Rex Hudler

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 11, 2007 -> 11:00 PM) He supposedly disclosed this to the producers before he auditioned. So what's the real story? I read a story about it and no one really knows. It seems that Idol producers don't know. Apparently, extensive background checks are done on each contestant by Fox and they have the right to nix someone. Supposedly this happened in this case. Weird stuff

Is it too much for me to expect IU to win both @ Purdue and @ Michigan this week? Is a split a more realistic expectation?

I stumbled upon American Idol: Rewind tonight. For those that don't know, it is a syndicated look back at Season One. I never saw the first season, so this is interesting to me. They are down to the final 30, whittling down to the finals. It's amazing to see how far the show has gone. The final 30 was done in a small studio with a tiny stage and no audience. Another thing that I found interesting is how good Paula Abdul looked in Season One. She has seriously aged in the past 5 years. The last thing is that Kelly Clarkson, barely made the final 30. When they were deliberating to get it to 30, she was placed in the "maybe" group and not included in the judges 15 "definites". edit: Does anyone know the story about how/why Brian Dunkleman didn't come back for Season Two?

Danman, while I tend to agree with you that Sweeney may never develop the power some have him pegged for, his current stats are quite misleading. Sweeney has a real sweet swing and could be one of those guys that develop power as they mature. Don Mattingly was one prime example of that. He never hit for power in the minors and finally learned to turn on the ball after reaching the Majors. While it could happen, I am not going out on a limb to say that it will. The problem with evaluating Sweeney is the Sox have pushed him too quickly, as the original piece stated. Sweeney should have been back in AA last year. While he has held his own at each level, he hasn't been great. Everything about Sweeney is based on potential. Personally, I wish the Sox would just let him repeat a level and see how comfortable he gets. He is still very young and has time to develop. A 2008 MLB debut (as a regular) is more realistic. But expecting him to hit with power right away is not.

Rosters such as that one at this time of year mean absolutely nothing. There are strictly paper rosters and that is it. Minor League rosters are formed with a trickle-down effect from the MLB club. Think of it this way.... The MLB roster is 40 players deep (assuming they are full). There are usually a decent amount of non-roster invitees to Spring Training that would not be on this AAA roster either. The active Major League roster is 25 players once the season starts. That means at least 15 players and any other non-roster invitees they keep and option to the minors will all have to go to Minor League rosters. Most will go to AAA, so you have to figure more than 1/2 of Charlotte's roster at the beginning of the season is not on that list. This causes a trickle-down effect all the way to Class A, so none of the rosters at this time of year are close to what they will be on opening day. So if you truly want to guess what Charlotte's roster will look like on opening day, you need to start with the Sox 40-man roster and make some judgements about who will be with the big club come April.

Speaking of Evansville, they waxed Indiana State today, 76-61 to bring their overall record to 13-13. Yee ha!

QUOTE(Sonik22 @ Feb 11, 2007 -> 04:54 PM) Yeah i really don't understand this, i think thats just because they are predicting an Evansville MVC tourney win. No, predictions have nothing to do with that mock bracket. Twenty reporters were invited by the NCAA to do a simulation of the process the NCAA Tournament Committee goes through to pick the bracket. They all went to Indianapolis and NCAA officials guided them through the complete process, giving them access to all of the computers and information actually used in the selection process. The process included the NCAA simulating conference tournaments and giving the reporters the info as if it were happening for real. They included some curveballs so the reporters would see how they affect the process. Two of the curveballs thrown to them were Evansville winning the MVC and High Point upsetting Winthrop in the Big South. This was simply an exercise and the brackets you see are the results. Scroll back about 5-10 pages in this thread and you will see two very good articles on the process, written by Andy Katz and Jay Bilas.

Duck, I see things flying across the room shortly. Please excuse my ignorance, but I am not familiar with Patrick Beverly and Stefhon Hannan. By your post, I am assuming they are recruits Weber was unable to get to Illinois. But where are they now?

I think you are right about the likelihood of the league getting 3 bids. But I don't necessarily think teams like Wichita St and Bradley have to win out. I think the days of a Valley team having to have single digit losses are over, at least for the foreseeable future. 10-8 in the Valley could get a team in if they have some non-conference wins to support their case, they finish strong and beat one of the big three in the Valley Tournament. I just don't see a ton of teams with real strong at-large resumes. I think the tournament committee is really going to have their hands full this year trying to differentiate between the final 6 at large bids.

The Missouri Valley still looks pretty good in terms of at-large consideration for the NCAA Tournament. Five teams still have a shot at an at-large berth depending on how they finish the year. SIU (21-5, 12-3 MVC) - A lock barring a total collapse, which won't happen Creighton (17-8, 11-4 MVC) - Solid chance. Lack a signature win on the road. Will likely need to win 3 of their last four. Beating Drexel, while at home, will help. Missouri State (19-7, 10-5 MVC) - Probably a better chance than Creighton with their win over Wisconsin and close loss as Oklahoma State. Pretty close to a lock barring a meltdown. Splitting their last four games and winning at least one in the Valley Tournament will likely be enough. Dates with SIU, Winthrop and @ Wichita St highlight their last four games. Bradley (17-10, 8-7 MVC) - Good chance if they finish strong. Win over DePaul will help. Wins over Loyola and Wright St are also solid wins, as would be an upcoming win over 21-5 VCU Saturday. Game @ Evansville could be a key. Losing that game and/or @ VCU may give them problems if they don't have a strong run in the Valley Tournament. Wichita St (16-9, 7-7 MVC) - Everyone has written them off, but I can't. They finish with Illinois St, @ Drake, Appalachian St (19-6), Missouri St and @ Creighton. Win 4 of those 5 and they will be sitting at 20-8 with wins over LSU and Syracuse on the road. While those teams haven't been as good as advertised early on, road wins early in the season will help the Shockers cause. They will have to finish strong to get consideration for an at-large bid, but they can do so and do so without really hurting any of the other teams' chances. Northern Iowa (16-10, 7-8 MVC) - Would need a drastic turnaround to receive at-large consideration. They have lost 6 of their last 7 games which obviously isn't heading in the right direction. They face Creighton, Nevada and Bradley in their next three games all on the road. Winning all three would certainly breathe some life back into their hopes, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that happening. Evansville (12-13, 5-9 MVC) - Only being mentioned here hoping like hell they fire Steve Merfield and get this program back where it belongs. There is too much history and too much local support available to this program for it to be in the situation it is currently in.

I would like a million dollars!

Ummm, where the hell is Andy? How can a guy who was becoming a central character, just disappear for two weeks with no explanation?

QUOTE(CrimsonWeltall @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 09:08 PM) The best part of tonight's episode was Ryan knocking the bouquet away from Kelly That was classic. I liked Creed throwing away the card on the biggest gift and replacing it with his.

QUOTE(Palehosefan @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 09:08 PM) The number of 4 star players on both sites are about the same, but Rivals gives out about half as many 5 star ratings. But both sites can REALLY differ on players, one can be a 2 star on Scout and a 4 star on Rivals, etc. That's interesting. I just looked at WR and it seemed scout.com's list of 4-stars went on forever.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 11:32 AM) Are you kidding me??? Good cripes that show has its head up its butt. Good thing nobody in music ever uses any form of drug. It's such a clean profession. It's not the pot bust. Bo Bice had it revealed that he had a prior arrest for drugs about 2/3 the way through the finals, but nothing became of it because he was up front with the Idol people and they knew it. I don't know the details of this situation, but the general rule is if you admit to it up front in the million questions Idol asks, then they will stand behind you later. Granted, if this guy got busted for selling or major felony possession, that might be enough to get him the boot now.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan99 @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 03:33 PM) Nobody accused Indiana of cheating. Ummm, yes they did. One thing I noticed when looking at both Rivals and Scout's sites is that scout.com is much more liberal with their player ratings. Scout.com had Michigan with 12 4-star players. Rivals had them with 5. That's a big difference.

We figured we would check out the beginning of the show and fast forward through the rest to catch up to live action (love the DVR!) but watched the whole thing. The show looked awesome in HD. I thought it was probably the best halftime show I have ever seen. I am not a huge Prince fan, but I liked the Purple Rain days. The fact that he was out there jamming in the rain and his dancers were all over the stage in heeled boots in a downpour made it even better.

QUOTE(Brian @ Feb 7, 2007 -> 09:56 PM) Can we get a thread for teams that are ranked so I don't have to weed through this Iowa and Illinois chatter? Nice!

Well no surprises for Michigan today. Eveything was pretty much determined ahead of time. They had a nice, solid class, but not a spectacular one. They will really have to ramp up the offensive line for the 2008 class.

QUOTE(watchtower41 @ Feb 6, 2007 -> 12:04 PM) Anybody think that Morris could possibly still be a mole here.... I'm thinking that he sent the message that his brother was going to the hospital to CTU himself. McCarthy also mentioned that he needed to use an outside source to get a hold of the picture that he uploaded for Fayed. Also nice that we finally get to meet the new VP. Looks like Lennox and him will always have underlying agendas past Palmer's control. I've had questions about Morris from the very beginning. I have never seen past seasons, so I don't have any knowledge of his previous history, but he seems shaky to me.

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Feb 6, 2007 -> 08:24 PM) http://blogs.indystar.com/hoosiersinsider/...e.html#comments Bad news about Finch the night before Signing Day. That just pisses me off. I can't believe he is going to Florida. I'd have been fine with either IU or Michigan, but the fact Florida has come in late like this makes me question the kid's maturity. If he goes through with it, this will be the 3rd school he has been "committed to" in the past month. I can understand him changing his long-time commitment from Michigan to IU, where he wanted to play with his HS teammates. I could have understood if he decided he made a quick emotional choice to change and reverted back to his original commitment to Michigan. But the commitment to Florida, especially after they just got a commitment from Major Wright, baffles me. Such is life when you are relying on the decisions of 17-18 yr old kids. lol The kicker to this whole thing is how Florida came to have a scholarship open. WR Terrance Toliver was supposed to decide between LSU and Florida and announce tomorrow, on signing day. Apparently, he got a little too excited and couldn't wait and told the LSU coaches of his commitment to the Tigers today. Word leaked out, so Florida has an open scholarship they weren't supposed to know about until tomorrow and they go back to Finch. It seems as if Finch must have wanted to go there from the time he made his visit and the only reason he stuck with IU was because UF didn't have a scholarship available after getting Major Wright..... until today.

Gordon highlight clip from Thursday night's win over Loyola IL.

2008 Indiana commit Bud Mackey led his Scott County (KY) team over Huntington (WV), the nation's #2 team. Mackey had 20 points, five rebounds and four assists. Huntington includes top PG OJ Mayo and Patrick Patterson.

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Feb 3, 2007 -> 03:26 PM) Well there goes some of that goodwill of beating Wisconsin on Wednesday. Iowa gets another banner in the rafters, as they beat IU 81-75. I absolutely hate blaming anything on refs, but they shouldn’t be as much of a factor in the game as they were today. They really stunted this game. Considering we were in this game to the end, I’m not really mad in our effort; we were only going to win today if we could in spite of the refs. This pretty much kills any hopes of us contending for the Big Ten, as we don’t face either Wiscy or OSU again. We now have a week off to correct ourselves, as we don’t play again until Illinois comes here next Saturday. I agree in that the officiating changed the way the game was played today. I don't think the best team won and I do think that would have happened in a game officiated in a more normal fashion. That said, I can't blame the officiating for the loss. Iowa got many crappy calls too and they adapted better. They worked through it better than IU did. Granted being at home and being able to feed off the crowd helps, but IU has been in worse environments. I'm really disappointed that IU couldn't find a way. They fought hard as hell at the end, but I don't think they fought hard enough early on.

QUOTE(aboz56 @ Feb 3, 2007 -> 02:53 PM) They're calling any and everything, this is by far the worst I've seen this year, probably not the worst ever, but it's pretty terrible. Also Haluska pushes off every damn time down the court, yet they can't call anything on him. Quit showing his girlfriend in the crowd. At least she's hot