By KEVIN HASKIN
TopSports.news
Kevin Haskin
Musings at the mid-month:
-- Hey April, what did you give up to trade rain to May?
-- Or was it a three-way deal in which March dealt you unseasonably cold days to be named later?
-- Missed that in the Transactions blurb For Scoreboard.
-- Miss Scoreboard, for that matter.
-- Lance Leipold has been good at saying the right things, though I genuinely applaud what he recently advocated during a Hawk Talk segment.
-- The new Kansas football coach spoke of unpolished gems he recruited to Buffalo.
-- You better if situated there. MAC school, cold weather, NFL city, no tradition …
-- Name-brand chicken wings only go so far, especially when replicated quite well in every college town in America.
-- Leipold mentioned the inspiration football recruits draw from fewer stars attached to their recruiting bios.
-- Saw this kind of thing for years when Bill Snyder and his staff coached up recruits. Saw it too from Mark Mangino, who once coordinated recruiting for Snyder.
-- These players also mature physically at the college level with regimented strength and conditioning and sophisticated nutrition plans.
-- Overlooked diamonds are essential to reviving the moribund Jayhawks, but the right coaches are needed to shake off the rough edges.
-- Leipold thinks that can happen after his program never ranked higher than eighth in the annual MAC recruiting ratings.
-- This is where the jump to a power five program becomes most difficult.
-- Solid additions also can come from the transfer portal, which Chris Kleiman has drilled down to find FCS players.
-- If anyone can transition players from that level it’s a coach who made the transition himself. Briley Moore is proof.
-- Truly anxious to see how the grading pans out for Kleiman’s third season at K-State. I suppose I’ll engage in a few mark-ups.
-- Tend to lean a different way with the Royals by maintaining faith; the strong start still provides encouragement for further heroics.
-- However, another 11-game skid, or something resembling it, will prompt me to avoid watching them.
-- Oh, that’s already happening.
-- Russell Westbrook breaking Oscar Robertson’s triple-double record left me a bit bewildered.
-- When such marks get broken, I often consider the record-breaker a generational talent. Not sure I believe that about Westbrook.
-- Reminded me of when KU’s Cole Aldrich recorded a triple-double in the NCAA Tournament. I reached out the next day to B.H. Born.
-- The Medicine Lodge center posted 26 points, 15 rebounds and 13 blocks in a one-point loss to Indiana for the 1953 NCAA title.
-- Born reminisced about many things, including Phog Allen providing instruction that day to an ill Jayhawk about the merits of gargling.
-- Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game being an extraordinary exception, among others, baseball statistics continue to provide the most natural appeal of any sport.
-- Both for casual and advanced analysts. Just something to how numbers spell out the game, particularly in box scores many of us once read religiously.
-- Bob Gibson: 251 wins, 255 complete games.
-- No records there, but those career marks wonderfully reflect the evolution of baseball.
-- Has horse racing reached the point it can only attract attention for adverse developments?
-- News that once centered on extraordinary bloodlines now centers on unordinary bloodstreams.
-- Sitting in the Shack (still a great burger, by the way) an hour before post Saturday, no TV had been turned yet to the coverage.
-- I gained no sense, either, that anyone longed to hear, “And they’re off.”
-- Maybe the same is true for races of all sorts anymore — foot, auto, horse, greyhound, Amazing. The appeal has diminished, it seems.
-- Never forget my dad once saying, “The most beautiful thing in sports is watching a thoroughbred run.”
-- He didn’t bet on horses. He grew up on a farm with them and shared stories about the impact of the Depression and Dust Bowl.
-- I overlooked those lessons at times. Now on occasion, they apply to something I regret.
-- Just something I wanted to put out there for Memorial Day. Honor those who enriched your lives.
