Tuesday, November 28, 2006

The Long Absence is Over

Man, it's been a while.

I'm sorry for the long absence, but I've had a lot of things going on in my personal life lately which has brought me away from my writing here.

So, what's been happening? Mainly, basketball. I've washed my hands of the football season.

Let's talk about what Scott Drew has been doing this year. I won't go game by game, but I'll try to do that from now on. For now, I'll just touch on the individual players and the team as a whole.

Aaron Bruce -
Man, this guy was in a sick shooting slump, but he looked like he busted out of that in a big way against Alcorn State, hitting 6 of 9 three pointers and generally looking like his old confident self. Even with the huge shooting slump, Bruce was able to contribute with tougher defense and leads the team in assists. We'll hope his shooting is back to stay, but even when it's not, Bruce is a great asset to have on the floor.

Curtis Jerrells -
This is another guy that hasn't exactly been lighting it up after a very good freshman year, but he was warming up last night scoring 16 points and he also made it a point to feed Bruce, and racked up 6 assists in the game. I am hoping that Jerrells can get back to driving to the hole more, a role that we don't seem to be filling often enough. Jerrells is great around the basket and it'd be nice to see him driving it.

Henry Dugat -
It really looks like he's coming into his own this year. Averaging 16 points per game, Dugat has kept the team alive with his scoring, especially in the Colorado State game. This guy is such a fantastic athlete that when it truly all comes together, he's going to be even better, but I think we are starting to see what Dugat is capable of, and that's quite a bit.

Demond "Tweety" Carter -
I have to admit that I am a bit surprised with how well Tweety has been playing. He's shown himself to be more of a pure point guard than I thought we would see this early in the year. I didn't think there was any way he'd have enough playing time to earn Baylor a third straight Freshman All-American honor, but with the way he's playing, I might be wrong. I don't know if he'll have the scoring opportunities to make All-American, but he's already had a good impact on the team and I think there's more to come from this young player.

Kevin Rogers -
The third leading scorer on the team, Rogers has shown flashes of being very good, but has also shown the tendency to disappear for stretches. He's averaging 12 points per game and 6.8 rebounds per game, but he has a lot more in him. If he was a little more active around the basket, he'd be able to get a few more put back baskets and a few more offensive rebounds. Rogers is shooting a very, very good percentage on his shots at nearly 62% of his field goals. I hope that we see the guards getting Rogers the ball and Rogers doing more with it when he gets it as we finish out this relatively easy streak of the non-conference leading up to the South Carolina game. Rogers has the potential to have a HUGE impact on the end result of this season.

Tim Bush -
Tim has shown true senior leadership. A guy that many, including myself, had relegated to very few minutes and little impact has shown that he is going to do what it takes to help this team win. He's battling down low for rebounds and baskets, he's hitting over 63% of his 3-pointers, and averaging 8.8 points per game. A true "glue" guy, Bush's willingness to come off the bench and play hard, I think we can look to this guy to help us win games, maybe more than we thought.

Mamadou Diene -
Diene is having a pretty standard year for him: 5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.0 blocks per game. He's still recovering from a badly sprained ankle, and I think we'll see all of those numbers increase, but he's still doing a good job of staying active and doing his best to work hard. He's averaging only 22 minutes, which I think is a good amount for him, and as he more fully recovers from his injury, I think we'll see him playing a few more minutes and being a lot more productive.

Josh Lomers -
What a solid player for a true freshman. Averaging 7 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game, Lomers is proving to be a very good substitute for Diene as he brings a little bit more offense and a more thorough knowledge of the game of basketball. He's still got to improve his endurance (he's got asthma), he's got to improve his strength even more, but this kid is going to be very good in a year or two. He's not the athlete that Dou is (there are very few 7 footers that are), but his understanding of the game is evident and helps him a great deal.

Injuries -
Pat Fields and Penny Thiam have both suffered injuries. Thiam is done for the year with a torn ACL, but showed a great deal of athleticism and a great need for some added strength. The redshirt year should help him a lot in being able to make a difference and contribute. Fields should be back soon and he's going to add a new dimension to the team. Fields is the best at driving the ball to the hoop and drawing contact/fouls. And he does a good job of converting those fouls into points. Getting Fields back will do nothing but make this team better. I can't wait to get him back.

Overall -
We are better than I thought we would be based on one main thing: Bruce and Jerrells hadn't really shown up until last night, but we were 3-1 and played a good Gonzaga team on the road in Spokane very competitively. With Bruce and Jerrells looking like they are getting back to form, I think the team has the chance to take off.

There are plenty of areas we need to improve in. Interior offense HAS to get better. Diene and Lomers have combined for 12 points per game, and that needs to be at LEAST 15+ for this team to seriously think about postseason play. I'd like to see it north of 18 points per game, unless Rogers is going to pick up some of that slack by averaging around 14-16 points per game.

We also need to improve our defense. It hasn't been awful, but it could be a lot better. I'm not sure if it's the young players not playing with a lot of confidence, but whatever it is, we need to firm it up and get the right mindset.

All in all, I think we are looking at a NIT team, with an outside chance of the NCAA, and a decent chance that the team stays home, barring improvement. If I had to put money on it, I'd say we finished in the NIT, but it'll be easier to say as we get into conference play.

Baylor plays Grambling tomorrow night. Be sure to tune in and check out a game that should be an easy win for the Bears.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Defense! Defense! Defense Hold That Line!

The title is to show how queer Baylor can be and how far we must come to be taken seriously in the college football world. Speaking of defense, let's talk about what we saw this season and peek at what we might see in 2007.

D-Line
Well, let's just say that we're lucky that no offense employed the "wet paper bag" blocking scheme or else we never would have gotten any pass rush or sacks this season. In short, we are small and slow on the line. Our tackles got blown off the ball and our ends were never around the quarterback. On the bright side, Lamb got to play alot and McDonald will be back next season. I think his injury on his first play caused us to go deeper into our "talent" pool than we would have liked. Not that him being in there would have made a huge difference but I think we'd be better to have him out there. We are in desperate need of either a freshman DT that can play right away or a JUCO to come in. We actually need a couple of them.

Linebackers
An unexpected bright spot. Moore, Jones, and JoPaw showed up much more than I thought they would coming into the season. They were hampered somewhat by not having a decent line in front of them but the tackle numbers speak for themselves. My only gripe is that we are slow at this position. Opposing running backs made the corner too many times in my opinion. Quarterbacks were also able to step up in the pocket and run for the first down and then slide just before the linebackers were able to close.

Secondary
Huge dissapointment. I know, I know, not getting pressure on the QB makes the secondary's job difficult. I totally agree. However, I don't even want to think about how many times a quarterback dropped back and hit his first read (before even a reasonable pass rush would have bothered him) for a first down. My favorite was on 3rd and 5 and our corners line up 9 yards off the ball. The recievers run to the line, make the catch, first down. There was also some players who wanted people to believe that they were solid and could play with the best. They were shown to have been out of their league. They didn't tackle well, virtually no interceptions after conference play started, and got gouged against any competent pass schemes.

Overall
The defense either underperformed or expectations were way too high for this group. Many starters were lost from 2005 and I believe those starter's leadership was missed more than the talent. I partially covered the pass rush problem already but to be honest, we've never really had a good line. In the recent pass, we've been at least somewhat effective with the blitz. I don't recall ever really bringing people this season. With as many new starting QB's our opponets lined up this year I would have thought that we would have gone after them more. Maybe we did but never got there. This contributes to my theory that we are very short on speed in this defense. The whole point of running a 4-2-5 is to get more speed on the field and it doesn't look like we have it. I'm not familar with who was redshirted this year and who's coming in next season but we absolutely MUST get bigger up front and faster on the outside or else it will be more of the same next season.

Monday, November 20, 2006

About Baylorfans

I was in Waco on Saturday to asses the damage from what I was led to believe was a nuclear device going off at Floyd Casey Stadium. It must have been North Korean because it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. What I saw was a team starting a Redshirt QB making his 3rd start get beat by the #16 team in the country. This is going to be pretty random but I'm going to discuss some different areas and positions on the team this year and going forward.

Quarterback
No one could stand Bell less than me. Like I mentioned in my last post, he did improve greatly over the course of the season. As bad as Syzmanski did the past 3 games (and it was awful), this is an offense that our record breaking 5th year senior didn't look competent in until the 5th game. Blake wasn't going to look like Joe Montana in his 5th game but I suspect he would start to improve with more time. I've heard that Beatty is looking good and we've already permanent ink penned GJ Kinne to the savior, err quarterback next season. Assuming GJ starts, one thing we have next year that we didn't have this year is a quarterback that has played in the system against good teams. Many Baylorfans have criticized the overall recruiting but the lack of someone who could take snaps coming off the bench and not lose the game absolutely killed our season.

Running Backs
Did we have running backs this year? The offense switch was an absolute disaster for Paul Mosley. For whatever reason, his number was called on plays that had the running back taking the ball standing still on a draw or moving east-west. I would bet that on plays where Paul got the ball with some momentum between the tackles or even some counter plays he averaged 2 yards better. Brandon Whitaker was a real disapointment this year. This offense should have made him a star. He looked very slow and showed no elusive abiltiy. The best running back I saw was Jacoby Jones. To be fair it was very limited action but he showed the ability to catch the ball out of the backfield and actually make someone miss before getting up the field.

Receivers
To be fair, it's almost impossible to judge this years group because of the offense change. After we run this system for another couple of years we'll see how this current group really stacks compared to future teams running this offense. Early in the season our receivers had an epedimic of the drops. This probably cost us either the WSU or the Army game. The beauty of this offense is that great route runners and guys who can make reads excell more than just the best athletes. Running routes was also a problem if you read any coaches conference call transcripts. The loss of Parks, who created a matchup problem for everyone we played, really hurt. He was always there with a first down catch in the middle. I think the talent level goes down with the loss of Shelton and Zeigler but I think the overall group gets better because of improved routes and read recognition next season.

Oline
A mixed bag, but for the most part not very good. To be fair once again, we had two guys starting who were a tight end and a defensive tackle last year and our center was playing on a broken foot for most of the season. The false starts that killed drives the first four games were limited somewhat the rest of the season. Run blocking needs to be a priorty this offseason. Lack of dephth was incredibly evident throughout the season. If the current recruits are as advertised (I'm no expert nor pretend to be), I would guess that one or possibly two of them either crack the starting lineup or are in the rotation. At this point I think even having a rotation will show that we have more depth than last year at this position.

I'll talk about the Defense next time I get a chance. Remember, the schedule is much more condusive to our goals next year and in a new system, the biggest production jump is usually the second year.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Real Baylor Team Just Stood Up

As JudgeChamber mentioned before, I was on my honeymoon last week. In an attempt to update my fantasy team and watch a little football on Saturday, I purchased for a hefty fee, a massage for my wife. Kauai, I guess, is in the Pac-10 market so I was stuck watching that conference's games and I saw the Baylor score on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. 42 point loss? At the airport the next day, I called my Dad and he said it wasn't even that close.

After reading all the accounts I can only conclude one thing: This team has no leadership and has no heart. If you recall, I questioned the existince of a backbone as well earlier this season. The Bears had fooled me into thinking they had one for a while. What happens on Saturday may show if the team has another vital organ (male).

Over the course of the season, what started as inconsistency has turned into very consistent: playing without heart, intensity, and smarts. I lay most of this at the feet of the seniors. They talked a good game about how things were different and how they would be the ones that took Baylor to a bowl. Well, if they believed themselves half of what they were saying then Saturday wouldn't have happened. We may have still lost but we would have been in the game. If they believed half of what they said we win 2 out of 3 with TCU, WSU, Army and are now fighting for a better bowl. I said weeks ago that the Army game especially would bite us. Nothing to play for with one game to go, just like last year.

If you're that good, stop WSU on the last drive. If you're that good, don't let Army of all teams push you around. If you're that good, show up to a must win game in conference play. Some people blame the coaching. They are partially to blame but the guys should have showed up just because of what the game meant, not because of how they were prepared during the week. Mickey Mouse could have been coaching all week and the guys should have played better despite him.

Morriss' main flaw in this game happend before the season started. I was never a Shawn Bell fan (although I will give him credit for getting better each week this season) but we had nobody we could really count on if he went down (which he obviously did). A JUCO should have been brought in for an insurance policy this season.


The world has ended on Baylorfans even though technically this is the best we've ever done in Big 12 conference play. To bring everyone back to earth let's review some good things that have happened even in the last month. 1) Playing a meaningful game in November. We did last year as well. If you remember, it took 2 years to make the jump from 3 wins to 5 wins. Hopefully this is our last year at this plateau (winning some games, losing close ones). 2) We will have a known quantity at QB next season. Not saying Sysmanski will be the starter, but at least we now have an idea of what he's capable of. I would also expect him to be light years better just from being in the system another spring and having actual game experience. So even if the latest OLAS, Kinne, is the starter, we have someone who won't freak out about having to go in.

On top of this, it is my understanding that our current group of recruits is the best Baylor has had in many years. I hope they are good enough to start as freshmen or at least contribute heavily. We need guys playing who know how to win, haven't been infected with losing at Baylor and won't know they are supposed to lose.

Finally, I hope I'm wrong about the guys I've just ripped but that's just how I see it. I hope to anything they find a way to win on Saturday (assuming Morriss even plays the upperclassmen). If they do win, it would fulfil a a theory I've had about this team. They only play well when there's no pressure. They sure did it last year in the final game. This group of seniors has played with and beaten a good caliber team who was playing well at the time) 3 times (CU, ISU, TAMU). Everyone else they've beaten was either sorry, Division II, or really down. Even the great comeback to KU was mired a little by the way the Jayhawks had made a habbit of giving up leads. We only played better when the game was seemingly lost. When we started coming back, KU folded for us. When was the last time we played a bowl caliber team back and forth and won or beat them outright? Most of our conference wins have been a case of the other teams collapsing.

I don't want to set Saturday up that if they lose then I'm right about having no heart, if they win I'm right about them playing well when there's no pressure. I'm not hedging my bet and you won't see me giving you an "I told you so" next week. I'll just look at the season as a whole and tell it like I saw it. Until then, see you Saturday.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Monday, November 06, 2006

TheDixieFitz

TDF will be out this week as he got married on Saturday. Congratulations to him, as he married FAR, FAR, FAR above his head. And I'm not joking in the least. FAR. FAR FAR FAR.

Basketball season is five days away and I haven't finished my non-conference preview. I'll have to get cracking, so get ready for a run of updates the likes of which have never been seen.

It's been a long 10 days

Well, in the last 10 days, a lot of air has been sucked out of the Baylor football program.

Lost a close game to A&M, lost Shawn Bell for the year, threw Blake into the fire, lost a blow out game to Texas Tech.

Tough 10 days.

I am still getting over a bad case of the flu, so I really don't have the strength to get into the heavy details of the games, but the bottom line is that we played well enough to win the A&M game, aside from three or four key plays that we literally let fall through our fingers. Blake played very well in the Tech game, especially considering it was his first real action, but the game as a whole was pretty pathetic.

Defense, now YOU owe the OFFENSE an apology.

We've got two games left this year, and the next one against OSU we're already 16 point dogs. I think that might be a little much, but we certainly haven't earned any respect in the last 4 games, especially on defense.

Maybe the football team is ready for basketball season? Another game like the one we had against Tech and I know I will be.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Sorry for the delay

I got back in country on Monday and on the way back it seems I picked up the flu. I'll do my best to get some stuff up this week.