SB Nation User Blog: mitch cumstein

ESPN College Football Live

mitch cumstein — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:29:56 -0000

Yesterday was Big 12 day on ESPN College Football Live. Dari Nowkhah and Andre Ware spent about 20 minutes talking exclusively about the South (as well they should, the power is still down south, obviously). But when they finally got around to talking about Mizzou and the North (and interviewing Coach Pinkel to boot), Andre Ware dropped this bombshell, and I quote: "I have a hard time finding five wins on Mizzou's schedule".

So let me get this straight, Andre. You're basically saying Mizzou is going 4-8 next year?

Hey, I'm expecting a pretty sizeable letdown, no doubt. We lose a ton of talent (QB, two best receivers, three starters of DL, three starters in seconday, All-B12 kicker). I know it's going to be tough. In fact, my baseline expectation is only 7-5 (just get bowl eligible baby) and anything past that is gravy.

But I think predicting a 4-8 season is a little overboard. In fairness, he's pretty consistent. He did predict that Texas Tech would have six or fewer wins as well.

In the immortal words of Lou Brown, I hope we can give Andre a big sh*tburger to eat.

I know it's only Andre Ware, but if this is the kind of offseason attention we'll be getting, it's going to be a long summer. I'll be interested to see what Phil Steele, Athlon's and others have to say.

Charis Prep ... not good in eyes of NCAA

mitch cumstein — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:26:36 -0000

[UPDATE: Bumped from FanPosts]

Pulled this from the comments section of one of Walentik's articles in the Trib. It doesn't look good in terms of getting Keith DeWitt to Mizzou:

The NCAA High School Review Committee has issued a decision to uphold the not cleared status for Charis Prep school in Wilson, N.C.

Charis Prep appealed the NCAA Eligibility Center staff’s decision in September 2008 that the school was “not cleared”, meaning core courses, grades and/or graduation would not be accepted when determining prospective student-athletes’ initial eligibility to compete in intercollegiate athletics. This original decision was upheld by the NCAA High School Review Committee after an appeal was held on Feb. 23.

During the spring and summer of 2008, the NCAA Eligibility Center staff reviewed Charis Prep’s curriculum, class schedules, teacher schedules quality control practices and enrollment figures. The review also included an in-person site visit.

Specifically, the review identified several areas of concern, including quality control and curriculum.

The school was notified of these and other concerns and given an opportunity to respond to the specific issues. The written appeal, supplemental material and the arguments made by Charis Prep during the appeal failed to sufficiently address the irregularities and deficiencies of Charis Prep identified by the NCAA Eligibility Center staff review.

Students currently enrolled for the 2008-09 academic year may have their individual academic records reviewed through the initial-eligibility process. A determination will be made regarding their NCAA initial eligibility status based on this review.

The high school review process was created after presidents from several NCAA member institutions raised concerns about the legitimacy of high school academic credentials presented by some incoming student-athletes. In response, presidents in Divisions I and II adopted legislation to provide for the review of high schools and individual prospective student-athletes records in the initial-eligibility process.

Kimmeh! strikes again

mitch cumstein — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:57:53 -0000

If he isn't just about the most likeable kid we've had at Mizzou in forever, then I don't know who is. Trying to pick up in the middle of the biggest game of your life. Gotta respect this kid's game (on and off the court). This is from The Trib's notebook today:

Midway through the second half, the Memphis bench was assessed a technical. This time, English sank both foul shots and smiled broadly as he jogged back down the court. As he waited to inbound the ball, he tried to chat up members of the Memphis dance team, but apparently they gave him an earful.

He turned and told them, “Be nice.”

TWISTED HISTORY: Speaking of English, he said Missouri wouldn’t be satisfied with merely making the Elite Eight.

“Do you know who made it to the Elite Eight in 1996, all eight teams? No,” he said. “But you could tell me who won it all in ’96.”

So, who won it all in ’96?

“Was it UConn? I think it was UConn,” English said.

It was Kentucky.

Can we give Ken Pomeroy a little love?

mitch cumstein — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:21:58 -0000

For believing in us when we didn't even truly believe in ourselves? I remember seeing kenpom's new projection system a little before the Illinois game and he had us at something like 24-7, with a 12-4 Big 12 record. I think that's what it was. He might have actually had us winning the Illinois game, with a 13-3 record for 26-5. Heck now that I think about it, it might have even been 27-4.

Regardless, he was way out in front of the Mizzou basketball bandwagon this year. I thought it was a stretch that we'd get to 23 wins, even with winning 13 games in the non-con. But kenpom was right on his prediction. I'll give him and his numbers all the credit in the world.

So on this beautiful Friday afternoon, can we give a little love to someone who believed in us when we didn't even believe in us? A bully for Ol' Ken Pomeroy!

[Promoted for Front Page Friday!]

What's with all this lyin' around s*?!

mitch cumstein — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:30:04 -0000

[Editor's Note: Promoted from FanPosts. Solid work from our friend mitch cumstein.]

I'm going to channel my inner Bluto Blutarski right now and give this site a little pep talk. (not that this site particularly needs it, most of you are pretty levelheaded ... but I can't post on PM or TB at work, and I really need to give myself a pep talk ... thanks for letting me vent, and feel free to add on).

Was it over when we shot 25 percent at the line in the last five minutes against Xavier? Hell no. Was it over when Dmitri McCamy was raining threes and threading dimes all over the place? No. And it ain't over now!

Yes, yesterday sucked. Extremely. We sucked. kU doesn't suck, which really sucks. Basically, yesterday, we were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.

But a couple points: (1) We still have a great opportunity on Wednesday; (2) No matter what happens on Wednesday, or Saturday for that matter, we're still dancing; and (3) If this were Vegas, we'd still be playing with house money. A lot of house money.

After an insanely hot run at the blackjack table, we're up five figures on the casino. Granted, yesterday was like trying to bluff a pair of eights against a nut flush, but you know what, we were smart and held 75 percent of our chips back in the room safe, just because we thought we might do something horribly wrong.

So now we're back in our room, regrouping, licking our wounds and getting a good night's sleep and getting ready to give the craps table a try.

None of us thought we'd be 24-5 at this point in the season. None of us thought we'd be 11-3 in the Big 12. And none of us thought we'd have a first-round bye locked up at this point in the year.

So, with all that said, let's not let one loss beat us twice. OU is going to be a tough challenge, no doubt. But let's give OU a little taste of what we experienced yesterday, a nasty crowd, an intimidating atmosphere and a barrage of transition buckets. (Oh, and if we do all three, we just might get ourselves a nice little 6-10 big man for next season too). Big game on Wednesday!

Dave Matter reporting Nevada game moved ...

mitch cumstein — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:05:45 -0000

...

... to Friday night, the 25th, instead of Saturday, the 26th.

Although I don't have as much a problem as a lot of you do with moving the Nebraska game, I'm not a big fan of playing on Friday night. Maybe it's the bad taste from the Troy State game or something like that. I just feel like Reno will be a little more hostile at night. Or, maybe I'm wrong. What's the blog's opinion?

Took this from The Big Lead ...

mitch cumstein — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:07:02 -0000

It's basically saying that because the mid-majors are down this year, then all it might take is a .500 conference record (and good RPI) to make the tournament if you're in a power conference. I've been flying under the assumption that Mizzou needed to get to 10-6 to get into the Big Dance.

Hopefully what he's saying has some truth to it. I'd still love for us to get to 10 wins and virtually assure ourselves of a berth. But I'd take a 9-7 or 8-8 season getting us there. I just want March to be relevent in my household again.

http://thebiglead.com/?p=11284#more-11284

Would Mizzou be better off with K-Law?

mitch cumstein — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:44:14 -0000

UPDATE: Promoted from FanPosts for Front Page Friday.

To me, the obvious answer is, of course, absolutely. But how much better would we be? He was our second-leading returning scorer, I believe. And he'd be the only guy on our roster who could consistently shake down a defender off the dribble and create his own shot (Denmon and Taylor can to some extent, and I guess you could say Tiller and Good Leo do as well, but none of those four are as effective at that as Keon was/is). Plus, he was a long-armed guard who was one of our best pressers. He wasn't necessarily all that great in half-court defense because of his strength issues. But he was good in the pressure game and getting in passing lanes.

The only downsides to Keon were his apparent lack of mental stability/toughness. We'll never really know how much effort it took from Watkins/HCMA/Cleveland/Zimmerman and his teammates to try to keep him happy (I thought that once Hannah was off the roster that Keon would be happier, but apparently that wasn't the case). The other problem is just finding enough minutes for everyone. Keon probably pushes either Tiller or Taylor out of the starting lineup (or maybe Goose doesn't start this season, though he was a starter the last two years, so I don't know why having Keon would make that much difference to MLaw).

The promises of filling Keon's schollie with a higher-profile recruit aren't all that great at this point in time. I would imagine we'll try to find a juco big man to fill out one of the two remaining scholarships and we might even bank that last scholie for next year. Though Anderson's recruiting seems to be a little more on the DL than Quin's. So maybe he's got something cooking that we don't know about.

All in all, I think having Keon on this team would be a wonderful problem to have. I'd sure love to have him still. With him, I think it's a realistic expectation that we beat Xavier and Nebraska. Not sure anyone short of Michael Jordan could have helped us against Illinois.

I mean, we're doing all right without him, but since we did a couple "What Ifs" last week, I thought I'd throw that thought out there today. Your thoughts?

I really like Leo in a reserve role

mitch cumstein — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:13:18 -0000

I know it's not FanPostFriday, but I'll go ahead and post one a day early.

I really like having Leo come off the bench and there are a bunch of reasons why I feel this way.

No. 1, while Ramsey isn't the consistent scoring threat that Leo is, Ramsey provides excellent energy. He's always moving, sometimes to his own detriment, but he's a very active player. Again, he doesn't always know what he's doing out there and has a tendency to take a bad shot/get out of control here or there, but he's a very energetic player. And that's something that the whole team can feed off of. In fact, with Ramsey, Tiller and Carroll in the starting lineup, the rest of the team basically has to play with energy just to keep up with those three. So that's why I like Ramsey in the starting lineup.

Secondly, with Leo coming off the bench, he can provide a quick scoring punch inside, coupled with Goose's outside burst of scoring. But the beauty of him coming off the bench is that if he's playing the Good Leo role, he can stay out there as long as he wants and play a lot of his minutes against either a somewhat tired starting big man or a reserve big man who's probably not as talented as the starter.

What's more is that if we're getting Bad Leo, then his poor energy/demeanor hopefully won't sap his teammates as much because it's five minutes into the game. And you can also just go ahead and cut his minutes shorter if he's Bad Leo because Bowers is developing into a legitimate fifth "big" man (and based on the rotation last night, he might have passed Safford in that regard ... either way, both Bowers and Safford are going to give you more energy than Bad Leo ... and will likely be just as effective on the offensive end as Bad Leo as well).

Finally, there's the fact that you're keeping Good Leo out of foul trouble by not starting him. I don't have any stats to back this up, but how many minutes of Good Leo have we been robbed of over the last couple years because of ticky-tack fouls?

I'm not as enamored with having Kim English in the starting lineup and would actually prefer Marcus "Hack-a-Shaq" Denmon in the starting lineup. But I'm certainly open for debate on that issue.

We need to punt the Braggin' Rights game ...

mitch cumstein — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:10:16 -0000

... this is not just sour grapes (it's mostly sour grapes, but hear me out). We need to get out of this series. Or at least not renew it whenever it comes up for renewal. Illinois is so far in our kitchen it's not funny. They are making breakfast, reading the paper, smacking our wife on the butt as she walks by. They are pwning us right now.

We need out of this game. If we're not going to win it more than once a decade, then this game doesn't do anything for us ... except dash our basketball hopes two days before Christmas.

I don't care who our coach is, Illinois just has our number. Norm couldn't win this game on a consistent basis. Jokey Smurf certainly couldn't and now it appears that Weber is going to clownsuit HCMA every December.

Unless this is just a huge revenue generator for us, then I see no reason why we play this series anymore. If you want to keep playing Illinois, I guess I could live with playing them home and home. But punt this game in the Lou. Tell me, are we really attracting recruits by these repeat performances (I believe we've lost the last three high-profile StL b-ball recruits ... thankfully only one of them to U of I).

I would much prefer a series with Tennessee or Kentucky or Iowa or Arkansas or any of the other 14 states we border with. Play that game in St Louis for all I care, but stop playing the Illini. It doesn't nothing for our program except depress the fanbase.