Monday Morning Coffee

March 19, 2018

What a surprise! Last week Steve Alford’s UCLA Bruins disappointed again in March.  They didn’t even make it into the tournament, losing to St. Bonaventure in the play-in game.  March Madness must be referring to Alford’s play calling, because he couldn’t even draw up a scheme to beat a mid-major’s zone defense.  Alford has also apparently never heard of a 2-for-1 at the end of the game.  The Bruins have missed the tournament or barely made the field as a #11 seed in three of his five season’s as head coach.  Surely UCLA deserves better.  However, now is probably not the time to fire him.  An FBI investigation is about to rock college basketball, and put a number of programs under sanctions.  Once that resolves itself, and this year’s high ranked recruiting class is secure, the Bruins will probably have some better replacements to choose from.

Have you used your NCAA Bracket as toilet paper yet? That’s probably all it’s good for since 25% of ESPN brackets completed had Virginia winning it all.  Thomas Jefferson must have been rolling over in his grave watching that Virginia first round upset.  After UMBC’s win, 16 seeds are now 1-135 against 1 seeds, or what the Cleveland Browns call “our record for the last decade”.  Of course Buffalo beat Arizona.  Skip Bayless picked Arizona to win it all.  We’re screwed if Skip predicts the sun is going to rise tomorrow.  Now that Oklahoma has been eliminated from the NCAA Tournament, ESPN will probably end their coverage of college basketball for the remainder of the season.  Michigan’s Jordan Poole hit the game-winenr against Houston, then celebrated like a kid who just got his drivers license, running from all his friends who wanted a ride…….
It’s great to see the Lakers winning games and all, but they have lost all sensibility when it comes to Luol Deng.  We all know that Deng is making a ridiculous $18 million this season, and another $36 million after that.  The Lakers are so desperate for wing players after all their recent injuries, they resorted to signing Travis Wear to a 10-day contract, and playing him meaningful minutes, along with G-Leaguer Alex Caruso.  Is Deng such a bad player that when the Lakers actually need wings, Caruso and Wear are that much better? If the goal is to actually trade Deng, then the Lakers aren’t helping themselves by chaining him to the bench.  If they have no intention of playing him, then release him and let him go find a team that will actually give him an opportunity (and trust me, somebody will).

The Rams bid farewell to Sammy Watkins last week, as the Chiefs signed the wide receiver to a contract worth $30 million guaranteed.  Watkins is a human ponzi scheme. He has cost teams two 1st round picks, a 2nd, a 4th, and $70m, and no investors have been paid back.  Watkins would have been nice luxury for the Rams to keep, but he’s been nothing more than an expensive decoy for them.  The Rams also lucked out and had him relatively healthy last year, which is frequently not the case for him.  The Watkins void can be addressed with some later picks in the draft.

NFL free agency is very overrated.  It’s a market filled with a bunch of rejects past their prime.  If the player gets to free agency, he has some serious flaws.  The Cardinals signed Sam Bradford, who will likely tear his rotator cuff signing his new contract.  The Broncos signed Case Keenum to replace Trevor Siemian and Brock Osweiler.  John Elway definitely suffers from CTE.  The only exception to this is Kirk Cousins signing with the Vikings, but that’s just because the Redskins were dumb enough to not work out a long-term deal with him.  Real contenders are build through the draft.  Just ask the Patriots.

Somebody needs to tell Matt Kemp to save some of his offense for the real season.  Kemp has been crushing it this spring, as I told you he would, hitting .333/.368/.722 with 4 home runs and 7 RBI.  Kemp may not be the best defender the Dodgers can put in left field, but he is far and away the best bat they can put in that spot.  Kemp has not only earned a starting spot in left field for the Dodgers, but he may end of being a key piece to what the team hopes to accomplish this year.  If only he could pitch out of the bullpen too.

One guy who looks like he can’t pitch or hit in the big leagues is Shohei Ohtani.  This spring Ohtani is hitting just .100 at that plate, and on the mound he has an ERA of 27.  Everyone thought this guy was the best of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.  Right now he looks like the worst of Scott Kazmir and Joc Pederson combined.  While this isn’t a contractual disaster because Ohtani makes very little, this is potentially a devastating disappointment for the Halos.  If Ohtani is just a minor leaguer that needs to develop, he is far from the savior the Angels need to try to compete with Mike Trout still in the prime of his career.  Time to get depressed over the Halos again.

Finally, another episode of The Walking Dead went down on AMC last night.  Spoiler alert for those of you who have yet to see it, so read no further if you plan on watching it later.  Rick was an actual trained cop?  How many opportunities does he need to kill Negan? He has more trouble killing Negan than Dr. Evil had killing Austin Powers.  Maggie must be 62 months pregnant by now.  You should never let woman who is 62 months pregnant make big decisions like she is.  Dwight just realized that Simon might actually be worse than Negan.  Simon’s not dead yet, but he’s about to be when Negan gets ahold of him.  Who knew that records could be so valuable in the apocalypse?  This episode had great action, but a frustrating and unsatisfying conclusion.  I definitely wouldn’t trust Georgie.  Mostly because she looks like the generic brand version of Hillary Clinton.

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