Tilting at Windmills

We’ve been quiet here on TaW about Sergio Kindle’s drunken rampage through Austin’s west campus for one reason only: I’ve been on vacation.

Not the kind of vacation Sergio likes to take where he’s rolling with his boys at 2 a.m. (admittedly), drunk (allegedly), careens his ride into some girl’s west campus apartment (admittedly), flees the scene (admittedly), has his boys help extricate the car and push it down the street so hopefully nobody will notice (admittedly) and waits 8 hours to call anybody and own up to it (admittedly).

No, I was on the kind of vacation that involves lots of sand, water and a roller girl offering to do the dishes. I’ll save that for another post, though.

Kindle, penciled in at starting defensive end for the Horns this fall, was already on TaW’s Texas All-Garbage team for a 2007 DWI. At the time, Mack Brown showed a lot of sack (or at least as much as he has) when he said the matter would be handled appropriately:

“We’re aware of Sergio’s situation and are disappointed anytime one of our players is accused of wrongdoing,” Texas head coach Mack Brown said in a statement. “We take a strong stance against drinking and driving and will thoroughly investigate this situation.”

Mack manned up and suspended Sergio for three games – Arkansas State, TCU and Central Florida. Mack has some delicious suspension choices on this year’s schedule with Lousyana-Monroe, Wyoming and UTEP all looking like nice Kindle-less candidates. Let’s see what kind of a “strong stance” Mack takes this time around.

The kicker here is easy, though: Kindle should be in fucking jail. Don’t quote me some bullshit Texas statute that says if you flee the scene of a property damage accident, all you have to do is leave a fucking note. If you’re not a star defensive end/linebacker at the University of Texas, APD is going to put you in jail for that little stunt, seeing as how you already have a drunk driving citation on your jacket. That’s common fucking sense.

What really happened that night? Well, internet anonymity aside, as an Intertubes message board veteran of almost 15 years, I’ve learned to smell bullshit from random posters. A person claiming to be a west campus resident who saw the aftermath sounds legit, though. You’ll have to scroll about halfway down the page to read the entirety, but here’s the main part you’re looking for:

His lawyer claims “his left front tire struck the curb, causing him to lose control. What the lawyer probably does NOT know is that the left hand side of the street is always packed (and was that night) with parked cars.

Sergio managed to drive through an area where there was no curb until about 5 feet before the wall he struck, because it was the driveway for the Jefferson West garage.

There is no way he could have hit the curb with his left front tire, unless he is referring to hitting the curb when he was already careening into the wall at 30mph.

I distinctly heard two screeches separated by about 1 second, then a loud crash. I, and most other people who live along the road, came out on their balconies to look at this spectacle. A large silver sedan (Grand Marquis?) with maybe 24″ or 26″ chrome rims, and I think airbag suspension (it made a loud hiss when they finally pushed it down the curb).

Sergio got out of his car, got down on his hands and knees, spitting blood on the ground (you can still see it) yelling “MY LIFE IS OVER,” likely a reference to how this could be/was a second offense to his DWI two years ago. He then slammed the back of the car, and got in to try to start it. No dice, that car was dead. One of his passengers said “Serg, calm down! No one is HERE yet. NO ONE KNOWS YOU DID THIS.” Sergio continued to freak out, understandably, then they got their stuff together, and pushed the car out of the wall, and up the road. I couldn’t see what happened after that, but apparently they abandoned the vehicle about two blocks north.

Our love-hate friends over at Barking Carnival got cute and decided to go take some pictures of the scene, concluding “meh, no big deal.” It looks like when they got there, workers were just beginning and all that showed was a little hobbit hole. Well, we at TaW did our own investigative work:

Does that shit look minor to you?

Kindle’s jock-sniffing lawyer, Brian Roark, of course says his client did the right thing by calling the apartment complex the next morning and owning up to it – instead of doing it immediately like anybody else would … if they were sober.

“He knew he was hurt at the time and that he needed to go home and go to bed.”

Read: He needed to sleep it off.

It’s almost like they teach a class at Belmont on what to do if you’re busted or think you’re going to get busted for DUI – not a bad idea considering the Horns’ string of arrests in the past 3-4 years. Even worse, UT thugs are now progressing from simply kicking in coed’s doors looking for a stolen TV (allegedly) to actually driving right into their bedrooms.

Kindle says he’ll pay for the estimated $8,700 in damages himself, admitting fault in the matter. Seriously, does this smell right to anybody else outside of the 40 Acres? Who’s going to replace all of the property inside the apartment that he destroyed?

He knows he’s damned lucky that:

a. Neither 21-year-old Ashley Zapata, nor anybody else was home, nor did he injure anybody (allegedly) except himself.
b. His boys had the foresight to help him move his car down the street, probably recalling the lessons learned from the DUI-avoidance classes the UT AD supplies (allegedly).
c. The Texas criminal statute is so poorly written that he might just escape on a loophole the size of the hole he put in the apartment.

The complex is also moving Ashley and her roommate to another apartment, which given that the girl is inconvenienced and no doubt has some emotional trauma thanks to a drunk, fuckup football player, may skirt the line of a minor NCAA violation.

Ask yourself this, too: how many of us (myself included) who have daughters would be taking Kindle, UT and all of Kindle’s boys who helped him cover this up to the civil suit woodshed over the incident? Does anybody seriously think that’s not going to happen?

I’m not going to take one iota of Horn-fan’s moral righteousness over shit this year, either (not that I really ever have). No doubt we’ll see Sergio in the Cotton Bowl in October and, barring curbs, last calls or buildings, he’s talented enough to have a good game against the Sooners.

Don’t worry about whether or not he and Mack are going to catch a ration of shit for it that day, though: my seats are two rows above the tunnel. I’ve got this one.

Blogging inspirado comes from various sources. Rehashing UT’s litany of arrests and thugs isn’t really news, but when our friends at Barking Carnival feel the need to dig up 20 and 30-year-old OU arrests and thugs, we at TaW feel obligated to respond in kind.

So, in response to BC’s “Oklahoma All-Garbage Team,” we present to you the Texas All-Garbage Team.”

We already posted our retort to the Sooners that BC chose to include. (Actually, Blevins was a nice inclusion, we’ll give you that one. Odds are 90-10 the entire Sooner fanbase will agree with you there.) The only reason it took me a couple of days to come up with the Texas version, instead of a couple of hours, is that there is so much Longhorn asshattery to wade through. It was hard to pare down the list. I mean, really … do I go with Ron McKelvey or Tyrell Gatewood at safety? Does Ricky Williams start ahead of Cedric Benson, or do I say fuck it and run the veer?

One thing you’ll notice about the list is that most of these UT players are from THIS decade. I didn’t have to go back very far, although there were a couple of gems from a ways back that tasted like special, delicious sauce and were too good to pass up. What we ended up with was almost enough players for UT to hold an intra-squad scrimmage. Unfortunately, a lot of these guys aren’t allowed to associate with other known felons, so that will never happen.

This post is long enough as it is, so it will only include footballers. Steroid-abusing asshole Roger Clemons will not be mentioned. Nor will domestic abusing basketballer Jason Klotz, drunkard basketball coach Tom Penders, drunkard baseball coach Auggie Garrido, or sleazebag corporate defense attorney Joe Jamail.

I’m sure I’m leaving some people out, so feel free to include your own below.

So, all of that out of the way, fellow Sooners and our welcomed guests from all corners of the Interwebs, I give you … the Texas All-Garbage Team:

Quarterback

1st team – No brainer: Vince Young. We all know as we move through life that after the applause comes the reality. Sorry the people of Tennessee didn’t line up to swallow your choad everytime you walked through a shopping mall, Vince. Did the NFL turn out to be actual work? Did people actually start critquing your work? At least next time you’re so distraught that you embarrass a 13-year-old girl, we’ll know where to find you – at your friend’s house eating chicken wings and watching football. Your mama says you just need “a lot of love and support.” Apparently, that’s mama’s code phrase for “my welcoming bosom.” While you’re cuddled up with her, see if she can help you with your throwing motion, Vince.

2nd team – Matt Nordgren. You thought I was going to say Chris Simms, right? Not even little Chrissy’s all-world talent could match Nordgren’s rocket arm that, upset at not getting playing time earlier in the day, fired a UT student’s cell phone through a few practice tires after said student wouldn’t yield a drop-off spot outside Jester Center at 3:30 a.m. in the fall of 2003. Apparently Nordgren had his feelings hurt (see a theme here?) because he didn’t get any playing time earlier in the day. Further pissing him off was that the aggrieved UT student wasn’t impressed by Nordgren’s Lexus SUV (let that simmer), with DB Cedric Griffin’s gold teeth in the passenger’s seat playing willing accomplice.

Carrying a clipboard – Chris Simms. After decommitting from Tennessee to play for the Horns (how doe$$$ that happen, anway?), Simms went on to star in Teddy Lehman’s and The Great Roy Williams’ personal highlight reels for a couple of years. Simms went 0-fer against Oklahoma and seemed to have more interceptions returned for touchdowns than he did actual passing scores. That’s why he’s holding the clipboard on this team: if there’s some way, any way, we can get Chris Simms back on the field or at least coaching those who are in the OU-TX game, I’m all for it.

Graduate assistant – Peter Gardere, he of beating OU four times (approximately 15% of his total wins as a starter over four years) and marrying banging rich Westlake skanks cougars broads fame, was pulled over in downtown Austin for DUI in 2007.

Top incoming recruit – Ryan Perrilloux didn’t set foot on campus, but apparently that didn’t matter on the OU AGT. He was supposedly the crown jewel of Mack’s 2004 recruiting class, but did a 180 on signing day and stayed in state to play for Les Miles. Don’t kid yourselves, Longhorns: it’s not that you didn’t want Perrilloux; he didn’t want you. Mack and UT fans were drawn like mosquitos to a bug-zapper to Perrilloux’s now-defunct www.ryan11.com website, which listed all of his high school accomplishments and was a celebration of everything Ryan. After he got to LSU, it didn’t take long for trouble to, er, find him. Miles suspended him “indefinitely” in May 2007 for trying to use his brother’s ID to get into a casino. “Indefinite” turned out to be three months as Perriloux was starting by September. In October, he got into a bar fight with some other LSU players and was subsequently suspended for one game (the others involved in the fight were kicked off the team). The following February (2008), Perrilloux was “indefinitely suspended” again for “violating team rules.” Supposedly those rules had nothing to do with anything outside the football program. Tell that to the feds, though, who had been looking into him for more than a year for his part in a counterfeiting ring (allegedly).

Running back

1st team – Ricky Williams. How’s that draft workin out for ya, Ditka? How’s that Nepalese blonde hash workin’ out for you, Ricky?

Admittedly, he was one of the best college running backs I’ve ever seen. But as good of a runner as he was, he was just as much (if not more) of a fruit. Apparently the rigors of having to earn his paycheck proved to be too much.

“Playing in the National Football League, you’re told, you know, where to be, when to be there, what to wear, how to be there.”

Ricky quit the NFL before news of his third failed drug test came out. Apparently he didn’t care that he was liable to the Dolphins for millions in signing bonus money they wanted back because what did he do with his time off? He moved to an RV park in Australia and read a lot. Presumably he eschewed the cheeba so he could come back and make the millions he pissed away. Well, not so much.

This guy’s one of the biggest waste of talents in NFL history, but surprisingly enough, he almost didn’t make the first unit on the Texas AGT.

2nd team – Cedric Benson. You could almost say Ced the Head is on the 1a team. Benson had already been busted for pot and the innocuous-sounding “criminal trespass” in 2003. The latter was actually when he and a couple of his boys rolled up at some girl’s apartment and busted down her door looking for his stolen (allegedly) plasma TV. He was sentenced to jail time, but as luck would have it, the Travis County Jail had no vacancies and he was free go to. Being the strict discplinarian that he is, Mack punished him further by suspending him for the Baylor game. In 2008, Benson apparently couldn’t use his NFL millions to hire a boat driver at Devil’s Cove on Lake Travis and was arrested for boating while intoxicated. Benson said he wasn’t drunk and thought he passed all of the field sobriety tests, which included saying his A-B-Cs, a challenging feat for him even if he was sober.

“They gave me a field sobriety test, told me to say my ABCs and told me to count from 1 to 4 up and down,” Benson told the Chicago Tribune. “I’m thinking, I passed all the tests, did everything right.”

He resisted arrest and eventually had to be pepper-sprayed in order to be subdued. How did he respond? He got arrested for DUI again two months later in downtown Austin, near the Rainbow Cattle Company, a popular gay nightclub at 5th and Lavaca (just sayin).

Given all that, yeah … it’s a wonder Benson didn’t make the first team on this list. The reason he didn’t was, in actuality, he was a gutless, overhyped running back.

3rd team – Edwin Simmons. Here’s another guy who almost deserved first-team honors if it wasn’t for that little thing called lack of talent. He once had a lot of promise and even had a great game against OU one year, but he lost it when he went off-tackle with some UT alum’s wife in 1987. Austin Police arrested a naked and stoned Simmons in somebody’s West Austin yard.

Reserves – Selvin Young and James Henry. Young worked himself into the defensive bong rotation in 2003, arrested for pot along with half of the UT defense (see below). Henry was a real winner, of “bitches must be kicked” infamy. In 2007, he was arrested for defending the honor of a teammate, Robert Joseph, who was already in jail for robbery (allegedly). Henry was outed courtesy of an overheard phone call at the Travis County Jail, teaching both he and Joseph that the jail phones are tapped. You learn something new every day.

Fullback – Because everybody needs a battering ram to make a hole, may I present fullback Brock Edwards. In 2002, Edwards was sentenced to 2 years probation, 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay $5,700 in restitution for a fraternity fight where he punched a guy, knocking him out, then kicking him in the face when he was on the ground. Dude, if I ever need to get three yards, I want Brock leading the way.

Wide receiver

1st team – Ramonce Taylor (Texas AGT MVP). If you thought Benson and Henry were fun, you’ll love this guy. Taylor was arrested with four pounds of pot in his native Temple, TX in 2006. Lucky for him, it didn’t weigh more than five, else the charge would have been upgraded (items tend to settle during shipping). Naturally, Taylor’s attorney said he was just holding it for a friend. Mack took a hard line and dismissed Taylor from the team, but not for the pot charge. Rather, he cited academics. Taylor made it academic after doing two months, then getting busted again for pot possession in 2008. Realizing that Taylor was really just a misguided kid who “is like a piece of coal … If you put enough pressure on him he can become a diamond,” the court suspended his two-year sentence. Taylor served five months.

2nd team – We get a two-fer here: Mike Adams and Lovell Pinkney. Adams was an ultra-talented wideout who, in 1994, was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend. It’s amazing he had the strength to do it since, just two months prior, he was stabbed by UT basketball player Al Segova during an altercation. Adams also slugged a cop on Sixth Street while in school at UT, but I digress.

When Adams was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend, who was holding her down? Lovell Pinkney. That’s right, the same Lovell Pinkney who admittedly made 30 grand selling crack when he was 16 years old.

Pinkney and Adams were also investigated for the free use of a rental car, but after assaulting cops and selling crack, this seemed so insignificant that it just went away.

3rd team – Myron Hardy. He was arrested in 2005 for pulling a switchblade in a fight at Seventh and San Jacinto in downtown Austin.

Tight end

This position was pretty scarce in my research, but we can approach this a couple of ways to alleviate any issues:

• Move Pinkney to TE. He was pretty big and based on the incident with Adams girlfriend, good at holding people up (or down) if he has to stay in to block.
• Run the spread with no tight end. UT pretty much has to do it these days anyway since they have no TE.

Offensive line

Going for quality over quantity here. If nothing else, since we have so many skill position players already, we could just take this team and run Leach’s Ninja formation.

1st team – BucKKK Burnette. I know lots of people from Wimberley and “racist” can’t be applied to a single one of them. Obviously, none of them are Buck Burnette, a backup center who Mack booted from the team in 2008 for posting a racist epithet on his Facebook page just after President Obama’s election:

“all the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse”

BucKKK subsequently came out and said how sorry he was for putting it on a public site and for just repeating what somebody else had told him. He failed to apologize for being a racist, though. At least I think that’s what he meant with his Facebook status. I assume he didn’t censor “Sooner.”

2nd team – Stan Thomas. This genius thought it would be a great idea to taunt Miami before the Horns met them in the 1991 Cotton Bowl. Among the gems he fired off:

• Taking Russell Maryland’s Outland Trophy away from him
• Compared attending a barbecue to Canes being in prison (not sure of the logic here, but he’s on a roll – let him go)
• He wanted “the first play to last five minutes because I’m going to hit everybody.”
• He predicted Texas would win 28-10

Let’s just say that didn’t sit well with Miami. They had 16 penalties (nine for unsportsmanlike conduct) for 203 yards and face-raped the Horns, 46-3. Texas AGT graduate assistant QB Peter Gardere was sacked eight times, three of them by Maryland, who abused … Stan Thomas – all day long.

3rd team – Mike Williams. The posterboy for fatass linemen turned out by the moobs-laden Maddog Madden, Williams is considered by the Buffalo Bills to be the biggest bust in the history of their organization. Williams was 6’6″, 375 when he was the #4 pick in the draft and signed a $10.5 million bonus. His ankle joints understandably started failing in his rookie season, causing him to miss a few games. The next year he began missing workouts and only started five of nine games before his back said “enough” and he lost his job to a converted tight end.

Maddog’s name in Project Mayhem was “Robert Paulson.”

Defensive line

1st team – Andre Jones. This genius was busted in 2007 for assisting in the robbery with Robert Joseph (see below), which subsequently led to James Henry kicking some bitches (see above).

2nd team – Henry Melton. Before he was a fat defensive end, he was known as UT’s fat running back who could get you three yards and an oxygen tank. Melton’s DWI bust in downtown Austin was just a part of the Longhorn Summer of Love in 2007.

3rd team – Lamarr Houston. He was arrested for DUI when he drunkenly wrecked his car in downtown Austin last fall. Mack was torn about suspending him for the UTEP game.

Honorable Mentions

Stonie Clark. After James Allen stopped juking ghosts, Stonie Clark opened his big arms and bear-hugged the Sooner tailback on the goalline to preserve a Texas win in 1994. Clark became a Longhorn legend and parlayed that one play into a lucrative skeezy career selling cars on the Austin Motor Mile.

Larry Dibbles. He was in the car with Selvin Young (see above), Edorian McCullough and Aaron Harris (see below) when the Brazos County Task Force stopped them and did a “well, looky here!” with the weed they were packing.

Linebacker

1st team – Sergio Kindle. He’ll be on the DL this fall, but he was a linebacker when he was busted for DWI in Austin.

2nd team – Aaron Harris. Harris was the rocket surgeon who tipped police off to the pot in the car when he, Tyrell Gatewood and Tarrell Brown (see below) were arrested.

Top incoming recruit – Chris Collins. The only reason Collins isn’t on the first team is because Mack finally had to cut him loose, or else. Collins was sentenced in 2007 for the aggravated sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl when he was 17. Collins admitted to police that he had sex with the intoxicated girl in Room 207 of the Comfort Suites in Texarkana at an after-prom party. After Mack was forced to cut him loose, Mike Gundy’s humanitarian streak kicked in and he welcomed him to the Payne County lockup Oklahoma State football team in Stoolwater.

Defensive back

If you’ve made it this far, get comfortable. The Texas AGT is absolutely loaded in the secondary (pun intended).

1st team – Ron Weaver (a.k.a. McKelvey). First team status here really means something and Ron McKelvey’s story is one of my favorite Longhorn schadenfreudes of all time. McKelvey (that was his UT name, so I’m going with it) began his football career as Ron Weaver the wide receiver at Monterey Peninsula College in 1984, then went to Sacramento State in 1988. By the time he got to Mackovic’s Longhorns in 1995, he was a 30-year-old defensive back, still clinging to glory like Uncle Rico wistfully throwing a football over a mountain. He’s best known (athletically) for getting burned on a long touchdown in a 48-7 win against Tech, costing the Longhorns a shutout.

2nd team – Another two-fer: Tyrell Gatewood and Tarrell Brown. Only a real-life Wooderson could knock these two out of the starting spot. Brown was arrested in 2006 with Gatewood and Harris (see above) at 3 a.m. on I-35. Brown gets special recognition for, unlike the other two, having a loaded 9-mil in his lap. Gatewood makes the team for having multiple arrests. His second bust was with Ben Wells (see below) when police found pot, xanax and a baby bottle full of codeine cough syrup.

3rd team – Robert Joseph. Really? The guy charged with aggravated robbery at an East Austin apartment complex is THIRD team?!? I told you the secondary was stacked. Joseph was arrested with Dre Jones (see above).

Honorable mention

Edorian McCullough. One of the Madisonville 4, he was arrested with Dibbles, Harris and Young (see above).

Ben Wells. Arrested with Tyrell Gatewood (see above) in, you guessed it, 2007 for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Kicker

Russell Erxleben. He once set an NCAA record with a 67-yard field goal in 1977. He was also a three-time All-American punter, so the guy had really good feet. He’s also a sneaky, thieving motherfucker. In 2000, Erxleben was convicted of running a Forex ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of close to $33 million. He plead guilty and was and sentenced to 84 months in prison (that’s 7 years, if you’re into the math thing). He was ordered to pay $28 million in restitution and fined another mil on top of that.

Coaches

1st team – Mack Brown (MacIII). Might as well grab the low-hanging fruit. With teeth yellower than a baby’s stool and a voice that’s a dead ringer for Mr. Haney on Green Acres, Brown has exactly one (1) conference championship in 25 years as a head coach. It does so happen that in that conference title year he got a national championship, as well, but that was also in 2005 and if you’re doing the timeline math with the above-referenced arrests, you’ll see how desperate he was to get one. Mack coddles when he thinks his players need a hug, he claps when you do poorly, he answers questions for Chris Simms at press conferences and he makes excuses like “we didn’t throw because it was too windy” and “we didn’t lose, we just ran out of time.” He’s a living legend in the UT community, which only goes to show that it doesn’t take much.

2nd team – John Mackovic (MacII). Even UT fans will tell you he’s a douche. He’d rather have a nice Pinot than a Shiner and he sure didn’t like to coach defense. Ask UCLA, who came into Austin for the infamous Route 66. MacII also lost to Rice and John Blake. That speaks for itself.

3rd team – David McWilliams (MacI). McWilliams was just barely over .500 in five years (’87-’91) at the helm, with only two of them winning seasons. He also went to just two bowl games, winning only the Bluebonnet in ’87. He was 1-4 against A&M.

Honorable Mention – Darrell K. Royal. I would have put him higher on the list, but he is from Hollis, Oklahoma afterall. DKR will forever hold the ignominious distinction of coaching the last all-white national championship team in 1969. He resigned from coaching in 1976 after Barry Switzer was kicking 100% of his ass every year using Texas players – black Texas players who thought they wouldn’t be given much of a shot at UT. Because the UPI awarded their national champion before the bowl games, DKR’s 1970 title has an asterisk next to it.

Gridlocked traffic. Tex-Mex. Barton Springs. Pink granite. Live Music Capital of the World. BBQ. Burnt-orange clad douchebags. Matthew McConaughey.

OU travels 5.5 hours down I-35 to meet up with their BFFs in Austin tonight. This isn’t an ordinary rivalry where everybody shakes hands and has beers together afterwards. No, each fanbase probably wishes a meteor would strike the other school’s campus. Sorry Sooner fans, it was close last week. Try again.

Some tips for those coming down or up or over for the game tonight (wherever you happen to live … the Sooner Nation is omnipresent): park in the state lot at 15th (Enfield) and Trinity. That will put you within a couple blocks of the Erwin Center and right next to Scholz Beer Garten, a favorite pre-game watering hole. OK, for those of you who already knew that, some out of the way places you might want to try close by are Nuevo Leon (best margarita in Austin) on east Sixth and the Crown & Anchor (pool tables, darts, pub grub and a shit ton of beers), just north of campus where San Jacinto meets Speedway.

Another crew coming to Austin is ESPN College Gameday. They’re here to watch the 25-1, #2-ranked Sooners who, should they get by Texas as expected, will be the number one team in the nation next week. At 17-8, unranked and losers of four out of their last six (two in Austin), Texas is grateful just to be in the national discussion today.

The Texas fans and media homers seem to get it somewhat, others not so much. Local sports radio personality and longtime Dallas Morning News columnist Chip Brown said this week that UT would keep it close or be tied with a minute and a half to go, “then who knows.” A caller immediately thereafter said that Texas would win it on a 35-foot buzzer beater by Abrams. What this tells me is, based on this scientifically accurate data sample, UT fans are basically saying they’ll win if prayers are answered.

The guys at Barking Carnival at least have somewhat of a clue what’s about to hit them: Blake Griffin. Tech really didn’t do us any favors by showing the devastation that can happen when you leave Blake single-covered, and the BC guys astutely picked up on that. Where they missed the mark is by thinking Blake’s a black hole once he gets the ball in the post. I hope Rick Barnes thinks that, too, but I’m pretty sure he’s seen film of Blake dishing to a cutting Taylor or Willie or Juan Pattillo (pick one) for an easy layup or dunk many times.

Last time these two teams met in Norman was hella-fun, if you’re a Sooner. OU was up by 9 at the half and it really didn’t feel that close as the Sooners eventually won by 15, led by Blake’s 20 and 10. Damion James, UT’s asshat forward who decommitted from OU as soon as he figured out Capel wouldn’t grease his pockets like Sampson would, rode the bench most of the game in foul trouble. A.J. Abrams, UT’s best offensive weapon, was just 3-15 from downtown and was really never a factor.

For their part, OU had four players in double figures, including Tony Crocker’s once-a-month good game. OU could probably handle Texas tonight without hitting on all cylinders, but it would be nice to blow them out of their own gym and watch a line of orange leave the HumDrum midway through the second half.

Since that game in Norman, Texas is 5-4, which includes a home loss to Nebraska and getting their asses handed to them by A&M. Oklahoma is, of course, a perfect 9-0 over that same stretch with four of the wins coming on the road and five wins by double-digits. Sounds like a recipe for an old-fashioned woodshedding, doesn’t it?

Definitely, but that brings up the only fear: that UT will play over its head and get the win it desperately needs to impress the tournament selection committee. The Whorns would also like nothing better than to deny OU its first number one ranking since March 13, 1990.

We know UT’s weapons: Abrams and James, not necessarily in that order. Abrams has allowed himself to be taken out of games as of late and a couple of things happen when he does: he forces bad shots and the rest of the team seems a little lost. Austin Johnson did a great job shutting him down early in the Norman game, contributing to OU’s fast start. It also helped that James was in foul trouble pretty much from the get-go, played just 20 minutes before fouling out and didn’t look all that great during the time he was in. Barnes was so fed up with James’ frustration that he benched him in favor of Dexter Pittman’s manboobs and reserve Gary Johnson, even in situations where it would have been appropriate (given his foul situation) to play him.

UT will try to guard Blake with a frontline of Connor Atchley, Pittman and Johnson. Atchley’s a 6’10” stiff who will get abused if Blake gets him on his hip, 1-on-1. Johnson is a nice post in the Ryan Wright mold, but think about Wright trying to keep Blake from rolling to the basket.

Pittman is UT’s best post defense against Blake. He’s big and could push The Beast around a bit, but honestly that’s about it. Pittman hasn’t started every game for the Horns and Barnes will have a dilemma here: does he start Pittman knowing that’s the best way of slowing down Blake, or does he go ahead and tell him to skip the pre-game nachos run and get in immediately, knowing that he could easily get into foul trouble early, like James did in Norman. Another problem Barnes will have here is Pittman wearing out his gelatinous body trying to keep Blake from dropping 40, and not being able to do anything on the offensive end. Today’s game preview in the Austin American-Statesman indicates Pittman will take a seat in a very large chair to start the game. That same story quotes Pittman, who needed an oxygen tank and defibrillator after spending 21 minutes on his feet in Norman, as saying yeah, Blake wore his big ass out so much that he couldn’t keep up on the offensive end (Big Dex rained 6 points on 2-7 shooting that day):

“I was caught up more on the defensive end trying to stop Blake Griffin from scoring and rebounding. I forgot about the offensive part of it.”

The guy who concerns me is 6’0” Turkish guard Dogus Balbay. A veteran of Euro-style basketball, Balbay is an excellent pass-first point guard. He can duct tape dimes to his person and distribute them freely without fear of being molested by a sadistic Sağmalcılar narc. His strength is getting others involved, which he did in Norman, handing out six assists. Problem is, UT has to have people who can knock down what he’s giving them and that’s been a big problem for them over the past three weeks. The knock on Balbay is that he can’t shoot. He’s a pedestrian 43% shooter from the field, but is an absolutely horrendous 34% from the FT line. Teams have been known to back off of him when he has the ball, knowing he’s Doug Gottlieb with his shorts adjusted properly. So, there’s an easy solution to guarding Balbay here: put Crocker on him. It’s not like you have to worry about contesting his shot or letting him get the first step, then fouling him in an effort to catch up.

Finally, back to magaritas, beer and Mexican food: Pittman just calls that “pregame.” So, while he’s ordering the #9 heart attack on a plate platter and a frozen swirl (no salt), fans should be piling into the EC, ready to see a long-anticipated game that we thought earlier in the year would actually mean something. Well, it might not have much bearing in the overall Big 12 scheme of things (don’t tell that to Kansas and Mizzou), but it sure means a lot to us as fans. Since I live about 10 minutes from downtown Austin, I’m pretty much obligated to go. I love living here for the weather, the music, the nightlife and for the love of god, Tex-Mex is an actual food group. The best times here, though, are when the Longhorn faithful are whining once again that OU has somehow screwed them out of something. On Monday, I fully expect the entire Sooner Nation to hold up an index finger with their right hand, a middle finger with their left and proclaim the University of Oklahoma Sooners the number one team in the nation for the first time in 18 years … at the expense of the Texas Longhorns.

It really doesn’t get much better than that.