Wow, and Happy Birthday to me. :D

23 minutes into my birthday and I couldn't ask for a better gift.

Ok, I said earlier that the jury was out until Grady faced some competition and put on some muscle. I was very wrong. I'd still like to see him with another 20 pounds of muscle on him, but his late game heroics were amazing.

Fun fact, Norm Roberts is currently the only undefeated coach in KU history. Hoping he wins the next one and he can hold that spot in history.

Loving this team. Of the starters here's what we're working with:

Harris: Great distributor of the ball.
Adams: Maybe the best all around athelete on the team. Undersized for a post guy, but makes up for it with brute strength.
Wilson: The "star". Has demonstrated that he can pu the team on his back when necessary.
Dick: Our "Braun" to last year's "Agbaji". Wilson is the veteran superstar, but Dick brings a virtually equivalent threat. Go ahead and double team Wilson....we'll just burn you with Grady.
McCullar: Holy cow, what a get he is. Highly skilled, highy experienced. Mitch might be collecting social security, but it's great to have a "new" old guy who just doesn't seem to make any mistakes.

Fun win. Anytime Duke loses, the sun shines a little brighter and the flowers small a little sweeter. When KU beat Duke, the sun smells sweeter and the flowers sing happy little songs to you. Doing it on my b-day? Not sure how much better it can get.

Well said, NotO!!!

Happy Birthday!!!

NotOstertag wrote: Fun fact, Norm Roberts is currently the only undefeated coach in KU history. Hoping he wins the next one and he can hold that spot in history.

Except that Norm Roberts is not getting credit for the wins, neither is Self. They are "Team" wins. Not sure why KU made that decision but...

Another Valentine's baby. I'm this Friday

--RC

I'm still crediting Norm with these wins. And Self. Not an either/or for me, lol.

Happy to share the bday gift with you HE and Bayhawk. Funny, it took me until sometime in my 20's to figure out that Valentine's Day is 9 months ago. Mystery solved.

A few random thoughts. I would not have expected a win if Wilson goes 0 for 7 on 3pt shots. I agree that this team is pretty fun and works very hard on defense. I like to credit the Hawks better shooting % in this game, 46.3% to 35.8%, to the better assist numbers 21 to 8. I feel that is because the Hawks play better team ball and are not trying to, 1 on 1, just beat your defender. In the end this game does not mean a whole lot but it is always nice to win.

I am happy to add my rebuttal. I only meant that this game does not change our chances of winning the conference and very little affect on our seeding in March. I would also say it will have little impact on the result if we play Duke late in the year. I think Duke had 3 and 4 freshman on the floor a lot that game and they are supposed to get another star freshman back from injury so they may have more growth potential. I say may because I like the Hawks style of play better and as we get better I think there is a lot of upside to this team. I am not disagreeing that anytime you win against a top program it is not a reason to celebrate. I was just saying it is still very early in a long season and one early season game is not going to make or break the season IMO.

I agree with your points. On the youngster subject I was just pointing out that the % of minutes played by freshman on the Duke team was higher than the KU team. I have no way of gauging what the growth potential is so who knows. I do think our freshman all have a chance to be really good.

On KU's four freshman. The growth of the bigs has already been amazing especially on rebounding and blocks. GD needs no further comment. MJ, hard to say after just one game but I really liked what I saw. We might, by the end of this season, be comparing this freshman class to some of the best ever. They have already raise the bar on my expectations.

Jalen and Djaun may be two of our best leaders ever, especially as a team.

The Thanksgiving week games, three games in three days against really excellent teams in a small hot gym, will tell us more about the team than the Duke game.