From January 3rd of last year:
Iowa State played about the game we expected against Clemson. They showed some courage against a more talented foe. They kept the game tight until the end. They had a few disastrous mistakes, the final one of which was quite the microcosm of Brock Purdy’s incredible Iowa State career, in which Purdy made a game-saving play, scrambling for a first down on fourth and short, then got stripped and lost the ball.
I make a point to say Purdy’s career in Ames was incredible because it was. Purdy was not the quarterback he was often made out to be, but he was a great quarterback—probably Iowa State’s best ever, considering how well he played over such a long period of time (Seneca Wallace, Sage Rosenfels, and George Amundson all threw more interceptions than touchdowns over their careers). He also represented the program about as well as you could hope for a guy to do it. He was a victim, in a way, of his own hype, because while he was never a Heisman-quality player, that’s the wrong bar to use to measure a quarterback in Ames in this era.
I’m still not positive how good Brock Purdy was at Iowa State, and I watched four seasons of Brock Purdy at Iowa State. He put up great numbers, he kept the wheels on the road for some great upsets, and I can’t get the 2021 Cy-Hawk game out of my head. Now that he’s having this NFL moment and hopefully starting a successful NFL career (I love Brock Purdy, I just can’t vouch for him wholeheartedly as a quarterback), the question is relevant anew. I think he’s doing what he did in Ames with the “wheels on the road” thing, and just driving a much nicer car in the form of the San Francisco 49ers, but I still don’t think he’ll successfully make throws during some dramatic comeback if the Niners trail big early in the Super Bowl. I also could see him—always hyped, always full of potential, always easy to believe in—as a quarterback who will develop into the guy who can win Super Bowls (this is a ridiculous thing to be writing, but it is also entirely true, and has always been the Brock Purdy experience). He just turned 23. That makes him younger than just about every NFL quarterback not named, this is funny, Trey Lance. That makes him younger than half the incoming quarterback draft class.
The bottom line with our guy Purdy, then, is that he’s shown his potential is still there, and he’s shown he can still execute, and he’s shown he’s still a gamer. So far, the 49ers haven’t let that last bit happen to his detriment or theirs.
Is Anybody Good? NFL Edition
Maybe the Bills and Bengals looked past the Dolphins and Ravens, maybe there was something in these cases to that beating–a–team–three–times–is–hard meme, maybe the Bills and Bengals just aren’t all that good? And by the way: How good are Philadelphia and Kansas City? Because if it isn’t the Bills, Bengals, or one of those two, we’re down to crowning Brock Purdy or asking questions about the Giants. (If Tom Brady wins this Super Bowl I think we should all have a great laugh at how we didn’t see it coming the whole time.)
It was, wonderfully, a thrilling weekend of playoff football. All five of the games were compelling and two were downright wild. If the NBA is juicing the rims this year, I want to know what the NFL is doing to the fields of play, because these games were electric and all high-scoring (if you break thirty in the AFC North I think it still counts as a barn-burner).
Is Anybody Good? College Basketball Edition
Alabama had a ridiculous game on Saturday, beating LSU by forty points in what should’ve been a no-downside day for the Tigers. Later that night, things took a horrific turn, and now Darius Miles has been charged with murder. We don’t have much else to say about that besides that it is horrific and horrifically sad.
Now.
UConn! You tricksters. You tricky freaking tricksters.
For two months, we learned to believe in UConn. They won the month of November and dominated the month of December up until its very last day. Now, they’ve lost four of five, they’re .500 in the Big East, and they just lost badly at home to a St. John’s team who’s not all that likely to make the tournament. We’re done with UConn. We think Marquette and Xavier might be the best teams in the Big East. We don’t actually think that, but the Huskies are joining Saint Mary’s right now as a KenPom darling and nothing more, and that’s quite the fall from grace.
If not for UConn’s trickery, we’d be leading with that of Kentucky, who pretty much rocked a real national championship contender in Knoxville, exposing all those offensive flaws we knew about but had begun allowing ourselves to ignore. Great defense, Vols. Now. How do you score when Santiago Vescovie doesn’t shoot fifty percent from deep?
Iowa State did indeed give Kansas a game, trading blows with the Jayhawks the whole afternoon. Osun Osunniyi was healthy and a presence, Gabe Kalscheur’s offensive rebirth continued, Gradey Dick beat the Cyclones but Gradey Dick might be the Most Outstanding Player in a certain pair of games in early April. You let Gradey Dick make five threes, you didn’t have a terrible day.
I saw a writeup that said that Iowa State didn’t play its best game, and that’s probably true. Iowa State has played better this year than they did in Lawrence. But they’ve only done it once, and that was against a team which at the moment appeared to be in the process of giving up on the sport of basketball entirely. If you expect Iowa State to score a point per possession against Kansas, I don’t know what to tell you. This team is not that good. It’s not fair to ask this team to be that good. This team is, however, good enough to hang with Kansas in Lawrence via defense, and that’s what they did. I’ll take Iowa State’s defense against any in the country right now, and there’s so much basketball to be played but the Cyclones are one win tomorrow from being the clear second dog in the Big 12, which exceeds every semi-reasonable expectation from November. T.J. Otzelberger is doing a better job than he did last year, and last year his team won eleven times as many games as the season before.
To bring this back to the national picture: Kansas and UCLA and Houston are the current top of the heap, with Houston’s ability to avoid disaster with that offense a continued question but nobody in the country question-free.
Our new categories:
- Champions Who Wouldn’t Surprise Us: Houston, UCLA, Kansas
- The Questioned: Tennessee, Alabama, Purdue
- Good, Not Great: UConn, Texas, Virginia, Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga
Arizona disappears. That team is Illinois with a good press agent.
**
Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:
College Basketball (a few courses)
- 12:00 PM EST: Georgetown @ Villanova (FOX)
- 2:30 PM EST: Purdue @ Michigan State (FOX)
- 6:00 PM EST: Illinois @ Minnesota (BTN)
NFL
- 8:15 PM EST: Dallas @ Tampa Bay (ABC)
NBA (best game)
- 3:00 PM EST: New Orleans @ Cleveland (League Pass)
NHL (best game)
- 4:00 PM EST: Tampa Bay @ Seattle (ESPN+)
Australian Open
- 7:00 PM EST & Onwards: First Round Singles (ESPN+, some ESPN2)
