Wednesday Reflections

* Originally, I had anticipated boycotting the ACC/Big 10 Challenge because of Wake Forest's exclusion. Then I realized that such an embargo, while noble and constructively petty, would only hurt me, Joe Q. College Basketball Fan. So, I watched. But you better believe I was bitching plenty, whoo boy!
Winning in Champaign is always a difficult endeavor, particularly with a handful of freshman, but Maryland was able to snap the Illini's 51-game non-conference home win streak last night. (Non-conference home win streaks make nice copy, but they're sort of like a person with the word "global" in their job title: More often that not, both things sound a lot more impressive than they really are.)
While it appears the Terps will be a factor in the ACC, there are still some major concerns for Gary Williams, the biggest of which is his team's weakness on the boards. It's also never good when your team shoots 50% and holds the opponent to 35%, yet the game is still in doubt in the final minute.
It's not even Decemeber yet, so Gary still has time to work on the kinks. Plus, he has to be thrilled with the performances of freshmen Bambale Osby and Greivis Vazquez.
The Dukies escaped last night with a win over a very mediocre Indiana team while proving, definitively, that they too will be a very mediocre team this season. (Duke had the fewest points in a victory since 1982 - Coach K's first season.)
Greg Paulus, who was benched in favor of freshman Gerald Henderson, actually fouled out of this game after refs called him for his patented "left-arm clear out" on two separate occasions, but the shock of having a Duke PG actually get disqualified for cheating was tempered by the fact that the Blue Devils made five more free-throws than Indiana attempted. Ahh, the comforts of college basketball season.
Paulus finished the game with five points and more turnovers than assists, but that didn't stop Dick Vitale from proclaiming his DQ as a "tremendous momentum-shift in this game, baby!" He went on to say that Paulus brings so much more to the floor than just statistics (a confused look, mainly) and his absence could cripple Duke. Yes, Dick, it could... From inverse assist-to-turnover ratios.
In other news, Josh McRoberts is still mind-numbingly ordinary. He has a good three inches on D.J. White yet couldn't move inside on him without a shoulder-dip. White played just as bad on the offensive end though, so much so that it's amazing Indiana had a chance to tie at the end of the game.
After a McRoberts inbound pass was stolen with 9.3 seconds left the Hoosiers had a chance to tie with a three. With no timeouts remaining, Errek Suhr got the ball in the corner and had a decent look from beyond the arc, yet inexplicably drove in the lane, realized he needed a three, dribbled back outside and dished the ball as time expired. The Hoosiers failed ot get off a final shot.
Blame the player all you want for the decision to drive baseline when his team needed a three, but there's only one person responsible for Indiana's stunning lack of late-game poise: Their coach, Kelvin Sampson.
Back when the Hoosiers hired Sampson, I wrote a lengthy diatribe about how the school's basketball program was now screwed because they had hired an imbecile. Normally, I'd just link to said rant, but since its so apropos today, here's the whole thing:

Next season will be the 20th year since Indiana’s last national basketball championship. It’s going to be about 20 more before they get another because, after the hiring of Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson, the Hoosiers have purchased a first-class ticket to mediocrity.
How on earth did Indiana decide on a tired, no-talent clown like Sampson when the coaching ranks are filled with either guys on-the-rise (Bruce Pearl, Jim Larranaga), major-conference stalwarts (John Beilein, Tom Crean) or former Dukies with wonderful hair (Quin Snyder)? Hiring Sampson after Mike Davis is like trading in a Geo Prism for a Hyundai Elantra.
Sampson has no upside. He has no potential. He’s climbed his own Everest (reaching a Final Four in 2002) and then fell-off it (one Tourney win in the past three seasons). Sampson has no redeeming qualities at all. He’s not young, he’s not talented, he’s not good and he’s already maxed-out his talent level. What the hell were they thinking?
Sampson’s eternal crappiness is made even more remarkable by the fact that he’s a pedestrian coach who can’t win even though he’s a dirty cheat. Sampson bolted OU with the program under investigation for alleged offenses that occurred under his watch. That Oklahoma can’t even have success while cheating says more about Sampson than any criticism I can come up with. I mean, say what you want about Jim Calhoun, but at least the man gets results from his blatant disregard for the rules.
Why would IU hire a coach whose ceiling is waist-high? Did they really want to distance themselves from Bobby Knight that much? It’s almost like this was an F-U to the legions who still expect The General to walk through the doors. "You want to force out Mike Davis? Well here's Mike Davis in 15 years!"
I also can’t help but think that the Sampson hiring came, at least in part, because of fear of the backlash that would come from hiring a white coach after canning a black coach who did a decent job (a la Notre Dame football). Of course, just because Scoop Jackson gets upset about the Irish’s Willingham-fiasco doesn’t mean everybody agrees with him. Scoop thinks black holes demonstrate how racist the astronomy community is.
But if that was the case, surely there were better black coaches who have never played under, coached for, or heard of Bobby Knight.
ESPN.com’s Jason Whitlock wrote a nonsensical column about why the Sampson hiring was great for Indiana. Almost every paragraph contained a “you get paid to write?!” moment. Some examples:

Whitlock: Sampson is as good as it gets. The winningest coach in the history of the Big 12 conference won 20 games nine straight years, advanced to the Elite Eight twice and one Final Four despite coaching just one NBA player.
Chase: The Big 12 began in 1995, doofus. Sampson is the winningest coach because he’s the only coach in the league who’s been there that long. Roy Williams left two years ago, Rick Barnes got there seven years ago, Eddie Sutton is a drunk and Baylor’s coach took part in a murder cover-up. If that’s the best compliment you can give Sampson, that’s a problem.
As for the making a Final Four: So did Mike Davis! And he actually won a game, unlike Sampson. The “coaching just one NBA player” thing is just as ridiculous. Coach K has coached zero NBA players and has three national titles!

Whitlock: Under Sampson, the Sooners always overachieved in conference play by giving a superior, more consistent effort than their opponents. OU's NCAA flameouts were somewhat predictable. Sampson never really had the horses, and his teams were generally worn out in March because they'd played harder for longer than just about every team in the country.
Chase: Maybe the Sooners wouldn’t be so tired if Sampson would give his players some rest. And who says they overachieved in conference play? Oklahoma only has one Big 12 regular season win and zero Tournament titles. If that’s overachieving I (and Indiana) shudder to think of what regular, old achieving will be like.
I love the “OU’s NCAA flameouts were somewhat predictable,” line too. Of course they were. Their coach is Kelvin Freakin’ Sampson!

Whitlock: Give Sampson a lottery pick -- let alone the all-star squad Williams had at UNC -- and he'll have no trouble winning in March.
Chase: Give him a lottery pick? What, this is a charity Whitlock is running? And what about Hollis Price and Kevin Bookout? Those guys were great JUCO and high-school players, respectively. Sampson also had a McDonald’s All-American signed up for this year. (Maybe he got all those phone calls.) Sampson couldn’t win the WNBA title if he had the Spurs and LeBron. Giving him Marvin Williams would just have cost Marvin Williams a few million on draft night.

Whitlock: Translation: Kelvin Sampson is best appreciated up close. You can't fully appreciate him from a distance.
Chase: So he’s sort of like Van Gogh in that way, I suppose. Well, I’d cut my ear off too if I had to “appreciate” Kelvin Sampson from up close.

Unlike Whitlock, I have some stats at my disposal to prove my point. Below is OU’s Tournament history since Sampson arrived:

2006 - #6 lost 1st round #11 Wisconsin-Milwaukee
2005 - #3 lost 2nd round to #6 Utah
2004 – No Tournament
2003 – #1 lost Elite Eight to #3 Syracuse
2002 – #2 lost Final Four to #5 Indiana
2001 - #4 lost 1st round to #13 Indiana State
2000 - #3 lost 2nd round to #6 Purdue
1999 - #13 lost Elite Eight
1998 - #10 lost 1st round to #7 Indiana in first round
1997 - #11 lost 1st round to #6 Stanford
1996 - #10 lost 1st round to #7 Temple
1995 - #4 lost 1st round to #13 Manhattan

That’s six straight Tournaments where Sampson has lost to lower-seeded teams. Hmm, Whitlock was right. I did need to get closer up before I could fully appreciate Kelvin!
The ’02 Final Four was an aberration (much like Lute Olsen’s National Championship), but can be explained by the easy-road OU took to get there. They beat a #15, #7, #4 and #12 seed to reach Atlanta. Not exactly George Mason-esque.
The following year, OU got to the Elite Eight as a #1 seed, but that road was even smoother, as they had to beat #16, #8 and #12, before losing to the first equally-matched team they saw.
Sampson supporters will point to 1999 when the Sooners made a surprising run to the Elite Eight as a #13 seed. (First thing, it's never good when supporters can point to one of ten seasons, but I digress.) Sampson rippers will say the Sooners underachieved all season (hear that Jason Whitlock?) and should have been a #5 seed in the Tournament if not for a terrible run in conference play. Anytime a major-conference team with a low-seed makes a run in the Tournament (see: Missouri), it’s usually because they finally play up to their abilities in March after a wasteful season.
At the beginning of his ode to Kelvin, Whitlock ran a quote from former Hoosier star Ted Kitchel: "[Hiring Sampson] is an absolute disgrace. I wouldn't hire that guy to coach my fifth-grade girls team. That guy is absolutely what we don't want at IU."
Kitchel was, of course, incorrect. I’d hire Sampson to coach a fifth-grade girls team any day. As long “any day” refers to a day when said fifth-grade girls team was playing a group of blind, wheelchair-riding nuns. But even then, I’d have to think about it.

Reading it again, I was probably a little out of line at points. Firstly, there's no way I'd think about ever hiring Sampson to coach a fifth-grade girls team against a bunch of blind, wheelchair-riding nuns. That's it. There is no secondly.
Sampson proved why he's the worst basketball coach in Division I last night with his appalling use of timeouts and his team's complete confusion in the game's final seconds. I know Sampson wasn't dribbling the ball down the baseline so it's technically not his fault that his player passed up the three, but look at it this way: Would a Mike Krzyzewski-coached team ever make such an inexcusable mistake late in a game?
Red Auerbach always used to say that a coach's work is done at practice, not in games. Sampson should have prepared his team for that very scenario every day in practice. But he didn't. Because he's an idiot. And a terrible coach.
Anytime Skip Prosser infuriates me this season, I'm going to get down on my knees and remind myself that it could be a lot worse, Kelvin Sampson could be Wake Forest's coach.
(Much (and by much, I mean very little) has been made of what makes me hate Kelvin Sampson so much. The Wolfman inquired this as I was ranting about it on the phone last night. After calming myself down, I responded that I don't like coaches who are schmucks. Jim Calhoun was an example I used. But at least I can respect Calhoun, the coach. Calhoun, the person? Huge schmuck. At least he can coach though. Sampson can't, yet gets showered with praise more than Tiki Barber, despite his total lack of all coaching accumen. I don't understand it. And it makes me mad. And that's all I have to say about that.

* The Redskins signed kicker Shaun Suisham yesterday to contend with the struggling Nick Novak. I've been advocating Novak's ousting since his first week on the job, but didn't really envision it coming from Shaun Suisham. (It should be noted that no decision has been made as to who will kick Sunday.) It's impossible to have any opinion of Suisham because all I know of him is what I read in today's Washington Post. If he proves himself to be better than Novak, he should start (particularly if he is stronger than Novak on kick-offs, which isn't saying much. Nor is saying he's better at field goals, but I suppose it's possible he could be worse. Slightly possible.)
I hate dumping on Novak because he's a Maryland guy, but he's really been awful. The Redskins were put in a terrible position after the win over Dallas because he ended up making the game-winner, but they should have swung the axe anyways, bad PR and all. Novak's miss from 37 yards last Sunday could have cost the 'Skins the game.
There was a lot of talk about signing Mike Vanderjagt this week, but I'm glad Joe Gibbs held off. Vanderjagt's damaged goods now; he's a Canadian, earringed version of Brad Lidge. For some reason kickers and relievers go off the deep-end more than any other people in sports (members of the Portland Trail Blazers, excluded.) I know those are high-profile, high-pressure gigs, but come on, guys. Man up a bit. You make millions to kick a ball through some yellow poles. It can't be that hard. Hell, I'm sure Kelvin Sampson could do it just fine.