Growing up in Oklahoma and having a big brother that was a Dallas Cowboys fan sorta left me without any real allegiance in the NFL.  I ended up being a fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (I was born in Florida) since the Selmon brothers played for them and it seemed to make as much sense as anything else.  Plus, I really actually liked those awful uniforms - well before there was "Pewter Power" there was "Oh my gawd who rubbed Cheetos all over those guy's uniforms?" - could you imagine such a uniform in today's totally corporate NFL?

That is basically just a long way of saying that I don't pay much attention to the NFL.  But I do occasionally pay attention to games when former Sooners are involved and Mike Balogun trying to make the 49ers roster made me happy to see him have a solid early pre-season game against the Colts.  Although he did not intercept Manning but the Colts back-up QB, it still counts.  He also finished with six tackles tying with two other defensive players.  He seemed to have solid, if unremarkable, performances in the other pre-season games (minus Oakland where he did not appear on the stat sheet).  The 49ers finished with their first unbeaten pre-season since 1992 and he appeared to be on the bubble when it came to making the final roster.  The 49ers had had several injuries at LB and Balogun was listed as the third string ILB on the depth chart as recently as yesterday.

Alas, there was no fairy tale ending as he was cut today and missed out on making the 53 player final roster for the 49ers (also cut was another former Sooner Joe Jon Finley).  The one glimmer of hope is that he gets signed to the practice squad and gets another shot next year as Alex Boone was able to do this year.

USA Today released the Top 25 Coaches Poll today.  There was some good news - the Sooners, ranked 8th, are the highest ranked team in the poll that did not end last season ranked in the top 25.  If you assume that means that we have to jump 6 teams to end up as one of the top two teams, let's take a quick look at what has to happen for us to end up in one of those top two slots:

Everything below assumes that we can overcome any challenges and win our games.  That includes beating #20 Florida State at home, beating unranked (#26) Cincinnati on the road, beating #4 Texas, and then a showdown against #9 Nebraska in the Big 12 title game.  It is not impossible, but will require consistency that the Sooners did not have last year.

On to the other pieces that we need to have fall into place - really it is pretty simple (if you want skip to the end, I provided a quick recap of what needs to happen):

#7 TCU faces no real tests in the season (at least based on pre-season rankings).  As expected, Utah and Air Force are expected to be the two stiffest tests, but TCU should have enough firepower to win - even facing Utah on the road.  They have a solid shot to go undefeated, but if they do it may still not be enough to overcome the Sooners who start right behind them in the poll.  I think Utah or Air Force tests them enough to put doubt in the voter's minds and these close calls drops TCU behind us in the poll.

#6 Virgina Tech and #5 Boise State play each other to open the season, so one of them is out.  If Boise State wins, they face no other competition the rest of the season and I expect that pollsters would continue to push them into the top two.  If Virginia Tech wins, they face some additional tests, including a season-ending test at Miami.  For our scenario, our rooting interest is with the Hokies to beat the Broncos as that knocks the Broncos out of the MNC chase while leaving the Hokies with additional chances to stumble.

Beat #4 Texas on October on 10/02/10 and their season is done and they are eliminated from the chase.

That same weekend, I think most Sooner fans have to swallow their pain left over from the Orange Bowl and pull for  #3 Florida to beat #1 Alabama - Florida faces tougher tests after the Bama game while Bama has a friendlier schedule and I don't see a real challenge - even in the vaunted SSSSSEEEEEECCCC.  We have to hope then that Florida decides that this upset of 'Bama guarantees all of their future opponents to roll over and they stumble late in the season allowing us to jump them to set up a MNC match-up against....

#2 Ohio State

In the "Youngstown Bowl" or the "Redemption Bowl" or something along those lines where we will have to hear again and again about how both the Sooners and the Buckeyes have lost multiple BCS games over the past five years.

So, to recap:

Go Utes - play the Frogs close at least

Go Hokies - Beat the Broncos

Go Tarheels / Go Canes - Beat the Hokies

Go Gators - Beat ' Bama

Go Bulldogs - Beat the Gators

BEAT TEXAS

BEAT THE BUCKEYES - BRING HOME # 8

The baseball team seemed to like their 7-6 extra inning victory over Oral Roberts on Friday so much that they decided to do the exact same thing today against North Carolina.  After leading the whole game, the Sooners bullpen gave up three runs in the bottom of the 9th (yes, North Carolina was the home team - the regionals are viewed as a neutral site, so teams alternate home / visitor).  The 9th inning ended with a strikeout with a UNC baserunner at third.  

The Sooners quickly ended the suspense though in the top of the 10th by driving in a single run, even though they had multiple baserunners.  UNC was not able to respond and are now paired up against Oral Roberts in the early game tomorrow with the winner of that game facing the Sooners.  If we win, we move on to the Super Regional - if we lose, then we get another shot in a game on Monday.

Box score here (PDF file)

Other Big 12 teams in action:

Baylor beat Lamar 6-4 to avoid elimination - Baylor faces Arizona

Kansas State beat Grambling 9-8 to avoid elimination - K-State faces Wazzu

Texas beat La-Lafayette to move to the finals of their regional

Texas A&M got bludgeoned 14-1 by Miami and will face Dartmouth tomorrow in loser's bracket for another shot at Miami

After the Sooners took the first game in the series 6-0, the Huskies rebounded on Friday to take the next two games in the series to punch their ticket to the WCWS.  The Huskies won the second game 3-0 and took the deciding game 4-0.  I was hoping that we were going to follow in the footsteps of Tennessee who pulled a big upset over the #2 seed, Michigan to get to OKC, but it was not to be.

It looks like the Sooners ran into a buzzsaw on the Huskies in the name of Danielle Lawrie who struck out 17 (remember these are only 7 inning games) in the third game to send the Huskies to OKC.  It was a bad time for the Sooner offense to fall flat as it was the first time in the entire season that we had been shutout in back-to-back games and the first time since March 19 that we had lost back-to-back games, a span of 28 games.

The Sooners lose one of their big offensive threats in Amber Flores to graduation, but graduate only one additional senior from this year's team.  Keilani Ricketts who had a stellar freshman year will return and has a good shot at setting records including strikeouts in a season that she just missed out on this year finishing just ten shy of the record.

It looks like the first-season men's tennis coach, John Roddick, is taking the OU men's tennis program to the next level.  After pulling an upset of Texas Tech in the second round of the NCAA Men's Tennis Tourney to get to the round of 16 for the first time in the program's history, the Sooners then sent the Longhorns packing and moved on to the quarterfinals.  The win against Tech was the Sooners first win against them in five tries, the first win against them in the 2010 season, and was some revenge after Tech beat the Sooners in the Big 12 tourney at the end of April in Austin.  The win against the No. 3 ranked Longhorns by the 20th ranked Sooners was the first win since 2005 and only the 2nd all-time.   BOOMER SOONER!  

The Sooners now face a touch test against Georgia on their home court in Athens.  Roddick is a graduate of Georgia and a former coach there when the Bulldogs won the national championship in 2001, so he is obviously familiar with the surroundings and with the pressure.  The Sooners have overachieved up to this point and maybe that will relax them going into this match and continue the string of upsets.

If you are wondering, yes, Coach Roddick is Andy Roddick's older brother and was his coach from 2006-2008 in addition to running his own tennis camp from 2002-2009.  Between his hiring and the new tennis facilities, it seems like the men's tennis program is poised to make a run at the Big 12 tennis powerhouses.

Unfortunately, for the first time since 1999, we fall into the "Others Receiving Votes" category in the final AP poll.  We finished 1 point (typical) outside of the top 25, right behind West Virginia who received 91 points.  Five losses is not in and of itself apparently a barrier to being included in the poll as Clemson finished 24th in the poll after not being ranked before the bowl season.  I guess a win over a SEC powerhouse like Kentucky is what pushed them over the top?  Or less snarky, maybe it was their win over Miami (40-37 in OT) that gives them the nod.  All in all, a disappointing way to finish a very disappointing season as I had hoped that we would maybe sneak into the polls.

Our five losses came to the following ranked teams (all final AP ranks):

#2 - Texas - 16-13

#12 - Brigham Young - 14-13

#14 - Nebraska - 10-3

#19 - Miami - 21-20

#21 - Texas Tech - 41-13

Final AP Poll at ESPN 


Clemson' five losses came to the following teams (all final AP ranks):

#6 - TCU - 14-10

# 13 - Georgia Tech - 30-27, 39-34 (ACC Championship game)

UNR - Maryland - 24-21

UNR - South Carolina - 34-17

Also, Kirk H. puts us in the pre-season top 5 for next year.  

Another feature from ESPN - "Way-Too-Early College Football Top 25" puts us at a somewhat more plausible (in my mind) #12.

The Sooner WBB team is doing their part to bring a little bit of holiday cheer to Sooner fans by winning their first two games at the Paradise Jam Tournament in St. Thomas (USVI).  As an aside - who would you rather go watch - the men's team in Anchorage, AK or the women's team in the US Virgin Islands?

Yesterday they dispatched South Carolina with a close win pulling it out in the final minutes after USC had cut the lead down to two.  Whitney Hand was a key player sparking the winning 9-0 run.  Unfortunately, Hand sat out the 2nd half of today's game against San Diego State University after sustaining an apparent knee injury.  The Sooners did not really need her though this time around as they dismantled the Aztecs limiting them to only 15 points in the first half to cruise to an 87-48 win.

They face an uphill fight to lay claim to their side of the division / tourney championship against the #5 ranked Fighting Irish of Notre Dame tomorrow.  Interestingly, ND beat SDSU on Thursday by only 5, so maybe the Sooners can spring a big upset and get back into their usual top 10 ranking.

Soonersports.com Gameday Central has more details & recaps of the games & the Paradise Jam Tourney site carries live stats for each game

Virginia fires Leitao; Sooners' Capel the target?

Even with the lackluster play of the MBB lately, it looks like the rumors about Capel moving to other pastures will continue to pop up.  UVa built a new b-ball stadium and is having a hard time filling it after their worst season in quite some time.  In a quick tour around the intertubes, this story seems to be playing according to the "official" storyline for the most part (he resigned) rather than the "unofficial" (he was fired so that they could "possibly" go after Capel) storyline that Gary Parrish puts forth.

Strangely enough I was wondering last week if they even kept stats at the NCAA or elsehwere about double-doubles.  I assumed someone did, but had not had a chance to track it down yet.

Then, in reading the preview of the OU Women's BB Big 12 opener tomorrow in Nebraska, I came across this summary of double-double stats for seasons and careers.  As you might expect, Paris leads the way in truly amazing fashion.

Continue reading this post »

I am getting awfully antsy with the game looming now and while looking around at various blogs, I stumbled across the Sports Illustrated archive.  They provide free access to lots (maybe all) of their past articles and highlighted on their CFB page was the article detailing the NC game from 2000. 

Continue reading this post »

(Bumped From The FanPosts)

I had heard the rumors and now it looks like they have come true - the Sooners will face the BUY Cougars in the first college football game to be played at the new Cowboys Stadium opening next fall. 

While there are other college games scheduled, this will be the first one in the stadium and will be played over the Labor Day holiday, so it will be an early season test for the Sooners against what could be a solid BYU team who just lost to another Stoops coached team.

No confirmation over on SoonerSports.com though - they seem to be busy covering some other event currently....

More details here

Big East bowl teams and records (3-1)

MAGICJACK ST.PETERSBURG BOWL

USF 41, Memphis 14

MEINEKE CAR CARE BOWL

West Virginia 31, North Carolina 30

PAPAJOHNS.COM BOWL

Rutgers 29, North Carolina State 23

BRUT SUN BOWL

Pittsburgh 0,  Oregon State 3

Pac 10 bowl teams and records (4-0)

Las Vegas

Arizona 31, BYU 21

Emerald

California 24, Miami 17

Pacific Life Holiday

Oregon 42, Oklahoma State 31

Brut Sun

Oregon State 3, Pitt 0