Hiring a star recruit’s father? Out. Hiring a star recruit’s grandfather? In.
It was reported today that Milt Wagner, grandfather of top-ranked Class of 2023 recruit D.J. Wagner and a former Louisville star himself, is joining the Cardinals staff. To make matters funnier, Wagner is not technically employed by the athletic department, but is instead in a “hybrid” role which incorporates both player development and alumni relations, helping Louisville skirt NCAA rules which require any family members of recruits to be hired into one of the three primary assistant coach roles. Principles are important, and sticking it to the NCAA is a good principle.
Does this make D.J. Wagner a lock to go to Louisville? I don’t know. Does this seem quaint in the NIL era? Kind of. But it’s got Louisville back in the headlines, and…let’s talk for a minute about Louisville.
Louisville’s down. This is undeniable. They were 13-19 this past year, they were only 13-7 in the Covid season (missed the tournament), they didn’t win an NCAA Tournament game during Chris Mack’s tenure as the head coach, that’s fairly shocking for a program of their stature. But are they “down bad?” I’m inclined to say no, and not just because they were solid in 2019-20 before the pandemic outbreak shut things down, or because the ACC’s not as good as it sometimes is, or because the Cards are the favorites to sign this coming season’s top-ranked recruit.
The thing about Louisville is that they will make it happen. They will hire a top recruit’s grandpa. They will find the loose quarters in the couch for NIL deals. A community that cares as much about basketball as Louisville cares about basketball will get the talent in the door, and a school that cares about basketball as much as Louisville cares about basketball will keep trying coaches if it doesn’t find one that works. There is an appetite for success at Louisville that I don’t think exists in the same quantity in many other places.
That isn’t to say Louisville is going to win another national championship, even ever. Winning a national championship is a pretty challenging thing to do. It’s also not to say that they’re going to bounce back this year. It was a rough season and it’s been a rough offseason, with a fairly mediocre recruiting class coming in and a tough bout with the transfer portal so far. It’s also not to say that Kenny Payne is or isn’t the answer at head coach. He might be, he might not be, we really don’t know. But Louisville? They’ll probably be back. Programs with that appetite are hard to keep away from the table.
Speaking of Kentucky
Were we speaking of Kentucky? Well, indirectly, because they are also recruiting D.J. Wagner and they did not just agree to employ his grandfather.
In other Kentucky news, Keion Brooks is returning from the draft and focusing his energies solely on the transfer portal. Only big action of the last 24 hours on that front nationally.
The Cubs Got It Done
Nice little win for the Cubs last night in Cincinnati. Not much to add except that it feels good to beat this year’s Reds, and I hope the guys can do it again tonight. Winning winnable games always feels good, no matter the year.
A Crack in the Brewers’ Foundation
We’ve been saying for the last season and a half that the Brewers are in a tight spot with how much they rely on just a few players for a high percentage of their production. Now, that theory’s going to be tested, as Freddy Peralta will miss “a significant amount of time.” He strained his shoulder, they’re saying no surgery, but they also said he’s going to be out a while.
Peralta hasn’t been getting outstanding results—he has a 4.42 ERA through eight starts and he was hardly averaging five innings per outing entering Sunday’s go-round—but he does have a 2.88 xERA, close to last year’s, and a 2.10 FIP, his career best, which indicate a decent dose of bad luck. Rough loss for the Crew going forward. Huge to have Eric Lauer and Adrian Houser pitching well.
On the topic of another team highly reliant on a few guys, Taylor Ward might play tonight for the Angels. We’ll see what the MRI comes back with, but they think the shoulder/neck injury is just a stinger.
Gelo and the Market Are Approaching a Truce
The market is still pretty high on the Flames, but Gelo is catching up to it on the Avalanche as they beat up the Blues. Now, we wait to see if the market will catch up to Gelo on the Lightning.
Overall, Gelo’s performing fairly well for betting purposes, but it is pretty quick with its reactions, and since it’s based on goal margin, its movements after individual games can appear a bit wonky. The thing about this is: This was the optimal rate of change we found, and one capable of figuring out things like, “These expansion Vegas Golden Knights are playing pretty well,” without a long slog of unbelievability. Are there better inputs than goal margin? Probably. But the G in Gelo stands for goal, and we aren’t trying to be the best hockey predictors in the world here. We’re just trying to make something that’s useful for building a futures portfolio, and if it can hang in there with single-game probabilities, all the better. Also, the conventional wisdom is that hockey is a streaky game, no?
On the ice itself, the Lightning finished off the Panthers last night. Gelo views them as currently the best team in hockey (after long viewing the Panthers as the best team in hockey), but Colorado, who beat up the Binnington-less Blues, is hot on their heels. Very clear pair of favorites, though the market seems to hold a bit more faith in both the Hurricanes and the Rangers than Gelo does (Gelo doesn’t see much value on either team in individual games, but it sees value on the Lightning pretty much everywhere).
Speaking of the Hurricanes and Rangers, they play tonight, and it’s not the game that will decide the series but it’s a pseudo-elimination game for New York. Looking like a coin toss in virtually every projection. The Hurricanes almost blew a 2-0 lead against the Bruins in the first round. Wonder how that affects preparations for tonight.
Also playing tonight are the Oilers and Flames, and the difference there is that the home team is both 1) the better team, per Gelo and 2) leading the series. The Oilers can’t put this away the same way the Hurricanes can put their series away with a win tonight, but they can hold onto home-ice advantage even heading back on the road for Game 5, which would put just about all the wind in their sails and set up Connor McDavid vs. the Avalanche in the Western Conference Finals, which…alright, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Will the Mavericks Stay Alive?
It doesn’t matter. That series is over. Not over is the Celtics/Heat series, with the Celtics pulling it together and turning it into a best-of-three. The Heat have home-court advantage now, but Boston has about everything else going for them aside from their recent trend of absolutely stinking at times (which the Heat also do, so…who knows).
Model Notes
We’ve talked recently about our hopes for Relo, a run-based elo-adjacent system for forecasting college baseball results. We’ve talked a little less recently about the same thing for college softball.
Neither is happening.
We’re too thin on time at the moment, and it’s too imperative to The Barking Crow’s future wellbeing that we get cracking on college football. (Only about three months away!) We’re also shelving our NASCAR, F1, and IndyCar model efforts for the year, or at least until we can get the football model set up well and see what we’re working with. We’re still figuring out how well we can cover college baseball’s NCAA Tournament (which culminates in the College World Series), so hopefully we can all enjoy those weeks together, but no data from us this year for it.
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Viewing schedule tonight (second screen rotation in italics):
- 6:40 PM EDT: Cubs @ Reds, Stroman vs. Mahle (MLB TV)
- 6:40 PM EDT: Marlins @ Rays, López vs. McClanahan (MLB TV)
- 7:00 PM EDT: Hurricanes @ Rangers, Game 4 (ESPN)
- 7:20 PM EDT: Phillies @ Braves, Gibson vs. Fried (MLB TV)
- 7:45 PM EDT: Blue Jays @ Cardinals, Gausman vs. Hicks (MLB TV)
- 8:10 PM EDT: Red Sox @ White Sox, Pivetta vs. Cease (MLB TV)
- 9:30 PM EDT: Flames @ Oilers, Game 4 (ESPN)
- 9:40 PM EDT: Brewers @ Padres, Burnes vs. Snell (TBS)
- 9:45 PM EDT: Mets @ Giants, Bassitt vs. Webb (MLB TV)
Lot of good baseball, the hockey’s compelling, the Mavericks need to win two for me to tune back in. The NBA Playoffs are back into dud territory.
