the 8th.

And now the situation, while not exactly rosy, is almost favorable. LSU sits in 9th place in the SEC, one-half game out of the SEC tourney. But the teams are tightly packed. Vandy is in 3rd with an 11-9 record. Arkansas is in 10th at 9-11. At 9-11-1, LSU is at the bottom of the pack, but when only two games separate 3rd from 10th, it’s not that big of a deal. What matters now is that there are only three series left, and LSU has probably the most favorable schedule of any team left in the running. LSU goes on the road to play 11-10 Kentucky this weekend, returns home to play last-place Mississippi State, and then closes out on the road against 11th place Auburn. That’s a pretty soft landing to what had looked like to be another downer of a year.

Hell, I was even ready to bury them. And now, their postseason odds look pretty good. All because they fell behind 7-0.

What Do You Need To Be Successful

2008-04-30T06:04:00.003-05:00

Commenter Jimherehi had a good observation yesterday in the comment to the post on what the NFL Draft means to LSU. He observes:

I find it strange that LSU is the National Champion and had only 1 player drafted in the first two rounds. Not that I think the ones drafted should have been drafted higher, just that it is strange that only one was drafted in the first two rounds. I guess it means that our winning the championship was a total team effort.

I think this deserves some discussion. What does it mean to have 3rd, 4th, and 7th rounders on your team, as opposed to 1st and 2nd rounders? In the 2007 draft, we had four 1st round draft picks selected off of LSU, and one selected in the 7th round. I had acquaintances who criticized LSU for having "so much talent" and not winning the conference or the national championship., suggesting that if we couldn't win it with that load of talent, we wouldn't have another shot at it.

We turned around and had just as good of a season the next year if not better, and got a little bit of luck on our side to give us a chance to win the national championship. Then, when the draft rolled around, only one of our players got anywhere near 1st round treatment.

My explanation for this is that, to my observation, as far as its impact on the college football field goes, there isn't a whole lot of difference between having a future mid-first-round selection on your team and having a future 4th round selection on your team. And further, there isn't a whole lot of difference between having a 5th round selection on your team and having one of the better undrafted free agents.

While I think there is a correlation between "first rounders" and past college success, I would bet that the stronger correlation is between "total draftees" and past college success. Take as an example the last two national champions. In the 2007 draft, after winning the national championship Florida had 9 players selected, and one of the guys passed over was their 4-year-starter at quarterback who could very easily have been drafted. In the 2008 draft, after willing the national championship LSU had 7 players selected, and another who very well could have been.

That's talent and skill spread around the field. Plus, it's senior talent and skill. Those two things are, I think, the keys to having success. Having a veteran team that is also talented at most positions is a very reliable indication of success, much moreso than having a few very good players.

As another example, take a look at that 2006 Arkansas team that almost won the conference. Following that season, they had 4 players drafted, including 3 in the first 2 rounds. Following their next season, they had 6 players drafted, including one of the top 5 and another late 1st rounder. Many people considered that to be a gimmicky team, led by a couple of great players, but the NFL draft shows they had talent all over the field that year, and hence, they had success.

I am sure someone will point out that USC had 10 players drafted, and did not win the national championship. True, but I think some people define success too narrowly. USC has won its conference for something like 5 or 6 consecutive years. That's a string of consistent success that marks a very talented team, and they were surely one play away from going to the national championship game over LSU. One wonders if, having lost that much talent, maybe they finally will start showing a little more vulnerability, but I digress.

My conclusion in looking at it is that having high end talent is great, but having good talent spread around is even better. Of course, having high end talent and good talent spread around is the best of all, but let's not be greedy. The good news is, I think we still have good talent spread around, and we will have it for the foreseeable future.

The Draft: What It Means for LSU

2008-04-29T06:02:00.003-05:00

It was a great weekend for LSU, despite some minor disappointments along the way. LSU had one of the headliners of the draft and had a total of 7 players drafted. Yes, Ali Highsmith was passed over, and we are all disappointed about that. Also, Early Doucet was probably a little disappointed in his draft position, but he is in the league and will get a halfway decent contract, though he will have to wait until his second contract to get the big money.

While Highsmith and Doucet may be a little disappointed, Jacob Hester and Keith Zinger must be thrilled. Hester was drafted in the early parts of the 3rd round, about a round or two earlier than he likely expected to be picked. Plus, he went to San Diego, a winning franchise and a good situation for him being behind an All-Pro. He will be asked to be a backup and a situational player, along with a special teamer, a perfect role for him and one where he will likely excel. Keith Zinger was drafted in the 7th round by the Falcons, and while some say that being undrafted may be better than being one of the last picks, he has to feel good that a team really wanted him. He's primarily a blocking tight end, and while those are not sexy picks, there is always room on every NFL team for a tight end who can block well. He can catch a bit too.

As an aside, I watched the draft coverage on NFL Network, and every time a tight end was drafted, Mayock said something to the effect of, "Good receiver but will not block anyone." What is the deal with tight ends who don't block? If you don't block at all, you're not a tight end. You're a really tightly lined-up slot receiver with exceptional size and slowness. The whole purpose of the tight end position is to be both a blocking threat and a catching threat. If you can only catch, you should be a wide receiver. If you can only block, you should be an offensive lineman. I'm not saying all should do both equally, but if you can ONLY do one remotely competently, tight end is not the position for you.

Matt Flynn was drafted by the Green Bay Packers, and I honestly think that he may have been better off not getting drafted. The Packers have an heir apparent starting quarterback in Aaron Rogers, and they drafted Brian Brohm in the second round. You have to believe the Packers are going to carry a quarterback with some experience on the roster in case Rogers struggles. I can't imagine they're going to keep two rookies, so Flynn is probably battling Brohm for the 3rd quarterback spot, and he's doing it from a pretty weak position.

As a simple coincidence, it appears that many former Tigers except for Flynn and Hester are going to teams that had very disappointing seasons. Dorsey is going to KC. Chevis and Zinger are going to the Falcons. They were among the very worst teams in the league. Doucet is going to Arizona, and while they have 2 very good wide receivers, one of them may be heading out, and the team missed the playoffs last year. Steltz is going to the Bears, who also missed the playoffs last year. This suggests there may be some roster issues on those teams that those players can exploit. This could be good for them.

But the primary message for LSU is that this draft shows the Tigers to be a consistent feeder to the NFL. For the recruits, LSU is now one of those schools where if you come in and have success, the NFL will pay very close attention. Last year, we showed that we can put top-flight talent into the top round, but this year we had even more players drafted overall than in 2007 (7 vs. 5), and it was distributed around the draft.

The bad news is, of course, that it means we have a lot of raw talent and skill to replace in the starting lineup. You just don't replace a top 5 pick and hope not to miss a beat. Matt Flynn didn't just step right into Jamarcus Russell's role, and Ricky Jean-Francois probably won't be able to completely compensate for the loss of Glenn Dorsey (though I think he will do very very well). We will need, as always, younger players to step up to fill in gaps in the lineup, and we will need veterans to keep improving their games.

Overall, despite losing a lot of talent to the NFL, I think we are in good position to continue to be strong. Not many teams have the ability to replace a top 5 pick with a guy who may be a top 10 pick the following year. Not many teams have the ability to replace a guy like Doucet with a Terrance Toliver while also having a Demetrius Byrd and a Brandon Lafell continuing to develop. Not many teams can lose a Jacob Hester and still have players like Keiland Williams, Richard Murphy, and Charles Scott to pick up the load. Not many national championship teams return 4 of their 5 starting offensive linemen.

I have to stop before I become too much of a homer. It is just way too long from now until football season.

The Draft: Some People Really Should Be Issued Computers Without a Keyboard

2008-04-28T06:26:00.000-05:00

It is absolutely mindboggling to read the opinions of the masses when it comes to the NFL Draft. People have such incredibly strong opinions about what is essentially a crap shoot for the people involved.

Let's break down the categories of obnoxious draft watchers:

1. The Homer: He likes his favorite college football team, and all the players on his favorite college football team, all of whom are among the best players available at their positions and are clearly better than other similar players from different schools. Admittedly, I'm the first to say that guys like Early Doucet and Ali Highsmith are gamers who will make whoever drafts them at this point pretty happy, but at least I acknowledge the possibility that this attitude is a result of personal affection for them as a result of their having gone to LSU.

2. The "I've Never Heard of Him and Therefore He Must Be Terrible" Guy: If the player did not play on national television at least 3 times last season and was not incessantly profiled as a "fast riser" in pre-Draft coverage, he is clearly a nobody and deserving of absolutely no attention or goodwill whatsoever. Why pick a player from Indiana when there are all those good Texas players available?

3. The "Blind to All Outside of the SEC" Guy: OK, I acknowledge that I love the SEC, but the idea that USC players are overrated because they play "weak competition" is hogwash. Believe it or not, the bulk of the NFL comes from schools outside of the SEC, including, outrageously, many of the league's best players. Sedrick Ellis is not overrated just because he went to USC. He may end up proving to have been overrated, but you can't say that just because he went to USC.

4. The Groupie. To the groupie, failing to make a splashy pick is like sleeping with the bass player. You do it if it's the only way you get to hang out with the band, but it's a big disappointment, because you really wanted at least the drummer, if not the singer. How many wide receivers does your team have? 7 or 8? It doesn't matter. Get another one. Wide receivers are cool.

One observation is that the cost of moving up in the draft seems to have declined. In years past, it would have taken a 2nd round pick for the Saints to move up 3 spots to take Sedrick Ellis. This year, we only had to move down 2 1/2 rounds from our early 3rd round pick to the back half of the 5th round. It seems that the teams have realized that the draft value chart is hooey.

As for the Saints, I think in order to analyze their first day, you have to assume they were targeting defensive tackle and cornerback with their first two picks. In the first round, if they had not moved up to take Ellis, they would have had their pick of the corners in the draft. Let's assume they would have taken Leodis McKelvin, the guy who was ultimately the first corner picked. As it so happens, McKelvin shares with Tracy Porter the skill set of being fast and being a return-man, so there are parallels there.

In the second round, defensive tackle Trevor Laws was available, though to be fair, the Saints could not have confidently guessed Laws would still be on the board when the #40 pick came up. He could have gone higher. He was ultimately drafted at #47.

My point is, the Saints did well if the combination of Ellis and Tracy Porter is better in a couple of years than the combination of McKelvin and Laws. If McKelvin and Laws is the better combination, we will regret the trade.

Later in the draft, we executed another couple of trades to enable us to pick up the second defensive tackle we wanted, a project of an offensive lineman, a placekicker who specializes in kickoffs, and we traded back into the 7th round to be sure to pick up wide receiver Adrian Arrington.

I liked what Mike Mayock had to say about DeMario Pressley, the defensive tackle the Saints drafted out of NC State. He said Pressley had a questionable motor and took a lot of plays off. However, he said that often with these 300+ pound guys who are asked to play 60-65 plays per game in college and have questionable motors, if you put them in a rotation and ask them to play 25 plays per game, their motor is just fine. In other words, it's a problem of stamina rather than desire. The cure is to limit their playing time.

I have no problem with the Saints picking a kicker in the 6th round. The kid reportedly has a powerful leg. It appears the Saints might be planning to carry two kickers, a field goal guy and a kickoff guy. This would be the kickoff guy. Kickoffs are at least as important as field goals, because most NFL kickers are about equal to each other in field goals, but there is wide variation in kickoff proficiency.

One of the more curious picks, I think, was the Arrington selection in the 7th round. We had traded our 7th rounder to move up two picks to get Pressley. Apparently, we thought the Bengals were going to take him, so they did what they had to do to go get him. I have no problem with that. However, we got a 7th rounder back by trading a 6th rounder next year. Arrington may have ended up being a free agent, and I guess the Saints wanted this kid so badly that they wanted to be sure to get him and not let other teams have a chance to sign him.

Most Underrated Player in the Draft

2008-04-27T08:33:00.001-05:00

Whoever drafts Marcus Monk will end up being very happy.

Poseur: I Hate the Draft

2008-04-25T19:13:00.000-05:00

I’ve been meaning to post for awhile about the baseball team, and I swear I will get to it. I’ve been busy with the big move to Dallas and I’m swamped at the new job. The long and short of it is this: the offense is still bad but it’s no longer historically awful. The team is inconsistent, as one would expect with a lot of freshmen and sophomores. And, finally, sweeps are killer. LSU has had two series in which they didn’t win a game, and that can’t happen if you want to make the postseason. But more on that later. I want to follow up on Richard’s thoughts on the draft and add my two cents.

I hate the draft. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Actually, I love prospects and I’m a big dork about GM moves. But the cottage industry surrounding the draft has gone from kind of cool to absolutely obnoxious. All of these mock drafts? Worthless. The draft grades on Monday? Even more worthless. Two to three months of hype over 40 times, body types, and “triangle stats”? It’s just creepy.

Everyone is expert. But the draft is like recruiting, it’s all a numbers game. Most first round picks do pan out, though few will become true franchise players. Middle round players will typically be roster filler, but a few guys will be better and a few worse than expected. Know how you can tell? You can’t. Because if you could, I guarantee an NFL front office can.

That said, I do have some general draft guidelines which I think I’ve picked up over the year. It’s more my general guideline, and I freely admit I could be wrong. Here’s my draft rules:

ONE. Draft linemen. I love linemen. Good teams are built from the inside out, and given the state of quarterbacks in the NFL, you’re almost better off letting someone else develop a guy for few years and then poaching him (SEE Favre, Brett; Anderson, Derek; Brees, Drew). Also, linemen have a low bust ratio. Even the “busts” have turned out to be serviceable players.

TWO. Everyone is an injury risk. I’m going to disagree with Richard on Glen Dorsey. Any team that passes on Dorsey because of his injury is stupid. Over fifty percent of NFL players will miss a game due to injury in any given season. Which means every single player is an injury risk.

THREE. Top picks are overrated. I agree with Richard that the draft trading chart should be ignored. And those top five picks can absolutely sink a team. Seriously, check out the top five picks from the last five drafts:

2007: Jamarcus Russell, Calvin Johnson, Joe Thomas, Gaines Adams, Levi Brown
2006: Mario Williams, Reggie Bush, Vince Young, D’Brickshaw Ferguson, AJ Hawk
2005: Alex Smith, Ronnie Brown, Braylon Edwards, Cedric Benson, Cadillac Williams
2004: Eli Manning, Robert Gallery, Larry Fitzgerald, Philip Rivers, Sean Taylor
2003: Carson Palmer, Charles Rogers, Andre Johnson, Dewayne Robertson, Terrence Newman

How many of those guys are absolutely dominant players? Heck, how many are Pro Bowlers? Of those 25 players, they have a grand total of 13 Pro Bowl appearances between them from 9 players, and no one has made more than 2. And remember, these guys get huge salaries.

FOUR. Take the best player available. If you are plugging a hole, grab a free agent. If you’re building a foundation, unless you have a guy who is the top three at his position signed to a good contract for the next few years, you should just take the best player. Because going back to Point Two: everyone is an injury risk. You might need a running back sooner than you think.

FIVE. Always be guided be one simple premise: can this guy play football? Often teams outthink themselves and get caught up in a guy’s “triangle stats” or whatever and forget to just see how the guy plays. While plenty of college stars can’t make the transition to the NFL, GM’s should be advised that if the guy wasn’t good in college, he probably won’t be good in the pros. Guess what? Everyone in the draft is athletic. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or has such a narrow view of athleticism as to render their opinion worthless. Peyton Manning’s “measurable” stink. He’s also a great quarterback. Your goal isn’t to win a relay of 40 yard dashes, it’s to win football games. Get guys who can play.
Finally, don’t watch the draft. Go outside. Just read about it later. Because let’s face it, 24 hours of watching Chris Berman is too much for any rational person to take.

Uncle Rico Has Something To Say

2008-04-25T18:42:00.003-05:00

For liveblogging of the NFL Draft, check out Uncle Rico's Time Machine. I did not know that two of my more frequent commenters, Gerry Dorsey and Joshua, ran a joint blog. It's about sports in general, I guess.

Anyway, they contribute a lot to this site, and they're doing NFL draft coverage that I won't be doing. So check them out. They're fans of different teams, which is an interesting move. I'm sure game week is very exciting.

What's Coming?

2008-04-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

First, let me just say that I appreciate the comments that I get. I know I am really bad about failing to actually respond to comments. Unfortunately, job and family considerations often prevent me from being able to get interactive with those people who are kindly enough to give me feedback. I assure you I read the comments and I appreciate the input, compliments, additions, and even the insults that people provide.

On to the show...

With Spring Football over and the summer camps still a ways away, there will be little news of value coming out regarding football. Really the only sports going on right now that interest me at all are baseball and hockey, and I just don't know that much about baseball, and you don't care one bit about hockey.

One thing I'm going to do is not post on weekends for a while. I don't get a lot of readership on weekends, and the posts end up getting pushed down the page before anyone sees them. Plus, it will allow me to stretch limited material a little further without diluting it content-wise. I have vowed never to post just for the sake of posting, and I won't start now. If I'm not feeling the inspiration to write anything, I just won't write. Now, when inspiration comes on the weekend, I'll post it during the week.

If there's something that happens on a weekend that I think needs to be written about, I will write about at that time, and of course when the season starts back up we will be heavily involved in weekend posting, but in the offseason, with so little going on, we'll chill out a bit on the weekends. Maybe do some light gardening.

Last year, around this time, we started doing our profiles of the members of the 2007 recruiting class at LSU. It was a big hit, and was a lot of fun to write up. Actually, we didn't start it until early June, but that's OK. We'll do it again this year, and since I don't have a boss here, I can start it whenever I like.

We're going to be a little more formal this time. I'm going to put players into one of three categories. Players will be either Headliners, or Solid Players, or Projects.

Headliners are guys the class is built around, and who I think the coaches expect the team to be built around in the future. These are players who have a really good chance of playing right away. Of course, I could very easily be wrong about them, but it's a projection. Last year, I would have labeled Chad Jones, Terrance Tolliver, Phelon Jones, Joe Barksdale, and Stefoin Francois as headliners. And maybe one or two others. Chad Jones, Tolliver, and Barksdale played right away, but Phelon Jones and Francois redshirted and are still trying to work their way up the depth chart.

Solid players are just that. They're solid. They're going to come in, and probably not play a whole lot immediately, but if they develop as expected they will be getting onto the two-deep depth chart in a year or two and will comprise the team leaders in their junior and senior years. That is, of course, if they develop. They sometimes don't. I would expect this to be the biggest category of players.

Projects are a group of people who likely are going to have to sit a while before they emerge as players, if they ever do. I don't want it to sound like a pejorative term, but the fact remains that not everyone in a recruiting class is a future star. Some are future depth players, or end up surprising you. I probably would have labeled Jonathan Zenon as a project when he was recruited, and he ended up a two-year starter. Last year, I probably would have labeled Jarvis Jones as a project, and he played backup left tackle as a true freshman. I would definitely have been wrong on that one.

As was pointed out when I labeled Robby Green as a "class filler", these guys sometimes end up being very good. Heck, sometimes walk-ons end up as All-Americans. Sometimes guys who the big schools wouldn't touch end up being Pro Bowl in the NFL. "Project" does not mean "Future Failure". It just means the guy probably has a long way to go before he's ready to help the team on the field.

So, that's what you have to look forward to. I look forward to writing them. I hope no one takes any offense. I don't know when I'll start, but I'll get to them soon.

Draft Week - The Saints, Part II

2008-04-24T06:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I kind of went through a primer on what I think the Saints are looking for. Now, I don't consider myself an expert on college football as a whole or on evaluating talent for college, and I am even less so an expert on the NFL. That said, I have opinions and a blog, so I'm writing about them.

The Saints hold the #10 overall pick and hold picks in every round except the 4th. The needs here are defensive tackle, linebacker, cornerback, and center (having lost Jeff Faine). There is no center who will be worth the #10 pick, so forget about that. At defensive tackle, Glenn Dorsey will not be available, Sedrick Ellis may be available, but likely won't, and the next defensive tackles are not considered worthy of such high selection. At linebacker, Keith Rivers may be there, and if he isn't there likely aren't any really good selections there.

At cornerback, however, there will likely be a wealth of talent available at #10. Leodis McKelvin, Michael Jenkins, Aqib Talib, and Dominique Rogers-Cromartie all are more likely than not going to be available, and if the Saints want one, they will probably have their pick of the 4.

But that brings up another possibility. If the Saints like all four of those guys about the same, there's no sense in using such a high pick (and the concomitant dollars it requires) on a corner when they can trade down about 10 spots and likely still have 2 of the 4 guys still available. Who knows, they may even end up with the same guy at, say, #19 that they would have taken at #10, while picking up additional draft picks in the process.

Another possibility that has been discussed is to try to move up the draft to take Glenn Dorsey. They'd have to move up to at least #4, and even that might not be good enough.

Let me just say that I hate that idea, for several reasons:

Top 5 picks cost a fortune in money and cap space. Having another top 5 pick on the team will tie up gobs of money on just two players: Reggie Bush and Glenn Dorsey.
It will cost us at least our 2nd round pick and likely more. The "value chart" for draft picks is a bunch of hooey, and religious adherence to it has caused GMs to do crazy things, and it especially overvalues the first few picks in the draft. The value chart is what caused the Haslett-led Saints to trade two first round draft choices to move up a handful of spots to draft Jonathan Sullivan, who was a total bust (and incidentally is probably the #1 reason we need to draft a defensive tackle now).
I'm not a big fan of drafting local legends. Sure, there can be a temporary boost in ticket sales and/or merchandising, but what happens if you need to bench, trade, or cut the local legend? Or what if he holds out? Or if he criticizes you in the media? Public. Relations. Nightmare.
As much as I love Dorsey, his durability is a legitimate concern. To give up multiple draft picks and a lot of money/cap-space to get a guy with a fairly high likelihood of getting injured is just asking for trouble.

If the local legend is truly the best player on the board when you pick, go for it. If you have to pay a premium to get him, either in a too-high draft pick or in a trade, you're better off going in another direction.

I prefer to wait until the 10th pick, and if Sedrick Ellis is available, I take him. If he is not, I probably look to trade down. There are a few other potentially good defensive tackles who will be available in the late-first or early second, like Patrick Sims from Auburn, Kentwan Balmer from North Carolina, or Trevor Laws from Notre Dame. If the right deal is in place (like Dallas's two picks for our one), we can move down and pick up a corner, a tackle, and a linebacker with early picks and maximize our value. One of Talib, McKelvin, or Rogers-Cromartie is likely to be available at #22, and Balmer or Laws will be available at #28, or perhaps Jarod Mayo will be available. Or Curtis Lofton. There are lots of possibilities, all of them pretty good.

Crazy Idea of the Day: You want a crazy trade idea? One that has no chance in hell of actually happening? Here's what I do. I dangle Reggie Bush as trade bait. I'd offer him straight up to any team who comes on the board with Darren McFadden still available. I think McFadden is that good (and Bush that limited, for that matter). McFadden can do everything Bush can do (catch the ball, run outside the tackles, take it to the house in open space) but is a more complete running back, who could team with Deuce McAllister to extend both of their careers. I think McFadden is going to be the better pro, and (gasp!) would actually cost less money than Bush. What's more, I think there are teams that would go for it. I think the Raiders would go for it. I think the Falcons might go for it. The Raiders are fans of every crazy idea that some jacklegs suggests, and the Falcons can use help pretty everywhere, plus they need a draw. Plus, I really don't like Reggie Bush all that much.

I have no idea how such a cockamamie* plan would impact the salary cap, which has to be considered in any big deal you even think about. That's why I doubt it would ever happen. Plus, you know, it's kind of crazy.

Note: Would you believe me if I told you I managed to type out "cockamamie" on the first try without offending my browser's built-in spell-checker?

Draft Week - The Saints

2008-04-23T06:37:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, we talked about how I follow the NFL draft as a fan of both the Tigers and the Saints. Yesterday, we talked about the Tigers. Today, let's talk about the Saints. Clearly, the Saints had a very disappointing season last year. A lot of prognosticators predicted us to contend for a spot in the Super Bowl. We ended up with a losing season. We have been "rewarded" for that with the #10 overall pick.

To the extent I was able to watch the Saints last year, not being in their regular TV market, it appears that our complete lack of playmakers on defense was exposed once again. I know a lot of people will say that losing Deuce early in the season hurt a lot, but the team did very poorly even with Deuce in the lineup.

Heading into the offseason, a lot of people were thinking we would almost certainly be looking at linebacker or cornerback in the draft. The Saints, however, significantly upgraded those positions during free agency period, by picking up linebackers Jonathan Vilma and Dan Morgan and cornerback Randal Gay (former LSU product, by the way). Vilma and Morgan have been stars in the league, but have suffered season-shortening injuries recently. If even one of those guys returns to prior form (and neither is old really, just unhealthy lately), the linebacker position is substantially shored up. Randal Gay is still a young player and has been a solid zone corner in his career despite not being a regular starter at LSU and not being drafted.

The conventional wisdom is that the Saints needed to address linebacker, corner, and defensive tackle. They have already made some changes at linebacker and corner, but may not be done at either of those places. We still need to address the defensive tackle spot as well.

The problem is that it is difficult to project who among the top prospects at those positions will be available at the #10 spot. Among the top players at linebacker, corner, and defensive tackle, only Glenn Dorsey appears to be certain to be gone by the time the Saints draft. USC products Sedrick Ellis (DT) and Keith Rivers (LB) may be gone, or may not. Mocks have them all over the board. Backup plans Kentwan Balmer (DT, North Carolina) and Jarod Mayo (linebacker, Tennessee) appear to be reaches for #10.

At cornerback, commentators disagree over who the #1 corner on the board is. Is it workout warrior and small-school fast-riser Dominique Rogers-Cromartie? He has freakish measurables and may be the most athletic cornerback not just of this year but of the last several years, but he played at Tennessee State. Not Tennessee. Tennessee State. Can anyone identify their mascot without looking it up?

Is it Aqib Talib, another terrific athlete. He played at Kansas and has certain Deion Sanders-like qualities, in that he gets interceptions and is dangerous with the ball in his hands. He's generally considered a little unpolished and inconsistent and seems to have a fairly high bust-potential. But he could also end up being the best corner out of this draft.

Is it Michael Jenkins from South Florida? Leodis McKelvin from Troy? Both are small-school guys like Dominique Rogers-Cromartie, though they are much more known commodities than is Rogers-Cromartie.

Heck, they could surprise us all and take one of the several good offensive tackles on the board. After all, when most people thought they were going defense last year, they drafted wide receiver Robert Meachem. I was actually in the minority who really liked that pick. I think the idea of using the draft to "accentuate the positive" is often a good idea, as opposed to using it to "eliminate the negative". The idea is that if the strength of your team is moving the ball on offense, use the draft to help you do that even better rather than using it to help you stop other teams a little better.

Of course, it's impossible to characterize Robert Meachem's first year as anything more positive than "extremely disappointing", as he did not actually play at all. Meachem got off to a slow start in his college career as well, and ended his career as one of the most productive receivers in the country. Plus, receivers sometimes develop slowly anyway, and Meachem was trying to break into a really productive, veteran unit.

If Meachem can develop in the pros like he did in college, I still think we will look at the Meachem pick as a positive. He is more than capable of being a #2 receiver in the NFL, complementing Marques Colston.

Tomorrow, I will go over what I would do if I was the Saints and was willing to do bizarre things for the sake of maximizing my haul.

Draft Week - The Tigers

2008-04-22T06:21:00.001-05:00

Here at GeauxTuscaloosa, we will do a little NFL Draft coverage, both from my perspective as a fan of LSU Football and as a fan of New Orleans Saints football.

Obviously, for LSU, the headliner is going to be Glenn Dorsey, who appears to be destined to be one of the first four players picked, and may be a target for teams trying to move up in the draft.

This is one of those years (much like last year, I suppose) where the top draft picks will be chosen more on need than on clear distinctions of talent. Last year, Jamarcus Russell was the #1 pick because the team holding the #1 wanted a quarterback and was enamored with him. This year, Dorsey could definitely be the #1 pick except that it looks like the Dolphins are looking at other positions, having flirted with OT Jake Long, QB Matt Ryan, and DE's Chris Long and Vernon Gholston in the media. Dorsey could easily be the #1 pick if the team holding the pick was looking for a DT for the 4-3 system. The Dolphins just appear to be looking elsewhere, but the Raiders and the Falcons at #4 and #3 look to be possibilities for Dorsey, and he almost certainly wouldn't fall below the Raiders at #4.

Of course, LSU will not be done once Dorsey is picked, but it does look like the initial post-season evaluations of other Tigers overestimated the value of players like Early Doucet and Ali Highsmith. January mock drafts had both of these players solidly in the first round, but they did not have great workouts and have slid down the draft board. Doucet is probably a late-second or early-third round pick as a slot receiver, and Highsmith will probably be picked somewhere in the middle rounds. Highsmith and Doucet are both gamers, and both very productive, and I think will play above their draft levels, but their workouts did not help them.

Jacob Hester may be the highest rated "fullback" in the draft, and I think he's the sort of guy who will never get a huge contract but will probably be in the NFL for a decade playing special teams, being a 3rd down back and/or blocking for someone else. I don't know what kind of draft value players like that have, but I expect him to get the call.

Chevis Jackson was a guy who a lot of people thought would be a first day pick, but a disappointing 40 time has put Chevis into the category of "zone corner", and those guys are a commodity in the NFL. Unfortunately being a "commodity" is not a particularly good thing. It means one zone corner is pretty much interchangeable with another, and few of them make a lot of money by NFL standards. He'll be drafted, probably in the middle rounds, but pure zone corners don't get drafted in the first round.

Craig Steltz is another guy who will probably hang around the league a long time, playing special teams and hopefully starting for someone at strong safety. I think he's a really safe pick in the middle rounds because, like Doucet and Hester, he's a gamer who knows how to play and knows how to produce. There's a spot for all of those guys in the NFL for a while.

Matt Flynn hopes to get drafted in the last two rounds. If he does, he will be in the NFL for a year or two while he tries to develop and improve enough to prove he can be a solid backup. I think he has the tools to do it and his workouts helped his cause. A regular feature in ESPN The Magazine follows Flynn, Andre Woodson, and JD Booty and evaluates the change in their respective draft stocks. Flynn has consistently rated as a draft-worthy quarterback, and I hope the NFL agrees. There are no guarantees though.

Other draft-eligible players are probably going to be looking for free agent contracts. Jonathan Zenon is a "speed" corner who just didn't show the speed in workouts. Given his lack of physicality as a corner, his mediocre speed probably puts him out of the draft. He will get a chance to make it as a free agent, but that's a pretty long road. Will Arnold certainly has draft-worthy talent, but his propensity for getting injured means no one will spend a draft pick on him either.

One interesting possibility is that some team will take a chance on former LSU running back Alley Broussard. Alley looked like a total stud and a sure-fire NFL prospect until his knee injury before the 2005 season. After that, he struggled with his conditioning and his confidence en route to also struggling with his production. He eventually transferred out of LSU and to a lower division, but is eligible for the NFL draft and worked out with LSU players for the scouts. He's clearly got the talent if his knee is 100%, but you wonder about his drive and his conditioning. I'm interested to see if he gets a sniff.

A former Tiger I actually really like as an NFL prospect who likely will not get drafted is OT Carnell Stewart. Yes, Stewart committed a lot of dumb penalties, and was sometimes abused in pass protection, but he was very inexperienced at the position. He was also a monster in run-blocking and very athletic for an offensive lineman. He's a guy who, I think, if he could get on a practice squad and develop for a year getting more coaching, he could turn into a real player.

Note: Several articles can be written about how LSU players have not tested as fast as expected. It appears that LSU just was not as fast of a team as a lot of people thought it was entering and playing last season. Our cornerbacks ran 4.6 40-times, and our best linebacker ran 4.8 and slower. Steltz ran solidly, but hardly spectacularly, and Doucet timed out pretty slow for a wide receiver. Though all of these guys were very good college football players, it is clear that the LSU football team just did not have the wealth of talent that people thought. We had a lot of very good, solid players, but we were not a team full of NFL first rounders like a lot of people thought. This helps explain the fact that we played a lot of zone coverage and did not blitz as much as people wanted. The coaches, shockingly, understood that we just weren't all that fast of a team, particularly on defense, and adjusted accordingly. Amazing how that happens.

Evaluating Linebackers

2008-04-21T06:21:00.000-05:00

I think I can put my finger on one reason I have trouble evaluating linebackers from film. The films on linebackers always concentrate on the guy lining up the running back and making the big hit. It makes for an impressive showcase for a linebacker to show him playing aggressively and making a hit and tackle. The problem is, the films don't really show how linebackers have to play.

The typical linebacker film has the linebacker playing in the middle of the field with the ball going to the running back. The linebacker waits for an opening and then shows a burst of speed to get to the back, standing him up and bringing him down with a thud. Nice.

What does a linebacker in college have to do? Rarely does he get the opportunity to lay a guy out like you see on the films. His first job is just to pursue the ball carrier and get him to the ground. Big hit usually not necessary. The films do an OK job of showing pursuit-and-tackling. Or at least, they usually do. Usually you can see how a linebacker pursues and whether or not he's a sure tackler when he gets where he's going.

After that is where the films fail. They almost never show the linebacker performing his second task, which is to drop back into pass coverage and defend the running back, tight end, or over-the-middle receiver. You just never see it, and it's such a big part of a linebacker's game in college, especially if the linebacker wants to play every down. If you see it, it's because he managed to get an interception, or a big hit after allowing the catch. Interceptions are nice, but I'd rather see five plays of a linebacker sticking like glue to a running back and not giving the QB the option to throw at him.

Evaluating a linebacker without seeing his coverage skills is like evaluating a baseball pitcher without seeing his curveball. How could you even begin? How much confidence could you have in whatever conclusion you drew?

The third most important part of a linebacker's game is to be able to shed blocks and still make a play. Film rarely shows a linebacker actually being blocked, I suppose it's because those kinds of plays aren't very spectacular. You can't usually get a big hit when you're just trying to get a lineman off of you so you can get any kind of hit. You almost never see this.

To continue the analogy, now you're evaluating your pitcher without seeing a curve or his 3rd pitch.*

There are other aspects of being a linebacker, such as being a situational blitzer. The films often show a linebacker blitzing and mauling the quarterback, so that's all good, but this is done primarily on pure athletic ability. So much of the linebacker game is mental, but the films focus on showing the athlete. This is what makes it so hard to differentiate the films of one very good athlete from the films of the three or four other very good athletes you're watching.

The good news is that the coaches know a lot more than we simple observers know. They see these guys play actual games rather than select plays, and can see everything these guys can do. They can make better evaluations than we can.

It looks like LSU will be picking up a commitment from a linebacker out of Florida today. His film is like all the others, but we have on pretty good authority that he is the top rated out-of-state linebacker left on LSU's board, so we'll be very happy to have him.

*Analogy does not apply to knuckleball pitchers.

Saban Roughs Up the Media Again

2008-04-17T06:10:00.003-05:00

If it makes it to this blog, I guess it's not news. I didn't know about Nick Saban's weird rant about scholarship numbers until I got into my car to go to work yesterday. The radio was abuzz about it.

In case you haven't heard, at his post-Spring press conference, Nick Saban was asked how he was going to make the scholarship numbers work out, considering he has too many people on scholarship now to add 25 more in the Fall and still be at the 85 limit. His response started with the statement that they have a plan, but it didn't end there.

He got really worked up about the question and was clearly bothered by it. He then said, "The media doesn't need to know and the fans don't need to know. The fans don't want to know." The exchange continued uncomfortably thereafter, with Saban clearly again bothered by a journalist's intrusiveness. The journalist in question was not some rookie or a national media plant. It was Birmingham beat writer Ian Rapaport, who is very Bama-friendly but appears to have gotten under Nick Saban's skin more than once.

Two things about this incident struck me. First, it's not that Saban refuses to answer the question that is really troubling. It's the way he refuses to answer it. It's his tone and his body language, which denotes an air of hostility. Les Miles refuses to answer certain questions to. The man has never honestly answered a question about a player injury except when the injury has ended the player's season. He refused for several months to ever say when Ryan Perrilloux would rejoin the team last season, and then quietly reinstated him at the start of Fall Practice. His manner of refusing to divulge information does not come off quite as disrespectfully as Saban's refusals to answer questions.

Saban is by most accounts a pretty smooth recruiter, which is why it is so surprising that he is so stiff and uncomfortable in front of media. And this was friendly media. I have always heard that when he wants to be charming, he can charm anyone and any crowd, but he gets downright surly with the media, which is where most people see him.

I also think he's wrong about the fans not caring what his plan for dealing with scholarship numbers is. After all, if a major beat writer asked the question, it's probably because the beat writer believes his readers are interested in the answer. Now, many of them, if faced with the response "I have a plan that I won't talk about", would probably be satisfied at least for the time-being, knowing they would eventually find out one way or another. But they care. They're not indifferent to the answers to questions like, "Who are going to be the players on the roster when we play a game?" And that's what the question really is.

Let me just say that I think it's an absolute right of a college football coach not to divulge sensitive information about his team and his players. That's a different thing from saying it's a good idea to hold back certain information, but if a college coach wants to keep information about his program out of the media, I don't think the media is right to claim they need the information for any reason.

This brings me to my second thought about this. Not only does this incident illustrate one of the key differences between Nick Saban and Les Miles, it also illustrates a difference between the LSU fan base and the Alabama fan base. The difference is that I think the Alabama fan base takes a more proprietary view towards their team than does the LSU fan base. By this I mean that the Bama fans feel more ownership of their team than we do of ours. I think there are good effects of this and bad effects of this.

Among the good effects are that the fans continue to come out in droves even when the team is not being successful. The fans continue to identify with the team, buy merchandise, follow the team, travel for road games, and generally care even when the team is losing. If not for this effect, I really don't think Bama draws 92,000 for a Spring Game last year, and I don't think Bama draws in the recruiting class they got in 2008. LSU fan activity dropped off considerably during the Hallman years and the latter Dinardo years, and the team reached a doldrums (particularly in the Hallman years) that led to a lot of fan apathy.

The bad effects are that the fans demand information and accountability. They feel they have a right to know what is going on with the program, and if they don't like it, they want things changed. They can also turn on a coach in a heartbeat. See Shula, Mike. Saban, though he is a good coach, is also a control freak. He is not comfortable with the idea of anyone else but him thinking they have a right to control the team or demand changes. He doesn't even let his assistants talk about the team publicly for fear he will lose message discipline. (Because, as we've seen, Saban is the master of media manipulation and discipline). Presidential candidates aren't this obsessive about controlling message discipline.

These factors are some of the reasons I was skeptical back in 2006 that Saban was a good match for Bama. At LSU, he was allowed to control the message without running into a lot of opposition. He was allowed to be surly with reporters without anyone really caring that much. He was allowed to disregard invitations for public appearances. Here, I don't think he will be able to do those things without taking a little damage. Now, the media and the fans will tolerate it if they win, but only if they win a lot. If 2009 rolls around and Bama is still looking average, the fans could get pretty surly themselves.

The Book on Perrilloux

2008-04-16T06:11:00.002-05:00

I've talked before about how I think people overstate the case against Ryan Perrilloux. Yes, he gets in a lot of trouble here, but it's always penny-ante stuff. He's never been arrested, never been charged with a crime of violence, never been implicated in drugs, never been implicated in theft, and never actually let his grades slip so much as to be academically ineligible.

I know at least one of my commenters says that's because a lot of other stuff he's done has been covered up, but that falls under the rubric of "unverifiable" and I don't know if we should put any credence in it. The young man certainly draws a lot of attention, whatever he does. You sometimes read threads on a message board that says things like, "I saw Ryan in class today. He looked normal."

I recently read a fairly balanced article about the LSU program and in particular Ryan Perrilloux, by CNNSI writer Stewart Mandel. He quotes Miles saying something I've said before here. He said that critics in the media, and on the message boards I suppose, "don't know what goes on in our program." He defended his handling of the Perrilloux situation, "The suspension itself was a tremendous punishment."

I often think to myself, why does this young man, who still has never done any truly unforgivable thing, draw so much ire from people? I mean, the kid has never killed kittens or stuck a gun in someone's face (though some commenters may wonder if he has and we just don't know about it). Yet, of all the discipline issues in the college football world, including another troubled young QB like Stephen Garcia at South Carolina, Perrilloux gets the most attention, and it's for things like skipping classes or trying to use a fake idea to get into a casino at 20 years old. Why is he hounded? Why is his every move watched by the college football media and fans to wait for his next failure?

Why do people expect that failure to come? Yes, in the last year, he has had a hard time staying out of trouble, but his previous two years at LSU was uneventful as far as we know. Granted, in those years he was a 3rd string quarterback and not expected to play, but we never heard anything about any legal problems or suspensions for skipping class. If he can stay out of trouble for his first two years, why not his last two?

And why is Ryan "LSU's Britney Spears", and analogy I like, by the way, because Britney (like Ryan) is expected to fail and constantly watched for signs of failure.

I think the answer is two-fold. Ryan Perrilloux is disrespected as much as he is for two reasons, both of them being his own fault. The first reason is his statement upon committing that he was hoping to win the start his first year and maybe win 4 Heismans. That really set him off on the wrong foot with LSU fans and with the team, and set the tone for his whole career thus far at LSU.

The second reason is his implication in the counterfeiting operation. He was never charged, mind you, and was never accused of being any kind of a ring leader. We don't really know much of anything about it, but I think the most reasonable sounding explanation that I have heard is that some of his friends/family/associates were heavily involved and Ryan may have received some benefits from it and/or known about it. Counterfeiting is a serious crime, but being on the periphery of it is not particularly serious in and of itself. What made this so important for Ryan was just how strange it is. You just don't hear about football players being implicated in this sort of thing, at least not until after their careers have been over for decades.

Without those two things, we have a high-level athlete who tried to gain entry into a casino illegally, got into an altercation with a bar bouncer, and skipped some classes and meetings. Hardly stuff to write home about or even worry about if you ask me.

This is not to suggest that those things didn't happen or that they aren't legitimately things that should be added to the Perrilloux equation. I just think that those are the things that set Ryan Perrilloux apart from other young athletes who have gotten into a few scrapes of minor trouble, nothing to justify the scrutiny he has received. I doubt anyone will ever actually forget those things, but if he can manage to get the other things turned around and stay turned around, he will be a special quarterback we can hopefully remember very fondly when his playing career here at LSU is over.

Deepest Conference in the NCAA?

2008-04-15T06:18:00.002-05:00

I was listening to talk radio again yesterday, and I heard some actual substantive football talk for the first time in a while. Tony Curry, who does not offend me generally, said that the SEC this year is the deepest conference in America, and the deepest it has been in a long time.

Really? Well, Tony Curry is entitled to his opinion, and I'm not going to criticize his intelligence for it, but I think he's incorrect here. In fact, I think the SEC is going to be significantly down from last year, when we had 10 teams end the season bowl-eligible. I doubt we even flirt with that again.

Next year I think the SEC will have a decided underclass again, which is the usual state of affairs. What made last year so special was that South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Arkansas all put together pretty good teams that could beat anyone on any given day. I expect that only Mississippi State will be able to do it again next year among that list.

South Carolina, Vandy, Kentucky, and Arkansas all lose a lot of good players and don't have the depth or recruiting to replace them. In particular, let's look at Kentucky and Arkansas. Kentucky loses its quarterback, 4 of its top 5 receivers, its top running back, and its best defensive player. And those are just the guys I can identify immediately. Kentucky's depth chart was not littered with 4- and 5-star players. They are not going to be able to replace guys like Andre Woodson, Keenan Burton, Jacob Tamme, Raphael Little, and Wesley Woodyard. Kentucky should take a step down.

Arkansas is even more obviously going to trend down. They lose their only really dangerous skill position players. Guys like Darren McFadden, Felix Jones, Peyton Hillis, and Marcus Monk made this team dangerous. Even with Marcus Monk mostly out of the equation last season, they still lose their top 4 receivers. They have some young players who show promise, but you just don't lose that much productivity, plus install a new offense and a new defense, and expect not to lose a little bit.

Those two teams are clear candidates to take a step down, but Vandy and USC also lose productive players. Vandy will have an offensive lineman selected in the first round of the NFL draft, and its best wide receiver in its history is going to the NFL as well. USC no longer has anyone named Brinkley on the team, and its solid running back tandem is now a solo job. They return dangerous wideout Kenny McKinley, but have never managed to find a consistent quarterback to throw to him. South Carolina had a really good 2007 recruiting class, but they're probably a year away from making any real noise.

That's 4 teams out of 12 that I think are not going to be as good as they were last year, and I can only identify one team that I think will make a significant step up. Ole Miss was a young team last year with a lot of talent at wide receiver, defensive line, and linebacker. Their QB play should be much improved, and if they can find a running back to replace BenJarvis Green-Ellis (5-star recruit Enrique Davis is a good place to start looking). Their young wide receivers made some serious plays last year, and if they get consistent quarterback play out of Jevan Snead they can have a very good offense. I think Ole Miss is a bowl team, but they're really the only team to appear on the verge of stepping up.

We all know that Florida and Georgia look like they're going to be really good. LSU looks like it will be just as good if our quarterback situation resolves in the way I hope it will. Tennessee and Auburn both look solid, though perhaps less so than in years past. Bama, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss look like they are likely to be bowl teams, but that's really about it. I think the SEC will be good next year, but not as good as last year.

Spring Comes To A Close

2008-04-14T06:14:00.002-05:00

One thing you have to realize is that in the State of Alabama, spring football is a much bigger deal than it is in Louisiana. Always has been. It came as a big surprise to me when I moved to Tuscaloosa 5 1/2 years ago just how big the Spring Game was. The Spring Game actually created traffic problems similar to what a real game would cause, but on a smaller scale.

That provided the foundation that the Saban-hysteria acted upon to create the Spring Game frenzy that happened last year. Now, it appears that Bama has changed spring football for the foreseeable future around the SEC. Where Spring Games previously, if they were even held, were strictly for devotees who bordered on being hobbyists, it is now being used as an offseason pep rally, designed to create an sustain interest in whatever program is holding it.

This weekend saw Bama's Spring Game draw about 78,000 people into the stands. It wasn't quite a full house, and a far cry from the state of affairs last year when they had to turn 30,000 people away, but it was still significantly above their own high standards. What happened in the game? Who cares? All I know is that one of the two intrasquad teams won. Which one? I have no idea. It's hard to figure out why it would matter.

Also, Florida had its Spring Game, which doubled as 3-ring circus, complete with interactive games where regular students could compete with players for the chance to win a scholarship. The College GameDay guys were on hand to do whatever it is you call what they do.

I'm still trying to work out what it means. Does it have any impact on LSU that we do not generate the same level of excitement for spring football as some other programs? It's hard to know. I feel pretty comfortable saying that Bama's spring fever last year gave them a pretty good shot in the arm for recruiting. It helped, at least in the short term, but it remains to be seen if there sill be any lingering long term benefit beyond the long term benefit of having a really good recruiting class.

It doesn't seem to be hurting us in recruiting this year, as we are going like gangbusters. Maybe it hurt last year, as we lost out on a lot of big recruits who ultimately had us in 2nd place.

The Minter Commitment

2008-04-11T06:22:00.000-05:00

Early this past Saturday, on the day of the Spring Game, Kevin Minter of Suwanee, Georgia committed to play football at LSU. Minter is listed at 6'0" 230#, with a 4.6 40 yard dash. His videos show him playing everything from defensive tackle to linebacker. He projects to be a middle linebacker at the next level. It appears from reports that he will have no difficulty qualifying academically.

He seems like a good kid, one who will be a good addition to the team both in terms of athletic ability and character. If you trust his 4.6 second 40 time, he is plenty fast enough to be a hard-hitting middle linebacker, and he looks plenty strong. He is outside of the Rivals250, but he is being recruited by USC which tells me he's probably a low 4-star at worst.

His videos, I think, test the limits of my ability to evaluate talent, which is something I've said before that I am not that great at. Sometimes I can look at a video and really tell that a kid is something special. I think a baboon could watch Russell Shepard and know he is a fantastic prospect at one position or another. It's a little harder with a player like Minter, and I think it's beyond my abilities.

I have watched the videos of Minter and fellow targets Jon Bostic, Chris Williams, Frankie Telfort, Willie Ferrell, and others and I cannot really tell much of a difference between those players. They all hit hard, shed blocks, and outrun running backs with ease at the high school level. It's hard to differentiate. Honestly, the most impressive linebacker video I have seen of any of our publicized recruiting targets is that of West Monroe linebacker Barkevious Mingo, who also has one of the best names in all of football. None of them look as good as Andalusia linebacker Nico Johnson's videos, but I don't think we have a legitimate shot at getting him.

I am really interested in knowing what coaches look for in a linebacker's videos, because I sure don't see anything to differentiate those guys. Surely there must be something, but it is beyond my abilities to see. Whatever they saw, they saw enough in Minter that they didn't want to wait to accept a commitment from him. They wasted no time in getting to him.

The fact that they accepted a commitment from Minter at this early stage says to me that Minter is one of the two best out-of-state linebackers that the coaches believe they have a realistic chance of signing. That says a lot about Minter, especially considering how much luck we're having pursuing out of state recruits this year. With all those people interested, they really wanted Minter, perhaps above all others.

We'll probably take two more linebackers, perhaps three more.

New Coach - Trent Johnson

2008-04-10T06:46:00.002-05:00

LSU appears to have hired Stanford's Trent Johnson as its new basketball coach. At first blush, this hire does not have a "wow" factor to it. I don't know much about Trent Johnson, and he wasn't really a guy talked up on the media circuit in the 2 months since John Brady was fired. However, Les Miles didn't have a wow-factor in his hiring either, and he has turned out great.

When this announcement was made, it introduced more questions than answers. Why is he leaving Stanford for LSU, a move most would consider a downgrade? What does he bring to the table? Is he a recruiter? Is he a motivator? Is he an X's and O's guy?

Some of these questions began to be answered by reading former Stanford great Mark Madsen's blog. Of course, I try to read Madsen's blog every day, if only to find out if he's going to be in any dance-offs soon.

Madsen says of Trent Johnson:

"This man deserves the very best because he is a first class individual and one of the best basketball minds in the business."

"Trent Johnson is one of the best communicators in the basketball world."

"He's secured multiple Sweet 16 performaces, a huge recruiting pipeline into Los Angeles, Oakland and throughout the East Coast, as well as one of the best X's and O's coaches in the nation."

That's enough for me for now.

Request Admin

2008-04-09T21:43:00.001-05:00

I would like to report this thread. He's spamming the board. Boil him in oil. I think he does it a fair bit. I wonder why he hasn't been banned.

Anthony Randolph To Try The NBA

2008-04-09T06:12:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, in a press conference, Anthony Randolph announced he was going to test the NBA draft waters, while leaving himself the option to return if things do not go well.

Projections seem to have him as a lottery pick, which has me perplexed. Randolph is a very good player, certainly, but I don't see "lottery" in him, because I don't see any star potential there (at the NBA level). I also don't see a player who elevates the play of those around him.

Yes, he has the prototypical NBA body style with his good height and lean physique, but he certainly has to gain strength before he hopes to make any kind of an impact in the NBA, where the post game is even more physical than in college. I don't follow the NBA much, but it is very hard to imagine Randolph going against the likes of Kevin Garnett, Shaq, or Tim Duncan and having any success at all.

It just boggles the mind that LSU could have a lottery pick on its roster and still have a losing season. He was a good player on a bad team, but he wasn't exactly dominant. The explanation is that Randolph isn't really a lottery pick. They say he'll be drafted on potential, but that seems a little odd to me considering Randolph has at least a 1-year apprenticeship ahead of him and probably a 2-year apprenticeship, and then will be eligible for free agency after his third year. And in what way is his potential higher than, say, Joe Alexander's or Eric Gordon's?

I wonder if those projections are going to start declining before the summer. Overseas players are starting to really compete with American college players for draft slots, and one can expect 1/4 to 1/2 of all the early draft positions to be taken up by foreign players. Plus, Randolph will have attended a bunch of camps and workouts by that time, and he will have been put through the paces.

Randolph, as I've said before, should return to LSU. I know that it's hard to pass up money, but life is about more than money. LSU is in all likelihood the last basketball team in which Anthony Randolph will be one of the best players. His future, despite what some projections say, is likely as an NBA role player, watching someone like Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, or Steve Nash keep the ball in his hands most of the game while Randolph (if he's on the court) is trying to stay out of his way.

That's not a knock on Randolph. It's just a commentary on how the NBA game is played now. He'll have a lot more fun and win a lot more glory for himself if he stays at LSU a little while longer and leads us to a nice run somewhere. I know his wallet says leave, but I feel pretty confident in saying that 10 years from now, he will probably wish he had stayed.

What does this mean for LSU? Well, assuming Randolph actually goes to the NBA, it means that this was truly a wasted year. We spent a lost season developing Randolph and setting up a future run with him as a primary weapon, and then he leaves. If he leaves for the NBA, we would have been better off never having him in the first place. His legacy at LSU will be zero. He will have come in and played reasonably well on a bad team and will have left before he accomplished anything.

If Randolph wants to come back, great. I'd love to have him back.

Jason Wins

2008-04-08T06:01:00.003-05:00

In a result surprising to no one, Jason wins the tourney game. The final standings are as follows:

Jason - 714 points
Me - 700 points
Daniel - 648 points
Poseur - 646 points
Rollie - 619 points
Jroberts - 540 points
Scott - 390 points

In another result surprising very few people, Memphis lost because they didn't hit free throws.

Alright, that's not really fair. Over the course of the game, they hit 12 of 19 free throws, which is a 63% rate. That's not terrible. Not great, but not terrible. They just missed a bunch down the stretch, and it was one of their best free throw shooters missing them.

For a random thought of the morning, I have two observations about televised sports that I think are interrelated:

Television executives reportedly complain about how long sporting events last, and how they go on beyond their scheduled times, and
Television stations air seemingly interminable pre-game segments, even for routine events, getting longer as the games get more important.

I truly believe that thanks to the internet and 24 hour sports channels, there isn't a whole lot of need for the networks to catch me up on the news before they start their broadcast of the games. Yet, they spend a lot of time telling me things that I already know, and that anyone could easily find out if they are really interested, delaying the starts of games and having them run long.

Last night, the broadcast started at 8:00 and the game didn't begin until after 8:30. This problem is not limited to basketball. This weekend I watched the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Yankees (yay!) on Fox in an early season match that is ultimately almost irrelevant to the final results of the season. The pre-game lasted over 20 minutes.

When I watched World Cup games in 2006, I was at first very put-off by the fact that when a game was set to start at 1:00pm, they went to the arena at precisely 1:00pm and the game was set for kickoff. It was jarring not to have any pregame, but then I got used to it, and ever since I have wondered why soccer is the only sport that does it this way.

If there is anything that needs to be said to set up the drama of the game, it can usually be said between the action of most major sporting events. Surely baseball is such a slow-moving sport that you could have an entire slow moving, tear jerking SportsCenteresque human interest story about the survivor of some rare disease between pitches.

As pregame activities expand, networks bristle at the fact that televised sports take up greater than their allotted time. Networks like ESPN, ABC, and CBS have lobbied for (and gotten) changes in the rules to shorten college football games, all while clogging up the television set at the top of their broadcasts with extraneous material that delays the start of the game. If CBS want to shorten their broadcasts, then they should start their 2:30pm football game precisely at 2:30. If they want to have pre-game, then have a specially set 30 minute pregame show. I assure you, after the initial jolt, fans will get used to it. They will even come to like it.

OK, so that random thought actually took up most of this post. Sue me.

WBB Falls

2008-04-07T05:56:00.003-05:00

Well, that was a sad ending to an exciting if not particularly well-played game.

In case you missed it, LSU held a 1-point lead with 7.1 seconds to play with Tennessee taking out the ball underneath its own basket. Out of a timeout, we put on a full-court man-to-man press, but Candace Parker beat the defender to the sideline and then outran her down the wing before hitting an open player under the basket. Amazingly, this player missed the gimme (a lot of that happened in this game), but there was actually time to get an offensive rebound and a put-back to put Tennessee ahead with 0.7 seconds left.

It was a very poor defensive play in a game characterized by very little offense all around. In 6.4 seconds, against a full-court press out of a timeout, the defense let Tennessee advance the ball with the dribble all the way down the court and get off not one but two point-blank shots. It was somewhat reminiscent of Tyus Edny for UCLA, but Edny wasn't going up against a defense that was able to set itself up out of a timeout. And Edny wasn't allowed to get off two shots.

Really it never should have even gotten to this point. The team played very good defense overall throughout the game, and got good shots on offense, but simply did not hit them. Sylvia Fowles had an impressive line with 24 points and 20 rebounds, but she was only 10 of 24 from the field and missed a lot of shots she'd normally hit with her eyes closed. She could easily have had 35 points if she'd only hit her layups and foul shots.

The team as a whole shot 35% from the field, and it wasn't because Tennessee played great defense. They just missed the shots. The team was 1 of 9 from 3-point range despite a lot of open looks from the better shooters on the team, and was 7 of 19 from the foul line. We simply failed to take advantage of the fact that Tennessee's best player, Candace Parker, was rendered mostly ineffective due to injury. Parker was 6 of 27 from the field. Despite a few nice baskets, she really was not the dangerous player you expected her to be. She had no jump shot whatsoever because of her bad shoulder, and was a liability on defense.

We outplayed them, but we lost because we left a lot of points on the table. We earned points by getting good shots off of good ball movement and good skills, but couldn't get the ball in the basket.

Looking at it objectively, this particular window of opportunity for LSU to compete in the SEC and on the national stage has clearly passed. The team loses its 5 starters and loses its 3 top scoring threats off of a team that was very top heavy in scoring anyway. Only Alison Hightower returns as a significant scoring threat for next year's team.

Coach Van Chancellor reportedly has a really strong recruiting class coming in. That is certainly good news under the circumstances. It looks like we will have to take a step back for a little while, as a young team gains experience, before emerging again as a real player on the national stage.

Spring Game - Women's Basketball - New Commitment

2008-04-06T08:28:00.002-05:00

There is just too much to talk about today. There's no way to get to all of it. We have the aftermath of the Spring Game. We have the LSU Lady Tigers (I hate that name. They're just the Tigers, dammit!) heading to the Final Four for tonight's matchup against Tennessee. We have the commitment of middle linebacker Kevin Minter. We had a baseball double-header against Bama yesterday, which was split.

We just won't get to all of them. I'll talk about Minter more extensively later this week, but for now I'll just say Minter is our first linebacker commitment. He's another kid out of Georgia to go along with Drayton Calhoun. He is by all accounts on track to qualify, and he looks pretty good. More on this later.

The Spring Game

The Spring Game was the Richard Murphy - Demetrius Byrd show. Murphy had an eye-popping 145 yards rushing plus a 53 yard touchdown catch. If the Spring Game is any indication, the redshirt sophomore may well be our feature back this Fall, passing the likes of Keiland Williams and Charles Scott on the depth chart. This is pretty amazing because Keiland and Charles are both pretty darn good. If Murphy is significantly better than them, then our running game will be outstanding next year.

It is rare, in my limited knowledge, for a single player to shine so much in spring. Usually, players get shuffled in and out so much that it is hard for one person to really stand out. Murphy took advantage of Keiland getting benched for a fumble, however, and he ran with it. Literally.

The quarterbacks received mixed reviews. Neither played flawlessly, but most people are saying that both of them looked like they belonged. I don't think there is any doubt, however, that Ryan Perrilloux is the best quarterback on the team by a mile at this point. Andrew Hatch had a pretty nice stat line, going 13 for 17 with 187 yards, 2 touchdowns, and an interception. Lee had a more modest day at 7 for 13 with 67 yards and 2 touchdowns, but didn't throw an interception.

They had some long pass plays. There was Murphy's 53 yard touchdown catch-and-run, and Byrd's 57 yard touchdown catch plus his 60 yard catch. He had over 130 yards on 4 catches, which averages out to "awesome".

If we have these kinds of big plays on a regular basis during the season, look out for us having a real shot to win the SEC and maybe even get to another BCS National Championship Game. The media is focusing on Florida and Georgia during this offseason, and they both appear to be very good teams, I see no reason to think they are any better than we are. I like the position of being overlooked, however.

On to Women's Basketball

The LSU women's basketball team tries to change its Final Four fortunes around tonight at 8:00 Central. We have, as most people know, been to five straight Final Fours. In our first four, we failed to win a game. Tonight, with 5 seniors starting, we hope that the experience will pay off for us.

We draw a team that is very familiar to us. This team has played the Tennessee Volunteers probably 10 times in their careers. They know the roster. They know the players. They know the strategies. There will be no surprises. Of course, that is also true of the Tennessee players, who know our players just as well.

This year, LSU is 1-1 against Tennessee, having beaten in the regular season before losing to them in the conference tournament. If you are looking for and advantage, Tennessee's best player Candace Parker suffered a dislocated shoulder in the Elite Eight. She returned to the game, and will be playing tonight, but it remains to be seen if there are any lingering effects. I don't think Tennessee can beat LSU if Parker cannot be effective.

I'm looking forward to watching it. If we lose tonight, a great group of seniors finishes out its careers on a down note, but in any event they should be remembered for their accomplishments rather than their inability to win it all.

Spring Game Begins

2008-04-05T09:48:00.003-05:00

LSU hired Duke athletic director Joe Alleva as its new athletic director yesterday. I have really nothing intelligent to say about this hiring, but I thought I'd put it out there.

The football Spring Game is today. We all remember that 92,000 showed up to Tuscaloosa last year for the Spring Game. That is a record for Spring Game attendance that will probably stand for decades, as it greatly surpassed any previous Spring Game.

What I did not know when I moved to Tuscaloosa 5 1/2 years ago, and what most people who don't have connections to the state of Alabama probably do not realize, is that Spring Football has always been a much bigger deal here than elsewhere. When I moved here, traffic was genuinely snarled on A-Day game day. I was genuinely surprised.

One day, I told my wife that I was not accustomed to Spring Football being so much bigger of a deal here as it is in Baton Rouge. She asked me, "How many people do you normally get at a Spring Game." I told her that we don't always even have a Spring Game. She was confused and surprised. I remember last year we had one, but the year before we did not. I estimated that when we have one, we typically get about 5,000 people there, and it isn't promoted all that heavily. I think they normally get about 3x that many people here, perhaps 4x as many. Last year was an aberration brought on by Saban Fever. I expect this year it will be more like 40,000 as Saban Fever has died down a little, but the ante has been raised on Spring Football.

I truly question the value of a Spring Game as far as evaluating the players or getting a taste of the strategies to be employed throughout the season. Coaches carefully screen what information gets out during the early part of Spring drills. Why would they let fans (and opposing coaches) know what's going on at the end?

This year, LSU is treating its game as another Junior Day. Reportedly 50 or so high school junior prospects LSU is recruiting or watching are going to be in attendance at the game. Expect a couple of commitments, as several guys LSU really wants appear to be close to pulling the trigger.

I am particularly interested in what could transpire on the linebacker front. We clearly need to recruit some linebackers this year, and a whole bunch of good linebackers are on the radar now. So many, in fact, that there's no way we could take them all. Some obviously have to be higher on the ladder than others, but all of the guys LSU is looking at (Minter, Bostic, Williams, Ferrell, etc.) have their boosters out there saying we need to be focusing on their guy. And that's just the out-of-state guys.

It's something to keep an eye on.

Spring Practice Over

2008-04-04T06:08:00.003-05:00

Spring practice at LSU is officially over, with a special celebratory "Spring Game" on Saturday, open to the general public.

As everyone knows, Spring Games have taken on new meaning in the wake of the excitement brought on by a certain someone who arrived in Tuscaloosa a little over a year ago. More on that perhaps tomorrow, but I want to talk about the actual players right now.

The big battles of the Spring were at quarterback, right tackle, safety, and cornerback. Everyone knows the quarterback situation and why the battle between Jarrett Lee and Andrew Hatch was so important. To hear talk, it appears that Lee has put a little distance between himself and Hatch. Lee simply has a stronger and more accurate arm, and can make the throws better than Hatch. Lee just has to learn game management and how to make the right decisions and he can be a very good quarterback. He's got the physical tools, and reportedly has a very good work ethic. He just has to put it all together. Let's hope what he has won is the backup quarterback position.

Jordan Jefferson will arrive in the fall to challenge, but I really believe the staff would much prefer to redshirt Jefferson, though he may have to play if Perrilloux has further problems. I think it's unrealistic, however, to believe a true freshman has a real chance to beat out a veteran at a position with such a long learning curve as quarterback. There is just too much to learn, and too many ways that the practice time that Lee has gotten will help him. Jefferson will be in the mix later in his career, but won't play this year unless there is attrition of quarterbacks or the veterans are ineffective.

At right tackle, we have to replace departed senior Carnell Stewart. True sophomores Joseph Barksdale and Jarvis Jones engaged in a good battle for the position throughout Spring, but it appears that Barksdale leaves Spring with the upper hand. Both Barksdale and Jones earned substantial playing time as true freshman reserves last year, and both figure to be on track to crack the starting lineup before long one way or another, but for now it appears Barksdale will be our 2008 starting right tackle barring injury. This is somewhat as expected, as Barksdale came in much more heralded (though at defensive tackle rather than offensive line) than Jarvis Jones, who frankly has been a big surprise since joining the team.

Cornerback is obviously a position where there is much wringing of hands and furrowing of brow. We lost two seniors to graduation, and we had no one behind them get any substantial playing time. The battle in the Spring was between four young players: Junior Chris Hawkins, Sophomore Jai Eugene, and redshirt freshmen Ron Brooks and John Williams. Hawkins and Eugene ran with the 1's all Spring, and there were reports either Brooks or Williams may switch to offense at some point. Eugene of course was a very highly prized recruit in Les Miles' first full recruiting class. That class honestly has been somewhat disappointing, but if the members of that class are ever going to make a move to the top of the depth charts, now is the time. I do not have any feeling on how these corners will look in the Fall when the games start, but for right now it looks like Eugene and Hawkins are our starting cornerbacks.

The arrival of Patrick Johnson in the Fall could shake that up. He's a very highly regarded 5-star recruit out of Florida that many people think can win the job outright. He has been described as the most physically gifted cornerback to come out of high school in several years, and the best cornerback prospect LSU has ever had.

Last but not least, at strong safety we have to replace All-American Craig Steltz. The competition is between last year's backup Harry Coleman, who played so well in the BCSNCG when Steltz had to leave with an injury, and sophomore Chad Jones, who looks like an eventual All-American type but seems like more of a free safety than a strong safety. Chad Jones skipped out on participating in baseball in order to concentrate on this competition. These two guys split time at the 1's, and it appears the battle for the starting safety spot is not even close to being decided yet.

I Sure Am Glad I'm Not a Real Journalist

2008-04-03T06:24:00.001-05:00

If I was, I might be forced to do something unthinkable, like issue some kind of apology or something for yesterday's post. In case you missed the news, the manager of the Kona Grill, where the Perrilloux incident reportedly took place, has denied any incident ever happened. This means, of course that we may never find out what, if anything, happened this weekend that has kept Ryan Perrilloux out of practice this week.

Of course, rumors abound yet again.

Among the more common rumors we've heard is that the Kona manager was bought off, meaning the incident happened precisely as reported, but is being covered up. You can believe this if you want, but I don't see a whole lot of purpose in executing a cover-up like this, so I don't think it happened.

The other rumor is the Ryan simply did not complete his required workouts in time to get to practice. A complementary rumor is that this may be a result of Ryan's baby being born during this time, perhaps prematurely.

The third rumor is that the Perrilloux suspension and the Shomari Clemons incident are linked. In case you did not hear, reserve freshman linebacker Shomari Clemons was issued a misdemeanor citation and summons to Court to answer to misdemeanor charges of shoving a police officer. He was not arrested (perhaps only through luck). We can expect a substantial suspension of Clemons.

Alright, we all know that Les Miles has never been particularly forthcoming about issues like this. We'll probably never get a definitive statement on what exactly happened this weekend with regard to Perrilloux that has kept him out of practice. But there are some things we know.

We know that Ryan still has never been arrested. He has never been accused of assault or other crime of violence, drug activity, theft of property or any other common crime football players get accused of. He has always maintained academic eligibility. The kid seems to be a magnet for troublesome behavior, but has never done anything truly outrageous that we know of.

I see no reason not to keep him around.

The Prodigal Son Prodigizes Again

2008-04-02T06:09:00.003-05:00

Did you see how I just made up a word there? Prodigizes. I feel like the President.

Yesterday, word came down that Ryan Perrilloux would miss all of Spring Practice. WJBO reported it was due to an incident at a restaurant, and someone on another message board said that the incident was an argument between Ryan and the waitress.

The word "argument" can mean many things, from a simple exchange of words to an embarrassing screaming match. The poster did not elaborate. For the moment, let's assume that what happened was a moderate argument, by which I mean there were some raised voices and bad feelings but without any threats of violence or excessive scene-making. It may turn out down the road that this assumption does not hold, but we can deal with that when the time comes.

Assuming this to be true, I think it's a bad move to have suspended him further. I agree with the commentators who have said that an argument with a waiter is not a big enough deal to warrant this kind of action, but I want to go a step further.

First, a little background. As many of you know, I am an attorney. One category of people I often work with are parents who have had their children taken away from them by the state. Each case is unique, but there are some generalities that hold pretty often. People in this category often have poor conflict resolution skills (which is code for saying that they have short tempers or cry a lot more than you'd think). They also often have difficulty setting medium- and long-range goals for themselves and meeting those goals. Often, it's because they never have done it before.

Anyway, as an attorney, one of my jobs is to do my best to help them correct some of these problems. You can imagine that one obstacle I run into is that they are trying to do this immediately after the very emotional setback of losing their children to the State. For people whose coping skills are behind the curve anyway, this is a problem.

The next obstacle, and the one I see parallels to here, is that they often make a lot of progress for a while, and do very well, but have some minor setback some time before they are able to get their children back. This minor setback, which may be something on the order of having to move from one house to another due to a landlord problem, which ordinarily you might think would set them back only a little bit, discourages them and they lose hope. Then everything falls apart.

I am afraid this may happen with Ryan Perrilloux. By all accounts, he was making a lot of progress in the eyes of the coaches, even going so far as to be reinstated to the team. Now, due to some minor setback, he has been publicly embarrassed again and has suffered a setback in his effort to rejoin the team fully, all over something that would be no big deal if it was you or me. If Ryan is anything like my clients (and I suspect he is), this is a very dangerous time in his life. This is the time when he could be thinking, "I don't have what it takes to do this," or, "They expect more from me than from anyone else." This is the time when he may lose hope that this can work out, and stop trying.

All over an argument with a waiter at a restaurant. If I was Les Miles, and there wasn't more to it than this, I would have just let this one go and let him rejoin the team. Anyone at any time can get into an argument with a waiter at a restaurant. He may not have been in the right (But who knows? Maybe he was.), but it just doesn't seem serious enough to me to warrant the risk that this could really turn out bad.

I assure you this is not a topic I relish talking about. This is a difficult spot for LSU to be in, and I do not like seeing a young man with such physical gifts potentially not be able to use them to his fullest because he has trouble getting along with people and following rules. This story, however, will go a long way to setting the narrative for the LSU football program not only for this season, but into the future as well.

LSU Gets Another Big Commitment

2008-04-01T06:09:00.002-05:00

I'm proud of the Lady Tigers for making it to their 5th straight Final Four, but since I did not know the game was on until about 3 1/2 minutes to go in the 2nd half, I do not have much intelligent to say about that situation.

Instead, let me gush once again about the state of LSU football recruiting, which appears to be in a Golden Era this year. Yesterday, LSU picked up a commitment from Dexter Pratt, 6'2", 220# out of Novasota High School in Novasota, Texas, a running back in the Rivals 250, and knocking on the door of the Rivals 100.

I'll tell you, I love this kid's videos. When I first watched his videos, my thought was that he looked an awful lot like an Auburn running back. I mean that as a compliment. He reminds me a lot of a Stephen Davis, Ronnie Brown, or Kenny Irons in that he is a between the tackles runner who has great north-south instincts. He takes the handoff or the pitch and he gets up to speed very quickly and doesn't mess around a whole lot in the backfield waiting to turn it upfield. Some others have said he looks like Rudi Johnson with speed, but Rudi was more of a run-over-you back. Pratt is a powerful runner who gets through arm tackles and makes yards after contact, but he doesn't seem like the type to initiate contact and try to run over you, and I think that's a good thing. Others have said Joe Addai, but I think he's a lot bigger and stronger than Addai was at this point, though his pass catching is Addai-esque.

He also has really good hands in the passing game and according to his coach he likes to block. What's more, he is another guy who is said to be a strong character player. He is reportedly on track to qualify academically without difficulty though, alas, it does not appear he'll be a Spring enrollee (we're getting spoiled here, people).

Having watched the film of all the big running backs we were interested in after Mike Ford, Dexter Pratt was the one I was really hoping we'd get. He just looks so fluid at running back. I don't know if my Steven Davis, Kenny Irons, and Ronnie Brown comparisons will ultimately prove out, but I think he's a good one.

When 2009 recruiting chatter started in earnest, a lot of people were looking at Pratt as potentially a linebacker rather than running back. After watching his videos, I just didn't see it. While I readily admit I am but an amateur judge of of ability, he looked an awful lot like a running back to me with his runner's instincts and ability with the ball in his hands. Further, he seemed to lack the side-to-side quickness and change of direction a linebacker must possess, or at least his videos didn't really show it. Plus, there was absolutely no film of him playing defense.

I know people switch positions. I know you sometimes look at a high school quarterback and say he looks like a wide receiver, or you take a high school running back and say he looks like a cornerback (Drayton Calhoun is a perfect example of this), but to me it is very hard to take a guy's running back film and project him to be a linebacker if you see no film of him actually playing linebacker. How do you know he likes to hit people? Maybe I'm wrong, but I just never saw it.

Anyway, back to Pratt. The kid is big and the kid is fast. When I saw his numbers as 6'2" and 220# with 4.48 speed, I looked at it as yet another exaggeration, but people in the know say his weight is legitimate, and his coach insists his time is legitimate, though you can read my post "Forty Schmorty" on why I always question these things. I know he looks plenty fast on the football field. He looks a bit like a young Alley Broussard, who if you remember was actually the fastest running back on the team early in his career, despite also being the biggest. Alley never was a receiver though, and Alley never did learn to block like Pratt reportedly can. Pratt may be big at 220#, but he sure doesn't look too big. He looks like he could probably gain maybe 10 pounds without losing speed. Pratt at 230# and with speed is a pretty scary thing. I love this commitment.

Reportedly, we may not be done at running back. According to chatter, we are really high on Trent Richardson out of Florida, and if he wants to commit to us we'll take him. If not, we are likely done for the year at this position and can concentrate on other things.

Tourney Game: Effectively Over

2008-03-30T20:40:00.003-05:00

For the first time ever, all the 1-seeds are going to the Final Four. By necessity then, everyone has one player remaining, their player from the 1-seeds.

It also appears that Poseur's and my own brief threat to overtake Jason will fall short. In fact, I know mine has. Poseur is still mathematically in it, but he's 51 points behind, meaning Kevin Love would have to outscore Tyler Hansbrough by 51 points over the remainder of the tournament in order for Poseur to catch up. That's pretty far-fetched.

Anyway, here are the current standings:

Jason: 697 points, Tyler Hansbrough remaining
Richard: 683 points, Tyler Hansbrough remaining
Poseur: 646 points, Kevin Love remaining
Rollie Fingers: 602 points, Tyler Hansbrough remaining
Daniel: 598 points, Chris Douglas-Roberts remaining
Jroberts: 490 points, Chris Douglas-Roberts remaining
Scott: 388 points, Darren Collison remaining

No matter what, I will end the tournament 14 points behind Jason. As mentioned, Poseur has to have Love outscore Hansbrough by 51 in order to catch Jason. No one else is even remotely close.

It's been a pretty fun tournament, though I regret there's no underdog story in the Final Four. Watching Stephen Curry's run through the tournament was exciting. Watching Western Kentucky (to the small extent I got to watch them) was also exciting. I also enjoyed watching Joe Alexander from West Virginia.

What did I learn about the game that I will be applying next year?

1. Find the dynamic scorers and pick them, no matter what. If I had picked Michael Beasley, I would have won the game. I didn't pick him because I thought USC was going places, and I didn't want to pick Beasley, who played USC in the first round and would have gotten the stifling Wisconsin slow-down game in the second. I picked Ramel Bradley instead, and though Ramel had a good game, he was outscored by Beasley 46-19. There are always a few dynamic scorers in the tournament. Find them and pick them, and don't overthink it.

Of course, it was exactly this thinking that made me pick Shan Foster, so take this advice for what it's worth.

2. Avoid players on teams that have "balanced scoring". Picking players off of Louisville or Wisconsin this year didn't pay off. David Padgett only scored in double figures in one game out of his four. Trevon Hughes had one big game and scored a total of 8 points in his other two. Find another team with a star player instead.

3. Don't believe the hype about guard play being most important. This maxim made me pick Jamont Gordon instead of Charles Rhodes. Gordon had a respectable 29 points. Rhodes scored 48. Once again, I would have won this tournament if I'd just picked the other Bulldog. This also made me pick DJ Augustin, who only had one game in the 20s and also one game with 6 points. Then again, Augustin was the best among the 2's anyone actually picked.

We won't be focusing so hard on the tourney from here on out. Frankly, I have no rooting interest anymore. I dislike all the teams remaining. I suppose I dislike Memphis the least though.

Tourney Game Results - Round 3

2008-03-29T06:05:00.003-05:00

We have results for Round 3 of the NCAA Tournament Game, and wouldn't you know it, but it's a game again. I won the 3rd round with 136 points. Jason had 128, while Poseur had 122. I ate into Jason's lead by 8 points, leaving me 30 points behind.

Most importantly though, Poseur and I each have an extra player over Jason. Results are as follows:

Jason: 644 points (Hansbrough and Curry remaining)
Richard: 614 points (Hansbrough, Augustin, and Curry remaining)
Poseur: 605 points (Love, Augustin, and Curry remaining)
Rollie: 549 points (Hansbrough and Curry remaining)
Daniel: 542 points (Douglas-Roberts, Padgett, and Curry remaining)
Jroberts: 449 points (Douglas-Roberts and Augustin remaining)
Scott: 369 points (Collison remaining)

It's a 3-team race now between Jason, Poseur, and myself. We all have Stephen Curry remaining, so he doesn't count anymore. Jason and I have Hansbrough in common, so I simply have Augustin as a bonus. If Augustin scores 31 points from now to the end of the tournament, I pass Jason.

For Poseur, if Love and Augustin score 40 points more than Hansbrough, he passes Jason, but he needs Love to outscore Hansbrough by 10 in order to pass me. This will actually be an exciting finish.

The key players remaining, then, are Love, Hansbrough, and Augustin. Poseur and I want Augustin to do well. Jason and I want Hansbrough to do well. Poseur wants Love to do well. None of these players go head to head in the Elite 8. It's really anyone's game at this point, and the key game is probably Memphis vs. Texas tomorrow night. If Texas is eliminated, it is highly unlikely anyone will catch Jason. If Texas advances, it's anyone's game.

I Would Have Titled this "The Prodigal Son Returns" But That Name Doesn't Really Apply and I Couldn't Think of a Better One

2008-03-28T06:08:00.006-05:00

Les Miles re-instated Ryan Perrilloux to the team earlier this week, though he has to complete a cadre of personal workouts on his own time before he is allowed to practice. He should return to the field on Monday.

Let's face it. Whatever you think of Ryan Perrilloux, one thing is undeniable: this team's chances of winning are a lot higher if Ryan Perrilloux is on the field.

With Ryan Perrilloux, the 2008 LSU Fightin' Tigers form a triumvirate with Florida and Georgia as the pre-season favorites in the SEC. With Ryan Perrilloux, LSU is clearly the pre-season favorite in the SEC West. With Ryan Perrilloux, LSU has an offense that promises to be as dynamic (and frankly, terrifying) as any offense in the country. With Ryan Perrilloux, we have a quarterback who can throw the deep ball, can beat you with his legs, can run the option, and can run the short and medium-range passing game. With Ryan Perrilloux, our receivers are likely to run wild. On ability alone, Ryan Perrilloux is a dark horse for the Heisman Trophy.

Without Ryan Perrilloux . . ., well, without Ryan Perrilloux no one really knows what we have, exactly. We know we don't have a quarterback who has taken a meaningful snap. We know we don't have an exceptional athlete behind center. We know we don't have anyone who could legitimately be called a Heisman threat, at least not this year.

I know as well as my readers do that there is more to being a quarterback than natural physical ability, and it is that "more" that Ryan may lack, including leadership skills and team-first attitude. We also know, however, that various members of the team have spoken out publicly that they do not think Ryan Perrilloux has reached the point of no return with them. You can ask, "What do you expect them to say" to which my response is that if they really don't want Perrilloux back, they probably wouldn't say anything at all.

It is healthy to be reminded, however, that Ryan Perrilloux has never been arrested, has never been accused of drug abuse, has never been accused of committing a crime of violence or a crime of theft. He has never done any one thing that could be labeled as truly lawless. Instead, he is a guy who seems to always do little things, like try to get into a casino with another person's license or skip too much class. Let's also not forget that the incident that got him suspended for the Bama game last year was at a time and place when he was out with his teammates, including senior leaders, in an incident that appears to have been initiated by overenthusiastic bouncers. For those reasons, I think the cries of "thug" are grossly misplaced.

Les recently changed Perrilloux's living situation. He is now rooming with my larger, much more athletically gifted cousin, Kirsten*. This fills me with good feelings, as being paired with a high character guy like Kirsten Pittman can't help but be good for Ryan.

I don't know the future. I don't know if Ryan Perrilloux will be able, this time, finally, to be able to continue his career without controversy. I hope so, for more reasons than one. I know it's entirely up to him. Les Miles isn't asking much of him. He just has to get to class, get to team functions, stay out of legal/academic trouble, and basically be a good citizen. If he does all that, he could end up as good as any quarterback we've ever had, and the Perrilloux-led Tiger offenses could be the most dangerous we've ever fielded.

*The author is not, in fact, related to Kirsten Pittman, though he would like to be.

GeauxTuscaloosa Gets Lucky: Chris Garrett

2008-03-27T06:18:00.003-05:00

I assure you I had no inside information. I just read something on a message board and concluded it meant something before reporting it here. It turns out, Chris Garrett, the 6'4" 220# quarterback from Tupelo, Mississippi committed to LSU yesterday after my post in which I pointed out his comments as showing serious interest in LSU.

I certainly didn't know he was committing that day. As far as I know, I've never laid eyes on Mr. Garrett nor had a conversation with him. I'm not a reporter. I'm just an analyst. But I think it's illustrative of the point I made, which is that if you watch it closely enough, you can eventually figure out that certain kids aren't serious about their interest and certain kids are.

Anyway, about Chris Garrett. He's our second quarterback recruit of the 2009 class, as Russell Shepard committed earlier this month. Where Shepard is a dynamic athlete, Garrett is more of a traditional quarterback. You have to love his size at 6'4" and 220 pounds. He's a pure drop-back passer, where Shepard is a dangerous runner. Garrett may not be a John Elway with his legs (remember, he was a tremendous runner early in his NFL career), but he can move out of the pocket a little if he needs to. He is not in the Rivals250 at this point, but he projects to probably be a 4-star player, though he may be a high-3-star. It doesn't matter. He's a guy that MSU, LSU, and other schools all wanted. He's a solid kid.

He's a little reminiscent of a Jamarcus Russell, in that he is a big strong-armed kid who nonetheless cannot be described as Kosarian in his mobility.

About that strong arm. OK, he's no Jamarcus Russell in the arm, but when you watch his videos you notice he can hit the hardest throw in football: the deep out pattern. If a kid can throw a 20-yard out-pattern accurately and get it there before the defensive back can get to it, the kid's arm is not an issue. Chris Garrett does that.

The other good thing about him is he projects to be another mid-term qualifier, which means he should be at LSU in time to participate in 2009 Spring Practice, along with Russell Shepard and Drayton Calhoun. This will help his progression and development, and give other schools a lesser chance to get him to change his commitment.

This gives us two very different quarterbacks in this class. We will have to see how they fit together. Personally, I hope that Crowton isn't planning to go to a permanent 2-quarterback system where quarterbacks split time 50-50. I don't think that's happening though. I think he's just trying to give himself a variety of weapons to choose from.

This is also the 5th state LSU has gotten a commitment from so far for 2009. We have eight current commitments. 3 are from Louisiana, 2 are from Texas, and 1 each from Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi. LSU's regional reach remains strong, while other schools continue to be unable to get recruits out of Louisiana if LSU wants them. That is a tremendously strong position to be in.

We may not be done in Mississippi. Garrett has a teammate that LSU is reportedly very interested in. Chad Bumphis is listed as an "Athlete", meaning he is a DB/WR. He is #8 on the Garrett videos and may be the top recruit in the state of Mississippi this year. Having his high school QB as a commitment can't hurt in getting Bumphis.

Recruiting 101 - Reading Between the Lines

2008-03-26T06:11:00.000-05:00

If you watch recruiting closely for a few years, and you really observe what recruits say and what eventually ends up happening, you get to be pretty good at reading between the lines of recruiting articles. Recruits often tell recruiting analysts what those analysts want to hear, and the analysts themselves are pretty good at asking loaded questions and providing selective quotes.

As an example of what I'm talking about, suppose you have a kid who lives in Florida and has been a Florida State fan all his life. He says something to the effect of, "Florida State is my team because I've lived in Florida all my life, but that's not going to have a big impact on my life." What he means is, "I'm going to Florida State, but I'm going to take some visits and experience the fun of recruiting first." If he says, "LSU is way up there on my list," what he means is, "LSU is an afterthought." The only real chance LSU or any other out-of-state school has is if Florida State fails to offer the kid.

I'm not being critical of the kids. It's not like they're lying. They are listening to other teams' recruiting pitches. They do have LSU on their list, perhaps a distant 3rd or 4th with little or no chance of making up the ground. Heck, they might even be thinking that they have open recruiting, but in the end a kid like that almost always picks the childhood favorite team if it's a real option for him.

As briefly alluded to earlier in this post, there is an alternative meaning to the kid's words of encouragement to other teams' fanbases. His statement may mean he does not have a real scholarship offer from his favorite school. He wants it, but he may not be willing to come out and say that he does not have it, out of embarrassment and ego.

One thing to be mindful of is that not all "offers" are the same. The written offer the recruits receive in the mail definitely is not an "offer" in the legal contractual sense, and may not actually mean much of anything. A kid who receives an offer in the mail and who actually calls the coach to commit may come to find out that the coach has 4 players ahead of him on the board at his position and will not accept his commitment until he learns what those other 4 players are doing. If the coach gets one or two of those 4 to commit to his school, he will never accept the commitment of the other kid and the offer amounts to nothing.

It's a harsh business, and this is sometimes how it works. A kid may receive the offer he wanted all his life only to find out it wasn't an offer at all.

As you read articles on recruiting services, keep these things in mind. A recruit who tells you he has a lifelong favorite school but is open to anyone is probably not be completely honest, perhaps even to himself, about either his state of mind or the state of his scholarship offers.

This begs the question, however. How do you tell when an athlete is really sincere about being serious about LSU. There's not hard and fast rule, but sometimes a recruit will say something surprisingly candid, like Mississippi quarterback Chris Garrett said recently, as reported by rebelsports.com: "I'm actually looking at LSU pretty hard. Really hard, actually." He continued: "When I went to LSU, I fell in love with the place." But he's not done: "It's going to be really, really soon (that I make my final commitment). I've made up my mind. I just want to wait a little while." [All emphasis added by me].

That's a kid who is really serious about LSU. He's currently a soft commitment to Mississippi State, and he may not end up switching, or may end up switching back if he does, but he's serious. He's getting past cliches, talking about his feelings for LSU in some depth, and indicating he's already made up his mind. Some of these other guys aren't serious. Garrett is.

Round 2 Results: The Let-Down

2008-03-25T06:21:00.003-05:00

After Round 1, it seemed like it would be a pretty good battle, but then Round 2 happened.

Well, not exactly. The first thing that happened is I noticed I failed to count one player for Jason in the first round, so his totals went up by 26 points from that round, putting him among the leaders in points, but still insanely high in players remaining. This paid off in the second round, as Jason took a commanding lead in the game with 516 points, with 5 players remaining. Here are the standings:

Jason: 516 points (Hansbrough, Lofton, Lopez, Alexander, and Curry remaining)
Poseur: 483 points (Love, Augustin, Lopez, Curry, and Reynolds remaining)
Richard: 478 points (Hansbrough, Augustin, Lopez, Alexander, Curry, and Lee remaining)
Daniel: 459 points (Douglas-Roberts, Lofton, Padgett, and Curry remaining)
Rollie: 447 points (Hansbrough, Lopez, Morgan, Alexander, and Curry remaining)
jroberts: 364 points (Douglas-Roberts, Augustin, Lopez, and Reynolds remaining)
Scott: 332 points (Collison, Lofton, Hughes, and Alexander remaining)

Poseur is in 2nd place in points, but has fewer players remaining than either Jason or me. Daniel had a very good first round, but lost a lot of ground in the 2nd round. Rollie was killed by Roy Hibbert and his failure to pick any of the 12- or 13-seed upsets. Shan Foster probably ended any hope I had of winning this thing, and DJ Augustin has played well without scoring any points, screwing everyone who picked him. Then again, the same could be said of James Lofton. All around, every player picked a dud in the 2-slot. Jroberts was one of the guys who picked the Eric Gordon-Malik Hairston combination at the 8- and 9-seeds, and as a result he is pretty much finished.

Anyway, I now think I'm the only one with any chance to beat Jason, and I need to hope for a miracle. I have one additional player remaining, so all I have to say is, "Go Hilltoppers!" If Lee scores 30 in the next game, or advances to the next round, I'm right back in it. Poseur could still get back in it, but he'll have to do it the hard way, by his players simply manning up and scoring more than Jason's.

Football stuff: I had a request for a Spring Football update. LSU has been on football hiatus due to Spring Break, but they return to practice today. There will be updates in the future.

Super-Late Round 1 Results

2008-03-24T06:23:00.003-05:00

Like I said, I was at a funeral in my wife's family this weekend. I was away from home all weekend, and I did not have my spreadsheets. As a result, I was unable to start compiling results of the tournament until this morning. I realize it's hopelessly out of date, but here are the results from round 1.

Richard (me): 275 points, 6 players eliminated
Poseur: 280 points, 6 players eliminated
Daniel: 277 players, 5 players eliminated
froberts: 225 points, 7 players eliminated*
Rollie: 275 points, 7 players eliminated
Scott: 192 points, 7 players eliminated
Jason: 253 points, 4 players eliminated

The number of players eliminated is as important as the number of points scored at this point, so while me, Poseur, Daniel, and Rollie look really strong in points scored, Jason may be the player with the advantage at this point because he has two more players still playing at this point. I think it's a two-player race at this point between Daniel and Jason, although one quick look at the brackets shows that Daniel has 5 players left in the sweet 16 while Jason has 7. Advantage Jason.

I'll get to the rest of it tomorrow.

froberts made a mistake and listed Josh Akognon as a player for Mt. St. Mary, a 16-seed. Akognon is actually a 14-seed player for Cal St. Fullerton. As a result, that slot is disqualified for froberts and it will be treated as if he did not pick a 16-seed player.

Day Three - Duke Loses And It Is Awesome, Baby

2008-03-23T10:18:00.001-05:00

Only one upset yesterday, but it was the one that gives me the warm fuzzies: Duke losing. Pittman has already said how much he hates Duke, and I agree with everything he said. Just add the bitterness of growing up in Maryland and roting for the Terps and that's how much I hate the Dookies. hope they lose every damn game. And it was beautiful to see them not only lose, but to lose to a Duke-clone in West Virginia. Even better, one coached by unrepentant scumbag, Bob Huggins. It made my day. It was also the only real upset of the day, so it gets to be one of the central stories. Thank you, Duke.

There were two other big stories: the struggles of the Pac-10 powers only to result in a perfect 3-0 day and the collapse of the vogue sleeper teams.

Say what you will about the Pac-10, but they can ball. Is UCLA the luckiest team n earth? Did they get a gift of a draw? Did they still struggle with a fairly mediocre A&M team? Yes on all counts. But they just keep winning. Really, there comes a point where they start believing they are team of destiny, because this team has benefited from more bad calls and lucky bounces than, well, the average Duke team. Hell, I'm not picking against them until someone surgically removes the horseshoe from their collective ass. Stanford also needed a late shot to win, and frankly, they were outplayed all game. Marquette was the better team, only to get beat in OT by Brook Lopez. It sucks, but it happens. Marquette can commiserate with Belmont about outplaying a team but still losing.

But what about Wazzu? The least heralded of the Pac-10 leaders, their 4-seed was widely regarded as a mistake. Washington St doesn't have the athletes, and they don't play a real fun style to watch. They are like the Wisconsin of the west (another team which won with ease - defense rules in the tourney because defense never goes cold). And they didn't just win, they absolutely crushed Notre Dame, one of the popular teams to make a deep run. Honestly, Washington St would be a horrible draw for UNC because of their half-court pace and tough defense. That's if UNC gets past Arkansas.

The other team of ultimate hype was Pittsburgh. They will watch the rest of the tourney on TV because, well, never bet against Tom Izzo in March. The good Drew Neitzel showed up, and when he does, they are simply a much better team than Pitt. So, once again, the Panthers make the Big East final and then bomb out of the Big Dance. Seriously, people. Stop buying into the hype. Pittsburgh does this every year it seems. A hot conference tourney has no correlation to success in the real tourney. Pitt is my poster child for this theory, but it really applies to any team that is seeded 4 or lower and is coming of a good tourney run. This year, that included Clemson, Pitt, Georgia, and Arkansas. Be skeptical of good but not great games who re being told they are great. They rarely are.

Day Two - Cinderella Gets to Jitterbug

2008-03-21T23:00:00.004-05:00

It's not that Day One lacked drama. It's just that aside for about one hour of basketball, it didn't quite deliver. Belmont taking Duke to the limit was dramatic, even if it didn't have a happy ending. Day Two had the happy endings. Just because I'm a firm believer in overanalyzing things, let's jump to way to broad conclusions from each upset. The big boys will have their day in a week, but the first weekend is about the little guy.

LESSON ONE: Stephen Curry is awesome.
Actually, we knew that going in. Curry is one of those guys I am openly rooting for just so I can keep watching him play. He is practically automatic from anywhere on the court. Gonzaga got screwed with this draw.

LESSON TWO: The committee hates and despises mid-majors
Gonzaga v. Davidson. Western Kentucky v. Drake. Butler v. South Alabama. Pretty much every mid-major people were excited to see got matched up with another mid-major power. It's like the draw was designed to get rid of the mid-majors as quickly as possible. But first, we got incredible drama from two of those games. Actually, the WKU game kind of sucked until Drake made a spectacular late run to force overtime, build a lead in OT, only to lose it on a desperation three at the buzzer. How would you rather lose?

LESSON THREE: Clemson was overrated.
Not to call out Clemson, but come on. They beat Duke ad suddenly people act like thy are a great team. They were the fifth best ACC team at best for most of the season, only to benefit from Maryland's late season collapse. They win one game against Duke and suddenly they ar a 5-seed and a popular pick to make noise? Why? That was their first real impressive win all season. Really, they weren't that much better than Villanova.

LESSON FOUR: The SEC stinks.
Tennessee struggled with American but put them away late. Mississippi State, admittedly, looked good against Oregon. Arkansas beat the floundering Hoosiers, which just about any team in the field could have done. End of good news. The SEC took it on the chin in round one , as they really weren't all that great in victory and the defeats piled up. Vanderbilt led the way with an absolute thrashing at the hands of Siena, in a game that was never even competitive. They didn't get upset, they got beat.

LESSON FIVE: Tampa rocks.
Four games, four upsets. UConn and Drake went down in the morning. Then Vandy and Clemson at night. Now, I hate the pod system, but this is something that could only happen because of the pods. Four first round games, all resulting in upsets could only happen in a venue with two 4-13 and two 5-12 games.

LESSON SIX: Let's not get too comfy with Cinderella just yet.
OK, 1st round wins are nice, and there's going to be at least two 12 or 13 seeds in the Sweet Sixteen thanks to Tampa, but let's take a quick step back. Before the tourney, I pointed out there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between teams seeded 5 through 12. The gap is really those top three seed lines. Know how many of the teams seeded 1 through 3 lost? That's right, zero. The decimation of the bracket helps the power teams, and we're still on course for the heavyweights to assert their will. The next two days go a long way towards showing whether this is another Year of the Upset, or whether this was just clearing the way for the top seeds.

NCAA Tourney - Day One

2008-03-21T06:26:00.001-05:00

I hate Duke. I hate them hate them them. There probably is not a single team in all of sports that I dislike more than I dislike the Duke basketball team. Maybe the New York Yankees. Well, probably the New York Yankees, but other than them, I hate Duke more than anyone. My hatred of them increased just a little last night.

Belmont had them beat until they played a truly horrific final 30 seconds of the game to give the game away to Duke. With the ball and a one point lead, they failed to get off a good shot because they dithered around for too long before starting the offense. Then, Gerald Henderson of Duke (their only good offensive player on the day) got the ball and Belmont decided not to play any defense against him, allowing him to score the go-ahead basket on an easy layup.

Belmont got the ball back, got off another bad shot, but managed to get a tie ball on the rebound giving themselves the ball back, down by one with four seconds to play. On the inbounds play off of a timeout, apparently someone on the floor didn't know the play, because the inbounds man threw up a lob and no one was there to get it. It was not obvious who was the intended recipient of the pass. Duke gave them one last chance by failing to hit a free throw, but the desperation heave at the end didn't fall.

Duke escapes and moves on, free to piss me off again another day.

Not a lot of surprises in the first day. Right now, it's looking like mostly chalk. The one substantial exception (9-seed beating 8-seed does not count) is K-State's victory over USC. Those of you who had Michael Beasley (23 points, advancing) on your team had a good night. Those of us who picked an 11-seed other than K-state lose out, as Kentucky and Baylor both bowed out of the tournament.

Those of you who had Dionte Christmas (3 points, eliminated) and/or Michael Jenkins (2 points, eliminated) had a bad night. Those of you who had all three of those had a mixed night. Rollie Fingers made a great call and picked up Josh Akognon off of 14-seed Cal St. Fullerton. He lost out, but scored 31 in the process.

I did alright. I'm behind the leaders, but I'm still in it. I probably need to get some upsets to go my way though, or I'll probably end up substantially behind the leaders. Go San Diego and Western Kentucky and Arkansas and Mississippi State!

No one had a worse day than Scott, in my opinion. He had Christmas and Jenkins, scoring a total of 5 points before exiting. He had his 1-seed player play and only got 5 points out of it. Only the pick of Michael Beasley relieved some of the horror, but now Beasley has to go against his pick for #3, so one or the other of those guys is getting eliminated Saturday, meaning that in order to get additional benefit from his 11-seed pick, he has to get his 3-seed pick eliminated.

I won't reveal the points or standings quite yet, because they only really matter at the end of a total round. Not everyone has had the same number of players play. Poseur, Rollie, and Scott have had 9 players play so far, while Jason has only had 6 players play. Jason's behind those guys, but obviously he is likely to catch up.

Actually, Jason is in really solid position right now. His 3- through 7-seeds have all played, and he has escaped the big upset, except for K-state over USC, which bit everybody and doesn't hurt Jason because he has Beasley as well. Moreover, Beasley is the only one of his lower-seeded players to have played already, meaning Jason has a lot of opportunity to gain from some upsets. If I had to pick one player in really good shape, it would be Jason, but a lot of people are in decent shape and can catch up with a little luck. As for me, however, most of the things that could happen to help me also would help Jason. I need to root for American to take down Tennessee, which seems like just about as unlikely as a 16-seed beating a 1-seed.

You probably won't get a detailed breakdown from me tomorrow morning, as I will be unavoidably traveling this evening and will be away from home tomorrow to attend a funeral in my wife's family. If anyone else is actually keeping up with the scoring, feel free to post the points and standings tomorrow morning. Otherwise, I will take care of it when I get a chance.

Poseur's Brackets

2008-03-20T09:12:00.003-05:00

I was all set to do a tourney preview until I looked in the mirror and admitted it would all be a bunch of bull. Look, the teams with little numbers next to their names are better. That's why they ahve such high seeds. The four #1 seeds are the best four teams in the country and everyone outside of Tennessee knows it. But here's the catch, this is a one-and-done tournament, which encourages upsets. Inferior teams are going to win games (exception: last year's tournament, which was the most boring March ever). With any luck, inferior teams are going to win lots of games. The key filling out your bracket is accurately predicting those inferior teams. So here's the answer: No one knows.

Sorry.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the gap isn't that wide between a 6 seed and an 11 seed. You wouldn't bat an eyelash if St Joe's beat Oklahoma on February 9th, so why think it will be an upset now? The real gap is between the very top teams and the rest of the field. Once you get past the top three seed lines, everyone is on fairly equal foooting until you get to about the bottom three seed lines. So what follows is a Peter Gammons style notes commentary based just on random guesses from watching too much basketball...

EAST
Hansborough is the perfect symbol for UNC: he scores lots of points, he plays hard, and he's a deserving Player of the Year, but at the end of the day, you just aren't that impressed by him... If UNC thought Clemson was tough, they should get a load of Louisville... Winthrop and George Mason are not as good as the team's which won our hearts in previous tournaments... I have no idea what to make of Washington St.. Butler and Tennessee is potential matchup that would be an awesome contrast of styles, but defense normally wins out in the tournament.

MIDWEST
I think this is the bracket most likely to get blown up, meaning that I've jinxed it and only the top seeds will advance... The typical Michael Beasley game is scoring 35 points in a losing effort... Face it, if there was another school's name on the jersey, Kansas would be an overwhelming pick to win the title, but they have choked so many times in the past... I expected Georgetown to be so much better this year... Clemson beats Duke and suddenly they are a great team? Did I miss something?... I hope Davidson wins just so I can see Stephen Curry play twice... Wisconsin is the matchup from hell, but they really lack athleticism, I'm not sure how much that matters... Final upset alert: Siena is pretty good. Ask Stanford.

SOUTH
If the first thing negative you say about a team is that they stink at free throws, that means that team is really, really good... Texas would love to play Memphis in Houston, but Stanford creates huge matchup problems for them... I refuse to be burned by Pittsburgh again: every year they do great in the Big East tourney and every year they lose in the big Dance. I refuse to buy the hype again... Which Drew Nietzel is going to show up for Michigan St?... Will Jesus call Oral Roberts home if they lose by double digits in the first round again?... Kentucky's 12-4 conference record says a lot more about the SEC than it does about Kentucky.

WEST
Who did UCLA blow to get this draw? Take a look at the region, every team's weakness is: lacks a powerful big man, which is UCLA's strength (well, one of them)... Arizona-West Virginia should be spectacular, so should be the encore of the winner vs. Duke... I'm partial, but I really do love this Baylor team. Purdue is gonna press a team with tons of guards who love to play in transition, rarely a recipe for success... Georgia is the lowest seeded team from a major conference ever... OK, Drake, time to put your money where your mouth is... I've ignored UConn all year. I honestly have no opinion on them, but they do seem like the sort of team that can make a surprising run.

The Tournament Begins

2008-03-20T06:11:00.003-05:00

Today is the day. It's one of the greatest days of the year for college sports fans. It's the day the college basketball NCAA tournament begins.

I got a slew of entries into our game yesterday. Daniel (my bro), Rollie Fingers, and Jroberts all input teams here. Scott and Uberschuck sent in their teams by email. That gives us 7. there is still time to put your team in, but you better get it in before 11:00am central time. If you want to be a late addition, compose your team and add it to a comment to this post, or you can email me at richard_ualaw@yahoo.com.

Some observations:

Despite Poseur's conclusion that everyone would pick Stephen Curry of Davidson, two players declined to pick him.
Only OJ Mayo of USC is common to all teams, meaning that the #6 seed is basically removed from the game as everyone will score the same points in the 6 spot.
So far, 4 different players from #1 seeds have been picked, with two coming from UCLA and none coming from Kansas
Other very popular players include Brook Lopez of Stanford (5 teams), Luke Harangody of Notre Dame (5 teams), Michael Beasley (4 teams, which I think is incredible considering EVERYONE picked a player off of his first round opponent), and Jamont Gordon of Mississippi State (4 teams).

Just so everyone knows the emailed teams, Jason's team is:
1) Tyler Hansbrough, UNC
2) Chris Lofton, TN
3) Brook Lopez, Stanford
4) Sam Young, Pitt
5) Luke Harangody, Notre Lame
6) OJ Mayo, usc
7) Joe Alexander, WV
8) JaMont Gordon, MSU
9) Sonny Weems, Ark.
10) Stephen Curry, Davidson
11) Michael Beastly, KSU
12) Courtney Lee, WKy
13) Edwin Ubiles, Sienna
14) Reggie Larry, BSU
15) Garrison Carr, American
16) Jeremy Goode, MSM

Scott's team is:
1) Darren Collison G, UCLA
2) Chris Lofton G, UTenn
3) Trevon Hughes G, Wis
4) Shan Foster G, Vandy
5) K.C. Rivers G, Clemson
6) O.J. Mayo G, USC
7) Joe Alexander F, WVU
8) Jamont Gordon G, Moo St.
9) Sonny Weems, Our Kansas
10) Jerryd Bayless G, ARIZ
11) Michael Beasley F, KSU
12) Dionte Christmas G, Temple
13) Michael Jenkins G, Winthrop
14) Sundiata Gaines G, UGA
15) Drake Reed F, AP
16) Chris Vann G, Main Stream Media

Les Can Buy a Lot of New Hats

2008-03-19T06:20:00.003-05:00

Q: How does the $3.751 million man wear his hat?
A: However he likes.

Those jokes never get old.

Les Miles finally finished renegotiating his contract, and obviously it's the talk of the football world for a day or two. Being here in Alabama, obviously I get an ear-full of the Alabama perspective.

When certain balding, deliberately provocative radio personalities deliberately try to provoke us, the best thing to do is not to respond at all. That's the last word about that particular subject, but there are others.

Obviously, the figure of $3.751 million per year was not chosen randomly or on accident. It happens to be $1,000 per year more than Nick Saban's salary at Alabama. If Les Miles cares about money (and I suspect deep down he probably doesn't), Nick Saban is his best friend in the world, because without Nick Saban's return to Alabama, Les wouldn't be nearly as wealthy.

The reason for this, as is apparent to those paying attention, is that Les Miles' previous contract called for him to be the 3rd highest paid coach in the country if he won the National Championship. He did it, but it became hard to determine exactly how much Charlie Weis and Pete Carroll made, because they are at private schools and need not report their salaries. LSU and Miles settled on his becoming the highest-paid coach in the SEC. The previous highest-paid SEC coach was Nick Saban, at $3.75 million per year.

If you're trying to read more into it than that, I think you're wrong.

On the JOX morning show, one of the guys recalled Alabama getting criticism for paying Saban so much while living in a poor state with a poor education system, and wondered if LSU would get the same criticism for overspending. It's an interesting point, but I believe there is a significant difference in the situations.

When Alabama gave Nick Saban his contract, Alabama dramatically escalated the arms race between big-time football programs. It was expected that this signaled an acceleration in the rise in coaches' salaries nation-wide, which had already been escalating quickly for years. Alabama was seen as raising the bar further, which would lead to rising ticket prices and the decline of non-football sports, as football took up more and more of the entertainment money at football schools.

LSU giving Miles a salary roughly equal to Saban's is the result. It is the realization of the fear that Saban's salary would increase coaches' salaries nation-wide. People feared Alabama's actions signaled a change in the way football programs worked across the country, and LSU's actions confirm it. We will see more and more of it in the coming months and years as coaches like Mark Richt, Urban Meyer, and Tommy Tuberville are probably going to be looking at big raises next time it comes time to renegotiate their contracts.

The difference is that LSU is reacting to market trends while Bama rocked the market and changed the trends.

If you want to know the long term impact, you can look more at what has become of Alabama. In recent weeks, Alabama has taken several actions that appear to be designed to save money:

Announced a cancellation of plans to expand Bryant-Denny Stadium, specifically naming economic concerns as the primary factor.
Apparently decided not to fire Mark Gottfried at least in part to avoid paying a hefty severance.
Hired a women's basketball coach on the cheap from within the current University payroll, a guy with little or no qualifications for the job other than the fact that he apparently doesn't cost much money.

It is apparent that Alabama is trying to avoid big outlays of money, and even the football program feels the impact. Is it connected to Nick Saban's salary? It's impossible for me to say, but let's keep an eye on situations around the country as salaries continue to escalate.

One More Thing: Get your teams in before games start tomorrow.

Get Your Teams In

2008-03-18T05:57:00.002-05:00

Alright, people. I know you're out there. Put in your teams for the NCAA Tournament Fantasy Game, described below. We only have one other player so far. Last year, we had 5 players including myself. Readership is bigger this year, so there's no excuse for not having a few more players.

The winner last year was Scott, who hasn't put in a team yet. So far, it's just myself and Poseur. To recap the rules:

Pick one player from each seed level, giving your team 16 players in total.
The play-in game does not count, and you may post conditional 16-seed players or wait until after the play-in game to choose.
Count the points scored by your team. The team with the most wins.

It's that simple people.

----------------------------

Yesterday, there was a lot of chatter complaining about the brackets. I understand everyone complains about brackets (except me, because I don't know enough to complain), but some of the complaints were just plain silly:

Complaint #1: Tennessee got screwed by being placed in a bracket with the #1 overall seed, UNC.

The gist of this complaint is that Tennessee, who was playing for a #1 seed going into the conference tournament, got bumped all the way down the #8 seed overall, as evidenced by being placed in the same region with #1 Overall seed North Carolina.

First, I really don't think they seed teams among brackets with the exception of assigning a #1 overall seed and assigning #s 64 and 65 for a play-in. Other than that, I don't think they really do that, so I don't think anyone decided that Tennessee was the lowest #2 seed.

Second, Tennessee gets to play close to home to start the tournament. They start in Birmingham, Alabama, where their fans will likely pack the house. Then they'll go to Charlotte, North Carolina where they will be outnumbered, but not overwhelmingly, by North Carolina fans. They could have been put in another region and have to start in Anaheim, California before going to Houston, Texas or Washington, DC and then Phoenix, Arizona.

Third, if your goal is to win the National Championship, which is Tennessee's goal, I think the only approach you can take is to not care about the draw and just take whatever comes at you. If Tennessee is going to win, they are going to have to play several very good teams, and they'll get to the dreaded North Carolina in their fourth game. Heck, it's entirely possible that neither team will make it that far. Just play your bracket and stop complaining.

If your goal is to make it the Sweet 16 or the Elite 8, you can complain about a tough draw.

Complaint #2: Arizona State didn't make it.

I know the arguments, and they make a certain amount of sense. Fact is, though, Arizona State played their way to the bubble and put themselves in a position to be left out. If they had won another game or two, they would have been in. If they had been let in the way they are, they would have been one of the two or three last teams. Whoop-dee-doo.

Complaint #3: Mid-majors are playing each other.

OK, I actually agree with this one. Everyone's favorite thing about the tournament is seeing little guys take down big guys. Everyone wants to see Gonzaga take down a Big East, Big XII or Big X team. No one wants to see Gonzaga take down Davidson. It makes no sense to engineer the brackets to have Gonzaga playing Davidson, Butler playing South Alabama, Georgia playing Xavier (which counts as two little guys against each other), and Drake playing Western Kentucky. It's just bad television.

Annual NCAA Tourney Fantasy Game

2008-03-16T20:46:00.006-05:00

This is the annual GeauxTuscaloosa NCAA Tournament Fantasy Game. The rules are simple.

Choose one player from each seed level. T.g., one player from a 16-seed, one player from a 15-seed, etc.
Make sure your team is entered before the first game starts on Thursday. The play-in game does not count, but you can wait until its results are in if you wish.
Count the points scored by your team over the course of the tournament.
The winner receives $150 million.*

16. Deonte Huff, Portland State
15. Garrison Carr, American
14. Sundiata Gaines, Georgia
13. Brandon Johnson, San Diego
12. Courtney Lee, Western Kentucky
11. Ramel Bradley, Kentucky
10. Stephen Curry, Davidson
9. Sonny Weems, Arkansas
8. Jamont Gordon, Mississippi State
7. Joe Alexander, West Virginia
6. OJ Mayo, USC
5. Luke Harangody, Notre Dame
4. Shan Foster, Vandy
3. Brook Lopez, Stanford
2. DJ Augustin, Texas
1. Tyler Hansbrough, UNC

My hardest choices were 8 and 9. I really wanted to pick Jamont Gordon from Mississippi State because I think he's the kind of player who can excel in the tournament, and I think Memphis is very vulnerable, but I didn't like anyone from the 9 seeds other than Leunen from Oregon, and Oregon plays MSU in the first round. I didn't want to play my 8 and 9 seeds against each other, because I wanted the chance to have both of them play a second round game. Not having an option I liked at the 9 seed, I ended up having to change my 8-seed.

Then I decided I didn't like having my 8-seed and 9-seed players both going against SEC competition, so I switched both of them up, returning Jamont Gordon to my team and adding Sonny Weems. This could end up backfiring horribly.

I had to pick Sundiata Gaines just because you have to root for Georgia. It's incredible what they managed to accomplish. I honestly think everyone in the world was rooting for Georgia today with the possible exception of the Arkansas players, and I bet even they had mixed feelings.

Get your teams in before the games start, and I'll keep up with everyone's stats.

*All cash prizes are "virtual", meaning they do not exist. If this is not clear enough, it means there is no cash prize. All that is at stake is pride.

Checking in on Baseball

2008-03-15T11:40:00.003-05:00

We interrupt the end of basketball season to remind you that LSU baseball has just begun its SEC schedule. LSU went to Tennessee and dropped the first game 6-5 and looks like they will wait until Sunday to play again due to weather. A 6-5 loss is actually a perfect indicia of the season so far.

If you're an optimist, you'll see the good things from the game: Matt Clark hit his seventh home run of the season, which is as many as any tiger hit last season. Every starter got on base once, showing some real depth in the lineup. Bradford, our All-American pitcher, threw nine strikeouts in five innings of work. And Aaron Ross threw three innings of scoreless ball from the pen. The team fell behind and rallied back, and had the tying run at second and the go-ahead run at first in the 9the inning. All of these were good things.

If you're a pessimist, you start with the obvious: we lost. Bradford, a guy we need to be awesome, let up six runs in five innings, which isn't good. Sure, everyone got on base, but no one had a multihit game. Hollander drew the team's only walk, and he was hitless. Jared Mitchell kept up his trend of striking out at a truly prodigious rate. LSU rallied, but that means they fell behind: 6-1 after six innings. And LSU never put up a crooked number on the scoreboard, scoring 3 or more runs.

Both groups are right. There are some really encouraging signs from this team. Clark is a masher. Blake Dean is picking up where he left off last season. DJ LeMahieu has been a revelation both in the field and a the plate. The pitching has been solid, though not overwhelming. Even Mike Hollander is hitting .300. And there are quality bats coming off the bench. They are even playing good defense. This team is ten times better than last year's squad.

But that isn't saying much. Last year's squad was terrible. The bullpen is still unreliable. LSU has been getting wins, but they have played a creampuff schedule. Even with the steady diet of patsies, LSU has been unable to get a sweep, seemingly always dropping the third game. That points to the weakness of finding a third starter and the bullpen. Mainieri has been unable to find a starting job for Helenhi, who is one of the team's better hitters. Hollander's hitting .300, but with no power. And while Dean is a stud, finding the other two outfielders has been the biggest problem. Mitchell strikes out way too much. Escobar was awful but coming off injury, Landry is hitting .229, Jones may not be ready, Pontiff lacks speed and power, and Gaudet... well, I can't find a problem with Gaudet other than he can't seem to get the starting gig.

A lot of this is nitpicking. The team looks pretty good, but the SEC is capital "L" loaded, so pretty good may not cut it. And potential around these parts don't make the sun shine. LSU expects wins in baseball. The pieces are there, and hopefully, they are coming together. Because I'm feeling like an optimist today.

Sue Calls Paul Finebaum

2008-03-15T08:08:00.003-05:00

I've talked about my love/hate relationship with talk radio before. I find much sports talk radio to be vapid, senseless, and borderline offensive, but I still listen. Well, yesterday, on my way home from work I was listening to Paul Finebaum's show and he got a caller named "Sue".

The call was a long one. Sue did not like the way Finebaum was acting, in particular with regards to Finebaum's famous dust-up with Mark Gottfried's wife at a basketball game about 6 weeks ago. Sue and Finebaum got into a pretty good argument, with Sue making the following points/observations:

People who call for a coach's firing should be people who somehow contribute in some concrete way to the coach's program. Otherwise, they don't have a stake in it.
Finebaum has the advantage of being able to continue talking when the caller hangs up.
People who call his show posture and talk big but never have to actually make a decision.
His callers are poseurs who act aggressively and drive big trucks to compensate for their insecurities.
Finebaum himself cries about the fact that Elizabeth Gottfried "accused" him of calling for her husband's firing, which he has in fact done dozens of times.
Finebaum is a jerk for bringing his beef with Mark Gottfried to Gottfried's wife.
Finebaum's show encourages the worst kind of bellyaching and ultimately does more harm than good.
Mal Moore doesn't owe Finebaum or anyone else an explanation for why Gottfried has not been fired.

There was more to it. You can listen to it here, care of the Paul Finebaum Radio Network. It's about 1/5 or 1/4 of the way through the 4th hour of Friday's program. I was thinking, "Wow, she's really got him pegged."

Finebaum, of course, resorted to what he's done a whole lot of lately. He dwelled on the fact that Sue was a woman, and that Elizabeth Gottfried was too. He said Gottfried "stuck her breasts in his face." He said he can "never get a woman to stop talking." Finally, Finebaum said, "Sue you obviously just don't understand what the purpose of programs like this are." Then he quizzed her on her sexual ethics, and accused her of having problems with men.

On the contrary, I think Sue knows exactly what the purpose of Finebaum's program is. She just doesn't like it. OK, the comment about the big trucks was way out of line, but honestly we all know people who drive big trucks for no practical purpose.

Of course, when she was done and the program moved on to other topics, Finebaum wasn't done with her. He called her a "stupid bitch" when another caller asked about it. The next caller really struggled to defend Finebaum, saying he wasn't calling for Mal Moore to fire Gottfried but merely "expressing his opinion." Left unsaid is that the "opinion" referenced is that Mal Moore should fire Mark Gottfried.

I say, hats off to Sue. She called him out on his misogyny and he naturally responded by calling her a "stupid bitch" and suggesting that she was a whore. Score one for Finebaum on that one. He clearly proved her wrong.

Out With a Whimper

2008-03-14T05:39:00.002-05:00

Any positive momentum gained by the men's basketball program in the closing weeks of the season was dampened yesterday by its ignominious and unceremonious ousting from the SEC Tournament, which also ended the team's season. Let's hope it does not end Anthony Randolph's career.

What's worse, because of the early weekday start time, no one with a regular 9-5 job like myself got to actually see it.

Strangely, for the first time in a while, LSU actually had scoring balance. The swing shifters, the college students, and the unemployable all got to see a balanced scoring attack that saw five Tigers score in double figures, but saw no one take over the game for the Tigers. Randolph and Johnson got their points, but also committed turnovers, and couldn't keep the mediocre Gamecock frontcourt off the scoreboard. Thornton hit for 17, but shot well under 50% from the field, and missed a lot of 3-pointers. Garrett Temple wasn't his usual self, as he fouled out in just 26 minutes and was held scoreless. As a result, South Carolina's good guards ran roughshod over us at times.

So now it's time for the basketball team to regroup for next year, probably under a new coach. I like Butch Pierre, but I think his only real chance of keeping the job was if we made a serious run in the tournament. For all the talk of improved play, which is true, this team was still only barely above .500 with Butch as head coach. He'll catch on somewhere though, and we'll probably see him as a head coach somewhere at some point in his career. He did and admirable job, but I think the basketball team needs an experienced head coach who can bring excitement to the program.

Who is that? Well, the three I keep hearing are Tim Floyd, Anthony Grant, and Mike Davis. Tim Floyd is currently coaching USC, and he has major Louisiana ties. He's also reportedly been interested in coaching the Tigers in the past. I don't know if he'd leave USC at this point, as they seem to have something pretty good going on despite a mediocre season this year.

Anthony Grant is currently at Virginia Commonwealth, and you have to think he'd jump at a chance to coach in a major conference. I can think of no real downside to hiring Grant. His teams have had success at VCU, having gone to the second round of the tournament in his first year. He was a long time assistant under Billy Donovan at Florida, and you have to think he'd love to come back to the SEC as a head coach. There are no guarantees he'd be successful, but he's a legitimate candidate who would bring excitement to the program.

Mike Davis is currently at UAB. He has been a head coach somewhere every year since 2000, and he took his Indiana team to the NCAA tournament finals in his second year. He has had success at UAB, and according to many has made that school the best basketball program in the state, which is a pretty substantial compliment considering UAB is a C-USA school and there are two SEC schools in Alabama. Since his trip to the Finals, however, he has only been to the NCAAs twice and has not advanced past the second round. He has not taken UAB to the NCAAs yet, and may not be able to do so this year after losing early in the conference tournament. His team finished second in C-USA, but Memphis pretty much sucked all the air out of that conference this year.

Players love Mike Davis. When Davis was fired from Indiana to hire Kelvin Sampson (that worked out great for them, didn't it?), one of Indiana's best players, Robert Vaden, transferred to UAB to be with Davis and sat out a year. He's been UAB's best player, and has real pro potential. Instead of going to the NBA, he decided to sit out a year and follow Mike Davis. Davis also got a commitment from one of the best players in the 2009 recruiting class in DeMarcus Cousins, who made it clear he'd go wherever Davis was. Davis, then, is a package deal with a 5-star power forward.

Things to think about.

If I was the one making the decision, I don't know which of the three I would ask first. All have their plusses and minuses. Floyd may not want it, and isn't exactly a charismatic guy. Grant is inexperienced as a head man. Davis is pretty close to the dreaded label "retread". I think we need charisma and excitement, but we could also really use a Demarcus Cousins.

It's Tourney Warm-Up Time

2008-03-13T06:14:00.002-05:00

One of the immensely regrettable things about college basketball is how the NCAA tournament, the 64-team behemoth, sucks all the air out of the room. It is truly the end-all, be-all of college basketball, to the exclusion of all else. The point of the regular season and the conference tournaments is to set the field of 64. Success in the pre-tourney season is measured by what kind of a draw you get in the tournament.

I wish that was not the case. While I find the NCAA tournament to be very enjoyable, I believe that winning your conference regular is an important accomplishment. Winning your conference tournament is another important accomplishment. Most people believe that it's only important to win your conference tournament if you need to do so in order to make the tournament.

In order to win the SEC tournament, a team has to win 3 or 4 games in quick succession, fighting fatigue and playing against multiple different styles of game. After your first or perhaps your second game, you no longer have any opportunity to actually prepare for any given opponent, because you won't know who it is in time to do anything about it. You just have to go out there and play. May the best team win.

LSU is one of about 6 teams in the SEC whose season is probably over unless they win the conference tournament. Bama is another. Our opponent South Carolina is another. I know here in Alabama, some people are reportedly high on the Tide's prospect of actually winning it, despite the fact that Bama hasn't won two consecutive SEC games since the 2006-2007 season, and has won only one conference game outside of its home gym in the last two years.

LSU has played much better of late, and I believe we are a dangerous team. We are capable of going out there and beating anyone. We get South Carolina first, and I think we match up well against them. Their best player is their point guard Devan Downey, and we have good on-ball guard defensive play with Garrett Temple. They lack size and physicality near the basket, so they won't be able to muscle Randolph and Johnson away from the goal quite as easily as other teams can. We may have a big mismatch near the goal in this game.

Last time these two teams played, Randolph got 20 points, and Johnson was also in double figures. Temple held Devan Downey in check, allowing him only 6 points on the game.

What South Carolina does very well is shoot the 3-pointer. Zam Frederick can go out there and light it up, which he did against us in scoring 21 points. Of course, we have Marcus Thornton, who can do the same thing.

Where LSU finished the season on a relatively strong note, winning 4 of its last 5 games, South Carolina went the other way, losing 5 of its last 6 and 7 of its last 9.

I think we should win this game, but of course you never know. That 4-game winning streak that ended on Saturday could have taken it all out of us. We shall see. Or rather, we will see the highlights, because I will be at work while this game is going on at noon.

Speaking of poor scheduling, the only really good team playing today is scheduled to start up at 2:15pm, when most people are still working. Could this have been more poorly planned.

But hey, that barnburner between Bama and Florida is in prime time. Good show.

Character Issues

2008-03-12T06:38:00.000-05:00

With the commitment of Russell Shepard last week, it seems like as good of a time as any to discuss an aspect of Les Miles' recruiting that has not been much discussed. Les Miles seems to be more-and-more passing on players with character problems in favor of players with real leadership skills, and I think this will pay off for LSU in the long run.

What do I mean by "character issues"? Well, for one, I think he is shying away more and more from kids who are far away academically from qualifying. This year, by all reports, even very good players are getting passed over if their academics aren't in order. We can all point to examples of kids who have not qualified in the past, such as DeAngelo Benton, that Miles has taken. And that's fine. Grades are not the end-all, be-all of character, but bad grades are a risk factor.

This year, we are reportedly turning away quality football players whose grades aren't up to snuff. Well, I think that may be too strong of a term. We aren't "turning them away". We're telling them to go back to the classroom and show that they can do what they need to do to get qualified and THEN they may get an offer if we still need them. This reportedly happened to Russell Shepard's teammate Hasan Lipscomb, in-state offensive linemen Chris Faulk and Carneal Ainsworth, in-state linebacker Tahj Jones, and possibly others. Les Miles is asking these guys to show that they can improve their grades before he will accept a commitment from them.

Miles has gone in the opposite direction from recruiting a bunch of very talented prima donnas who think they can coast through life. He seems to have concentrated on finding guys who can graduate high school early and get with the team as quickly as possible. After dipping his toe into the early-enrollee waters with Joseph Barksdale in 2007, he seems to have jumped into those water enthusiastically now. One member of the 2008 class, linebacker Kellen Theriot, is currently participating in Spring Practice, and many thought that all-everything cornerback Patrick Johnson would be able to as well, but his clearance from the NCAA came too late to enroll early.

For the 2009 class, Miles already has commitments from two players who expect to enroll in January of 2009: quarterback Russell Shepard and athlete Dexter Calhoun (more on him another day). There may well be more than that.

Not every coach likes to get players in early. I remember that Nick Saban allowed it, but at the same time discouraged recruits from enrolling early. I don't remember all the reasons for it, but I respect that opinion, even if I disagree with it.

He's also staying away from players who have gotten into trouble. One very high profile Louisiana kid, who will go nameless here, is apparently getting the cold shoulder from us in part because of an arrest in his recent past.

Miles is concentrating not only on guys with the grades, but also guys with leadership skills. You hear Michael Ford talk and you can just tell this kid oozes leadership. The same is true of Russell Shepard. Reports out of some quarters said that Patrick Johnson was like a magnet for other athletes. Even star athletes, with their understandably enormous egos, looked up to Patrick Johnson and considered him a natural leader.

Why is Miles concentrating so hard on getting leaders and high character guys? Well, I think one explanation is probably fairly obvious to anyone paying attention. I think Ryan Perrilloux has probably added a lot of grey hair to Miles' head since his recruitment in 2005, and because Perrilloux was the only quarterback recruited in a 3-year stretch, he is kind of stuck with him now unless he wants to bite the bullet and play a Jarrett Lee or Andrew Hatch. I think Miles is very good about learning from mistakes, and he doesn't want to get stuck again having to rely on someone who is fundamentally unreliable.

It's not all negative reenforcement, however. I think you only have to look at the 2007 season and see what leaders and high-character guys like Jacob Hester, Kirston Pittman, Ciron Black, Darry Beckwith, and Glenn Dorsey can do for a team. As is becoming evident from the coverage of the NFL draft we're seeing, that team may not have been as talented as many people thought. We may have only two players (Dorsey and Doucet) drafted on the first day, when many people early in the season believed that Ali Highsmith, Craig Steltz, and Chevis Jackson could all be high picks as well, and believed players like Beckwith and Tyson Jackson might be tempted by big dollars to leave early, where now it looks like they may not have been high picks had they come out. That team won with a combination of talent and leadership, and Les Miles is smart enough to learn from that and put his learning into action.

If this continues, this is going to be one of the great classes in LSU history, both on Signing Day and into the future.

Look Back to 2006

2008-03-11T06:52:00.000-05:00

Following up last week's retrospective on the 2005 signing class, here is an early retrospective on the 2006 class. Obviously, there isn't as much information available about the 2006 recruiting class as there is about the 2005 class, because these guys have played one fewer year. However, I think there's enough information to make the task worthwhile. Of course, all grades are tentative as there is still time for players to break out (or fail to break out).

QB: None
Analysis: Not getting a QB in this class has certainly put us in a bit of a bind. We have Ryan Perrilloux as a junior and no scholarship sophomore or senior QBs other than Hatch, the Harvard transfer. A good QB in this class could have really helped out.

RB: Keiland Williams - *****, Richard Murphy - ****, Charles Scott - ****
Grade: A
Analysis: These guys are now the key runners on the team, and should be one of the team's strengths no matter what happens with the QB situation.

OL: Matt Allen - ****, Steve Singleton - ***, Mark Snyder - ***, Zhamal Thomas - ****
Grade: D-
Analysis: Pewww! Three of these four are no longer on the team, and the fourth appears to not be in the two-deep and to have been passed by younger players on the depth chart. Zhamal Thomas was allegedly involved in a burglary and was dismissed. Singleton left for reasons unknown. Snyder's career ended due to injury problems. You can't blame Snyder for that one, as he endured two catastrophic knee injuries. Matt Allen had a lot of good press at this time next year, but he seems to have gotten lost on the practice field.

WR: Jared Mitchell - ****, Chris Mitchell - ****, Ricky Dixon - ****
Grade: C-
Analysis: This group has a combined 22 catches for their careers, none of them have been particularly memorable, and none of them came in the last 6 games of the season last year. Actually, Jared Mitchell looked like he was getting somewhere early last year. He made 13 catches in the first 7 games, several of them in SEC play. Then he stopped getting the ball once Doucet returned from injury. Of all these players, Jared seems the closest to becoming a productive player, but he's not there yet. For the Mitchells, it's now or never. I think if they don't do something this year, they will get passed on the depth chart by multiple freshmen this year.

TE: Richard Dickson - ****, J.D. Lott - ***
Grade: A
Analysis: One guy who looks to be an All-America candidate next year, and another guy who left the team. That's an A-grade in my opinion. Dickson had a huge breakout year as a receiver last year, and is a 2-year starter at tight end. If we're lucky, he'll stay for his senior year.

DL: Al Woods - *****, Pep Levingston - ***
Grade: B
Analysis: Woods has been a mild disappointment, but he's a solid contributor. He just doesn't dominate like we'd expected. Pe Levingston looks like a solid depth player, but it's not certain he'll ever get starters' time. All-in-all, something of a light defensive line class, made lighter because Charles Deas never made it to campus.

LB: Derrick Odom - ****, Perry Riley - ***, Jacob Cutrera - ***, Kelvin Sheppard - ***
Grade: B
Analysis: The highest rated guy on the board never played a down, while the three-stars have gotten significant playing time as reserves. Riley looks like a stud to me, and Sheppard looks like a solid player. Both have excelled at special teams and it's now their turns to really have a shot at starting. There are probably no All-Americans in this group, but Riley could be an All-SEC type guy.

DB: Jai Eugene - ****, Danny McCray - ***, Troy Giddens - ***
Grade: Incomplete
Analysis: I'm just not prepared to give a grade to Jai Eugene yet. Danny McCray has become a key player as the nickel back, though he sometimes struggles in coverage. Giddens is off the team for the same reason as Zhamal Thomas. The key here is Eugene. He's played well on special teams, but he has struggled when he's gotten into the game at corner, after being one of the most sought-after defensive backs of his class. Fact is, he didn't play defense for the last year-and-a-half he was in high school, and is learning the position from scratch as a Tiger.

You look at this class and you have to think there are some disappointing aspects to it, though it could end up being stronger than it looks right now. Perhaps the coaches would have liked to have redshirted the Mitchells, but didn't have the receiver depth to do it. Perhaps if Thomas and Snyder hadn't had their problems, the offensive line class would look a lot better. Perhaps if Deas had made it to campus the defensive line would look better.

Still, there are also things to like about this class. The running backs and linebackers appear to be strengths, and Richard Dickson might end up being the best player from this class, and maybe our best tight end ever.

Basketball Woes

2008-03-10T06:11:00.002-05:00

I watched much of the women's basketball game last night, the SEC Tournament title game against Tennessee. LSU lost 61-55. The loss was a result of poor offensive execution and poor free throw shooting more than anything. Down the stretch, LSU missed 3 front-ends of one-and-one free throw situations, and went 3 1/2 minutes without scoring a field goal.

It was a very good and very exciting game overall. Except for some brief occasions where Tennessee busted out to a lead of 7 or 8 points, it was a very close game throughout, with many lead changes. We occasionally went through stretches of poor play, and we just happened to go through one right at the end of the game.

On the men's side, we lost our final regular season game against MSU. Mississippi State is a really good team, and it showed. We played well for a while, but once again we had very little diversification of offense, as most of our points were scored by 3 players: Marcus Thornton (38), Chris Johnson (17), and Anthony Randolph (14). The rest of the team combined for 6 points. When Johnson got into foul trouble, the team really fell behind and never recovered.

The SEC Tournament is next for us, beginning at noon on Thursday. I really think we have a shot in this tournament. On the right day, I think we can beat anyone in the conference. Of course, we've also proven we can lose to anyone as well. I guess as long as we don't get Arkansas we have a chance. They seem to be our kryptonite. We would meet them in the semifinals if both teams make it that far.

Honestly though, as long as we win one and stay competitive against Tennessee in round 2, I will be moderately satisfied.

"How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here"

2008-03-08T20:58:00.004-06:00

I recently got a request for music videos. I used to post a lot of music videos, mostly to classic alt-rock or alt-pop from the '80s and '90s. I just sort of got out of the habit once football season started and I didn't pick it back up when football season ended.

One of the things about being a mostly one-person operation is that I'm somewhat dependent upon the fickle whims of inspiration. I can really only do something if I have some desire to do it. For a while now, I haven't had the desire to seek out videos to the music I like, but I'm making an effort. I present to you "Every Day is Like Sunday" by Morrissey:

I'm not a big Morrissey fan at all. This is the only Morrissey solo song I'm actually familiar with, though I like some of what The Smiths did. I like the song, but primarily I'm posting it because it is an example of '80s and '90s music videos that were weirdly detached from the song.

The music video posted above is about a young woman, attractive in an '80s Madonna-ish sort of way, struggling to make sense of a world that she finds offensive or vacuous. She goes through town and is bothered by butchers selling meat and by people mistreating animals. She finds her inspiration in the Beavis-like good looks of Morrissey, and achieves some sort of peace knowing there are kindred spirits out there if she can just find them.

The song is not about that at all. It's about nuclear war. It's about how following the apocalypse, every day is pretty much the same and it gets kind of lonely.

I don't know why music video producers and directors so frequently strayed so far from the subject matter of the songs in designing a video around, but this is clearly one of the most egregious examples. Granted, the song is slow and kind of romantic sounding, so it doesn't exactly shout "I'M ABOUT THE HORRORS OF GENOCIDE," but the director had to know what it was about. Surely someone told him.

If you don't know the song, go ahead and click the video and listen. Despite its subject matter, it's actually a pretty catchy and melodic tune.

Moving Right Along

2008-03-07T06:17:00.003-06:00

Obviously, we cannot keep this up forever. Eventually, this site has to move away from its slap fight with Tigerdroppings. After all, despite what you may have read recently, there are about 350 posts on this blog out of about 355 that do not mention Tigerdroppings at all. This blog is about discussing LSU sports and SEC sports, and those topics have been sadly neglected the last couple of days.

One topic sadly neglected, and not just in recent days, is the play of the LSU women's basketball team, which finished the season undefeated in SEC play and heads to the conference tournament as one of the favorites. Winning the SEC is a huge accomplishment, as we all know that the Tennessee program has been the 500 pound gorilla of this sport. Knocking them off was huge.

First up in the SEC tournament is Ole Miss. Unfortunately the game is at noon today, which means it is pretty much impossible for me to watch it, as I will be at work. And yes, I enjoy watching LSU women's basketball when the games get more important (against Tennessee, or in the tournaments). I am hardly an expert on the topic, but I know we are really good and we have an excellent chance to win this tournament.

I also need to talk about the LSU-Bama basketball game from the other night. I was a little distracted from this topic yesterday, as you may have noticed. Despite being outrebounded dramatically (36 to 24 according to ESPN's boxscore), we won that game on the strength of good shooting, and in particular good free throw shooting. Shooting 41% from 3-point range doesn't hurt either. Clutch shooting and clutch defense are also nice, and we held Bama without a field goal in the last couple of minutes, coming from behind by 1 point to win by 7.

My analysis of this game is handicapped a little by the fact that I did not watch it. It was not on television here. I know that Anthony Randolph, perhaps in another showcase for the NBA, scored a career high.

He and Marcus Thornton again carried the scoring load, getting 56 of our 80 points. I sure hope this kid comes back, and just based on what I've seen I have to be doubtful of the projections that he is a lottery pick. He has the height and length, and he has athleticism (but not Tyrus Thomas-level athleticism). He has moves and overall general skills. He just lacks so much strength, and it showed in his inability to fight Hendrix and Jemison for rebounds. Neither of those guys are as good as the players he'll meet in the NBA.

If he really is a lottery pick, I can't be mad at him for going. That's a lot of money to pass up. I just doubt those projections.

More on Yesterday

2008-03-06T06:24:00.003-06:00

Congratulations to the LSU basketball team on another win last night. That makes four in a row, and I think we've accomplished what we wanted to accomplish regardless of what happens with Mississippi State on Saturday. Am I getting way ahead of myself to think we might have a real shot at winning the tourney?

Anyway, the Tigerdroppings issue is still in my mind. Let me make one thing very clear. I do not begrudge Tigerdroppings its success, nor do I set out to pick a fight with it. Quite the contrary, every conflict that has ever arisen between this site and Tigerdroppings happened because the administration of Tigerdroppings did something that I thought was jaw-droppingly surprising.

Was I warned against linking to this blog? Yes. Did I follow that mandate 100%? No. Did I follow it mostly? Yes. Was I kicked off for linking? No.

To summarize this, it is perfectly within the rules of Tigerdroppings, and even encouraged, to start a thread with the topic "Top 5 strangest places you've taken a dump," but you must not link to a blog that talks about football. Linking to the blog that talks about football is clearly outside of the purview of a message board about football. Hell, the topic on taking a dump will probably go on for 3 to 5 pages, and more than one admin will probably post to it.

I don't justify breaking the rules, but the Tigerdroppings rules are broken all the time. It's almost a rite of passage over there to break some rule and cause some drama and then it all blows over in a day or two. I broke the rule against linking to this website exactly once after I came to understand exactly what the rule meant, and I've been banned twice, neither time was immediately after linking this blog. It's not the linking that got me banned. It's something else. Did I break the rule? Yes. Am I the only user in the world who deliberately broke a rule once? There will probably be more than one TD user who deliberately breaks a rule TODAY.

Like it or not, there are some unwritten rules at Tigerdroppings. These rules aren't advertised except to people who unwittingly break them. Unwritten rule #1 is, "Don't talk about the unwritten rules." I guess if you talk about them, they're no longer unwritten.

I don't know why there are unwritten rules. I don't know why certain things are out of bounds, and I don't know why they don't want other users to know that it's out of bounds. It's certainly not out of fear of conflict, as the place is nothing if not full of conflict and drama. It's certainly not because they want to generally restrict what topics are discussed. Almost literally anything goes over there. The only things that are clearly out of bounds are the following:

Use of racial slurs (though expressing racism is not out of bounds, as long as you avoid racial slurs)
Posting of pornography
Linking this blog, whether you are me or anyone else

One of these things is not like the other.

For more, check out the comments section to yesterday's post. Someone decided they did not agree with me, and you can check out his perspective if you want.

I've Gotten Into More Stupid Drama

2008-03-05T05:39:00.003-06:00

Everyone knows that drama creates buzz, right. Well, maybe it's time this website got a few more hits because I seem to have gotten involved in more Tigerdroppings drama. Hence, we are calling an audible, and the post I promised you yesterday will have to wait.

In a thread over at Tigerdroppings, a poster named Catahoula Lake, who is a person totally unfamiliar to me, started a thread in which he quoted my post yesterday on Russel Shepard. He seemed to have trouble getting the link right. A little later in the day another user tried to help him fix the link and discovered that any attempt to link to this website is automatically garbled. Someone over there has programmed it so that it is impossible to link to this site from Tigerdroppings.

He pointed this out on the thread. I noticed his response, and I posted my own response expressing my surprise. Then I noticed that my response did not send the thread to the top of the page. The thread, completely harmless though it was, had been "anchored", meaning it was set to not to get bumped to the top when someone posted to it, so it would steadily sink to the bottom and off the page, where it would likely not be viewed again.

It was not anchored automatically the way the link was garbled. This was done by an admin that day, who chose to disfavor that particular thread, the one that mentioned this website, tried to link to it, and that prompted someone else (none of these people are me mind you) to notice that this website got special treatment.

Special negative treatment, that is. Links to national media aren't garbled. Links to LSU beat reporters like Glenn Guilbeau aren't garbled. Links to local LSU-themed bloggers like Dandy Don aren't garbled. Why is this website so disfavored over there?

I then started a thread on the Help Board asking about this. I will admit, I got a little testy. Frankly, I took it as a personal slight, which I think is a fair conclusion under the circumstances, and my testiness was justified. After a short conversation on the topic with a handful of users, the thread was deleted and my posting privileges were revoked. What's more, the message that pointed out the garbled links on the original thread, and how it only involved this website, was deleted along with my follow-up.

Recall, from the previous drama, the last straw was that they didn't only ask me not to link to the website or comment on it over at Tigerdroppings, but they didn't want me to ever point out that they had taken any action against me. It seems they did not want their users to know that this website was so disfavored. So, to recap, here is the relationship between GeauxTuscaloosa and Tigerdroppings:

I can't mention the website over there
I can't discuss the rules regarding not being able to mention the website over there
Anyone who attempts to link to my website will find it impossible to do
Threads that mention this website will be anchored
Posts that mention that this website gets special treatment will be deleted
People who attempt to bring this forward will be punished

I still cannot imagine why this website is held in such contempt by the people who run Tigerdroppings. I don't have a big enough ego to think that I'm some kind of a threat. Hell, this blog has approximately 15-20 regular readers. Tigerdroppings probably gets 15-20 new regular users every day or two. It's a behemoth. I doubt I take away one cent of advertising dollars, and I doubt I would take away a cent if my readership increased by a factor of 100. Why does anyone spend 2 seconds thinking of this place as some kind of enemy?

And if they are inclined to think about this place, why is it held in such contempt? In over 350 posts on this board, I've mentioned Tigerdroppings exactly three times that I recall. This would be the fourth, and the drama started well before the first time I mentioned Tigerdroppings in any negative way. Heck, all I do is post long, rambling articles about football. Most of Tigerdroppings clientele doesn't even have the patience to read them, much less care about them. To the extent I've been critical of Tigerdroppings for having an incredibly high number of idiots posting (and apparently at least one petty and vindictive admin), other websites have been at least as critical.

I think, ultimately, that's what bothers me the most. This is so petty on their parts. What's more, because they won't let it even be discussed openly, they seem to know that it's petty. The only reason I can think of to censor all discussion of this website and their rules regarding it is that they must know how unreasonable they're being, and they know that if it's openly discussed over there, people will point out how chickenshit it is (pun intended).

It also makes me wonder what other topics of discussion may be secretly censored.

Russel Shepard Commits to LSU

2008-03-04T05:34:00.003-06:00

Big-time prospect Russell Shepard out of Houston-Cypress Ridge committed to LSU last night. He is listed at 6'2" and 180#, but you have to be a little suspicious of those numbers, but also must realize he will get bigger before he leaves high school.

If you don't know this kid, get to know this kid right now. He's a 5-star quarterback, and the #4 2009 recruit in the country, one of the best players at the most important position on the field. His commitment to LSU is the biggest so far in a year with several big commitments already.

You want my breakdown of this kid, do you? Okay, here's what I have:

Strengths: He's a tremendous running quarterback, a true speed-burner with running instincts. Also, and I think this is almost as important, he seems like he really has his head on straight. He'll be a December graduate and a Spring enrollee, meaning he'll be at the 2009 Spring Practice. He projects to qualify with ease. He is a very well-spoken kid who seems like a natural leader as well. He's athletic enough that if he does not make it as a quarterback, he could still end up being an All-Conference or All-American performer at cornerback, wide receiver, or maybe running back.

He could also end up helping us get other high-profile Texas recruits like defensive tackle Jamarkus McFarland (a kid with a name like this has to go to LSU), defensive back Craig Loston (Shepard's cousin, actually), and teammate Hasan Lipscomb, who will be a Tiger if he gets his grades in order.

Weaknesses: His videos don't show a heck of a lot of passing, and the passing they show doesn't stand out as being spectacular. He's also a little small to be taking the huge hits at quarterback you have to take if you want to be a run-first guy. That said, his videos on Rivals aren't highlights. They're sophomore highlights, and the kid is destroying everyone.

If you want some comparisons to former players, he looks an awful lot like former Colorado Buffalo and Pittsburgh Steeler Cordell Stewart, a.k.a. "Slash". He's also reminiscent of Tommie Frazier. If he's not a quarterback, he's like a taller Percy Harvin.

The only reason we were in it with Shepard is because Texas coach Mack Brown was recruiting him strictly as a wide receiver. Shepard has said he does not mind switching positions but wants to get a shot at quarterback, and will switch positions if he doesn't earn playing time at QB.

That's fine with me. Les Miles has said he's a quarterback and that's where he wants Shepard. I actually give Mack Brown some credit here. He didn't just tell Shepard what he wanted to hear. He told him the truth, which is that Texas wasn't going to give him a shot at quarterback. LSU will.

Here's what I'd do with him. I'd tell him, if you don't get into the two-deep at quarterback as a freshman (which is realistically unlikely, if you ask me) you will redshirt, and during your redshirt year you will work exclusively at quarterback. During your second year, continue working him at quarterback while installing some specialty sets to utilize his skills as a ball-carrier or receiver. In his redshirt sophomore year, make the final evaluation on whether or not Shepard is the quarterback of the future, and if he is not, make a permanent move. If he is, leave him at quarterback even if he is not the starter yet, but continue to leave in specialized plays for him at other positions while you wait.

I don't know if he's a future QB, or if his future is at another position, but I'm happy to give him a fair shot at quarterback. He'll have to come in and compete with Jarrett Lee (who will be 2 years ahead of him), Jordan Jefferson (one year ahead), and possibly Ryan Perrilloux who will overlap him by one year if he is still here for his senior year and who will not be beaten out if he stays, and then he'll have to compete with whoever we sign in the 2010 class. There are also rumors that we will sign another 2009 quarterback, but considering another QB could scare Shepard away and further considering the small class we have this year, I'm not sure it's a good idea to recruit another quarterback. I'd rather use that slot for another position. I'm not the coach though, and Les Miles has long since earned my trust.

With us getting a non-binding verbal commitment from a high-profile out of state kid that everyone in the world wants, you have to be concerned about the possibility of him changing his mind. Even though he says he's finished, and even though he seems like a real high-character kid (more on that tomorrow), you can't help but be worried. It helps that he's a mid-term graduate who will be enrolled by the time the pressure gets enormous in January. it also helps that he's a quarterback, and coaches aren't going to wait around to get their QB commitments.

It's an exciting day to be a Tiger fan.

3 In a Row

2008-03-03T06:46:00.002-06:00

There was another impressive win for the basketball team yesterday, as the Tigers came back from 16 down to win 71-64 at home against Georgia. LSU had only two scorers in double figures and only got 1 bench point. Obviously, if you watched the game at all, you know how top heavy the team was, getting 36 from Marcus Thornton and 19 from Anthony Randolph. The rest of the team scored 16 points.

We have 5 conference wins now, which means that Butch Pierre has as many wins in conference as Mark Gottfried has, as someone on talk radio pointed out last week.

Gottfried gets a chance to even the score on Wednesday when LSU takes on the Tide in the PMAC. They beat us pretty good in Tuscaloosa earlier this season, but this is a very different team now, and Bama hasn't won a conference game on the road all year.

We are out of the basement and ahead of Georgia, Bama, and Auburn. If we win on Wednesday, we put more distance between us and those teams, and we have the opportunity to pass Ole Miss and South Carolina. That's as far as we can go.

Honestly, my enthusiasm over this strong finish is somewhat dampened by the rumors that Anthony Randolph is likely to go pro at the end of the season. The development of Randolph as a skilled post player, and the prospect that he will get physically stronger are two of the primary reasons for excitement going forward. His alleged plan to end his college career after this season
throws a wet blanket over that enthusiasm.

I know the school of thought that says it's probably best to go pro as soon as you can in basketball, but I really wonder if that is true with Randolph. Randolph is an excellent player, but he has two primary weaknesses that will handicap him dramatically in the NBA. First, he's not strong enough to play back to the basket in the NBA, and he doesn't really have the face-up game to make up for it. This will affect his immediate effectiveness and will make him a "project" in the NBA, hurting his draft stock. Despite his myriad skills, I have to think he's going to make a pretty ordinary NBA'er.

Second, he has no apparent passion for the game. He has not shown to be a fierce competitor. This is something that I think another year or two of college can actually correct. Heck it's probably one of the few things college basketball teaches well. The NBA has a reputation for being not a very fun league, and if his passion is lacking now, one wonders what it would be when he's playing 5 minutes a game for the first year or two of his career.

I hope he decides to come back for another year or more. He's a young kid and the NBA can wait. This is probably the last time in his life he'll be a key player on a basketball team, and he should enjoy it while it lasts.

Look back at 2005

2008-03-01T07:52:00.002-06:00

With the talk of recruiting lately, even for the 2009 class, I think it's instructive to go back and look at Les Miles' earlier recruiting classes and grade them after the fact. Miles' first class was the small 2005 class with only 13 commits. Let's grade them out. Star ratings are by Rivals:

QB: Ryan Perrilloux - *****
Grade: Incomplete
Analysis: We all know Perrilloux has the talent to be a phenomenal quarterback. He sat behind Jamarcus Russell and then Matt Flynn waiting his turn, and no it's his time to shine. He has looked very good in limited roles thus far, and has excelled when he had to be the key guy because of injuries. The problem of course is his inability to stay with the team. If he plays, his gameplay will get an A-grade. If he doesn't, this is a washout of course.

OL: Ciron Black - ***, Kyle Anderson - ***, Lyle Hitt - ***
Grade: A
Analysis: Black is a two-year starter following his redshirt season, and may end up going pro early following his third year as full time starter. He's an All-SEC left tackle, and if he stays for his 5th year he will probably go down as LSU's most accomplished offensive lineman ever. Can't get much better than that. Lyle Hitt originally was a defensive tackle before being moved to offensive guard and was an important role player in last year's national championship run, primarily as a run blocker on the right side. Kyle Anderson washed out due to off-field issues, but a Ciron Black is enough to make up for that.

WR: Brandon Lafell - ***, R.J. Jackson - ****
Grade: B
Analysis: Jackson has not done much other than play special teams, which is a disappointment for a 4-star player. Lafell is threatening to emerge as our #1 receiver. If he does, this grade will go up a bit. Lafell redshirted his first year, then made a handful of catches in his second year while sitting behind Dwayne Bowe, Craig Davis, and Early Doucet. When finally given his chance, he made a bunch of catches, but also had some costly drops. He seems to have gotten past the drops problem and looks to be a very solid wide receiver now.

RB: Trindon Holliday - ***, Steven Korte - ****, Antonio Robinson - ****
Grade: B-
Analysis: We all know Trindon and his speed, but it's clear he is only a specialty back and a kickoff returner, though he is dangerous at both. Trindon's a weapon, but this class was only 1 for 3 on running backs, and that running back isn't capable of being an every down back. Korte and Robinson washed out at LSU and are now elsewhere.

DL: Ricky Jean-Francois - ****, Al Jones aka Rahim Alem - ****
Grade: B+
Analysis: Rahim Alem has been an important reserve defensive end and role player in his time on the team, and figures to be so again before maybe taking over for Kirston Pittman next year. Jean-Francois looks like an All-American in the making, but his off-field problems that made him lose 12 games last year keeps this grade from being an A.

LB: Darry Backwith - ****
Grade: A
Analysis: Darry spent his first year excelling on special teams, then he took over the strong side linebacker position at the start of the 2006 season, moving inside at midseason, where he has been a stalwart when healthy. He returns for his senior season as the undisputed leader of the linebacker corp and one of the best linebackers in the conference. Not bad.

DB: Chris Hawkins - ****
Grade: Incomplete
Analysis: He was stuck behind quality starters for his first years in the program. Now, he enters his junior year with a legitimate shot to nail down a starter spot at corner. This grade will be determined by whether or not he does that and how much he excels at that position. One could say he's a mild disappointment for failing to win the nickel back position, or the dime back position, but let's not go that far.

Overall, we have 13 prospects, three of whom have washed out and several of whom have emerged as leaders and producers. Considering the unavoidably small size of the class, this is a pretty good effort.

Annual Rites of Spring

2008-02-29T06:20:00.003-06:00

Spring Practice is here. It has started already for some schools, and it starts for LSU today.

To recap, each team gets 15 formal practices in the Spring. They can take them whenever they like. They can practice 3 times a day for 5 days if they want. Most, obviously, don't do that. I believe LSU likes to practice about 4 times per week until the practices are used up.

Things to watch this year?

Obviously, the quarterback situation. Everyone knows about Ryan Perrilloux, and the fact that he is currently suspended. There's some talk he could be reinstated soon. Or he might not be reinstated for months. Either way, the battle between Jarrett Lee and Andrew Hatch to be the alternative to Perrilloux is one that even the national media will be paying close attention to.
Cornerback, another oft-discussed issue with the 2008 LSU football team. We lost two starting cornerbacks, and rarely played the #s 3 and 4 cornerbacks. There are no heirs apparent to Chevis Jackson and Jonathan Zenon. The backups last year were rising sophomore Jai Eugene and rising junior Chris Hawkins. Hawkins, in my opinion, looked pretty good when he got into the games in garbage time. Eugene struggled at corner, though he played well in special teams. Keep in mind that Eugene never played corner in high school, and even though he was a coveted recruit, he has had to learn the position from scratch and may simply be taking a while to learn it. Don't be surprised, though, if redshirt freshman Phelon Jones passes one or the other of those guys.
Position changes. Reportedly, freshman tight end Jordon Corbin has been moved to end, but expect even more changes than that. Freshman corner John Williams is rumored to have moved to offense. There have been rumblings that one of the Mitchell receivers may move to corner. Fans have clamored to move safety Harry Coleman to linebacker. Who knows what will actually happen, which is why it will be fun to watch.
Right side of the O-line. We obviously have to fill the right tackle position vacated by Carnell Stewart, but there are some who say that the right guard position occupied by Lyle Hitt last year might also be up for grabs. Rising sophomores Joseph Barksdale and Jarvis Jones are the key challengers for those positions, and Barksdale figures to break into the starting lineup.
Offensive line depth. You need more than 5 offensive linemen, and for the first time in a number of years, LSU looks to have real depth at line. Several redshirt freshman will be jockeying for position, as will rising sophomore Matt Allen, who had a lot of positive buzz at this time last year but did not get on the field as a redshirt freshman. Redshirt freshmen Josh Dworaczyk, T-Bob Hebert, and Ernest McCoy all have high hopes of making it into the 2-deep. If Will Blackwell has been moved to offensive guard as has been reported, he has his work cut out for him.
Tight end. We all know that Richard Dickson is a stud receiving tight end, but this team lost both of its primary blocking tight ends to graduation and another of the reserve tight ends left the team. Redshirt freshman Jordan Corbin has reportedly moved to defensive end, leaving us with only 3 scholarship tight ends on the Spring roster, two of whom have never played a down. What was once a position of absurd depth is now a position where we may end up relying heavily on one or more of the true freshmen. There should be a battle between Alex Russian and Mitch Joseph to be the blocking tight end opposite Dickson.
Wide receiver. I want to know two things: 1) will Terrance Toliver step up his game? He started out strong last year, but his production tailed off towards the end of the season. He has all the tools, and it's just a matter of developing them. If he steps up, he'll be very difficult to defend; and 2) Will any of the other receivers emerge as a true threat? Rising juniors Chris and Jared Mitchell haven't produced much so far in their careers and it's probably do-or-die time for them. Ricky Dixon and RJ Jackson are rising redshirt sophomores who also need to establish themselves. Any of these guys who do not take a step forward risk falling behind incoming freshmen.
Linebacker. LSU replaces 2 of 3 starting linebackers, and I fully expect rising junior Perry Riley to take one of those two spots. The other one appears up for grabs between Shomari Clemmons and Kelvin Sheppard. Rising sophomore Kelvin Sheppard has the most experience of the two. Jacob Cutrera is a pure middle linebacker so does not figure to compete for a spot outside. Don't be surprised if there is a position change somewhere to bring another body in to compete for a linebacker spot.

Of course, some of the things that emerge this spring will be rendered moot by the true freshmen coming in the Fall. Cornerback is one of those areas where a true freshman may really make waves, because Patrick Johnson is a stud. Wide receiver is another position where a true freshman or two may play, but I doubt any true freshman will break into the top 3. Ryan Baker also may break into the rotation at linebacker.

Another Basketball Win

2008-02-28T06:07:00.003-06:00

The basketball team beat South Carolina 62-55 last night, lifting the Tigers out of the cellar, now occupied by the hapless Georgia Bulldogs. We can put some other teams in our dust and put some distance on Georgia when we play them on Saturday.

The keys to the game against South Carolina: free throws and rebounds. We were 14 of 14 in free throws. Incidentally, there wasn't a missed free throw all night, as South Carolina went 7 for 7. We outscored South Carolina by 7 from the line and didn't give away any points there. We out-rebounded South Carolina 37-25 according to ESPN's boxscore. According to Tigerbait's recap, the margin was 44-28 on the boards. Either way, we got a lot of rebounds, and that makes a big difference in a close game.

We won, amazingly, without shooting well from 3-point range and while committing 14 turnovers compared to the Gamecocks' four, but made up for it with dominating inside presence. Our forwards outscored USC's forwards 35-20, including Anthony Randolph continuing to dominate with 20 points.

I maintain that this is a team that can put it all together and do some things. It's too much to ask for a run to win the SEC tournament, but I do believe that if they play up to their abilities they will be a very tough out in the tourney. If we keep winning, we will build that momentum for the 2008-2009 season, when we look like we could be a very good team.

The 2008-2009 season will see us finally add a big body to the team who can out-muscle people. J'Mison Morgan is a highly regarded center prospect at 6'10" and 275 pounds and figures to be one of those guys who will come in and play immediately and be able to keep us from being out-muscled in the lane, which has been our most consistent problem this year, and in previous years whenever Big Baby Davis wasn't on the court. We've had a remarkable run of tall, skinny forwards lately, and players like Patrick Patterson have simply tossed them around like they were small children.

And let's not forget the biggest addition to next year's team: Tasmin Mitchell, who will replace Alex Farrer in the starting lineup and give us a very formidable starting five. What's more, for the first time in quite some time we will have a pretty solid bench with Alex Farrer, J'Mison Morgan, Terry Martin, Quentin Thornton, Garrett Green, and the other incoming freshmen. We could actually go 10 deep with solid players. I don't know when the last time that happened was.

Yes, we are below .500 this year, and will likely stay that way, but the future looks bright for this team.

There's also been a lot of football news in the last couple of days, but I felt like talking basketball today. We'll get into all the other stuff in the coming days.

Team Discipline

2008-02-27T06:23:00.002-06:00

In listening to talk radio here in central Alabama this week, I have heard a lot of talk about "discipline". Honestly, I do not understand the fan's approach and perspective on team discipline. Many of them seem to have thinly veiled contempt for football players and want them to live in a virtual prison.

I can't begin to tell you how many call-ins have talked about "kids these days" and how discipline in the home is suffering and kids don't have any fear of authority anymore. There may be some truth to it, but the implication here is that Rashad Johnson's parents are to blame. Jeremy Elder's parents are to blame.

Believe me, as an attorney who represents accused juvenile delinquents, I have my own attitudes and perspectives on certain parents. However, to come out with no knowledge of the situation and all but indict Rashad Johnson's parents and Jeremy Elder's parents for neglect is reprehensible. It's unfair. It speaks from ignorance. It's thoroughly embarrassing.

I think it comes down to a bizarre form of hero worship that dates back to primitive man. Some people, and I find this particularly true or especially prevalent among Bama fans for some reason, want their athletes to be not only good athletes, but also paragons of virtue. They want their athletes to be modeled after Thor, Superman, or Siegfried. They want them to be champions on the field, saving stranded kittens off the field, helping old ladies cross the street, and fighting for truth, justice, and the American Way.

If they fail to live up to that ideal, they must pay. There must be physical pain. There must be penance. They must pay until it hurts not only themselves, but the team and the fans. They want SUSPENSIONS! If these players don't know what a privilege it is to dress up in the crimson jerseys, and aren't willing to live a monkish lifestyle in the process, then they must be punished for their failure to be like Siegfried.

Granted, I don't want all of the best athletes on the team to be like Achilles skulking in his tent (READ A BOOK!), but I also expect the athletes to be human.

By all accounts, Rashad Johnson is a fine human being who worked his way up from walk-on to All-SEC while never getting into any trouble before he allegedly shoved a bar bouncer on the Strip. Heck, if the worst thing a college athlete ever does is shove a bouncer once in his life, I consider him a success story. If there are three or four of those kinds of incidents over the course of a career, that's another story, but once? For a 5th year senior? Big deal.

Some callers want the Strip to be declared off limits for the players. I think this is crazy talk too. The Strip, for those of you outside of the area, The Strip is the prime nightlife within Tuscaloosa. This is not like LSU, where there are a number of areas around Baton Rouge where students hang out. Here in Tuscaloosa, most of the bars and clubs are either on University Boulevard right off of campus or are downtown within a few blocks of University. All of it is within walking distance of each other.

If the Strip and Downtown are off limits, you're basically telling players they can't go out and have fun. Doing that would mean that players could only go to house parties (which are probably even more troublesome) or must drive to Birmingham (also problematic). I don't think you can tell college students, particularly athletes, that they can't go out on the town to blow off steam. It's inconceivable to me.

I think people need to relax when it comes to team discipline. Yes, the coach has to do something about major incidents like melees, academic problems, etc., but sometimes a coach is probably best served by realizing that some things are just no big deal. Let the courts punish Rashad Johnson for shoving a bouncer, if he did it. It'll cost him some money and some embarrassment and some time at the courthouse. That sounds like enough to me. If it isn't, let him run some stadium steps. Above all, stop with the calls and the "back in my day" speeches. I'm tired of hearing them.

Maybe I Spoke Too Soon

2008-02-25T06:35:00.003-06:00

When I posted yesterday's post titled "Another Good Day in LSU Athletics" I did not guess that the Montrell Conner story would have the legs or the bitterness it showed as the day progressed. Depending on who you believe, one of the following things happened:

Conner, his parents, and his coach met with Miles, who personally extended a scholarship offer that was accepted, only later to be told, "Not so fast, I shouldn't have offered it."
An assistant coach offered Conner the scholarship, which was accepted, but there was a miscommunication with Miles and the offer never should have been extended.
Conner was offered a scholarship, but only at linebacker and wanted to be a running back, accepted the scholarship and then was told he couldn't be a running back so it wasn't considered accepted.
Conner misunderstood some nice talk and friendly conversation as a scholarship offer.

Somehow or another, Montrell Conner thought he was a commitment to LSU only to find out that he wasn't going to be considered a commitment. The boards went ape-shit. A major booster reportedly went ape-shit as well.*

Word now is that the "misunderstanding" is resolved, though Conner is not a commitment at this time.

There was lots of blame thrown the coach's way over a problem that lasted all of a couple of hours at most. You would think the foundation of Tiger Stadium was crumbling under our feet. I have a slightly different perspective of blame, however.

I think at least part of the blame for this has to go to the pay recruiting sites, who are always trying to "scoop" one another. I think they often post information before it's really ripe to go out to the public, because they want to be the first to report it. I think they reported Conner's commitment strictly after hearing it from Conner without checking with their sources within the program first. This may be standard procedure, but with an atmosphere like Junior Day with all of its confusion, maybe it shouldn't be.

Anyway, this will all blow over in a little while, and it's really much ado about nothing.

*Incidentally, the exact same thing happened to Tahj Jones, but no one seemed to care that much about that one, because reportedly it has to do with Jones' academic situation.

Another Good Day in LSU Athletics

2008-02-24T06:55:00.002-06:00

After such a good Friday, we followed it up with an even better Saturday. The baseball team won 5-4 in its second game against Indiana. The basketball team won by 20 against Ole Miss. The football team picked up two more commitments on Junior Day.

I watched the basketball game on TV, and I was pretty darn impressed with this team. The consistency isn't there, but it's clear this team has some ability. Randolph and Johnson dominated the game defensively, disrupting shots and contributing heavily to Ole Miss shooting an abysmal 27% from the field. Ole Miss scored a season-low 49 points (previous season-low was 67 points).

The offense played well, particularly early in the game when Thornton was burning up the nets from outside staking us to a big lead. When he went cold, Ole Miss started coming back, but never got closer then 6 down. Midway through the 2nd half, we turned up the defense and fed the inside and built the lead up to 28 before putting in all the subs with 1:30 to go in the game.

Like I said before, I just want this team to build some momentum going into next season. This win is a nice step in that direction. The stretch run includes only one more game against a team that currently has more than 4 wins. If we can win games against South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, we will climb out of the conference basement and salvage a little bit of pride from this season.

In football, the big commitment yesterday was that of Janzen Jackson, a defensive back from Carencro listed at 6'1" and 185# with 4.43 speed. If he's really that tall, and really that fast, and really has hips of a cornerback, this kid is a S-T-U-D. Let me just admit that I am no expert at evaluating talent, but sometimes a kid's videos stand out so much in some respect that you have to take notice. Janzen Jackson is listed as a cornerback, but his videos show him making hard tackles and providing run support like a strong safety. He'll be an absurdly physical cornerback if that really is his future. If he has the swivel hips and the height and the closing speed of a corner, he will be hard to keep off the field early in his career. He's also a coach's son, much like current redshirt freshman defensive back Phelon Jones, and Carencro players usually come to LSU with good coaching under their belts already. The listed measurements are often unreliable, but I sure hope this kid is as tall and fast as advertised.

If you have access, be sure to watch his videos. You will be impressed. He is generally regarded as the best defensive back in the state.

The second commitment of the day was offensive guard/defensive tackle Josh Downs of Bastrop. He's listed at 6'2" and 275# and comes from one of the most important football factories in Louisiana. His commitment caused some consternation among the message board posters who, for one reason or another, think he is unworthy. The reasons for this break down into two different categories. First, as a defensive tackle, the message board posters consider him to be less of a player than in-state tackles Chris Davenport and Darrington Sentimore and out-of-state tackle Jamarkus McFarland (great LSU name, by the way). Second, word came out that running back/linebacker Montrell Conner wanted to commit but his commitment was not yet accepted.

It's hard to explain to someone unfamiliar with all of this exactly why it matters that Montrell Conner's commitment wasn't accepted. Honestly, I don't think I understand why it matters myself. As for why it wasn't accepted, it is apparently because either a) he wants to be a running back while the coaches only want him at linebacker or b) because they don't yet know whether he's a running back or linebacker. Montrell Conner is a Rivals100 guy, but you should take it as a given that the coaches know more than Rivals does, and I have it on good authority that most major college coaches consider the ratings services to be laughably inaccurate in many cases.

As for Downs, he is a mystery to me, but I don't mean that in a bad way. He hasn't really been discussed much on the boards or the services in advance of his commitment, and there is very little film on him. I know he has the weight, and I know he comes from a good feeder school. Other than that, I don't know much.

One thing that is becoming clear is that the boards and the services know very little about what the coaches are thinking. After Signing Day, I made a post that included this statement:

Of course, no signing day retrospective is complete without . . . looking ahead to the next recruiting class. Unlike for the 2008 class, the in-state 2009 class is expected to be very studly. Already, wide receiver Reuben Randle, defensive tackle Chris Davenport, athlete DJ Banks, running backs Eddie Lacy and Michael York, and RB/LB Montrell Conner look to be 5-star or high-4-star national prospects that could go wherever they want to go in the country.

In addition to my embarrassing misnaming of Michael Ford, it is becoming apparent that 2 or 3 of the people I mentioned not only won't be 5-star or high-4-star national prospects, but they may not even have offers from LSU, period. DJ Banks' offers are coming from lesser programs. Eddie Lacy's grade problems and legal problems may be scaring the big boys off. Montrell Conner apparently can only go to LSU as a linebacker rather than a running back (if that). So take everything with a grain of salt.

Lots of Topics to Mention Today

2008-02-23T06:54:00.003-06:00

Poseur's very timely post yesterday afternoon portended good things for the baseball team, which pummeled Indiana in its season opener last night. In a remarkable turnaround from last season, the team got both offense and pitching in a 7-1 win. If last night is any indication, LSU looks to be a much better team than it was last season.

I'll be the first to admit I have no pretensions of insight into college baseball. I am pretty ignorant of the college baseball world, and I am mostly unfamiliar with LSU's lineup. It rarely comes on TV here, I can't catch it on the radio, and I'm just not dedicated enough to sit at my computer listening to it on the internet. That's Poseur's job.

LSU football recruiting, however. That's in my wheelhouse. Three recruits announced yesterday that they were committing to play football at LSU. These guys are from 3 different states and play 3 different positions of need. I didn't expect to have to make this post until tomorrow, and today's post was supposed to be a "Watch for a Bunch of Commitments" today post because today is the start of Junior Day. Three recruits got the jump on Junior Day, however.

Henry Orelus, a 6'5" 280# offensive lineman from the football factory of Central Glades, Florida, was actually the first commit. He is a former teammate of current LSU redshirt freshman O-lineman Ernest McCoy, who seems to have a bright future here. Orelus is believed to be the Center prospect of this class, which was a position of substantial need because LSU did not recruit a true center last year. Orelus has not been evaluated yet, but it is believed he will be a 4-star when the rankings finally come out. Various scouting reports say he is very coachable and is way ahead of his peers in terms of technique and skills for a big man. He's not going to be a headline-maker of this class, and honestly I had never heard of him until his commitment was announced, but he's a solid foundation for a class that needs a center. It's also significant that he's an out-of-state commitment, which we often had to fight very hard to get last year.

Michael Brockers, a 6'6 260# offensive tackle/defensive end prospect from Chavez High School in Houston was the second big commitment of the day for the Tigers. He's a member of the Rivals100 for 2009, meaning he will likely start out as a high 4-star player. There is some doubt as to whether he is a future defensive end or a future offensive tackle. His videos at end are really impressive. He is quick off the snap, hits hard, and wraps up. What's more, he's living the dream by coming to LSU. According to the article at Rivals announcing his commitment, his head coach Mike Jackson had this to say. "Every kid is different, but this kid has said from day one that he wanted to go to LSU," Jackson said. "I have known him since the eighth grade and it has always been LSU." Defensive line is a pretty substantial need in this class, but he could end up being an offensive tackle instead of a defensive lineman, particularly if LSU signs other highly regarded defensive ends like Alex Okafor, but that might be a long shot

Michael Ford was long rumored to be a heavy lean to LSU. He comes from Leesville, and is probably the best running back prospect in the state for 2009, and probably the best running back prospect in the state since Joe McKnight in 2007. Eddie Lacy of Dutchtown also has a claim to that title, but Lacy is rumored to have grade issues and off-the-field problems. Ford is alleged to already have the ACT score and simply needs to stay on track to graduate in order to qualify. He won't give us any headaches about making it to campus. His listed 40-time is 4.57 seconds, which is kind of disappointing, but it is said that it was run on a wet field and was the fastest time of the day at that camp. He is supposed to actually be very fast, possibly in the high 4.4's, which is excellent for a running back. He's a track standout as Leesville. Ford also has the personality of a leader, and figures to be a cornerstone of LSU's offense when the current RB corps of Keiland, Charles Scott, and Richard Murphy start clearing out. If there's a downside to Ford, it's that he has had some injuries. It's not anything that is likely to linger like a knee or shoulder. He just broke a collarbone and had another minor injury or two. He hasn't been on the field as much as you'd like to see. That said, if you watch his videos, keep in mind those are from his SOPHOMORE year. Let's hope he has a good and healthy senior season.

Stay tuned, because there are probably going to be a few more commitments today. I look to hear about commitments from defensive back Janzen Jackson, Texas running back Hasan Lipscomb (part of the Katrina diaspora), and possibly one or more offensive linemen. Maybe even more. I think this is going to be a class is that mostly set by the time Fall Practice starts in August.

Basebal Preview: Last Year of the Box

2008-02-22T15:29:00.003-06:00

Last year, I wrote a particular savage post about the baseball team which may have indicated that I thought last year’s offense was historically pitiful. However, I did close with the hopeful note that it was just Mainieri’s first year and I believe a coach gets a free pass in his first year. That still holds true, but now it’s time for Mainieri to produce.

The team is a preseason pick to finish 5th in the SEC West, but Manieiri openly talked about contending for Omaha. While I admire his gusto, the success of this team should be measured fairly modestly: making the SEC tournament and the NCAA tournament (strangely enough, making the NCAA’s may be the easier task). LSU opens the season ranked #25, so it’s not like the optimism is wholly unjustified. How can this team so quickly reverse is fortunes?

Well, for starters, by absolutely gutting the team. Tonight’s starting lineup will include four players who weren’t on the team last year and four sophomores. Mainieri has also announced that Chad Jones and Micah Gibbs, two more newcomers, will start a game in the Indiana series. The weekend rotation will have one newcomer, though tonight’s starter is Jared Bradford, who is on the Golden Spikes Award watch list, and Bradford was about the only bright spot last year. However, don’t think the pitching staff hasn’t been revamped. Verdugo’s been named the midweek starter, and Daniel Bradshaw was the Louisiana High School Pitcher of the Year and is the team’s new closer. Anthony Ranaudo, drafted in the 11th round, turned down the Rangers to pitch at LSU but is right now out with an injury. Someone is just keeping a rotation spot warm for him.

Also, of the returning players, almost all of them lack experience. Mike Hollander is the only 3-year letterman on the entire roster, and he starts off the season moved to a new position (3rd base) and batting last in the order. Normally I have a problem with giving a guy a slot just because of his age, but since this team is so bereft of true senior leadership, I’m okay with one spot for a guy for leadership instead of production. But the leash is short. After Hollander, there are only six other players on the roster with two years in the program (Haydel, Byrd, Coleman, Pontiff, McGhee, and Cain). Of those, only P Ryan Byrd is a starter, though Nicholas Ponitff should be in the outfield rotation while Coleman and Cain were pretty good in the pen last year (Cain was our most effective reliever and Coleman had a great K-BB ratio despite a high ERA). Everyone else on the team has one year or less in the program. Mainieri brought in 19 players in this recruiting class, named #1 in the country, including 12 freshmen.

How are they going to do? Well, we’ll find out pretty quickly. Of the 12 freshmen, 11 of them were named High School All-American. It really is a dream class, and one that LSU needs to produce right away. For this season, Mainieri needs the JUCO studs to step up right away. 1B Matt Clark, DH Matt Gaudet, and SP Jordan Brown are already starters. SP Ryan Verdugo is the midweek starter while INF Rene Escobar and SS Derek Helenihi were both JUCO All-Americans. Ryan Schimp and Mike Hollander better produce or else their seasoned veteran status won’t count for squat.

As bad as last year’s offense was, there is hope the returning starters can turn it around since, aside from Hollander, they were all freshmen. Schimpf and Jared Mitchell were freshmen thrown to wolves last year and looked like it. C Sean Ochinko was the second best freshman on the team last year, and he got better in the offseason, making the Cape Cod leagues All-Star Game. Of course, the best freshman was OF Blake Dean, who now takes up the mantle as LSU’s unquestioned best position player and leader. A huge mantle as a sophomore, but on this team, the sophomores are the veterans.

I’d expect a lot of the new players to have the same growing pains as last year’s freshmen, while the sophomores should now dramatically improved. While Omaha might be a pipe dream, there is the talent to make it if everything breaks right. The real goal for this team should be making the Super Regionals. That would be a great season, and would be a stepping stone to great things next season. But this team absolutely has no excuse to miss the tournament again. It’s a young team, so expect some inconsistent play, but this should be the most exciting LSU team since the Bertman era.

Bring on Indiana.

Jeremy Elder

2008-02-22T06:06:00.002-06:00

Of course, LSU is not the only school with certain problems arising this week. Freshman defensive lineman Jeremy Elder, who redshirted last season, was arrested for two counts of Robbery in the 1st Degree this weekend.

I have my own perspective on this, and it's colored by two things. First, I come at it from a college football angle. Second, I can't ignore the fact that I am a criminal defense attorney by practice.

I spent a few minutes trying to think of what the worst thing a college football player can do would be. My conclusion was that it was a futile exercise because there are any number of things a college football player could do that would be instantly fatal to his career at a major program like Bama. A nonexhaustive list would include gambling on games, any serious violent crime, any crime likely to include substantial jail time, and distribution or manufacturing of controlled substances. And these are just the things off the top of my head.

In that sense, Nick Saban has a very easy decision. If one of your players is going around campus pointing a gun at people and asking for money, that player has to go. There's really no wiggle room. The fact that Jeremy Elder was only a reserve player makes this a non-particularly-painful decision, either. Suspending him indefinitely is the right thing to do, and if the allegations prove true, I'm sure he will be let go.

That's the college football observer in me talking. There's also the criminal defense attorney that has his own perspective.

If there's one thing you come to understand as a criminal defense attorney, it is this: The fact that a person has done a horrible thing does not necessarily make him a horrible person.

Robbery in the 1st Degree is a very serious crime. In popular parlance, it is "armed robbery". It's an A-felony, not far removed from murder as far as range of punishments go. In general, if you have a charge like this, if the person is not exonerated, you can probably expect the ultimate sentence to include multiple years in prison.

Elder may not be facing that. First, I imagine that because he is so young, this is likely his first adult offense, and may be his first offense period. His attorney will probably seek to get him "youthful offender" status, and the court will order an investigation.* Youthful offender status does several things to a criminal case. First, it seals the record, much like in juvenile court. Second, it reduces the available sentences. Someone granted youthful offender status can only be given a maximum of 3 years in prison, and most get no prison time and instead get probation.

In my experience, if he does not have a substantial history of criminal behavior, he will likely be granted that status, and it may keep him out of prison. This is particularly likely if the gun involved really was a pellet gun. The court would be a little more likely to cut him a break if he did not shove an actual, death-inducing firearm in someone's face.

I don't think any of that changes the football aspect of this case. If he did it, he has probably stepped on the Alabama practice field for the last time. He'd be allowed to otherwise go on with his life, however.

*I may be wrong about this in the sense that I have never tried to get someone youthful offender status for an A felony. It's just never come up in my practice. Without looking up the rules, I'm not sure you can even get it if you are accused of an A-felony. However, if it really was a pellet gun, it may not be an A-felony anymore.

Still On the Topic of the Week

2008-02-21T05:59:00.007-06:00

I figure that there's nothing to say about what happened to the basketball team last night, except to say that it's clear this team has a LONG way to go to be competitive every night. We just did not have the guard play to keep up with Arkansas.

Leaving that sad topic behind, we return to the issue of LSU's quarterback situation.

I've read a lot of very strong opinions on this situation lately, mostly in the vein of "kick him off". People are saying he's a bad kid, a distraction to the team, a potential cancer, etc. This is all well and good, and everyone is entitled to their opinions, but there are some important things to keep in mind.

First, very few people on the message boards and probably no one in the media actually knows Ryan Perrilloux. We know what gets into the media, which are the screw-ups he makes. While his screw-ups are definitely a part of his personality, they do not make up the whole of his character. I'm sure with Ryan Perrilloux, as with most other people, there are layers there that are unknown to the general public.

Second, and for the same reason, most of the people commenting know nothing about the attitude and perspective of the team. We don't know how Perrilloux's transgressions are affecting the team. We can make some educated guesses, but they are just that. Only guesses.

The coaches know Ryan Perrilloux, and the coaches also have their fingers on the pulse of the team. Or at least they should. And they will be the ones to make the ultimate decision as to what is best for the team. I am sure they will be second-guessed by many people. Their decision, however, will be much more informed than any piece of advice they get off the internet.

I am fully cognizant of the fact that what I am saying could be used of an indictment of all commentary and criticism from the media or the blogs or the message boards. That's fine. This is all in good fun, but I try to recognize that my own criticism of the coaches comes from a place characterized at least as much by its ignorance as by its insight. That is true of all of us, and when it comes to questioning a kid's character or calling for great damage to be done to his future, we should all be a little more cognizant of that.

Update: This is perhaps my favorite message board post ever:

JLee has all the same traits and strengths of Matt Mauck and Matt Flynn. He has a better arm than both of them and is mobile, but not as fast as Flynn. Experience is overrated if you are not smart and do not have talent. He is two inches shorter at about 6-1, but in a spread-type offense (under Crowton) that is easily overcome -- this is not the NFL.

Lee is already purported to be on the sharpest guys they've ever had at QB. He reminds a lot of observers of the two Matts and Tommy Hodson and Alan Risher. Hodson and Risher had no experience and both did well with less talent around them. Hodson and Risher could and probably would have led our 2003 and 2007 teams to the title.

Indeed, even should RP return, I'm not so sure that Lee would not win the starting nod on his own merits. Talent, smarts, mobility, accuracy, consistency and leadership can overcome inexperience really quick. If Hodson and Risher are not enough examples, look elsewhere around the SEC -- there are many.

LSU will be fine -- maybe not BCS title ready this fall -- but asskicking ready, they will be.

Here is a picture of Jarrett Lee:

Here are pictures of the quarterbacks this poster compared Jarrett Lee to:

Here are some pictures of recent LSU starting quarterbacks the poster did not see fit to compare Jarrett Lee to:

I suppose we can all be thankful he did not bring out Jeff Wickersham comparisons.

I Listen to the Radio Sometimes

2008-02-20T06:01:00.002-06:00

I got in my car to drive home last night right as Paul Finebaum was starting to talk to Bruce Feldman, author of Meat Market, about the slew of arrests and suspensions in the SEC lately. To recap for those not paying attention, Bama's freshman defensive lineman Jeremy Elder was arrested for armed robbery, Tennessee punter Britton Colquitt was suspended and forfeited his scholarship for an alcohol-related traffic incident, and LSU quarterback Ryan Perrilloux was suspended for violation of team rules.

Feldman went a long way to convincing me that it would be best if Miles were to cut ties with Perrilloux. I will attempt to paraphrase the substance of Feldman's interview:

While Perrilloux's situation is the least serious legally, it is probably the most significant in terms of impact on football. Miles is in a tight spot because he does not have another experienced quarterback on the roster, and while the LSU coaches like Jarrett Lee he is only a redshirt freshman and was not expected to have a big role in the offense yet. But Miles has to be careful because this is the sort of situation that could lead to rot from within. Last year's success was built in part on high character players like Hester, Dorsey, and Steltz, but now those people are gone. If low character guys like Perrilloux are allowed to get their way, it could lead to discord and conflict on the team, as other players will want to get treated like Ryan Perrilloux. Meaning, Perrilloux is allowed chance after chance to come back despite not following rules, when other players might be dismissed from the team for the same things.

The man makes a point.

Bruce Feldman has proven in the past to be an intelligent and insightful observer of college football. His book Meat Market is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the inner workings of a BCS-level college football program. His interviews on the radio are among the best and most interesting segments Paul Finebaum ever has. In short, he's one of those guys who, even if I disagree with him on some point, I'm going to listen to his perspective with an open mind.

In counterpoint, let's all realize two things:

Ryan's legal troubles are small-potatoes compared to some other people's; and
Miles has disciplined Ryan quite harshly in the past, to the point where I don't think you can say he lets Ryan "get away" with stuff.

He was suspended for about 6 months and made to do his workouts and drills outside of official team settings. He was not allowed to travel with the team to Bama last year. He's been embarrassed on multiple occasions both in private within the team and in public. No matter what happens from this point forward, the suspensions have probably cost Perrilloux any realistic chance of being a high draft pick, unless the unlikely happens and he suddenly turns it around and becomes a role model for the next two years.

It is my impression that Miles intends to allow Ryan Perrilloux back on the team if he can abide by certain rules between now and the time he is to be allowed back on. Those conditions and Miles' time table for reinstatement probably will never be discussed publicly. In the meantime, I expect Perrilloux to miss part or all of Spring Practice and possibly much more.

A time table like that would cut to the bone, both for LSU and for Perrilloux. If Ryan showed one on-field weakness last year, it was in game management, by which I mean he often struggled to get the team out of the huddle and properly lined up in time to get the play started. It's a correctable problem, but in order to correct it he will need repetitions under center. He won't be getting those repetitions if he's suspended.

Another long suspension I think takes away the problem of "rot from within" that Bruce Feldman discussed. A long suspension means that Perrilloux isn't getting away with anything. He's being excluded from the team and set back in his development.

And if, ultimately, we move on without Ryan Perrilloux, we are fairly well set up to do it. We have a very good offensive line in place to protect a young quarterback. We have several very good running backs to take the pressure off of a suspect passing game. We will probably have a strong defense that will allow our offense to play somewhat more conservatively than it otherwise would. We can move on without him if we need to, and I think if Perrilloux sees that, he may decide to fall in line.

Perrilloux Suspended . . . Again

2008-02-19T05:55:00.002-06:00

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, this is bad.

Ryan Perrilloux has been suspended from the team indefinitely for unspecified violation of team rules. No one seems to know any inside story about the length of the suspension, but it is rumored that the team rules he violated concerned going to class and attending team meetings.

Some observations:

Someone once told me that LSU would be really good next year if Perrilloux can stay out of jail. I responded that Perrilloux, as far as we know, has never been in jail. He's been investigated for connection to a counterfeiting operation, but never charged. He's been cited for using someone else's ID to get into a casino. He's been in the news for a conflict outside of an off-campus club. He's been suspended for missing classes and team meetings. He has never been arrested. He's never assaulted or attacked anyone that we know of. While the kid has some apparent stupidity problems, let's not overstate his lawlessness.
My God this is colossally dumb. Let's look at this logically. While Perrilloux is a big part of LSU's future, he needs us at least as much as we need him at this point. Granted, we need him quite a bit. With Perrilloux, we're on the short list of national championship contenders. Without him, we probably aren't, but we're still contenders in the SEC. With us, Perrilloux has the prospects of an NFL future. Without us, Perrilloux has a big uphill battle to make a living playing football. To use an analogy to hunting, LSU is the wolf and Perrilloux is the rabbit. The rabbit is running for his life and the wolf is running for his dinner. Failure at LSU will mean the virtual end of Perrilloux's prospects of wealth and stardom, but it will mean only a temporary dip in LSU's prospects.
Let's be clear, Miles did not kick Perrilloux off the team. He is suspended, not dismissed. Miles has shown a willingness to "sacrifice until it hurts" when it comes to Perrilloux, having already given him one very long suspension, but he's also shown a willingness to welcome him back and in good graces after it has hurt.
One has to wonder what (if anything) is going through Perrilloux's head. He has to know as well as anyone that he's paid his dues on the field and the way is open for him to play and to excel. He's the heir apparent to the QB position on a team with a ton of offensive weapons at the ready. He has to know that, production-wise, few quarterbacks are ever set up as nicely as Perrilloux is now. I don't know how a kid sees that and decides to risk it all.

I do not think this is the end for Perrilloux. I've heard too many stories recently of Perrilloux still being on campus, still being active and around. If he was gone for good, he'd be.. uh.. gone. If Miles wanted him gone, he wouldn't be suspended. He'd be dismissed.

Keep in mind also, Ryan Perrilloux recently lost his father. I mean VERY recently. It doesn't excuse violation of team rules of this nature, particularly if they occurred before the death of Mr. Perrilloux, but I sincerely doubt that Les Miles is going to pile onto the kid quite that bad.

Ryan is a special talent. I sincerely believe we've never had a quarterback with as much natural ability for the position as Perrilloux has. And yes, I include Jamarcus Russell, who is admittedly very close in talent to Perrilloux, but Perrilloux's running ability makes him superior (physically). This is a guy who is probably our best shot at getting a Heisman Trophy in my lifetime to this point.

It is my hope that Miles will suspend him just long enough to keep him on the straight and narrow through the season. After the 2009 season, he can go pro and save us the drama for all I care, but I don't want to enter the season with a transfer from Harvard and a redshirt freshman as our quarterbacks.

Disappointing Loss in Basketball

2008-02-18T06:26:00.002-06:00

I half-expected to beat Kentucky. They are not that great of a team, though they have generally played well lately, excepting that horrible loss to Vandy earlier in the week.

It started well. We took a small lead to halftime after leading for most of the first half. The whole team seemed to play in sync and the team made few mistakes. We could have been ahead by more, except we seemed to miss a few easy shots. It happens, but we still took a lead to halftime.

We struggled early in the second half, letting Kentucky build up a lead before fighting back and briefly taking the lead on our own. It came down the stretch of the game with us down by 3 points with the ball and the shotclock off, but Marcus Thornton forced up a bad shot that pretty much ended our chances.

We didn't play a flawless game, but we played pretty well. Kentucky just played a little bit better. As expected, we didn't really have an answer for Patrick Patterson, who can probably bench press more than Chris Johnson and Anthony Randolph combined. It was, all in all, a well played game by both teams, and my predominant feeling towards the end was that it looked like both teams were having a lot of fun and were pretty much evenly matched.

This is a team with some talent, and that will add more talent next year, especially with the re-addition of Tasmin Mitchell. I don't expect a miracle finish from this team, but I would really like for them to build some momentum going into the offseason. We need these guys to develop some positivity to take to next season, which could be a year where we make some real noise, particularly if we get the right coach in place.

This is a team that sometimes looks very close to being a very good team. But then we get on a run where we don't play defense and don't move the ball effectively on offense, or where Marcus Thornton forces up bad shots unnecessarily, or Johnson and Randolph get out-muscled down low and things go bad from there. I don't really have an answer to these problems, which is why I'm not coaching basketball.

In other news, rumors swirl about Ryan Perrilloux's future with the team. It all seems like bull to me, but Les Miles (fresh off of his Mexican vacation) is having a press conference to discuss it. It seems to me that if Perrilloux was no longer with the team, Miles would have cut his vacation short, but maybe that's just thinking too hard. Stay tuned.

Big Win for Butch Pierre

2008-02-14T06:37:00.002-06:00

Congratulations to the Tiger basketball team and to Butch Pierre for the biggest win of the season last night. Granted, Florida is not a national power this year, but they're still a good team, likely headed to the NCAA tournament, and we beat them in their own house by a convincing 85-73 score. Only 6 players scored points, but 5 were in double figures, with 3 getting 19 points or more.

This is a team that isn't going anywhere unless it wins the NCAA tournament, but a lot of people think we're set up to make a run next year with a good recruiting class and the return of Tasmin Mitchell from injury. We'll see. If it's true, whoever comes in to coach this group is inheriting a pretty solid roster.

And yes, we should give Brady credit for that. I called for Brady's firing, but I don't think he's a terrible coach. He had some measure of success, and he leaves the program much stronger than he found it. He just did not have the consistent success we're looking for a college basketball program. For every year he made the NCAA tournament, there was a year he didn't make any post-season tournament. For every great player, there was a recruiting mistake (Voogd) or a disgruntled player leaving the team early. Alright, there was more than one disgruntled player leaving the team early for every great player, but it's just an expression.

I wish Brady luck in life. I hope he finds another job. He was pretty good in Samford, and maybe he can go back to that level. I don't think he's going to get a major college program again, though.

In the meantime, Butch Pierre has gotten the team to play inspired basketball, losing to Tennessee by only two and beating Florida on the road. I don't know if he will get a chance to coach LSU next year, but he still has a future as a major college assistant coach if he wants one. Next we see if he can do it again against Kentucky.

Kentucky gets Commodored

2008-02-13T05:58:00.002-06:00

For those of you who are relatively new to this blog, let me inform you that my wife is a fan of Kentucky basketball. She's also a fan of Bama football. No, I've never understood the Kentucky thing. She's from Alabama, so she gets a pass on the Bama football thing.

We Tivo every Kentucky basketball game, mainly so that she knows when it comes on and can watch it. Kentucky started the season pretty roughly, but they have been surging lately, winning 5 straight games, some of them against very good teams. Last night was a hotly anticipated contest with Vandy, a good dynamic team.

It was ugly. I turned it off and went to bed with just under 10:00 left in the game, after Vandy took out all of its starters. Vandy was winning by about 40 at the time. The game ended 93-52. I'm here to tell you it could have been worse. Kentucky had 11 points at halftime, and was losing by 30. The opening minutes of the second half were no better, as Vandy quickly built its lead to 40, and just cruised that point on.

I think Vandy could possibly be criticized for not calling off the dogs early, but until they built up the lead to 40, I could do nothing but think of how that Kentucky team came back from 31 down against LSU about ten years ago. I know this year's team isn't nearly as dynamic on offense as that Kentucky team (which hit 3-pointer after 3-pointer), but I can't blame Vandy for having that on their minds. They finally fully called off the dogs 3/4 of the way into the game.

The good news is that despite the large margin, it only counts as one loss. The bad news is that Kentucky is a bubble team, and the selection committee will be mindful of two embarrassing losses when making their selections: the early season loss to Gardner-Webb and the late-season blowout to Vanderbilt.

Granted, Vandy is a very good team, and they were playing at home. This is definitely not the football Vandy, who is a traditional doormat. The basketball Vandy has a pretty good history of playing quality basketball and has some very good players. There's no shame in losing to Vandy. And while you don't ever want to get beat quite like that, it's not like you can't recover from it and move on.

The NCAA tournament may well be out of reach, unless Kentucky can win the SEC tournament, but the way they were playing before last night, they could very well be a threat to win the tournament. Luckily for us, we get them next. It should be a fun day in the GeauxTuscaloosa household.