The Wisconsin Sports Rant

Bucks blow a 17 point lead and lose to the Knicks

Overrated Marquette loses to Notre Dame

And the Badgers lose to Purdue…AT HOME

This, my friends, is not how I would have hoped Saturday would turn out. The first two items are definitely annoying, but not shocking. The third is. The Badgers have now been swept by a team that has proven to be underrated; yet this should still not have happened. The seasoned, veteran team that Wisconsin is should not be giving up 72 points on their home court. That is not Wisconsin basketball. The irony of my conversation with one of my friends before the game was thick. We talked about how this is a great “team” because they don’t have a single superstar, and they really don’t lose unless multiple guys have bad nights. What is even more disturbing than losing at home is losing a game that meant first place in the Big Ten. Now Wisconsin drops to into third, and has two losses on the record to the team in first. A date in Bloomington looms this week as well, so we may be looking at a 2 game losing streak. All I can say is this was a very disappointing evening.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Time has been scarce to work on the blog lately. Still, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been basking in the amazing season Brett Favre and the Packers are having right now. It is very exciting to see the 38 year old Hall of Fame QB perform like an MVP. It will be hard to beat out Tom Brady with the numbers he is putting up, but honestly, is there a player that is more valuable to his team right now? I am not suggesting that Brady is not valuable, or Peyton Manning for that matter. Still, Favre is the reason for all but one of the Packers’ wins this season, and that is the true measure of an MVP. The Pats and Colts very well could have 5 or 6 wins without their star QBs. That being said, I don’t really care to debate the issue anyway. The bottom line is the winning is such a pleasure to watch, that any accolades for the players really don’t matter. The time left in Favre’s career is an unknown, and though he is playing some amazing football right now, it is still unreasonable to expect that he will have that many more chances to win another Super Bowl ring. The last best chance was blown in 2003, but with a weak NFC, and a team that has made major mistakes and still has managed to accumulate 6 wins against 1 loss, this year presents as good an opportunity as any. All you have to do is make it there, and if you are peaking at the right time…who knows how far they can go. I just love that the Packers are relevant again!

Moving on to quick topics:

• The Badger football team really proved they were terribly overrated earlier this year. They can really get back to a respectable team by knocking off the Buckeyes this weekend, but if I were a betting man I would wager heavily against that possibility.
• The Bucks opened the season tonight in Orlando. Does anyone really care? I have been such a huge Bucks fan in the past, but I just have a very hard time getting excited about this team, Yi or otherwise. Besides, tonight, it was a tie game in the third quarter when I stepped away to take care of a few things. When I returned just before the end of the period, the Bucks deficit had ballooned to 23 points. Nice.
• I wanted to post this when the regular season ended, but does anyone else find it interesting that of the 4 expansion teams to enter the league since the Brewers last winning season, 3 of them have reached the World Series, and 2 of them have actually won the whole thing (the Marlins even did it twice). Also, most teams wore pullovers and elastic-waist pants the last time the Brewers played in the post season. Ouch.

Hopefully I will be able to return to a regular posting schedule shortly. With NCAA basketball right around the corner, I will have to anyway.

Wow! I will be the first to admit, I NEVER thought Yi Jianlian would play for the Milwaukee Bucks. Sometimes being wrong is not that bad! So now we have a front court that has an Asia/Pacific flair, and hopefully, a tough mentality. There is definitely youth, and hopefully as much talent as has been hyped. Still, it is hard to get excited about this team. They have one of the most prolific scorers in the league (Redd) to go along with these guys, but it is hard to see the improvements as being enough to lift a team with the 3rd worst record in the league to a playoff-level. I will, however, give Larry Harris his due credit for getting this deal done, even if it was really Senator Kohl who made it happen. Harris has taken his fair share of abuse for the pick as well as some of questionable moves, but for today, at least, he has the last laugh.

Can you believe it? Just when you thought the Bucks were incapable of making a bad selection due to a very deep draft, they made a terrible selection! The one guy who has absolutely no desire to be in Milwaukee, and we pick him! He doesn’t even have to play in the NBA, and very well may not until the Bucks trade or release his rights! Rashard Griffith preferred to play overseas than for the Bucks, so it’s not like this is new to us. The question is, was this another Larry Harris debacle, or did the Senator sign off on it? It seems like Larry has spent the last few years secretly getting back at the Bucks for firing his father in 1992. I can’t think of any reason why he should remain the GM.

So, without further ado, let’s throw out some headlines we could potentially see in the Journal-Sentinel over the next few months:

• Peking Bust!
• Bucks Digging Hole to China
• Bucks Continue Losing Streak Without Playing
• Bucks Poo Poo on Draft Platter

and my personal favorite:

• Larry Harris Fired

Two posts in under 12 hours. Am I abusing my substitution role? Possibly. Don’t worry, Ranter. It’s not like you’re going to be tending to daddy duties and then all of a sudden find yourself wearing number 16 on the Kansas City Chiefs. But i read with great interest Bill Simmons’ draft advice for the upcoming NBA draft. He had some high marks for the Bucks saying they’re the Eastern Conference team that could make a quantum leap next season. He went on to suggest drafting Brendan Wright from North Carolina, sign Mo Williams, and shop Bogut and a 2008 #1 for Pao Gasol.

I find the recommendation interesting but i’m not ready to give up on Bogut yet. I’d much rather shift him back to the 4 spot and clog the lane with Wright or Al Horford (if the Hawks, Grizz and Celts make the mistake of passing on him). One would think that Bogut, Villanueva, and Wright/Horford would be a pretty formidable front court.

What i’m not in favor of is drafting Conley, Jr. I think the need is definitely up front. Even if we can’t resign Mo Williams, Charlie Bell could step up. Corey Brewer is great but we don’t need a swingman. I also don’t like Joakim Noah purely because he scares children. And it looks like Yi doesn’t want to give the Bucks the time of day. There are good options at 6 for a team that needs help at every spot except Redd’s. But allowing 104 ppg means too many easy buckets. The Bucks need to shore up the front line on draft day.

As if it should come as some big surprise, the Bucks dismissed Terry Stotts Wednesday, as well they should have. Look…no one likes to see a stand up guy lose his job. But in the NBA, it’s winning that matters, and not much else. The Bucks simply haven’t done enough of that this year. Like I mentioned in my previous Bucks post, injuries can only shoulder so much of the blame. Losing close games over and over, having your big draft pick start to look somewhat “busty”, and a complete disdain for defense were just some of the contributing factors to the move. The sad thing for Stotts is he is unlikely to get another NBA head coaching job for a long time, if ever. He has presided over two massive debacles in the last 10 years. Then again, maybe that’s saying something. As for the team, I believe this year will now only get uglier, if that is possible. The players will most likely start looking forward to the end of the season, by which point the fans will have already switched into Brewers mode. Perhaps the Bucks can channel a little more of that lottery luck that netted them the Australian matador.  However, this time they will have their pick of some real talent. You know, like Kevin Durant, Greg Oden, or anyone on Florida.

My goodness…is it even possible to lose twice in a season when your star player scores 50 or more points?  If you play for the hapless (and hopeless) Milwaukee Bucks, then the answer is yes.  What an amazing way to lose.  Not only did they Bucks blow an 18 point fourth quarter lead, but in doing so, they wasted Michael Redd’s 52 point effort.  Of course, it didn’t help that they let Ben Gordon score 48, some of them completely uncontested.  The Bucks are an unmitigated disaster and as I have posted previously in this blog, Terry Stotts should be fired post-haste.  18 points in the fourth quarter???   How many times are you going to let the coach stand there in press conferences and say that his team played really well…just not quite well enough to finish.  To me that is basically like admitting that you are not doing the job you are being paid handsomely to do.  The bottom line is that the Bucks have had all sorts of excuses as to why they were losing, but when your best player scores 52, you have an 18 point lead in the final period, and you still come out with the ‘L’, there is simply no excuse at all.

Wisconsin took care of business in Minnesota, with Tucker pouring in 29 points on 10-20 shooting. It is frustrating that the talking heads on ESPN and such say that Florida is the only lock for a #1 seed at this point. That suggests that even if they were to slip up against any of their competition before the SEC tournament, they would still gain a #1 aeed. If that is the case, then why isn’t Wisconsin also a lock at this point? The Badgers have only 1 conference loss and 2 overall, the latter being the same as Florida’s overall record. I don’t want to make a huge deal about it, but I still find it frustrating. I think the Badgers could probably lose at Columbus, win the rest, and still hold a #1 seed.

Marquette seems to have reverted to their early Big East schedule form. Consecutive losses at Georgetown and DePaul, while not necessarily true upsets, have severely crippled their chances of winning the Big East regular season title. The losses have also likely dropped them out of the “protected” seeds in the NCAA tournament for now. They will really need to finish strong, perhaps even earning a trip to the conference tournament final to creep back into one of those top seeds. In Wednesday night’s loss to DePaul, Dominic James took another ill-advised shot at the end with way too much time left on the clock. He is clearly pressing at this point and needs to find better ways of trying to get out of his slump. For Marquette to make a run in March, he had better get back on track soon.

Finally, the Milwaukee Bucks did just as I had predicted in my side note from yesterday’s post. They made the wrong kind of history by being the Boston Celtics’ victims in their first win after a franchise-record 18 game losing streak. I also have to say that perhaps dismissing Stotts shouldn’t wait until April. The Bucks have obviously hit rock bottom. Their season is lost. Time to start thinking about those ping pong balls.

If you read Michael Hunt’s column today, you probably agree that Stotts’ days in Milwaukee are numbered. Honestly, take a look at his two head coaching stints: Atlanta and Milwaukee. Granted, Atlanta was a huge mess before he took over, but Milwaukee was not quite that big of a project. We already had Michael Redd, and some other better-than-average players. Then, we got the first pick and took Andrew Bogut. We have added pieces here and there that should have made this a better team. Now I realize that injuries cannot be discounted, but as Hunt also discusses, there is a time when you can’t simply blame it on injuries anymore. The players that are out there need to perform. Bogut has not lived up to the hype (wow…a top draft pick, big white center in Milwaukee not living up to the hype? Where are you Kent Benson?) Now is that the fault of the coach? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it is the responsibility of the coaching staff to develop the players, and this is just one area that Stotts has failed. Looking back at the last four seasons of “Terry” in Milwaukee, does anyone think that the firing of Terry Porter and replacing him with Stotts was a good idea? The team has gone in the wrong direction, and it is time to recognize that. I am not sure a simple coaching change will get this team headed back up. I think some other personnel moves are in order; but that is a topic for another post. The bottom line with any professional sports club is that the coach has ultimate responsibility for winning and losing, and when the latter dominates the team’s record, it usually ends with a dismissal. This case should probably be no different.

Side Note: The Bucks play the Celtics on Wednesday night. The Celts are on an 18 game losing streak. The game is at the new Boston “Garden” or whatever it is called now. Probably a good time to put some cash down on the Celts.

It’s a good fantastic thing that we are witnessing some of the best college basketball ever played in the state of Wisconsin, because it keeps the Milwaukee Bucks from being lambasted by the press and the fans. Perhaps if we weren’t in the midst of such excitement over our NCAA hoops prospects, there would be a lot more discussion and frustration over how bad things are getting for the NBA tennants of the “Fortress on Fourth Street”. While the Bucks’ performance thus far, regardless of the injuries, has been pretty bad, the reality is that I, like many, simply don’t care. There is little that is inspiring about this team, and not much going for it either. At 9 games under .500, I find it comical that Tom Enlund would even mention playoff implications with regard to the 30 point shellacking the Bucks received last night in Miami. Milwaukee is in the 11th spot in the pitiful Eastern Conference, which is sad in and of itself; but how can a team that plays no defense and has no identity even hope to compete past April? Hopefully we will be watching one (or two) of our NCAA hoops teams into that month and when One Shining Moment has come and gone, we will have a championship to drown out the pathetic play of our professional ballers.