KANSAS CITY, Mo., -- Texas beat Oklahoma State 66-59 at the Sprint Center to advance to the Semifinal round of the Big 12 Tournament. Damion James came up huge with 11 points and 23 points while D.J. Augustin led the team with 24 points.
I've been hearing both sides of the Gundy/Carlson argument, and I've reached a few conclusions. If I were a real columnist, I'd say that either Gundy was right or that Carlson was spot on. Unfortunately, I can't provide anything so clear cut.
I think Gundy's reaction was over the top and uncalled for. I think he should be ashamed of it, and I think he did all but one of his players a huge disservice by refusing to talk about what had just been a great win.
I think Carlson'scolumn was poorly written, poorly researched and unfair. Using that anecdote with Reid being fed chicken by his mother in that manner was inappropriate. She made more mistakes. Most importantly, she credited "rumors and the rumblings" for one controversial assertion. Another she began with the most bloggish of phrases — " Word is..." From talking to sports writers who know her, I believe that the rumors, rumblings and words come from very legitimate sources. But that's not good enough. If she's going to write something this controversial, she owes it to Bobby Reid and her readers to cite her sources. If she can't get anything from a source who can be named, then she has nothing. This is especially true because her assertions are largely unprovable. If an unnamed source provides insight on an injury, we'll know on gameday whether or not the information was legitimate. In this case, we may never know if her sources were accurate.
Her next big mistake was a by-product of bad, lazy reporting. She only uses two quotes and both were taken second hand. This raises the possibility that they were taken out of context. If you read the quotes, you have good cause to be suspicious. She should have done her own reporting and avoided this pitfall.
Jason Whitlock pointed out a lot of the same things as I did, and his column on this is worth reading. The problem with Whitlock's column is that he gives Gundy a pass on his bad behavior. My guess is that it's because Jason's a real columnist and he has to have a right-or-wrong straight opinion. I don't.
Gundy's worst mistake was overshadowing his team's big win over Texas Tech with this tirade. The Cowboys are in national news for the first time in a long time because he started pointing his fingers and yelling — at a woman. It's kind of funny, Gundy is a coach for a BCS school, so he's been around awhile. But he's never gone off like this, not until a woman provoked his ire. Now, he suddenly has the guts to take a stand and stick up for his player? I don't buy it.
He's naive and self-righteous. He talks about hurting the "kid's" feelings, but he's the guy who benched the quarterback. Think that didn't hurt? Another thing — frankly, he sounds like a moron. "This was brought to me by a mother — of children," he says, in case we weren't clear what kind of mother we're thinking of. "Three-fourths of this is inaccurate," he charges. Carlson asked him Monday to divulge where the inaccuracies in the story lie. "I don't have to," he answered. Yes you do, Mike, if you want to be taken seriously. "This article embarrasses me to be involved with athletics," he said after the game. Why? That just doesn't make sense. Maybe he should quit his job if he's ashamed about it. Another annoying this is his use of the word "downgrade." Apparently Carlson, downgraded Bobby with her column... No, more accurately, she denigrated him. That's the word he was looking for, but never would have found, as evidenced by the fact that he stuck with the word "downgrade" throughout the tirade and even into the next few days. Jenni denigrated Bobby. She didn't downgrade him To downgrade someone is to "assign to a lower status." For example... Oh, I don't know, making your starting quarterback your backup quarterback. That's downgrading someone, Mike.
Oklahoma City, Okla. -- Ok, so it's never a miracle when a team with the best player in the country beats a team that lost to Oral Roberts at home, but no one here is giving Texas much of a chance against Kansas. They're playing for the Big 12 tournament title at the Ford Center in about an hour, and I'm among the many expecting KU to win.
Texas hasn't looked especially good in either of their first two games, and Kevin Durant has yet to put together two good halves. D.J. Augustine seems to be taking about 30 minutes of floor time before warming up and finding his groove, and Connor Atchley is, well, he's Connor Atchley. A.J. Abrams is Texas' most consistent performer here in OKC, and his specialty is the fickle-by-nature three-pointer.
Meanwhile, Kansas is looking fine, and that's enough to beat the Longhorns if they keep underperforming. To be fair, Durant's had two incredible halves to go with his to ho-hum halves, and Augustine made a huge shot against Baylor, then several shots down the stretch versus Oklahoma State. If they can get hot together and stay that way, Texas' chances increase exponentially.
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After much soul searching and serious debate, Cody Hale and I have decided we'd rather live in Oklahoma City than Texas' panhandle. This has more to do with how awful the panhandle is than how great OKC is, but this town's not that bad if you stay in a select few areas.
When I say a 'select few', I'm giving OKC the benefit of the doubt. The only nice place we've found is Bricktown, but we haven't explored much. There are plenty of restaurants on and around downtown's knockoff Riverwalk, and the bars look nice from the outside. Circumstances beyond our control prevented us from checking out Skyy Bar or any of the others, but given the chance, we would have. We ate at Toby Keith's I Love this Bar and Grill, and a 1-hour 10-minute break not withstanding, it was pretty good. The cover band was too loud for conversation, but at least they sounded alright. The ribs were delicious, and the fried okra, "freedom fries," and caesar salad were all good. The corn bread was nothing special, but the cheap beer to wash it down with made up for it.
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Alright, 30 minutes till tipoff, time to get my game face on. Quick, meaningless predictions: Texas loses, 65-75 Durant scores 28 Craig Winder has three steals, three fouls and two points Texas gets into the NCAA tourney as a 4 seed
