After discovering the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk was asked who owned the patent.
“Well, the people, I would say,” he replied. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
I’ll say this for Jonas Salk: The man knew how to cure a disease and win a press conference. We would think less of him today if he vowed to do what’s best for his inactivated polio virus while not ruling out the idea of inoculating the masses at some later date.
Which brings us to Kansas basketball coach Bill Self. He recently accomplished a very difficult thing. With one bright idea, he made Missouri and Kansas fans simultaneously happy, gave both teams a valuable evaluation tool and raised more than more than $1.75 million for hurricane relief.
And yet, somehow, Self still managed to play the heavy Sunday in Kansas City when he stubbornly refused to acknowledge that his creation should be an annual event and not a one-off. After Kansas beat Missouri 93-87 in an entertaining exhibition game, Self clung to his oft-repeated stance that he had no plans to schedule the Jayhawks’ oldest and most bitter rival again unless it is in KU’s best interest. That’s a criterion that loosely translates as Kansas having everything to lose and nothing to gain from playing its inferior and obnoxious little brother.
But even that interpretation is just a cover for the real reason: Self holds a grudge about Missouri leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. Those old hard feelings could easily be milked for a good cause every year. Set up an annual regular-season game in December and stipulate that the proceeds always go to the charity of the coaches’ choosing.
Everybody wins, even though one team loses.
It would have been so easy to make that announcement Sunday evening in the afterglow of a satisfying victory over an old rival in a game that was an exhibition in name only. The postgame briefing in front of a standing-room-only crowd of reporters was the perfect time to deliver the news, but Self decided to take a knee. I hesitate to criticize Self too much because he did raise $1.75 million more than I ever have, but it’s a shame so much more is being left on the table and an annual game that almost everyone wants to see won’t happen any time soon.
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As for the exhibition game itself, I thought the quality of play was extraordinary for October. The biggest draw — for half the crowd — was the first appearance of Michael Porter Jr. He was good offensively in the first half but got a little impatient in the second half and wound up shooting 6 of 20 from the field on his way to 21 points. It might not be a bad thing that someone so gifted, someone who has basked in gushing adoration for at least the last four years, struggled a bit in his first attempt at college basketball.
We got a taste of how Cuonzo Martin plans to use Porter, at least against the man-to-man defense the coaches agreed to play exclusively. He usually got the ball at the top of the key as the Tigers spread the floor. Self chose to guard him mostly with Lagerald Vick, a 6-foot-5, 175-pound guard who was giving up 5 inches. I would have liked to see Porter post up more often. He did so on the first possession of the second half and easily scored over Vick’s head. If opponents are going to cover him with guards, that’s the obvious way to make them pay.
The most promising sign of the day for Missouri was the performance of the other newcomers. The Tigers cut a 17-point deficit to seven with Michael Porter on the bench late in the second half. Kassius Robertson was as advertised: A 3-point shooter who actually makes his 3-pointers, which is the best kind of 3-point shooter. Jontay Porter held his own physically inside and grabbed 12 rebounds. Jeremiah Tilmon packed a lot of activity into his 13 minutes — piling up 10 points, four rebounds and seven fouls — and should be a star if he can just curb his enthusiasm as far as fouling is concerned.
The Tigers look like a Top 25 team now that could get even better later if Martin can convince them to play defense.
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On Saturday, the Missouri football team ended its five-game losing streak with a 68-21 victory over Idaho.
The Vandals entered the game with the nation’s sixth-ranked pass defense, which makes me question whether their previous opponents — Sacramento State, UNLV, Western Michigan, South Alabama, Louisiana-Lafayette and Appalachian State — exclusively used noseguards in the wildcat formation. I don’t even know what Idaho was trying to do defensively, as its secondary gave Missouri receivers 12-yard cushions and still got beat deep.
Drew Lock piled up 467 yards and six touchdown passes, and he now gets to face the nation’s 129th-ranked pass defense when Missouri visits Connecticut on Saturday. That should excite fans for the possibility of Missouri winning its second straight game — at least if you have any faith in statistics, which I’m not sure I do after watching Idaho play pass defense.
The Tigers led the Vandals 51-14 at halftime, and yet Lock continued to chuck the ball and take big hits throughout the third quarter. Missouri has enough negative realities without getting into negative hypotheticals, but I don’t think Barry Odom did a thorough enough cost-benefit analysis on that decision. If Lock got seriously hurt in garbage time, the Tigers would have a very slim chance of winning enough games to save Odom’s job.
The chance of a quarterback suffering a season-ending injury in any given quarter is higher than the chance a team rallies from a 37-point halftime deficit to win. In fact, the chance of a team rallying from a 37-point deficit is historically zero, as the biggest rally in FBS history came when Michigan State erased Northwestern’s 35-point lead in 2006. Quarterbacks, on the other hand, get broken every week.
A statistically minded staffer should spend his June formulating a sliding scale that tells a coach when the point spread and time remaining dictate it is wise to yank his indispensable players.
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Kudos to athletic director Jim Sterk for being accessible to the media this year. Of course, that means he must find new and vague ways to address Odom’s job status. I interpreted his comment to the Columbia Missourian’s Peter Baugh to be a little more pro-status quo than I had heard before.
“There’s things that could happen, but I expect (Odom) to be back,” Sterk told Baugh on Tuesday.
Sterk carved out plenty of wiggle room before the comma, and he will probably make good use of that room if the Tigers don’t build upon their beatdown of Idaho, but he did finish almost declaratively. If not red meat, he at least served some tofu.
If that qualified as good news from above, there was more bad news from below. In February, we were sold on the importance of Missouri landing the majority of the Tiger Ten, the in-state class of recruits heralded as one of the best in recent history. That scenario fizzled by the summer. But if the locals weren’t interested, at least the Bama Boys — quarterback James Foster, athlete Cameron Taylor and linebacker La’Dedric Jackson — were onboard.
All three have since decommitted, with Taylor and Foster announcing their decisions on Twitter this week. I guess that 47-point victory over Idaho didn’t resonate in the Deep South.
The class is down to 11 recruits, including only one Cameron and one Kam. The other major Cam/Kams, with the exception of CBC wide receiver Kamryn Babb, have committed elsewhere. It appears the Cam/Kam Dynasty I envisioned in August, like so many high hopes about the Missouri football team, will not come to pass.
