Today I’m going to offer some miscellaneous thoughts while I transition from basketball season to baseball. I know, the NBA will play for another three months, but outside of the Warriors and Spurs, I’ve got no real rooting interest. If those two teams meet in the Western Conference Final, however, that’d be a must-watch series. As a guy with Kansas ties, I was interested in the NCAA Men’s West Regional final, featuring a pair of former Kansas State coaches. Oklahoma’s Lon Krueger was the Big Eight player of the year twice in the early 1970s, then coached at K-State from 1986-90. Kruger was followed in Manhattan by Dana Altman, now the head coach at Oregon. Altman also led the Wildcats for four seasons before leaving for Creighton. There was a big difference in the four-year stints for each coach. Kruger led K-State to the NCAA tournament each season, while Altman’s tenure included a Big Eight last-place finish in the first year (the cupboard was pretty bare when Kruger left for Florida), followed by two NIT appearances and one trip to the big dance. Folks in and around Manhattan, Kansas were sad to see Kruger, who grew about 40 miles east of Manhattan on U.S. 24 in Silver Lake, head for the Sunshine State. Altman was widely believed to have saved the school the trouble of firing him. Neither coach had a lot of success against Kansas; Kruger’s team lost a regional final to the Jayhawks in 1988, and neither had a win over KU on the Wildcats’ home floor. Starting with his fifth season at Creighton, Altman’s Bluejays won at least 20 games for 11 consecutive seasons, and in six seasons at Oregon, Altman has six more 20-plus win seasons. Since Altman packed his bags in Manhattan, K-State has made just five NCAA appearances, four of those were under coach Frank Martin, who left for South Carolina after the 2012 season. Meanwhile, K-State football has transformed from the laughingstock of college sports to, if nothing else, a solid program. Folks thought Kruger would be around for the entirety of his college career, and more than one K-Stater has wondered if the Wildcats underappreciated Altman while he was there. Other thoughts to put a bow on my basketball season: Has there been a greater foregone conclusion than UConn winning the women’s basketball national title again this year? I also wondered if it’s good for the game to have one dominant team and a bunch of good ones. Eventually, the rest of women’s college basketball will catch up to the Lady Huskies, so yeah, it is good that UConn continues to set the bar high. And there’s nothing I can say about Kansas and its loss to Villanova that doesn’t come across as sour grapes. But I’m not alone in questioning the officiating at the end of the game. We enter this spring with the Kansas City Royals as defending World Series champions. The team is better than I ever dared to dream as recently as three years ago, and I’ve not looked forward to a Major League season this much since before the strike in 1994. I’ve read a lot of preseason publications, and it just seems insane to think the Cubs won’t win the National League Central, but several folks think this is the Pirates’ year. Yes, it’s not realistic to think Jake Arrieta can have another season like last year; who’s to say? But the blister on his pitching thumb is at least a mild concern. It’d be worth sacrificing his first start or two for the long-term health. I’ve seen predictions of a Cubs-Royals Fall Classic, and that remains my worst nightmare. Not because I know so many Cubs fans, but to be honest I’d like to see first-hand the joy of the longest suffering fans in the history of professional sports. Just not at the expense of the Royals. Or the Cardinals. Anyway, your division winners will be Houston in the AL West, Kansas City in the Central and Toronto in the East. The Nationals will find a way to take the amazingly weak NL East, and the Giants will win the West. The AL wild cards will be Texas and the Yankees, and the NL will have the Pirates (again) and the Dodgers. The Cubs and Giants will play for the NL pennant, and the Blue Jays and Astros will meet in the ALCS. From there, take the Cubs in the last game played in Wrigley, whether that’s game five or six, over Houston. Now, let’s get this baseball season started!
