Reporting on the departure of AJ Ratliffe from the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team, the Hoosier Report points out the significant AJ deficit now facing the Hoosiers:

Perhaps most significantly, the IU program is now facing a significant AJ deficit. In 1996, AJ Guyton began his productive four year career at IU, graduating in 2000 as one of the school’s greats. In 2000, AJ Moye instantly became a fan favorite because of his hustle and ability to compete in the paint with much taller players, most memorably with a jump-ball block of the much taller Carlos Boozer in IU’s 2002 NCAA Tournament upset of #1 Duke. After Moye departed in 2004, AJ Ratliff enrolled and enjoyed an up-and-down career that is now over. Three AJs, evenly spaced. Does anyone know Adam Ahlfeld’s middle name? As far as I’m concerned, it is “James.”

My wife has long noted the desirability of the Hoosiers having an AJ at all times. I was about to post a blog post on the matter and was a bit surprised to find that I had been beaten to the punch. Nicely done, John M, nicely done.

Last night’s men’s basketball game between Indiana and Illinois had a pretty exciting finish. It was a double overtime win by the Hoosiers. The Illini were up by 3 toward the end of regulation. Eric Gordon banked in an NBA distance three pointer to tie it up. I can’t remember for sure, but I think someone from Illinois missed the front end of a one-and-one and it went to OT. Illinois went to the line with a couple of seconds left at the end of the first OT with two free throws – and missed them both. Finally the Hoosiers escaped after 2 overtimes with a parade of free throws.

This is one the Hoosiers should have lost. I’m not getting the sense that they are quite as good as they’re ranked. They’ve lost to two of the better teams they’ve played — UConn and Wisconsin — and the rest of the competition hasn’t been all that stiff. But they’ve won a couple of close ones at the end on the road — seems like a similar scenario played out in Minnesota as played out last night. So, I’m figuring maybe a 6 seed in the tournament and maybe one or two wins before getting bounced. Guess we’ll see.

Holy crap, Bob Knight resigned from Texas Tech – midseason.

“He said he was tired and that it was best to go ahead and do it now,” Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance told The Associated Press. “I think Bob is through with coaching. I think he got to the point where it wasn’t fun for him.”

Update The Indy Star has a more extensive report now. It appears that Knight is stepping down to help turn over the coaching reins to his son, Pat Knight. Seems like my biggest disappointments with Coach Knight have to do with Pat Knight. I never really thought Pat deserved a spot on the IU teams and thought the quality of the teams suffered. Mainly I noticed him when I got to law school in the fall of 1993. Pat got most of his playing time and there was a sharp drop off in the quality of the teams after the graduation of Calbert Cheney and the rest of the class of ’93. It always seemed peculiar to me that the coach’s son got to play at one of the premiere basketball colleges in the country. Maybe the drop-off in performance was just coincidence. Now Knight is leaving Texas Tech midseason. The official reason is that he’s tired. But, come on. You’ve coached almost 1,300 games. Ten more isn’t going to kill you. Seems to me like, once again, he’s doing something a little odd for the benefit of Pat. This way Pat Knight can be sure of some time as head coach with less temptation to consider the larger pool of potential head coaches you’d have during the offseason.

Maybe my views are colored by watching too much politics — where its often advantageous for a retiring politician to step down in the middle of a term to give someone in the politician’s party some incumbency time before the general election.

Regardless of all of this Knight was clearly a great coach, and I certainly appreciate all of the great Indiana teams I was able to watch over the years thanks to him.

Update 2 The Hoosier Report has a good post on the subject. My speculation that the mid-season timing was done to help Pat appears to be wrong.

By request, a Patriots Suck thread. Now, clearly they don’t “suck,” but the level of hype from Day One has been stupid. The only reason to put a team like that on a pedestal is because it’s so satisfying to see them knocked off. Glad it was one of the Manning boys who did it . . . again.

First and foremost, Belichick is a classless jerk. I don’t know if it’s because his daddy was a football coach who never had time for him as a boy or what, but the guy is a sore winner and a sore loser. Randy Moss is a guy with talent but is also a self-absorbed, hot-dogging glory hound. Tom Brady is also a guy with a lot of talent. And he’s a lot more of a team player than Moss. But, the humble underdog, Cinderella story thing has warn off over the years. Also, under Belichick, Brady’s level of sportsmanship has seemed to decline over the years — at least if postgame interviews are any measure. (Though, from what I hear, he was o.k. after the loss last night.) And then you’ve got flat out dirty players like Rodney Harrison on the team. I suspect most of the bad character simply oozes down from the top.

So, anyway, I was happy that they lost the big one. Now, instead of having to hear about this team every year for the next decade or two, they might get mentioned a few times over the next couple of years and then forgotten except when someone is talking about the career of Eli Manning.

Good news for Colts fans – Tony Dungy is coming back for another season.

Dungy, 52, is the winningest coach in Colts history with an 80-28 record and directed the franchise to its first Super Bowl championship in 36 years last February. He became the first African-American coach to lead a team to a Super Bowl title when the Colts defeated the Chicago Bears 29-17.

Now, just 7 more months until preseason starts.

Today’s AFC Divisional playoff game between the Chargers and Colts will be the last football game in the Hoosier Dome. Yeah, yeah, I know, it has been the RCA Dome for quite some time, but I never fully accepted the name change. In the 23 years it’s been open, I’ve only been to one Colts’ game there. As I recall, I was something like 15 years old, didn’t care a bit about the game, and spent most of my time looking at the cheerleaders through binoculars. I saw a Rolling Stones concert there in December of ’89 during the Steel Wheels tour, and, probably best of all, I saw the Richmond Red Devils finally bag a State basketball championship in overtime against Lafayette Jeff in 1992 (the last two were courtesy of tickets acquired by “T,” frequent commenter here at Masson’s blog.)

Truth be told, I didn’t become an avid Colts fan until Art Modell shipped the Browns off to Baltimore. I seem to recall that got announced during the 1995 season and that’s when I started watching most of the Colts games. That was a great season. As luck would have it, the Colts beat the Chargers in playoffs that year. Zack Crockett came out of nowhere and ran wild when Marshall Faulk was injured — it was a New Year’s Eve playoff game – that seems so odd as the NFL season seems to run later and later. That season ended with the Colts in the Steelers’ end zone with a near miss of a last second Hail Mary pass to win the game. After another solid outing and another playoff loss to the Steelers, the next couple of years weren’t great – back-to-back 3-13 seasons. Then, the good times started:
1999: 13-3, lost to the Titans in the playoffs.
2000: 10-6, lost to the Dolphins in the wildcard round.
2001: 6-10, Jim Mora fired as a coach; Colts defense was awful.
2002: 10-6, got walloped by the Jets in the wildcard round.
2003: 12-4, lost to the Patriots in the AFC Championship.
2004: 12-4, lost to the Patriots in the divisional round.
2005: 14-2, lost to the Steelers in the divisional round.
2006: 12-4, won the Super Bowl
2007: 13-3, playoff results to be determined.

Jeeze, how spoiled have we become with Manning as QB? Two seasons where the Colts have had fewer than 10 wins. Twelve win seasons in the past 5 consecutive. And a fair number of the 17 losses in those seasons have been in garbage time where the Colts had nothing much left to play for.

Let’s look at the prior history:
1984: 4-12
1985: 5-11
1986: 3-13
1987: 9-7, lost to the Browns in the divisional round
1988: 9-7
1989: 8-8
1990: 7-9
1991: 1-15
1992: 9-7
1993: 4-12
1994: 8-8
1995: 9-7, lost to the Steelers in the AFC Championship
1996: 9-7, lost to the Steelers in the Wildcard Round
1997: 3-13
1998: 3-13

So, today, we take on the Chargers again. Frankly, I’d feel more comfortable if the Chargers were still coached by Marty “great coach, but can’t win in the playoffs” Schottenheimer. But, if the Colts can avoid giving up 14 points on runbacks and having Manning throw 6 interceptions, and having Adam “the Iceman” Viniateri miss a chip shot field goal, all of which happened in the Colts’ narrow regular season loss to the Chargers, I like our chances.

I thought coming into Baltimore this week was going to be a problem. The Ravens would be bitter about their narrow loss against New England last week and, well, it’s the Colts coming back to Baltimore. But, right now, it’s 44 – 13 with 2 minutes to go, and frankly, the score makes the game sound closer than it actually was. Manning and a lot of the other starters have been out since mid-way through the 3rd quarter. If Belichick were coaching the Colts instead of Dungy, Indianapolis would have about 70 points and Manning would have 6 – 8 touchdown passes.

Instead, we’ve been treated to the quarterback stylings of Jim Sorgi and a Sanders-less defense. Not sure why I’m still watching other than that I can’t help myself. Hopefully only having to play half a game this week will help the Colts rest up and get healthy during the stretch run.