By now, I'm sure everyone has heard that the OU women's basketball team lost a thriller to Louisville. OU was down two and got a rebound on a missed Louisville free throw with about 7 seconds to go. The ball was quickly relayed up the court to Nyeshia Stevenson who decided to pull up for an open three. The ball thought about going down, in between hitting both rims, before bouncing out. That's how agonizingly close OU was to playing in the championship game. Of course, leave it up to ESPN to immediately ask Courtney Paris if she's going to pony up $64,000. Here's her response:
"I do make good on the guarantee," said Paris, whose father is former NFL offensive lineman Bubba Paris. "Not today, though. Obviously, I don’t have $64,000 waiting, but I do make good on it."
It certainly does leave a sour taste in your mouth. OU was up 16-2 to start the game and yet faded down the stretch. Courtney Paris holds over a hundred records in the NCAA books, and yet she will have never played in the championship game. Seems like a gross injustice, doesn't it? Of course, this game was probably just a way to see who will get steamrolled by UConn who obliterated a really good Stanford team the way they obliterate just about everyone else.
So that makes two basketball teams at OU this year that had that national championship type aura around them and neither could quite deliver. Still, it was a great year for OU basketball and one can't really complain. And the OU Athletics Department certainly shouldn't hold Courtney Paris to the $64,000 she promised. She's given way more than $64,000 worth of effort and heart to the university in her time here.
Moving on, it appears that the Texas Longhorns are still bitter about the whole Big 12 Championship thing last year:
Inside the Texas Meeting Room, via alt.coxnewsweb.com
Naturally, this has prompted all sorts of jokes and cajoling from their rivals on message boards, and all over the internet really. I've seen it called a "Texasterisk". We're not going to re-hash the entire debacle, but you certainly don't see Ole Miss putting up an asterisk on their stadium, or Utah for that matter, or Texas Tech:
Michael Crabtree Game Winning Touchdown Against Texas
Don't get too carried away, though, Sooner fans as Tim Griffin (ESPN) points out that it's coming down. Anyways, it certainly gives you a glimpse into the mind of a Texas Longhorn, which suggests that the 2009 Red River Rivalry will be even more venemous than usual. The West End on the eve of the game will certainly have lots of trash talking back and forth, and I'm expecting that both teams will come out with a lot to prove. It should be a really physical and hard-fought game.
We'll get into more football headlines and news after the jump (click link below)
The OU Spring Red-White game is on Saturday. Before that gets underway, there will be an OU Legends flag football game that will include the following players:
Stephen Alexander, Brian Bosworth, Tony Casillas, Ryan Daniel, Brent and Greg Dequasie, Patrick Fletcher, Jacob Gutierrez, Tim Lasher, Bubba Moses, Greg Moyer, Antonio Perkins, Jowahn Poteat, Wes Sims, Trent Smith, Charles Thompson, Paul Thompson, David Vickers, D.J. Wolfe, Renaldo Works
The way they are all talking up Quinton Carter, I'm expecting to see him lay out about a guy per game. It's been a little while since we've had someone who will make guys think twice about running over the middle.
Sam Bradford is the ultimate teammate, summed up well in this Rivals article by this little paragraph:
Bradford never seems to enjoy the spotlight he endures as the face of Oklahoma football. But get him talking about his teammates, and he'll beam with pride at their progress in spring practices.
Unfortunately, as the article mentions, weather has kept the Sooners from scrimmaging as much as they'd like this spring. The indoor facility is a full football field, but the sidelines are too tight, so Stoops limits scrimmages to outdoors.
A few quick notes on the Texas spring game, if you feel so inclined to keep up on your rival: ESPN's Tim Griffin and more from Tim Griffin.
Speaking of Tim Griffin, he runs a pretty great Big 12 blog at ESPN. He's started a list of the 40 best players in the Big 12 for this upcoming season. So far FB Matt Clapp and LB Keenan Clayton have made the list.
Tim also provides a few quotes from prized 2010 recruiting commit QB Blake Bell:
"I can't find any other place that has everything I'm looking for," Bell told OU Insider.com. "My dad and uncle agree, that OU has the best coaching, QB coach, best offense, best passing offense and best winning tradition that we can find.
"We've looked at a lot of schools and a lot of programs, and after watching practice, and how they practice, no one matches up with what OU is doing."
"They said they might bring in one more quarterback, an option guy, but they said they're done with drop-back passers," Bell told the Eagle. "They always have talented guys come in. I'll be surrounded by a lot of talent, what more can a quarterback ask for? It's great to be a Sooner."
Pretty interesting that he mentioned OU might be bringing in an option quarterback. It's certainly true that OU now has a plethora of dropback passers.
Speaking of dropback passers, Landry Jones is impressing everyone it seems like. Sam Bradford especially:
"I think Landry is playing really well right now,” Bradford said. "I think it’s night and day from what he was doing in the fall to how he’s playing right now.
"If you guys watched him play he could probably be starting at a lot of places.”
Starting guard Brian Simmons likes what he sees from the Colorado State transfer, Brian Lepak:
"I guess he is a walk-on technically, but I look at him as a scholarship player,” said left guard Brian Simmons. "He has tremendous technique. His technique is always there and he knows plays, he knows what he’s doing. I think he came in as a guard but he’s taking snaps for us as a center.
Simmons also said he likes what he sees from Stephen Good, who will probably get a chance to start at the other guard:
"I’ll say this, when it comes to just pure strength, as long as I’ve been playing football, and I played at Hargrave Military Academy with a lot of all-star prep players who are playing in the NFL now, I haven’t come across anyone that’s just physically as strong as him,” Simmons said. "I think once he gets the mindset of bringing all that to the field, I think he’ll be a very good player. As far as just being a physical presence, he’s not big enough. He’s going to do nothing but get bigger.”
Overall, things are actually looking alright on the offensive line, and the quarterback position looks to be pretty deep for the next few years. That's all for today!