Tuesday Morning Musings

Kansas 81 Oklahoma 68 I wasn't excited about the prospect of watching Kansas vs. Oklahoma Monday night before the game started and nothing happened during the course of that game to alter my level of enthusiasm. It was a simple formality on the way to the Jayhawks sixth straight Big XII title. Xavier Henry had one of his best performances of the season, scoring 23 points, and doing pretty much anything he wanted to in the first half.

At the beginning of the season, this is a game I would have thought would have meant something. The Sooners lost Blake Griffin, but they still had Willie Warren, a hyped recruit, with a sweet name in Tiny Gallon and one of the hottest names in coaching, Jeff Capel. Now, Willie Warren is past tense, Oklahoma is 13 and 14 and 4 and 9 in the Big XII. This is only the third time I've watched an Oklahoma game this season, so I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know how to speculate on the why. But, I do wonder at the possible impact one poisonous player's attitude can have on a team and on a season.

Willie Warren was still on my fantasy league's draft board in the 3rd round, and I contemplated picking him up. Instead I picked up Greivis Vasquez, which brings me to my next musing:

Greivis Vasquez is awesome. The kind of intensity he plays with is the reason I watch college basketball. He's averaging 18.8 points a game and 6.2 assists. Sometimes he can get a little loose with the ball and ends up turning it over oh, let's say 9 times, like in Maryland's loss at Clemson. But even when he is coughing it up like it's cold and flu season, he's always trying to make up for it on the very next play.

In Maryland's win over Georgia Tech on Saturday, he played 39 minutes, scored 18 points, recored 8 assists and five rebounds. For some players, that would be the game of the season. For Greivis, he's had better. Despite all of this, he isn't projected as a first round pick in the draft next year. He might not find an NBA team who will take a chance on a great all around hustle player, who happens to have a horrible verticle and the strength of a small woman chilid.

Which is too bad, because I would watch the NBA a lot more than I do if their rosters were full of players like Vasquez. Guys who want to play and love to play. That's the reason I do watch college. Because even though Maryland doesn't win every game, they're always fun to watch.