The article has the Cubs as the runaway favorites in the NL.  They have the best record in baseball so that seems fine.  Here’s my beef.  For the Cubs they list their weakness as:

They’re bad: At pinch-hitting. In 126 at-bats, Cubs pinch-hitters have only 22 hits, and their .175 average is worst in the NL.

Sure that sounds pretty sucky.  But I think the Cubs have a bigger issue that is completely overlooked in the article.  The Cubs have a losing record on the road.  They are 21-28 away from Wrigley.  The Cardinals, who are just a couple games back from them are 27-22.  The Brewers who are only 3 games back from the Cubs are 24-26.

I like teams that can win wherever they play and while the Cardinals are not quite as scary as the Cubs or Brewers, especially with the recent pitcher additions to both teams, the Cardinals are capable of winning on the road and at home.

Which makes me wonder at why the Cubs would have 4/5 odds of getting to the post season while the Cardinals and Brewers are 10/1 and 6/1 respectively.

Especially with the 3 teams as close as they are with so much of the season remaining.  I have no trouble giving pretty strong odds to all three teams to make the post season since currently all three teams have records quite a bit better than the 2nd place team in the other divisions, so the 2nd place team in the Central should be in good position to get the wildcard.  I’m just not sure that the Cubs are that much more likely to get to the post season than the Cardinals or Brewers.

I’m not sure if those odds are Jeff Passan’s odds or Vegas’ but it sounds like somebody might be getting a little swept away by Cubs hysteria.

The summer is a particularly bad time to write a college sports blog but I won’t let this hold me back anymore.

I just sent in my check for the football season tickets so it is probably about time to start complaining about scheduling Maine and Florida-somebody-or-other (one of those teams that will actually play for a championship instead of a BCS trophy).  It is probably time to start figuring out how many different ways Illinois and Notre Dame are going to suck (I’ve spent most of my life in Illinois getting abused by fans of those two programs so I have a health hatred for them).

But this post is more for me than you.  It is a reminder not to go months without writing something because I feel like I should be trying to cover sports like a reporter.  I’m no reporter.  I normally don’t even bother spell checking.  But I am an annoying Hawkeye fan and this is my reminder to write more about that.

Plus, he was a guy that seemed to be a good person and never seemed to have any hints of causing any trouble off the court (that I heard of at least).

So let me break out my tin foil conspiracy cap for a second. Maybe Freeman realized that Lickliter’s style doesn’t quite fit with Freeman’s skills. Or maybe Lickliter realized that Iowa was not going to turn into a power house and make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. Feel free to swap Freeman and Lickliter’s names above.

So, then let’s say Freeman and Lickliter are playing pool and drinking a couple beers and start talking about all of this out loud to each other and the subject of Freeman transferring schools comes up.

Lickliter says something along the lines of, “We’d really love it if you stuck around this year but I totally understand if you want a better chance of playing somewhere that will highlight your skills and give you a better chance of making it into the NBA.”

Freeman says something like, “I had thought about it but I really don’t like the thought of sitting out a year.”

Lickliter: Yeah, that rule blows when coaches come and go like we do these days. What you need is a hardship?

Freeman: But coach. I’ve got my shit together. My family is fine. My injury from last season is completely healed.

Lickliter: Well, I’ll make you a deal. You announce that you are going to transfer and I’ll make up some story about how I told you that you weren’t going to get any playing time during your senior season even though you were the best player on our team last year while fighting through an injury. It’s not 100% guaranteed to work. But maybe everybody will think I’m an ass and totally screwing you over and the NCAA will let you play without sitting out for a year.

Freeman: That just might work. I love you, man.

I know it is a little far fetched but I just can’t think of any reason why Lickliter would not want Freeman to be a part of the program so at least a conspiracy theory would answer that nagging question. Plus, SIU really does have a much better chance of making it to the Sweet 16. They do it way more often than Iowa these days. And Lickliter doesn’t really seem like a mean guy that would kick a guy under the bus for no good reason.

Good luck at SIU, Tony. I hope to catch you on TV a few times this winter.

I get most of my general sports news from Yahoo! Sports. One of the Headlines is an article about 2 ex-Hawkeyes accused of sexually assaulting a woman on October 14, 2007. Both players left Iowa after shortly afterward. First off, they are accused right now. As far as I know, there has been no conviction. But they are definitely not the first Hawkeyes in recent memory to at least have the cops and lawyers paying attention to them.

I miss when the big some news was whether Tate was allowed to collect the car (or was it cash) for hitting the hole in one during a charity golf outing.

I know bad things happen to sports programs across the country all the time, but maybe the players on the Iowa leadership thing should spend some time learning how to use the media over the summer to highlight all of the good, funny, and heartwarming things that the rest of the players on the team are doing. Maybe a team blog or something would be useful to help highlight the good guys that the media isn’t as quick to cover.

First up is the Kansas State - Wisconsin game at 3:20pm CT. Both games that I have seen of Kansas State involved Beasley getting into early foul trouble. For some reason, I expect him to stay out of foul trouble today score a billion points and help his team beat Wisconsin. It’s a long shot, but I picked it before this tournament began and I can’t change it now. But if he gets in foul trouble Wisconsin will kill them.

At the same basic time, Purdue plays Xavier at 3:40pm CT. Purdue looked as good as I hoped in the first round. I picked them to win this round (against Georgia). They will still beat Xavier. I kind of wish that I had picked Purdue to beat Duke in the next round.

The final Big 10 game is Michigan State against Pittsburgh at 9:10. MSU looked fine against Temple which means it is about time for them to play like crap. Pittsburgh will cause all kinds of trouble and win by 10 or more.

Which will leave Purdue as the only Big 10 team left in the tournament after today. Go Boilermakers.

I couldn’t care less about any of the other games except for wanting Duke to win today so that a Big 10 team (Purdue) can beat them on Saturday. It would also be nice if Marquette beat Stanford since I originally picked Kentucky to beat Stanford today.

No proofreading today. I have to go install hardwood floors in the dining room and living room today.

The Big 10 managed to win all 3 games yesterday. Good job.

Today, the only Big 10 game is the Indiana - Arkansas game which starts at 8:40pm CT tonight. Arkansas will regain the lead and pull away in the second half after the each Indiana player is distracted by Kelvin Sampson sending them text messages and calling them throughout halftime.

Also on the schedule today is the Butler - South Alabama. Butler got hosed by how lowly they were seeded. They can either let that bug them and lose or just show up and beat up South Alabama. I’m expecting the latter.

Drake opens the tournament today against Western Kentucky. Go Drake, go.

So far in my Yahoo Pick ‘Em Tournament, I still have 15 of the Sweet 16 (and that’s only because Kentucky only has 3 players). I think based on my safe picks, that I shouldn’t lose any other Sweet 16′ers today.

Let’s take a second out of our busy days to remember the Duke - Belmont HS game last night. It’s always good to take a few minutes to laugh each day.

Today, the Big 10 has 3 games. Considering the Big 10 only had 4 teams make the NCAA tournament this year, today is a pretty big day.

The first Big 10 game today is the Michigan State - Temple game which starts at 11:30am CT. I know nothing at all about Temple but plenty about Michigan State. It is completely irrelevant who MSU is playing. They have about a 50-50 chance of winning the game. I cannot remember seeing such in inconsistent team that is capable of swinging from such highs to such lows in the history of basketball. I flipped a coin to determine that MSU will win by 1 point because Nietzel happens to hit a 25 foot 3 pointer as the clock expires.

Next up for the Big 10 is the Purdue - Baylor game at 1:50pm CT. I really want Purdue to do well since they seemed to come out of nowhere and stand toe to toe against anybody on the schedule. Both teams flubbed horribly in their conference tournament losing to really bad teams. Purdue was definitely hotter up until that point as long as you are impressed with regularly beating Big 10 opponents this year. I like Purdue’s defense and the few times I have watched their games I thought their offense was pretty efficient. I’ll pick Purdue to win by 8.

The final Big 10 game today is Wisconsin - CSU Fullerton at 8:40pm CT. CSU Fullerton likes to shoot 3s and their tallest player is 6′ 6″. Unless they hit about 20 of 25 3 pointers, Wisconsin will crush them. And Wisconsin’s defense is good enough that CSU will have to make those 3 pointers under extreme duress. Wisconsin will easily walk away with a 15 point win.

The other big hyped game from today is the Kansas State - USC matchup at 6:10pm CT. The game features two big name freshman who will be playing in the NBA next year. One of them will be playing their last game today. It would be a lot more interesting of a game later in the tournament but who really cares about the outcome of a couple of one year wonders outside the fans of the respective teams. My prediction is that the game will end with one of the teams scoring more than the other but other than that, I don’t care.

I’ll also be keeping my eye on the Duke - Belmont game to make sure that Duke wins so that they can eventually get crushed by Kansas in the Final Four like I predicted yesterday.

Iowa took care of making sure I don’t have to feel bad when they get knocked out of the tournament by deciding to only beat Northwestern over the last month or so.

That just leaves the beloved tournament.

I signed up for the Yahoo! Tourney Pick ‘Em ‘08 this year by joining the Black Heart Gold Pants group (Group #5862, password gornstar) mostly just because I wanted a chance to use gornstar correctly in a sentence for once.

Normally, I am eliminated from any hope of winning these things after picking the Hawkeyes to win the championship. This year however, I have a slightly more sanely filled out bracket.

I have Tennessee, Kansas, Memphis, and Duke in the Final Four. Then Tyler Smith will score 56 as Tennessee beats Kansas and Memphis will beat Duke 204 to 27. Tyler Smith will be the only person to score in the championship game which Tennessee will win, 32-0.

I really wanted to pick Drake to beat Duke but after several years of watching what Duke does to Davis lead teams, I expect that Duke will win by 1 on some last second bullshit free throw.

Okay, maybe the Hawkeyes still end up influencing my decisions after all.

Let’s take a look at the matchups and what might happen.

Minnesota - Northwestern

Northwestern is really, really bad. Minnesota is the best team playing in the Big 10 on Thursday and the only Thursday team that could possibly maybe go to the NCAA Tournament without winning the Big 10 one (assuming they make it to the finals - and even that would be a stretch). Tubby Smith will keep Minnesota composed and easily get past Northwestern and maybe even save up a little bit of energy for their game tomorrow.

Illinois - Penn State

Illinois has massively underperformed this year and Penn State has managed to keep playing pretty well despite losing their best player for the season earlier this year. Pruitt and I went to the same high school and played basketball for the same coach (Coach Kerkman had been around forever long before I started playing) so I always hope he does well but am still happy when Illinois loses. Penn State beat Illinois twice already this year. Beating any team 3 times in a year is tough and Penn State might still be emotionally drained from their huge win against Indiana to end the regular season. Illinois will play a little bit like the team people were expecting this year and win by 10+.

Iowa - Michigan

Common sense tells me that Iowa played so poorly down the stretch that they cannot possibly win this game. Or maybe that’s just my heart’s way of keeping me from expecting anything. Did you know that other than beating Northwestern twice, Iowa hasn’t beaten anybody else since beating Ohio State on Feb. 2? Ouch.

Iowa also hasn’t played a game since March 4th. I think the extra rest will help Iowa catch a second wind and spark a better shooting percentage and maybe even give them the legs they need to play some defense against Michigan in the second half. Iowa beat Michigan the first game and lost the second. But Iowa had a pretty good lead in the second game before they just completely fell apart in the second half. If they have the strength to play the whole game, they should be able to get past Michigan. Hopefully not playing this weekend was enough rest.

This should be a close game that either team will be able to win at the end. I’ll pick Iowa with a final score of something like 65-60.

And the winners of these games have virtually zero chance of winning tomorrow - unless Iowa wins today, of course.

Erik Campbell managed an 8 year stretch as the Michigan wide receivers coach where each year the team had a 1,000 yard receiver and the year the streak ended there were 3 guys that all caught for more the 500 yards.

Not too shabby.

Of course, there were a lot of ridiculously talented receivers that were just begging to play for Michigan during that time. The real test will be to see how well he can make the receivers that play for Iowa and whether he has the ability to help recruit some of those types of athletes for Iowa.

The current crop at Iowa showed flashes where they seemed to really get what was going on and the lots of moments where it was clear they were not quite ready for a season in the Big 10.

I’m sure all of the receivers are pumped up about the opportunity to work with a man who has been responsible for so many great NFL careers. Hopefully, Campbell has a few new tricks to increase the players ability to catch the ball and complete their routes since I am certain that he will have their total attention right off the bat.

I expect with one full season as the full time quarterback under his belt Jake Christensen will have a little better luck getting them the ball as long as Campbell can help get the wide receivers to the spots they need to be and get them to actually catch the ball.